Sneaker monitors and proxies: keep restock checks running

What a monitor does

A monitor is a loop: request the product, compare it with the last answer, alert on change. The change can be a new product, a size coming back in stock or a price drop. Alerts usually go to Discord, Telegram or the bot itself, which then starts tasks.

Many sneaker stores run on Shopify. Shopify's Ajax API documents a read endpoint, GET /{locale}/products/{product-handle}.js, that returns a product with its variants and an available flag. Shopify says there are no hard rate limits on the Ajax API, but requests are subject to its standard abuse-prevention measures.

Why ISP proxies suit monitors

A monitor's traffic adds up because it never stops. Polling one product every 5 seconds is 17,280 requests a day. At an example response size of 50 KB, that is about 0.86 GB a day for a single product, before retries.

The 50 KB figure is illustrative; measure your own target. Valor's Shopify guide suggests spreading monitors across routes: one monitor with no proxy, one on residential and 2 to 3 on ISP, so one blocked route does not blind you.

A small Shopify monitor in Python

This script polls one product through one proxy, prints when availability changes and slows down when the store pushes back. Replace the store, handle and proxy values with your own.

import os
import time

import requests

STORE = "https://example-store.com"
HANDLE = "example-sneaker"
PROXY = os.environ["MONITOR_PROXY"]  # http://user:pass@ip:port
INTERVAL = 10  # seconds between polls

session = requests.Session()
session.proxies = {"http": PROXY, "https": PROXY}
last = None
delay = INTERVAL

while True:
    response = session.get(f"{STORE}/products/{HANDLE}.js", timeout=15)
    if response.status_code in (403, 429):
        delay = min(delay * 2, 300)  # back off up to 5 minutes
        print(response.status_code, "backing off", delay, "s")
    else:
        response.raise_for_status()
        product = response.json()
        sizes = [v["title"] for v in product["variants"] if v["available"]]
        if sizes != last:
            print(time.strftime("%H:%M:%S"), "in stock:", sizes or "none")
            last = sizes
        delay = INTERVAL
    time.sleep(delay)

Set the proxy as an environment variable so the password stays out of the code:

export MONITOR_PROXY="http://USER:PASS@203.0.113.24:8000"
python monitor.py

Expected output is one line per change, for example 14:02:10 in stock: ['9', '10']. If you see 403 or 429 lines, the store is limiting that IP; slow the interval or move the monitor to another IP.

Poll without getting blocked

• Keep a steady interval. A monitor that fires many requests a second on one IP is the easiest thing for a store to block.
• One store per IP set. If an IP gets limited on one store, your other monitors keep running.
• Back off on 403 and 429. Doubling the wait, as above, stops a short block from becoming a long one.
• Separate monitors from tasks. A monitor IP that gets limited before the drop should not be the IP a task needs at checkout.
• Follow the store's terms. Polling public product pages is still traffic on someone else's server.

How many monitor IPs

Plan 1 to 3 IPs per store you watch, more if you track many products on one store. Our guide to how many proxies a sneaker bot needs covers the full list, including tasks and spares.

ProxyLane's sneaker ISP IPs cost $3.90 per IP for 30 days with unlimited traffic, so a monitor can run around the clock on one IP without a traffic bill.

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