What should I use for reliable anti-blocking during scraping?

If by “anti-blocking” you mean avoiding rate limits / bot defenses while scraping, the most reliable approach is usually not a single tool, but a mix of:

1. Respectful request patterns

   • Low concurrency
   • Randomized, human-like delays
   • Backoff/retry on 429/403
   • Cache responses and avoid re-fetching
   • Use conditional requests when possible (ETag, If-Modified-Since)

2. Stable identity management

   • Reuse sessions/cookies
   • Consistent headers
   • Keep fingerprints coherent rather than changing everything constantly
   • Avoid suspiciously high rotation rates

3. Infrastructure hygiene

   • Good-quality IPs from reputable providers
   • Proper DNS/TLS behavior
   • Keep an eye on reputation of outbound IPs
   • Monitor error rates and adjust throttling

4. Use the site’s intended access path

   • Official API if available
   • Data feeds / exports
   • Partner access or permissioned scraping

5. Browser automation only when necessary

   • For heavily JS-rendered sites, use a real browser automation stack
   • But avoid over-relying on “stealth” tricks; they’re brittle and can break often

If you want something practical and robust, I’d recommend this stack:

• HTTP scraping: requests / httpx + tenacity for retries + aiohttp/httpx.AsyncClient if async
• Browser rendering: Playwright
• Rate limiting: token bucket / leaky bucket in your own code
• Proxy management: reputable provider + conservative rotation
• Monitoring: log status codes, block rates, CAPTCHA occurrences

A good rule of thumb: optimize for being a good client first, because the most “reliable” anti-blocking strategy is usually the one that doesn’t trigger blocks in the first place.

If you want, I can suggest a safe scraping architecture for a specific case (static site, login-required site, JS-heavy site, or API-backed site).