Proxy setup in Python requests

A step-by-step guide to connecting Prokso proxies in Python requests. It takes a few minutes.

Step 1. Get the proxy details from your dashboard

Open your plan and copy the host gw.prokso.com, port, username and password. Port 823 is HTTP and 824 is SOCKS5 (both give a new IP for every request); ports 10000–20000 keep one IP (sticky session) for up to 120 minutes and work as both HTTP and SOCKS5 (each port is a separate address). Set the country in the username: username__cr.ua.

Step 2. Install the library

You need Python 3 and the requests library: pip install requests. For SOCKS5: pip install "requests[socks]".

Step 3. Pass the proxy to the request

Put the proxy in the proxies dict for http and https. The code below prints the IP the website sees.

import requests

proxy = "http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gw.prokso.com:823"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

r = requests.get("https://api.ipify.org?format=json", proxies=proxies, timeout=30)
print(r.json())

Step 4. SOCKS5 and a sticky session

For SOCKS5 change the scheme to socks5h:// and the port to 824. To send several requests from one IP, use a port from 10000–20000 instead of 823 or 824 — it works with both http:// and socks5h://.

# pip install "requests[socks]"
proxy = "socks5h://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gw.prokso.com:824"   # socks5h — DNS through the proxy too

Step 5. Check the script output

Run the code from step 3: it requests https://api.ipify.org through the proxy and prints {"ip": "…"} — the address the website sees. It should differ from yours. Run it twice: on 823 the IP changes, on a sticky port it stays the same. The My IP page in your browser won't help here, as the browser doesn't use this proxy.

Session, timeouts, and retries

For a series of requests, create a requests.Session() and set the proxy once: a session reuses connections and runs noticeably faster. Always set a timeout: without one, a hung request will stop your script forever. Through residential and mobile addresses a response takes longer than it does directly, so 30 seconds is a reasonable starting point.

import requests
from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
from urllib3.util.retry import Retry

proxy = "http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gw.prokso.com:823"

s = requests.Session()
s.proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}
# retry only temporary failures, with a growing pause
retry = Retry(total=3, backoff_factor=1, status_forcelist=[502, 503, 504])
s.mount("http://", HTTPAdapter(max_retries=retry))
s.mount("https://", HTTPAdapter(max_retries=retry))

r = s.get("https://prokso.com/ip", timeout=30)
print(r.status_code, r.text)

Only temporary failures are worth retrying: 502, 503, 504, and timeouts. On port 823 every retry goes out from a new IP. Codes 403 and 429 come from the site: an immediate retry will not fix them and will only spend traffic.

What the errors mean

• ProxyError with code 407. The proxy did not accept the username or password. Check the string and the remaining traffic on your plan.
• ConnectTimeout. The script could not reach the proxy: check the host and port, and whether the port is blocked on your network.
• ReadTimeout. The proxy is reachable, but the site did not respond in time. Increase the timeout or retry the request.
• Missing dependencies for SOCKS support. The package for SOCKS is not installed: run pip install "requests[socks]".

The response codes are explained on the proxy error codes page.

How to spend less traffic

Traffic is counted by the size of the responses. Request data through the site's API if it has one: JSON is several times lighter than an HTML page. Do not download again what you already have, and do not load images if you only need the text. The traffic calculator will help you estimate the volume in advance.