Proxies for Playwright

Proxies for Playwright

Playwright is the leading browser automation framework for E2E testing and web scraping. Its built-in proxy support makes it straightforward to route all browser traffic through Hex Proxies — enabling geo-targeted testing, distributed scraping, and realistic multi-location QA.

Basic Proxy Configuration (TypeScript)

import { chromium } from 'playwright';

const browser = await chromium.launch({
  proxy: {
    server: 'http://gate.hexproxies.com:8080',
    username: 'YOUR_USERNAME',
    password: 'YOUR_PASSWORD',
  },
});

const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://httpbin.org/ip');
const content = await page.textContent('body');
console.log('Proxy IP:', content);
await browser.close();

Geo-Targeted Testing

import { chromium, Browser } from 'playwright';

async function testFromCountry(url: string, country: string): Promise<{
  country: string;
  title: string;
  status: number;
}> {
  const browser = await chromium.launch({
    proxy: {
      server: 'http://gate.hexproxies.com:8080',
      username: `YOUR_USERNAME-country-${country.toLowerCase()}`,
      password: 'YOUR_PASSWORD',
    },
  });

  const page = await browser.newPage();
  const response = await page.goto(url, { waitUntil: 'domcontentloaded' });
  const title = await page.title();
  await browser.close();

  return { country, title, status: response?.status() ?? 0 };
}

// Test from multiple countries
const countries = ['US', 'GB', 'DE', 'JP', 'BR'];
const results = await Promise.all(
  countries.map(c => testFromCountry('https://yoursite.com', c))
);
console.table(results);

Python Playwright with Proxy

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

def scrape_with_proxy(url: str, username: str, password: str) -> str:
    with sync_playwright() as p:
        browser = p.chromium.launch(proxy={
            "server": "http://gate.hexproxies.com:8080",
            "username": username,
            "password": password,
        })
        page = browser.new_page()
        page.goto(url, wait_until="domcontentloaded")
        content = page.content()
        browser.close()
        return content

Sticky Sessions for Multi-Page Flows

When testing login flows or multi-step processes that need the same IP:

const browser = await chromium.launch({
  proxy: {
    server: 'http://gate.hexproxies.com:8080',
    username: 'YOUR_USERNAME-session-checkout-test-1',
    password: 'YOUR_PASSWORD',
  },
});

const context = await browser.newContext();
const page = await context.newPage();

// Multi-step checkout test with consistent IP
await page.goto('https://shop.example.com/cart');
await page.click('[data-testid="checkout"]');
await page.fill('#email', 'test@example.com');
await page.click('[data-testid="continue"]');
// Same IP throughout the flow

Parallel Geo-Testing in Playwright Test Runner

import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

const countries = ['US', 'GB', 'DE', 'JP'];

for (const country of countries) {
  test(`pricing page shows correct content for ${country}`, async () => {
    const browser = await chromium.launch({
      proxy: {
        server: 'http://gate.hexproxies.com:8080',
        username: `YOUR_USERNAME-country-${country.toLowerCase()}`,
        password: 'YOUR_PASSWORD',
      },
    });
    const page = await browser.newPage();
    await page.goto('https://yoursite.com/pricing');
    // Assert country-specific content
    const content = await page.textContent('body');
    expect(content).toBeTruthy();
    await browser.close();
  });
}

Performance Notes

Playwright adds browser rendering overhead on top of network latency. With Hex Proxies ISP proxies adding only 10-30ms to each request, the proxy layer is negligible compared to page render time. For scraping-focused use cases, consider using Playwright's request interception to skip unnecessary assets and reduce page load time.