Farming Webshare Accounts for Free Residential IPs vs. Paying for Apify Residential Proxy
In one line: PETANIPROXY, an open-source tool shared on Threads, actually solves Webshare’s own account-signup captcha to farm more free residential IPs — not the anti-bot defense on whatever site you’re really scraping. Knowing that difference stops you from mistaking it for a substitute for Apify residential proxy or a real captcha solver.
A Threads post: auto-farm Webshare accounts for free residential IPs
Someone shared an open-source tool called PETANIPROXY on Threads, pitched as a fix for the familiar “my scraper keeps hitting 403s and free proxies keep dying” pain point. The post has racked up roughly 5.9K views at the time of writing — decent reach for this kind of technical share.
Opening up PETANIPROXY’s GitHub repo (its README is upfront about this) shows it’s a local rotating-proxy gateway that does three things at once: pulls public proxy lists, generates WireGuard connections through Cloudflare WARP’s official API, and — the part that matters here — automatically signs up multiple free Webshare accounts, each good for 10 free residential IPs.
The key mix-up: the captcha it solves is Webshare’s signup check, not your target site’s defense
This is where it’s easy to misread the tool. The README states it directly: it uses speech recognition (SpeechRecognition + pydub) to “automatically crack Google/reCAPTCHA audio captchas” (“Menggunakan speech recognition buat mecahin captcha suara Google/reCAPTCHA secara otomatis”) — but that captcha shows up during Webshare’s own account-signup flow, not on whatever forum or e-commerce site you’re actually trying to scrape. The tool’s author also offers a paid CapSolver API as a faster alternative, used in that exact same spot: getting past Webshare’s verification while auto-creating accounts, not your target’s.
In other words, PETANIPROXY solves “how do I get more residential IPs for free,” which is a completely different problem from “how do I get past my target site’s anti-bot defenses.” Even with a pile of farmed Webshare IPs in hand, scraping a site like LIHKG — or any other forum with real anti-bot protection — still means facing whatever rate limits or challenge pages that site puts up. That’s the same two-layer split covered in a piece on Cloudflare’s block vs. challenge actions: a clean exit IP only solves one of those layers, not both.
Two separate bills: where the IPs come from, and what a captcha costs
Bill one: residential IPs, priced per GB
Webshare’s official page lists its free plan as “10 proxies for free,” no credit card required — the exact plan PETANIPROXY farms. For paid upgrades, the same page lists bandwidth pricing (current as of this writing, 2026-10-01, flagged as a limited-time promotional rate):
| Bandwidth tier | Price per GB (promotional) |
|---|---|
| 1 GB | $3.50 |
| 10 GB | $2.75 |
| 100 GB | $2.25 |
| 1,000 GB | $1.50 |
| 3,000 GB | $1.40 |
Compare that with Apify’s official pricing and its residential proxy documentation: $8/GB on Free and Starter plans, $7.5/GB on Scale, $7/GB on Business — roughly 2-3x Webshare’s small-volume rate.
But forum scraping is mostly text-based JSON, and a single response is usually tens of KB. Even at that 2-3x price gap, the actual bandwidth-cost difference for running a real job typically comes out to a few dollars. What’s actually worth spending time evaluating isn’t the per-GB difference — it’s the engineering time it takes to maintain an account-farming, health-checking, and rotation system, and whether repeated automated account creation runs into restrictions on account automation that Webshare’s own policy lists under “mass creation of accounts” and “automated login abuse” — worth noting that policy page is written around abuse on other sensitive targets, and doesn’t spell out whether repeatedly farming free-tier accounts on Webshare’s own signup page counts the same way, so that part stays genuinely unconfirmed rather than assumed as a violation.
Bill two: if you actually hit a captcha on your target site
This is where PETANIPROXY’s “captcha bypass” framing would actually apply — except the subject here is your scrape target, not Webshare’s signup page. If anti-bot defenses escalate and your actor starts getting served reCAPTCHA for real, there are two common paths in the Apify ecosystem:
| Option A: integrate CapSolver directly | Option B: Apify Store’s 2Captcha Solver actor | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost (reCAPTCHA v2) | Official rate $0.80 / 1,000 solves | Apify Store listing bills through 2Captcha’s own rate, roughly $2.99 / 1,000, plus Apify compute |
| Integration work | Your own CapSolver account, your own polling logic | Call a ready-made actor with createTask/getTaskResult polling built in |
| Billing | One CapSolver invoice | Separate 2Captcha account and invoice, plus Apify compute — not folded into one Apify bill |
The price gap is close to 3.7x — what you save with the ready-made actor is the time spent writing polling logic, not money.
