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What is a Proxy?

A proxy acts as a gateway between you and the internet. This means that all requests you send through a proxy (with a bot, proxy browser, etc... ) will be sent through that proxy.   This is useful when using automation tools in order to perform actions like purchasing limited stock items from a website. If you used the software without proxies (on your local address), you run the risk of site bans by being detected sending an enormous amount of requests coming from the same IP. Proxies mask these requests by sending them all through different IPs.  

Different Types of Proxies

There are a variety of different proxies. Each with their own benefits and drawbacks. It’s important you are fully aware of these when picking the best proxies for your use case.  

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies are the most versatile. These proxies and their IPs are acquired from real devices all over the world.

✅ Advantages of residential proxies: Huge pools of IP’s: Since residential proxies are acquired from real devices all over the world, some providers have up to 40M different IPs to choose from.

Lower risk of bans: Since these IPs come from real devices, they are more human-like, so the risk of an anti-bot detecting and banning them is lower.

Versatility: Proxies can be generated from a host of custom pools, allowing you to better target certain sites and use cases. Other providers such as Koch even include an aio pool, allowing the provider to pick the best proxies for the presented situation.

❌ Disadvantages of Residential Proxies:

Speed: Out of the 3 common proxy types, residentials are the slowest, with top speeds being around 200ms. This is due to the nature of the proxy.

Price per use: Residential proxies are sold by the gigabyte, so every GB used will have a price billed to the user. This means in some cases it will be the more expensive solution.  

Different Types of Residential Proxies

Residential proxies offer two different varieties. The one in which you use heavily depends on the use case.

🛑 Static/sticky residentials: Static residential will maintain the same IP for around 30 minutes. Due to the nature of a residential proxy, it can in some cases by shorter than this. It is not possible to extend the static time any longer.

🔁 Rotating residentials: Rotating residentials will rotate the IP on every request that is sent through them. When you generate this type of proxies, it's possible they look similar. However, IPs are handled server-side.  

Datacenter Proxies (DC)

DC’s proxies from a datacenter. These proxies are completely private IPs, and are not actual physical IPs, but virtual IPs created in the datacenter. Datacentres are built in subnets, which may end up in datacenter proxies being really similar between them. This can result in a higher ban ratio from websites. We typically see this on sites who are very strict on proxy usage with multiple users running the same subnet.

✅ Advantages of datacenter proxies: Speed: Datacenter proxies are the fastest proxy type you can get. Some ideal speeds can go as low as 20ms (in an ideal setup). Datacentre's have a lot of bandwidth and powerful internet connection, designed to be used for high traffic scenarios.

Billed per IP Datacenter proxies have a fixed cost per IP, so the user is billed for the timeframe he is using the proxy for, and can enjoy unlimited usage/traffic. This can be very cost effective if you require high bandwidth/usage.

❌ Disadvantages of datacenter proxies: High ban risk:  Due to them being virtual IPs, and being very similar if they come from the same subnet, Datacenter proxies are banned on some sites and antibots. This means you won't be able to access the site or send requests to it.  

ISP Proxies

ISP proxies are similar to residential proxies that they use IP addresses that are associated with real physical devices. However, ISP proxies run on data center servers. This means they provide the speed, uptime, and anonymity of data center proxies, with the high-quality IPs of residential proxies that can easily circumvent IP-based security solutions.

✅ Advantages of ISP proxies: Speed Despite appearing as a residential IP address ISP proxies, like DC's, come from a datacenter. This means that you will experience much faster speeds compared to residential proxies, coming second to only DC's. This makes them excellent for high bandwidth usage tasks where using residentials would burn large amounts of a data balance.

Truly Static: Unlike residential proxies, ISP's are truly static. Because they are not coming from a physical device, it allows them to maintain the same IP indefinitely. This is excellent for use cases where changing IP addresses frequently or at all has negative consequences.

❌ Disadvantages of ISP proxies: Cost: Like DC's, ISP's are billed per IP. They too have a fixed cost for the timeframe the user has the proxy for. In large quantities, this can prove costly.

Lack of IP Diversity: Unlike residential proxies where you are given access to millions, when using ISP's are you are only assigned a single IP.

Fewer Locations: As they are located in a datacenter, you are bound to the location of this physical building. This inherently makes it difficult to get a diverse location range for ISP proxies.