after you did all that: great here is the recipe for banana bread

first, the ips of all vpn providers are known, the problem with the cheap/free ones is that they spy on you.

instead of blocking ips use proof of work for those sus ips https://github.com/TecharoHQ/anubis

(it’s the anime girl that checks if you are a bot. :3)

it drives the cost of crawling at scale high up while being minor for individual, “legit” requests

all the cool kids are using it

maybe the particular server of the vpn haz problems? have your tried switching that around?