Build Your Own Proxy Endpoints with AWS, Tailscale & UniFi

Most proxy comparison articles tell you which service to buy. This one teaches you how to build your own proxy infrastructure from scratch using cloud VPS instances as exit nodes — and how to manage them with tools you might already own.

We will cover three distinct approaches: bare-metal WireGuard tunnels on AWS Lightsail, Tailscale exit nodes with multi-region routing, and UniFi Site Manager with Site Magic SD-WAN for teams already invested in the Ubiquiti ecosystem. By the end, you will have a working architecture that gives you dedicated proxy endpoints in any AWS region for as little as $3.50 per month per location.

Why Build Your Own Endpoints?

Commercial residential proxies charge $3–$8 per gigabyte. If your workload is predictable — say, monitoring your own sites from multiple geolocations, running ad verification, or testing geo-restricted content — you are paying a massive premium for IP diversity you may not need.

A self-hosted exit node gives you:

• Fixed monthly cost regardless of bandwidth (up to your transfer cap)
• Dedicated IP reputation — no one else is burning your addresses
• Full control over logging, encryption, and data retention
• Cloud-provider IPs — not residential, but clean datacenter IPs from AWS, GCP, or Hetzner

The trade-off is clear: you get fewer IPs but total control. For many B2B use cases — SERP monitoring, uptime checks, content QA across regions — that is exactly the right deal.

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────┐     WireGuard/Tailscale     ┌──────────────────┐
│  Your Home   │ ◄──────────────────────────► │  AWS Lightsail    │
│  or Office   │                              │  eu-west-1        │
│  Network     │     WireGuard/Tailscale     ┌──────────────────┐
│              │ ◄──────────────────────────► │  AWS Lightsail    │
│              │                              │  us-east-1        │
│              │     WireGuard/Tailscale     ┌──────────────────┐
│              │ ◄──────────────────────────► │  AWS Lightsail    │
│              │                              │  ap-southeast-1   │
└─────────────┘                              └──────────────────┘
       │
       │  UniFi Site Manager
       │  (optional: Site Magic SD-WAN)
       ▼
┌─────────────┐
│  UniFi       │
│  Gateway     │
│  (UDM/UXG)   │
└─────────────┘

Each Lightsail instance acts as an exit node. Your traffic enters your home network, gets routed through the VPN tunnel to the cloud instance, and exits to the internet from that region’s IP address.

Approach 1: AWS Lightsail + WireGuard (Cheapest)

This is the absolute minimum viable proxy endpoint. One Lightsail instance, one WireGuard tunnel, one exit IP.

Cost Breakdown

Component	Monthly Cost
Lightsail $3.50 plan (512MB RAM, 500GB transfer)	$3.50
Lightsail $5 plan (1GB RAM, 2TB transfer)	$5.00
Lightsail $10 plan (2GB RAM, 3TB transfer)	$10.00
WireGuard	Free (open source)
Overage transfer	$0.09/GB after cap

The $3.50 plan includes 500 GB of outbound data transfer. For most proxy workloads except heavy scraping, this is more than sufficient. AWS also gives you 3 months free on select plans for new accounts.

Setup Steps

1. Launch a Lightsail instance

Choose your region based on where you need to appear as. AWS has 20+ regions worldwide.

# Using AWS CLI (faster than the console)
aws lightsail create-instances \
  --instance-names proxy-eu-west \
  --availability-zone eu-west-1a \
  --blueprint-id ubuntu_22_04 \
  --bundle-id nano_3_0

2. Install WireGuard

SSH into your instance and install WireGuard:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y wireguard

# Generate key pair
wg genkey | tee /etc/wireguard/privatekey | wg pubkey > /etc/wireguard/publickey

3. Configure the server

Create /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf:

[Interface]
Address = 10.0.0.1/24
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = <server-private-key>

# Enable NAT for exit node traffic
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i wg0 -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

[Peer]
PublicKey = <client-public-key>
AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32

4. Enable IP forwarding

echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
sudo sysctl -p

5. Configure your client

On your local machine or router:

[Interface]
Address = 10.0.0.2/24
PrivateKey = <client-private-key>
DNS = 1.1.1.1

[Peer]
PublicKey = <server-public-key>
Endpoint = <lightsail-public-ip>:51820
AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0
PersistentKeepalive = 25

Setting AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0 routes ALL traffic through the tunnel. For selective proxy routing, you can specify only certain destination ranges.

6. Start and enable

sudo systemctl enable --now wg-quick@wg0

You now have a proxy endpoint in EU West. Your traffic exits to the internet from an AWS IP address in Ireland. Total cost: $3.50/month.

Scaling to Multiple Regions

Repeat the process for each region you need. A 5-region setup (US East, US West, EU West, EU Central, Asia Pacific) costs $17.50–$25/month — less than a single month of most commercial proxy services.

Approach 2: Tailscale Exit Nodes (Easiest)

If you want the same result with dramatically less configuration, Tailscale turns any machine into an exit node with a single command.

Why Tailscale?

Tailscale wraps WireGuard in a zero-config mesh network. You install it on your devices, they automatically find each other, and you can designate any device as an exit node. No port forwarding, no firewall rules, no key management.

