What are proxies?

A proxy server acts as a gateway between your device and the internet. Sometimes called a “proxy server,” proxies pass your web request through the proxy server address, concealing your real IP before connecting to the target website.

How do proxies work?

When you make a request, it gets sent to the proxy server first, which then forwards it to the target website. The website’s response passes back through the proxy before reaching you, hiding your original IP address with the proxy’s IP. Proxies boost your online privacy and hide your activities, as the target can only see the proxy’s IP and not your own.

If you’re looking to bypass geo-restrictions, become more anonymous online, collect data at scale, or many other things, proxies are the way to go. Not all proxies provide the same flexibility, anonymity, or features; this will depend on the type of proxies you use. Here’s a few popular use cases for proxies:

• Sneaker Reselling
• Web Scraping
• Ticket Reselling
• Gaming

What are the different types of proxies?

Proxies come in various shapes and sizes, each with its ideal use case, pros, and cons. Rampage provides access to residential, mobile, ISP, and DC proxies. Here’s the difference between them all.

Note, when we say “legitimacy”, its to refer to how the IP address would look to a target server based on its origin.

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies are IP addresses provided by real residential devices. Residential proxies offer a high degree of flexibility, location, and features. Because these IP addresses are assigned by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to actual homes, they appear more legitimate to websites and are less likely to be blocked or flagged as suspicious, making them great for tasks requiring high anonymity or accessing geo-restricted content. Residential proxies can come in two different varieties, static or rotating.

Static proxies refers to a "session time"- how long a proxy will hold an IP address before rotating onto the next. Often mistaken, but static proxies are not truly static because the IP addresses are sourced from real residential devices or "nodes", and their availability relies on them being connected to a network. On the other hand, rotating proxies will rotate per request. Every time you click a link or page for example, the proxy will rotate its IP address.

Residential proxies come with their own unique set of advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages	Disadvantages
Residential proxies use IP addresses assigned by ISPs to real homes, making them appear highly legitimate to target websites, helping to reduce the risk of blocking or blacklisting.	Residential proxies are typically more expensive than data center proxies due to their scarcity and legitimacy, sometimes making them a large expense for large-scale operations.
They offer a high level of anonymity since they are difficult to distinguish from real users, making them suitable for accessing restricted content and bypassing geo-restrictions.	Since they depend on real residential connections, availability can sometimes be limited, especially in specific regions, leading to potential issues with scale and performance for specific use cases.
Residential proxies offer extensive location coverage, allowing precise targeting of specific countries, cities, or even zip codes to simulate very local browsing.	Unlike ISP or DC proxies, residential proxies can be slower because they rely on real residential connections, which may not always provide consistent speeds or stable connections.

Mobile Proxies

Similar to residential proxies, mobile proxies are IP addresses provided from only mobile devices. These offer an extra layer of security and anonymity due to their technical makeup. These are often used in tougher use cases where further privacy is required. Since mobile IPs are shared among multiple users by cellular networks, they are less likely to be blocked, providing a significant advantage for use cases like automation, web scraping, and accessing restricted content without raising suspicion.

Here’s some of the advantages and disadvantages of mobile proxies:

Advantages	Disadvantages
Mobile proxies use IP addresses assigned by mobile carriers, making them highly credible and less likely to be flagged or blocked, as they appear like genuine mobile users.	Mobile proxies are generally more expensive than data center or residential proxies due to their complexity and limited availability.
They provide an additional layer of anonymity as mobile IPs are regularly rotated and shared among users, making it difficult to trace any single user’s activity.	Due to sharing among multiple users, bandwidth on mobile proxies may be limited, which can impact speed and overall performance for data-hungry tasks.
Ideal for accessing content that requires a mobile IP or avoiding strict anti-bot measures since mobile networks are harder for websites to blacklist entirely.	Availability can sometimes be inconsistent, as mobile proxies are limited by the number of mobile devices and carriers providing these connections, affecting reliability for large-scale use.

ISP Proxies

Unlike residential and mobile proxies, which come from real residential devices, ISP proxies originate from data centers. However, ISP proxies combine aspects of both residential and data center proxies. ISP proxies use IP addresses registered with ISPs but are hosted on data center infrastructure, which allows them to offer higher speed and better reliability. ISP proxies will be fully static, located in the data center they originate from.

Advantages	Disadvantages
ISP proxies balance the speed of data center proxies and the legitimacy of residential IPs, making them less likely to be detected or blocked.	More expensive than data center proxies, as they combine residential legitimacy with data center performance, which adds to their cost.
High-speed connections and better reliability due to their data center infrastructure, suitable for tasks that need fast and stable connections.	Still more likely to be detected than true residential proxies because the IPs originate from data centers, which can be identified by advanced anti-bot systems.
Suitable for large-scale scraping, account management, and accessing restricted content, as they combine high trustworthiness and excellent performance. In addition, they’re completely static	Limited availability, as these proxies rely on a combination of ISP-assigned IPs and data center hosting, making them less scalable compared to purely data center solutions.

DC Proxies

Data Center (DC) proxies are IP addresses provided by racks of servers in data centers rather than by a residential or mobile device. These proxies are known for their speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Similar to ISP proxies, these benefit from the speed and reliability of the data center infrastructure but lack the extra layer of “legitimacy” that the other types of proxies have. Similar to ISP proxies, DC proxies remain static, with their location also being the location of the origin data center.

Finally, here are some advantages and disadvantages of DC proxies:

Advantages	Disadvantages
DC proxies provide high-speed connections with excellent scalability, which makes them ideal for high-volume tasks like web scraping and automation.	Lack of “legitimacy” compared to residential or mobile proxies, as their IP addresses originate from data centers, making them easier to identify and block by sophisticated anti-bot systems.
Cost-effective compared to residential and mobile proxies, making them a popular choice for users looking for affordable solutions for data-intensive tasks. To extend the afforability, you may find that these proxies are offered as "shared", meaning multiple users will have access to these same IPs at the same time you do.	These proxies are more prone to bans and blacklisting, especially for accessing restricted content or platforms with strict security measures.
Easy to deploy and scale for extensive operations, providing a reliable infrastructure for managing multiple concurrent connections.	Limited in terms of anonymity and flexibility, as the proxy's single data center origin can make it difficult to bypass geo-restrictions or avoid detection for sensitive activities.

Conclusion

Proxies can be overwhelming, having multiple different types and use cases. Rampage simplifies all these into one place. Outside, you'd have to go through each individual proxy provider, make an account, and potentially have to buy into packages or contract. Through our dashboard, we've given you access to 10 of the biggest residential and mobile providers in a single place, as well as 4 options for ISP/DC proxies. You'll find pay-as-you-go access to some of the biggest names such as Oxylabs, BrightData and NetNut alongside our own offerings to residential and mobile proxies.

If you find yourself still scratching your head on what would work best for you and need soms recommendations, feel free to reach out to us via Discord, email, or our live chat and we'll be happy to help.