Self-hosted vs commercial proxy services
Commercial "residential proxy" services often operate in legal grey zones and price accordingly. Self-hosting gives you datacenter proxies at a tenth of the cost. You control rotation, you control logs, you control the legal risk.
Recommended stack
Squid for HTTP(S) forward proxy, 3proxy for SOCKS, HAProxy for load balancing, or Python aiohttp/httpx for custom rotation. A cluster of 5–10 VPS-S instances rotating gives you a 5–10 IP pool for $75–150/mo.
Jurisdiction & scraping
Moldova and Russia are outside most western scraping-abuse reports. Romania and Panama are strong alternatives. Avoid jurisdictions where "computer misuse" is broadly defined and applied to scraping (US, UK).
Best jurisdictions for scraping
Budget-friendly jurisdictions with low abuse-report follow-through.
Panama
No Data RetentionNo retention laws, no MLAT with most western countries.
Moldova
Budget OffshoreLight regulation, low prices, minimal intl cooperation.
Romania
Anti-RetentionCourts struck down data retention laws. Great EU connectivity.
Russia
Western-ProofOutside western legal reach. Subject to Russian law.