Setup

1. Install Tailscale on your Lightsail instance

curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh
sudo tailscale up --advertise-exit-node

2. Approve the exit node in the Tailscale admin console

Go to the Tailscale admin panel → Machines → click the instance → enable “Use as exit node.”

3. Route traffic through it from any device

# On your client machine
sudo tailscale set --exit-node=<instance-hostname>

That is it. Three commands total. Your internet traffic now exits from the Lightsail instance.

Multi-Region with Tailscale

Deploy Lightsail instances in multiple regions, install Tailscale on each, and switch between exit nodes as needed:

# Switch to US endpoint
sudo tailscale set --exit-node=proxy-us-east

# Switch to Japan endpoint
sudo tailscale set --exit-node=proxy-ap-northeast

# Disable exit node (direct connection)
sudo tailscale set --exit-node=

Tailscale’s Premium plan includes regional routing — it automatically selects the nearest exit node based on latency. This is essentially a self-hosted version of what commercial proxy providers offer with their geographic targeting.

Headscale: The Self-Hosted Alternative

If you want to eliminate the dependency on Tailscale’s coordination server entirely, Headscale is an open-source implementation of the Tailscale control plane. You run the coordination server on your own infrastructure, giving you complete sovereignty over your mesh network.

Approach 3: UniFi Site Manager + Site Magic SD-WAN

For teams already running UniFi gateways (UDM Pro, UXG, Cloud Gateway), UniFi Site Manager offers a compelling way to manage proxy endpoints across multiple physical locations.

Site Magic: Zero-Config Site-to-Site VPN

Site Magic is Ubiquiti’s SD-WAN feature that creates encrypted tunnels between UniFi gateways automatically. Instead of cloud VPS instances, you can use UniFi gateways deployed at different physical locations as your exit nodes.

Use case: You have offices in Stockholm, London, and New York, each with a UniFi gateway. Site Magic connects them with automatic mesh VPN. You can route traffic from Stockholm to exit through the London gateway — your traffic appears to originate from a UK IP address.

Key advantages:

• Hub & Spoke or Full Mesh topologies supported
• Up to 10 sites interconnected (expanding)
• Subnet-level control over what traffic routes where
• Zero configuration — Site Manager handles key exchange, NAT traversal, everything

Teleport: Remote Access VPN

UniFi Teleport takes a different angle. It uses WireGuard under the hood to let remote users connect back to any UniFi network. This is useful for:

• Appearing as if you are on your office network from anywhere
• Accessing geo-restricted services via your home connection
• Testing localized content through different office exit points

Teleport is free and requires zero configuration — you generate an invite link in the UniFi app, and users connect via the WiFiman app.

Combining UniFi with Cloud Endpoints

The most powerful setup combines UniFi Site Manager with cloud VPS exit nodes:

1. Deploy Lightsail instances with WireGuard as described above
2. Configure a site-to-site VPN from your UDM/UXG to each cloud instance
3. Use UniFi’s policy-based routing to direct specific traffic through specific cloud endpoints
4. Monitor everything from Site Manager’s unified dashboard

This gives you the management simplicity of UniFi with the geographic flexibility of cloud infrastructure.

When to Use This vs. Commercial Proxies

Scenario	Self-Hosted Endpoints	Commercial Proxy
Geo-testing your own sites	✅ Perfect fit	Overkill
Ad verification (few regions)	✅ Good fit	Also works
SERP monitoring	⚠️ DC IPs may get flagged	✅ Residential IPs
Large-scale web scraping	❌ Not enough IPs	✅ Essential
Social media automation	❌ IPs get burned fast	✅ Rotating residential
Price monitoring (e-commerce)	⚠️ May work for small scale	✅ Better at scale

The honest verdict: Self-hosted endpoints are excellent for controlled, predictable workloads where you need a few clean IPs in specific regions. The moment you need IP diversity, rotation, or residential-grade anonymity, you need a commercial provider. Many teams use both — self-hosted for internal tooling, commercial for data-intensive scraping.

Cost Comparison: 5 Regions

Solution	Monthly Cost	IPs	Bandwidth
5x Lightsail $3.50 + WireGuard	$17.50	5 static	2.5TB total
5x Lightsail $5 + Tailscale Free	$25.00	5 static	10TB total
Bright Data residential proxies	~$500+	72M rotating	Pay per GB
Smartproxy residential	~$200+	55M rotating	Pay per GB

For teams that process less than 10TB/month across 5 regions, self-hosted wins on cost by 10–20x. But if you need more than a handful of IPs per region, the math changes fast.

Security Considerations

Running your own exit nodes means you are responsible for the security of those nodes:

• Keep instances updated: Enable automatic security updates
• Firewall rules: Only allow WireGuard port (51820/UDP) inbound
• No logging: If privacy matters, configure WireGuard with no persistent logs
• Rotate keys: Change WireGuard keys quarterly
• Monitor traffic: Use Lightsail’s built-in metrics to detect anomalies

Conclusion

Building your own proxy endpoints is not a replacement for commercial residential proxies — it is a complement. Self-hosted exit nodes give you predictable costs, dedicated IPs, and total control for workloads that do not require IP diversity. Combined with UniFi Site Manager for physical sites or Tailscale for zero-config mesh networking, you can build a surprisingly capable multi-region proxy infrastructure for under $25/month.

Start with a single Lightsail instance in the region you need most. Get it working. Then scale from there.