Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange API From a US Carrier IP

There are two honest reasons to point traffic at Stack Overflow through a proxy. One is the Stack Exchange API, which hands out a daily quota per application key and per source address and will refuse requests when a shared address has been busy. The other is simply seeing the site as a US visitor on a phone: the layout, the ads, the collectives, the job of reading a long answer on a small screen. HourlyProxies covers both for $2 or $3, the price of two hours on a dedicated US 4G or 5G line that no one else is using.

Why the API cares about your address

The Stack Exchange API is generous but it is not infinite, and part of its allowance is tracked by source address. On an office or university network that means your quota is shared with everyone else running a tool against the same endpoint. Move your client onto a dedicated carrier line and the quota you see in the response is the one your code is spending. That makes it possible to develop a bot, a dashboard or a research script and know exactly how much headroom it has.

Register your own application key, send it with every request, honour the backoff field when it appears, and keep the request rate at the level the API documentation asks for. The line is a quiet room to work in, not a way to spend more than you are given.

The site itself from a US phone

If you write documentation that links to Stack Overflow answers, or you maintain a Collective or a company tag page, it is worth looking at those pages through a US mobile line once in a while. You see the mobile layout, the consent and sign-up prompts an anonymous visitor gets, how code blocks wrap at phone width and which ads show in the US. A browser profile with the proxy configured does this in a minute.

The same session can check Stack Overflow for Teams access rules or a private instance's address restrictions from outside your network.

Research use, done politely

Researchers sampling questions and answers should use the official data dumps or the API within its quota rather than crawling the site. The API returns structured data, supports filters and tells you when to slow down. A dedicated line gives a clear quota reading while you develop the pipeline; the dumps give you volume. Please do not scrape pages at speed through rotating addresses. Stack Overflow's terms do not permit it and neither do ours.

What the hourly line includes

One real SIM in a 4G or 5G modem we own, in New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Miami or North Carolina, on AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon as stock allows. HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 endpoints. Unlimited data under a fair-use rule. Rotation on demand. A free move between cities. 4G is $2 for the first two hours then $2 per hour; 5G is $3 and $3; four hours maximum per purchase, nothing renews. Stay all day and the paid hours count toward the $5 or $6 day price.

4G usually gives 20 to 45 Mbps and 5G 50 Mbps and up, depending on signal, which is more than a Q&A site will ever need.

• API quota readings that reflect only your client
• The anonymous US mobile view of any page
• Teams and private instance access checks from outside
• Two hours, then it stops

What we will not help with

Voting from several accounts, evading a suspension, posting through alternate identities or scraping at scale all break Stack Overflow's rules. We do not sell lines for that and we will close accounts that use them that way. Read, test and build with your own account and key.

Setting up a Stack Overflow proxy on HourlyProxies

1. Choose a city and carrier and buy two hours on 4G or 5G.
2. Configure your API client or browser with the line's HTTP or SOCKS5 endpoint.
3. Make one API call with your key and read the quota fields in the response.
4. Run your tool at the documented pace and watch for backoff instructions.
5. Finish inside the window or add an hour.

Stack Overflow proxy questions