I built a free tool to simulate web scraping proxy costs and bandwidth. Here is why.
Hi everyone,
I’m a back-end developer, and recently I've been diving deep into the world of web scraping and browser automation using frameworks like Playwright and Scrapy.
While scaling up my data extraction pipelines, I ran into a massive, frustrating roadblock: estimating proxy costs.
As many of you know, premium residential proxies are metered and billed per GB. When your headless browser starts fetching heavy product directories or dynamic web pages, it drains bandwidth like a waterfall. Most premium proxy providers hide their real, granular costs behind enterprise sales walls, making it incredibly difficult for independent developers and bootstrapped startups to budget their infrastructure.
To solve my own pain point, I decided to build in public and launched ProxyVero.
What is ProxyVero? It is a 100% free benchmarking index and price simulator platform built with Python/Django.
Currently, I’ve rolled out a few core interactive tools and data-driven guides:
Dynamic Price Simulator: You can slide to input your target data volume, and it automatically estimates and compares monthly costs across major providers like Smartproxy and Bright Data.
Use Case Matrix: I'm mapping out exactly how much traffic different scrapers use, starting with our comprehensive technical breakdown on Web Scraping Proxies.
What’s next? I want to expand the database to include smaller, budget-friendly proxy providers that cater specifically to indie hackers. I also want to make the bandwidth calculator even more precise by allowing users to select specific target site types (e.g., e-commerce vs. social media).
I would love to get your feedback:
As a developer or founder, what is your biggest headache when dealing with proxy networks?
Is the pricing layout simple and intuitive enough? (I recently revamped the architecture to make navigation cleaner).
If you’re running any scraping infrastructure or just curious about web tracking bypass, please check out ProxyVero and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Cheers,
proxy vero