Using LIHKG-scraper’s pricing as a yardstick
LIHKG-scraper’s search-listing event is priced at $0.002 per row today, and this particular actor doesn’t need captcha-solving at all. Using that price purely as a scale reference shows how sensitive this problem is: if a different actor had to solve one reCAPTCHA v3 Enterprise-grade challenge per row (CapSolver’s enterprise rate is $3 / 1,000, or $0.003/row), that single cost line already exceeds a $0.002 sale price — there’s no way to clear a 50% margin at that rate. That’s the real reason “switch to a cleaner proxy” and “add a captcha solver” are completely different orders of cost decision: swapping proxy tiers is usually cheap; adding a captcha solver only pays for itself at a high-enough per-item price, or a trigger rate low enough that it doesn’t fire on every single item.
Pick one and start
From least effort to most freedom
FAQ
Does the captcha PETANIPROXY solves let me bypass anti-bot protection on the site I’m actually scraping? No. Per the project’s README, its speech-recognition captcha solver and optional CapSolver integration both exist to get past Webshare’s own account-signup verification, so the tool can farm more free accounts at 10 free IPs each — not to solve whatever captcha your actual scrape target throws at you. Even with a pile of farmed Webshare IPs, a site with real anti-bot defenses still makes you face its own protection layer.
How many IPs does a free Webshare account get, and what does upgrading cost? Webshare’s official page lists the free plan as 10 residential proxies, no credit card required. Paid residential bandwidth is billed per GB; the smallest 1GB tier is currently a standing promotional price of $3.50/GB, dropping to $1.40/GB at 3,000GB scale.
How much cheaper is farming free Webshare IPs than paying for Apify residential proxy, per GB? By official list prices, Apify residential proxy runs $7-8/GB depending on plan (official pricing), versus Webshare’s paid tiers at $2.75-3.50/GB at small volumes — roughly 2-3x apart. But text-heavy forum responses are usually tens of KB each, so even at that price ratio the actual bandwidth-cost gap for a real job is usually a few dollars. What actually decides whether farming is worth it is the engineering time to maintain an auto-farming/rotation system, plus the risk of accounts getting suspended — not the per-GB proxy bill.
If I do hit a captcha on my actual target site, how far apart are CapSolver and the 2Captcha Solver actor on the Apify Store, price-wise? For reCAPTCHA v2, CapSolver’s official rate is $0.80 per 1,000 solves; 2Captcha Solver on the Apify Store bills through 2Captcha’s own rate of roughly $2.99 per 1,000 (plus Apify compute, which the actor’s own page describes as minimal) — close to 3.7x apart. The difference is integration work: CapSolver means your own account and your own polling code; the Apify Store actor wraps that polling logic for you, but you still open and fund a separate 2Captcha account rather than paying it through your Apify bill.
Using LIHKG-scraper’s pricing as a yardstick, is paying for captcha-solving ever worth it? LIHKG-scraper’s search-listing event is priced at $0.002 per row today, and the actor doesn’t need captcha-solving at all. Using that price purely as a scale reference: if a hypothetical actor had to solve a reCAPTCHA v3 Enterprise-grade challenge on every single row (CapSolver’s enterprise rate is $3 per 1,000, or $0.003/row), that one cost alone would already exceed a $0.002 sale price — no way to clear a 50% margin. That’s why swapping to a better proxy and adding a captcha solver are completely different orders of cost decision: the first is usually cheap, the second only pencils out at a high-enough per-item price or a low-enough trigger rate.
Further reading
- Free GitHub Proxy Lists vs Apify Residential Proxy: same underlying question of whether a free option can replace paid proxy, but from the angle of public proxy-list survival rates and blocklists rather than account farming.
- Blocked by Cloudflare? First Figure Out If It’s a Block or a JS Challenge: if you’ve confirmed your target is serving a real JS challenge rather than a rate-limit block, this piece covers why proxy quality alone — residential or not — won’t fix it.
Chad runs 30+ published Apify actors, including LIHKG-scraper used here. What PETANIPROXY’s captcha solver actually targets, and Webshare’s and Apify’s pricing, are all checked against the project’s own repo, official docs, and official pricing pages; anything that couldn’t be verified was left out.