Just Eat does not challenge a datacenter client. It refuses it. On 24 August 2026 a single request to just-eat.co.uk from a server in Germany, sent with a normal browser user-agent, came back as HTTP 403 with Cloudflare's "Attention Required!" page, which is a firewall verdict rather than a test, and every one of the 20 free proxies that managed to connect got the same page. That is a different situation from most of the delivery marketplaces we measured that evening, and it changes the plan before any scraping question arises: no browser trick solves a block, only an address the rule does not match.
The marketplace behind the door is the UK arm of Just Eat Takeaway.com, which became part of Prosus on 6 October 2025 after 90 percent of its shares were tendered (Just Eat Takeaway.com newsroom); the group says it connects more than 362,000 restaurant and retail partners across 15 countries (Just Eat Takeaway.com, December 2025). In the UK the storefront is built per postcode: which restaurants deliver, their menus and prices, the fees, the estimate. A city means many postcodes on a schedule.
The answer for Just Eat
UK residential proxies pinned to the city of the postcodes you read, driving a real browser, a postcode held per session. Put any restaurant-partner login on its own static UK ISP proxy. Datacenter and free exits are refused at the door, and the count of that refusal is below.
Just Eat as a target
Three surfaces. Restaurant storefronts per postcode, with prices set by restaurants and fees set by the platform. Grocery and retail partners, where prices belong to a shop. And the group's other brands, each on its own site in its own country: Lieferando in Germany and Austria (which has its own page, proxies for Lieferando), Thuisbezorgd in the Netherlands, Just Eat in Ireland, Spain, Italy and elsewhere.
The UK site is a JavaScript application behind Cloudflare. The shell, once served, loads restaurants and prices through Just Eat's own API calls keyed to the postcode in the session.
Jobs a proxy is right for
- Menu and price monitoring across UK cities. Chains audit their own listings and their franchisees' markups; independents track competitors; price-intelligence firms build the dataset.
- Fee research. Delivery and service fees per postcode and per basket size, and how they move.
- Postcode coverage. Which restaurants reach a postcode, and where the gaps are, for site selection and competitor mapping.
- Listing accuracy. A restaurant group checking hours, menus and photos across every city it trades in.
- Cross-brand comparison. The same restaurant on Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats at the same postcode, which is the comparison UK restaurateurs most often ask for.
Jobs a proxy is not for
Courier accounts. Identity and right-to-work checks.
Promo credits across accounts. The links are phone, payment and device, and farming credits runs against Just Eat's terms.
Buying from outside the UK. A UK payment method and a real address in the delivery area cannot be supplied by a network.
The door: a block, not a challenge
The distinction matters enough to spell out. Cloudflare's challenge page ("Just a moment...") is a JavaScript test; a real browser on a decent address passes it, which is why DoorDash and Uber Eats, which use it, are reachable with the right setup. Cloudflare's block page ("Attention Required!") is the result of a firewall rule the site operator wrote: the request matched something (an address range, a country, a client signature) and the site declines to serve it. There is nothing to solve. A browser does not help. A different address does.
Our numbers on 24 August 2026: the direct request from a German datacenter server was blocked, and of 20 elite HTTP proxies from our free proxy list, 15 timed out before connecting and the 5 that did connect were blocked. The rule evidently matches datacenter address space, and possibly anything outside the UK; we did not test a UK datacenter exit, so treat that as an open question. A UK residential exit is the address that the rule is written not to match, because it is what customers use. Scraping past Cloudflare explains the two page types and what each one means for a scraper.
Type by job
| Just Eat job | Proxy type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Menu and price monitoring across cities | Rotating UK residential, city-pinned, sticky per postcode | Passes the firewall rule; reads as a local |
| Fee research | Rotating UK residential, sticky per postcode | Fees are per postcode and per session |
| Postcode coverage | Rotating UK residential, sticky per postcode | Each postcode is one session |
| Listing accuracy | Rotating UK residential, city-pinned | See each listing as customers there see it |
| Restaurant-partner login | UK ISP (static residential) | One fixed, trusted location per account |
| Anything | Datacenter or free | Blocked at the door, 0 of 20 |
For why the two address types are treated so differently, datacenter vs residential proxies.
Free proxies here
Not one of twenty, and the reason is structural rather than bad luck: free proxies are datacenter addresses and the rule blocks datacenter addresses. A fresh UK free proxy in a real browser may or may not clear it depending on what the rule matches, which we did not measure; our free UK proxy page explains what the UK free pool looks like if you want to try one look. For anything repeated, our UK residential proxies start at $0.44/GB, pay as you go, no KYC, pinned to the city.
Setup
- UK residential exit, city-pinned. This is the whole difference between a page and a block. A Manchester postcode from a Manchester exit.
- Real browser, cookies kept. Once past the firewall the site is an application, and the session's cookies are its standing. The Puppeteer proxy guide has the flags for handing Puppeteer the proxy.
- Sticky session per postcode. Enter the postcode, read the storefronts you track, record postcode and timestamp, rotate. The two modes are explained in sticky vs rotating proxy sessions.
- Treat a block page on a residential exit as a signal about that exit. Retire it and log it; a rising block rate means the rule has widened or the pool needs to grow. The general rules are in avoiding IP bans while scraping.
Sizing
Cross-brand comparison in 10 UK cities, weekly:
postcodes per city 10
pages per postcode session ~10
sessions per exit per day 4-6
exits in rotation ~20-25 UK residential, city-pinned
(repeat on Deliveroo and Uber Eats with the same exits)
Bandwidth is what you buy; storefront pages with images blocked are small. A monthly comparison costs a month, and the balance on our pricing page waits for the next one.
Where it ends
A UK residential address is what gets a page instead of a block, and it is all the proxy contributes. Courier identity, account links, local payment and Just Eat's terms, which prohibit scraping, are untouched by it. Given that, a city-pinned UK exit with a real browser lets a legitimate data job read public storefronts the way customers at each postcode see them: one postcode per session, human pacing, and the block rate logged.
The German sister brand has a challenge rather than a block in front of it: proxies for Lieferando. The UK rival with a scoring door is in proxies for Deliveroo.
Sources
- Just Eat Takeaway.com newsroom, 2 October 2025, Prosus declares the offer unconditional (90.13 percent tendered; settlement 6 October 2025): newsroom.justeattakeaway.com
- Just Eat Takeaway.com newsroom, 16 December 2025, Lieferando Report 2025 (group boilerplate: more than 362,000 partners across 15 countries): newsroom.justeattakeaway.com
- HProxy measurement, 24 August 2026: one direct request from a datacenter server (HTTP 403, Cloudflare block page) and 20 elite HTTP proxies from our free proxy list (15 no connection, 5 block page, 0 site).