How to test Astro proxy servers for free

On Astro, a trusted proxy website, anyone can buy the best residential, mobile and datacenter IPs or try them for free. We offer geo targeted proxies as well as static, rotating, individual, anonymous, etc. To test a proxy for free, you should contact our support service and request the bot to provide you a test connection, or consult an admin. You will be granted a sum of money which is enough to get to know our service.

In this post, we are going to review how to try and use our free residential proxies.

• You will be granted a small sum of money, which is enough to get to know the service.

• If you need more money for a test, the support service will be happy to grant you a larger sum, but manually.

• Increased bot activity and unethical users have forced us to reduce the test sum to less than $1.

• It is enough to buy just one mobile or residential proxy port (a dynamic proxy) with 100Mb of traffic.

How to use our free residential and other proxies

Once the sum is added to your account, you can order a port.

A port is a dynamic proxy (controlled, backconnect). Its address is actually our server’s address; the external address will change as specified in the port settings.  

Therefore, once you have ordered a port, you need to enter the proxy address into the software or browser with no other changes to the settings.

How to place an order:

1. Make sure you have money on your account,

2. Press the ‘Add port’ button,

3. Select the appropriate settings (please follow the manual below to see the options).

Before you buy or try our free residential proxies

1. To avoid blocking, we strongly recommend that you choose both country-level and city-level targeting.

2. Choose the ‘new IP for every request’ mode only if you are sure you can use it without getting blocked.

3. Real users do not change IPs randomly. They rotate them within a particular city location or ISP’s range only.

4. If you are running a lengthy session, you want to be sure that all your requests come from the same IP address. This mode is not suited for browsing or Facebook. This mode is good for specific tasks, registration goals, and some types of parsing.

5. For manual browser or anti-detect browser work it is better to manually change IPs by HTTP-link URL.

You can read more about how to buy residential, mobile and datacenter proxies, which of them to choose for your specific goals in our FAQ (https://blog.astroproxy.com/en/faq) or consult our support service.

The main terms

Quantity: a needed number of ports with the same settings. We recommend that you create a separate port for each account and thread. If you need a long list of proxies, you can create lots of low-traffic (for example, 100Mb) ports.

Name: name your port in such a way so that you don’t mix it with proxies, particularly if you work in a team. Many users give mnemonic names to ports.

Network type: a type of proxy, which you are going to order/buy (residential, mobile, datacenter).

Country: specify a country that is home to IP addresses, which you are going to assign to your port (if you choose ‘Any’, the system will pick a random IP address from the pool).

City: specify a city that is home to IP addresses, which you are going to assign to your port (if you choose ‘Any’, the system will pick a random IP address located in any city within the range).

ISP: Internet Service Provider (if you choose ‘Any’, the system will pick a random IP address located in any city within the range).

ATTENTION! To avoid banning, we strongly recommend that you use country- and city-level targeting and, if you use mobile proxies, ISP-level targeting as well. 

Rotate external IP: a port’s operation mode. It determines how external IPs will be rotated: by time, HTTP-link URL/GET request, or you will get a new IP address every time you go online. Choose one that suits your goals. To avoid problems, consult our support service.  In most cases, rotation by time or HTTP-link URL works best. Sometimes, IP addresses change by themselves, imitating users’ activity. Our system will select an appropriate new IP address as you configure it to.

Traffic volume: once you buy a port, you get a prepaid volume of traffic. When it expires, you can extend the port and buy the needed amount of traffic. To see how much traffic you need, you should test the system. You should order at least 100Mb of traffic.

Login: username, which you type in to access proxies.

Password: type it in to access proxies.

Access by IP (each written in a new line): if you do not want to enter your username and password for some reason, you can specify a list of IP addresses intended for password-less authentication. In this case, you will not need to enter username and password. When you have finished with the order, the port will appear in your profile.

The main elements are shown and described in the screenshot images.

When ordering free proxies or buying them from our trusted website, consult our support service. You will thus avoid issues and make your work with dynamic proxies more effective.