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> handle 15000 requests per 15 minutes,

that's just ~17 req/sec

That's "cheap VPS running wordpress" level of traffic

Maybe a plain WordPress install. Run something like WooCommerce and install a bunch of plugins to get the functionality that WordPress and WooCommerce should have built-in, and suddenly a cheap VPS can only handle 2 or 3 requests per second.

It's phenomenal how inefficient the WordPress/WooCommerce stack is.

Though the main issue I'm seeing is credit card testing, not scraping.

And I'm ideologically opposed to using a CDN (because it shouldn't be needed for such a small site!) so it's somewhat a self-inflicted problem...

"Security" plugins are also HUGE problem here, most of them turns "few cached DB SELECTs" (or static file read if you use caching plugin) into now a bunch of inserts, just to log/analyze "offender" IP and maybe block it, in many cases turning "blocking offender" to be more costly that would be serving the page without the security plugin

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