What varies on sneaker sites
Release dates, regional pricing, taxes, size availability and shipping rules differ by country, and resale marketplaces show prices in local currency with local fees. A researcher who wants to understand how a release is priced in Germany versus Japan needs to see those storefronts as a local visitor does. That is the proxy's only job here: showing public pages from the right place.
Research uses and boundaries
- Comparing retail and resale prices for the same model across countries.
- Tracking size availability on public product pages over time.
- Building a release calendar from public announcements.
- Checking public listings for counterfeits as part of brand protection.
Out of scope: bots that add to cart or check out, raffle entry automation, and any tool built to beat purchase limits. Those practices break retailer terms and harm ordinary buyers, and we do not support them under our acceptable use policy.
Session and targeting tips
Price sweeps work well with rotating sessions: a new IP per request across a list of product URLs. Use sticky sessions when you page through a long catalog or compare size grids in sequence. Pick one exit country per pass and keep currency settings consistent, so the comparison is clean. Keep the request rate modest and avoid refreshing a product page repeatedly during a drop; polling at short intervals is what looks like bot traffic. Hourly or daily checks are enough for market analysis.
Why residential and not datacenter for this
Residential proxies are the sensible default for public pages. Datacenter proxies are cheaper, but retail sites often treat them differently from home visitors, which would distort a price comparison. Mobile proxies cost more and add little for desktop storefronts.
How to set up the proxies
Buy a package from 5 GB ($4.50, bandwidth never expires), open the proxy generator and copy the host, port, username and password into your tool. The gateway is gw.nefo.net:9000, and targeting lives in the username: -country-jp for Japan, -session-sk8 to hold one IP. Integration examples are in the docs, and prices are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
No. Checkout bots, queue bypassing and scalping are outside our acceptable use policy. Proxies here are for monitoring public prices, stock and release data.
Run one pass per country with the exit set to that country, keep currency and size settings consistent, and record the exit, time and price including shipping and tax.
Hourly or daily is enough for market analysis. Polling every few seconds resembles bot traffic and is unnecessary for research.
Rotating for sweeps over many product URLs, sticky (1 minute to 24 hours) for paging through a catalog in order.
Residential bandwidth starts at $4.50 for 5 GB ($0.90/GB), down to $0.53/GB at 10 TB, and never expires. See pricing.