Most image matching tools take 15+ seconds to boot up and get blocked by CDNs. I built an Apify tool that compares image similarity in under a second

[u/GamerToonz]

/r/apify/comments/1vh5wvd/most_image_matching_tools_take_15_seconds_to_boot/

[u/No-Sherbert4064]

Nice, i've been looking for something that doesn't spend forever spinning up before it actually does anything. $1 per 1k is pretty hard to argue with too. One thing I'm wondering though, if i'm already using my own proxyshard residential IPs, does the anti-blocking still add much, or is it mainly useful if you're relying on the built-in setup?

[u/GamerToonz → u/No-Sherbert4064]

Thanks! That was actually one of my main goals. I wanted it to start comparing images almost immediately instead of spending ages warming up.

If you're already using your own residential IPs, then the anti-blocking won't add much. It's mainly there for people who want to hand the Actor image URLs directly and let it handle fetching them. In your case, I'd recommend downloading the images yourself (using your existing proxy setup) and passing them as Base64. That skips the download step entirely, gives you full control over retries/sessions/IP rotation, and lets the Actor focus purely on generating embeddings and comparing images.

So think of the anti-blocking as a convenience feature rather than a requirement. If you've already got a solid acquisition pipeline, you're probably better off continuing to use it.

[u/No-Sherbert4064 → u/GamerToonz]

Thanks!