diff --git a/scraper/cmd/scraper/main.go b/scraper/cmd/scraper/main.go
index 090e22f..d4d8e36 100644
--- a/scraper/cmd/scraper/main.go
+++ b/scraper/cmd/scraper/main.go
@@ -12,6 +12,10 @@
 //
 //	SCRAPER_WORKERS             Chapter goroutine count        (default: NumCPU)
 //	SCRAPER_HTTP_ADDR           HTTP listen address            (default: :8080)
+//	SCRAPER_PROXY               Outbound proxy for all scraper requests, e.g.
+//	                            http://user:pass@proxy-host:3128 — use a
+//	                            residential proxy to bypass datacenter IP blocks.
+//	                            Falls back to HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY if unset.
 //	KOKORO_URL                  Kokoro-FastAPI base URL        (default: "")
 //	KOKORO_VOICE                Default TTS voice              (default: af_bella)
 //	POCKETBASE_URL              PocketBase API base URL        (default: http://localhost:8090)
@@ -493,6 +497,7 @@ Environment variables:
   SCRAPER_WORKERS             Chapter goroutines        (default: NumCPU = %d)
   SCRAPER_HTTP_ADDR           HTTP listen address       (default: :8080)
   SCRAPER_TIMEOUT             HTTP request timeout sec  (default: 90)
+  SCRAPER_PROXY               Outbound proxy URL        (default: "", falls back to HTTP_PROXY/HTTPS_PROXY)
   KOKORO_URL                  Kokoro-FastAPI base URL   (default: "", TTS disabled)
   KOKORO_VOICE                Default TTS voice         (default: af_bella)
   POCKETBASE_URL              PocketBase base URL       (default: http://localhost:8090)
diff --git a/scraper/internal/browser/http.go b/scraper/internal/browser/http.go
index 5b9c374..df169da 100644
--- a/scraper/internal/browser/http.go
+++ b/scraper/internal/browser/http.go
@@ -1,10 +1,14 @@
 package browser
 
 import (
+	"compress/gzip"
 	"context"
 	"fmt"
 	"io"
 	"net/http"
+	"net/url"
+	"os"
+	"strings"
 	"time"
 )
 
@@ -18,11 +22,41 @@ func NewDirectHTTPClient(cfg Config) BrowserClient {
 	if cfg.Timeout == 0 {
 		cfg.Timeout = 30 * time.Second
 	}
-	return &httpClient{
-		cfg:  cfg,
-		http: &http.Client{Timeout: cfg.Timeout},
-		sem:  makeSem(cfg.MaxConcurrent),
+
+	transport := http.DefaultTransport.(*http.Transport).Clone()
+
+	// Wire in proxy from environment (HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY / NO_PROXY).
+	// This lets operators route traffic through a residential proxy by simply
+	// setting HTTPS_PROXY=http://user:pass@proxy-host:port without any code
+	// changes — the standard approach for bypassing datacenter IP blocks.
+	if proxyURL := proxyFromEnv(); proxyURL != nil {
+		transport.Proxy = http.ProxyURL(proxyURL)
+	} else {
+		transport.Proxy = http.ProxyFromEnvironment
 	}
+
+	return &httpClient{
+		cfg: cfg,
+		http: &http.Client{
+			Timeout:   cfg.Timeout,
+			Transport: transport,
+		},
+		sem: makeSem(cfg.MaxConcurrent),
+	}
+}
+
+// proxyFromEnv returns an explicit proxy URL if SCRAPER_PROXY is set, otherwise
+// nil (and http.ProxyFromEnvironment handles the standard HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY).
+func proxyFromEnv() *url.URL {
+	raw := os.Getenv("SCRAPER_PROXY")
+	if raw == "" {
+		return nil
+	}
+	u, err := url.Parse(raw)
+	if err != nil || u.Host == "" {
+		return nil
+	}
+	return u
 }
 
 func (c *httpClient) Strategy() Strategy { return StrategyDirect }
@@ -37,9 +71,25 @@ func (c *httpClient) GetContent(ctx context.Context, req ContentRequest) (string
 	if err != nil {
 		return "", fmt.Errorf("http: build request: %w", err)
 	}
-	httpReq.Header.Set("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36")
-	httpReq.Header.Set("Accept", "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8")
-	httpReq.Header.Set("Accept-Language", "en-US,en;q=0.5")
+
+	// Mimic a real Chrome browser request to reduce bot-detection likelihood.
+	// These headers match what Chrome 124 sends for a top-level navigation.
+	httpReq.Header.Set("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/124.0.0.0 Safari/537.36")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Accept", "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.7")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Accept-Language", "en-US,en;q=0.9")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Accept-Encoding", "gzip, deflate, br")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Connection", "keep-alive")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Upgrade-Insecure-Requests", "1")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Sec-Fetch-Dest", "document")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Sec-Fetch-Mode", "navigate")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Sec-Fetch-Site", "none")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Sec-Fetch-User", "?1")
+	httpReq.Header.Set("Cache-Control", "max-age=0")
+
+	// Set Referer for subsequent page requests (anything that is not the root).
+	if parsed, pErr := url.Parse(req.URL); pErr == nil && parsed.Path != "" && parsed.Path != "/" {
+		httpReq.Header.Set("Referer", parsed.Scheme+"://"+parsed.Host+"/")
+	}
 
 	resp, err := c.http.Do(httpReq)
 	if err != nil {
@@ -52,7 +102,22 @@ func (c *httpClient) GetContent(ctx context.Context, req ContentRequest) (string
 		return "", fmt.Errorf("http: unexpected status %d: %s", resp.StatusCode, b)
 	}
 
-	raw, err := io.ReadAll(resp.Body)
+	// Decompress gzip/br responses when the server honours Accept-Encoding.
+	// net/http decompresses gzip automatically only when it sets the header
+	// itself; since we set Accept-Encoding explicitly we must do it ourselves.
+	body := resp.Body
+	if strings.EqualFold(resp.Header.Get("Content-Encoding"), "gzip") {
+		gr, gzErr := gzip.NewReader(resp.Body)
+		if gzErr != nil {
+			return "", fmt.Errorf("http: gzip reader: %w", gzErr)
+		}
+		defer gr.Close()
+		body = gr
+	}
+	// br (Brotli) decompression requires an external package; skip for now —
+	// the server will fall back to gzip or plain text for unknown encodings.
+
+	raw, err := io.ReadAll(body)
 	if err != nil {
 		return "", fmt.Errorf("http: read body: %w", err)
 	}