Popular Proxy Questions

Proxy server is a small program running on some device that routes your request through itself which results in target website see proxy device IP and not yours.

There are different types of proxy depending on which device hosts it (datacenter, residential PC, mobile phone), but idea is always the same - you tell proxy what request send to what website, its doing it for you and returns result.

Usually it's tasks where the target site would otherwise limit or block a single IP: web scraping, price and SEO monitoring, ad verification, managing multiple social media accounts, buying limited items like sneakers and tickets, checking how a site looks from another country.

Yes, in most countries using a proxy is legal, while your actions should still be lawful whether you're using proxy or not. A better question for residential proxies is whether the IPs were obtained with the owner's consent. Reputable providers disclose how they source their proxies.

VPN encrypts all traffic from your device with the goal of privacy. Proxy works inside an app and its goal is only to change visible IP to avoid blocking. VPN is better for privacy on public Wi-Fi. Proxy is better when you need many different IPs, locations or rotation.

Residential proxies use real home IPs. Websites treat them like ordinary visitors, so they get banned less. They're slower than datacenter proxies and usually billed per GB. Browse residential proxies.

Mobile proxies use LTE/4G/5G carrier IPs. Many real users share each IP, so websites rarely block it. It's the strongest and most expensive option for strict targets. Browse mobile proxies.

ISP proxies are static residential IPs that have home provider ASN but hosted in a data center. They combine residential reputation with datacenter speed. Browse ISP proxies.

Datacenter proxies come from hosting providers. They're the cheapest and fastest, but easy to detect because they come from known server ranges. Browse datacenter proxies.

There's also IPv6, which is very cheap but works only on sites that support IPv6.

Rotating proxies change the IP on every request or at a set interval (sticky sessions), they are usually the best option for scraping. Static proxies keep the same IP for a longer session which is required when working with accounts. See rotating proxies for providers and what their session lengths are.

A shared proxy is used by several customers at once, so someone else's spam or scraping can get your IP flagged. A dedicated (private) proxy is assigned only to you, which is important for long-time account management. It costs more and whether an IP is really private usually comes down to the provider's claims. Check the private proxies list.

HTTP(S) proxies understand web traffic only, which is enough for browsing and most scraping. SOCKS5 passes any traffic through, including email, torrents, games and sometimes UDP, so use it when your app isn't a browser. Most providers support both and SOCKS5 doesn't cost more. See which providers offer SOCKS5 or UDP.

It depends on the type and billing model:

• Residential and mobile are usually billed per GB of traffic, and the price per GB drops as you buy more.
• ISP and datacenter are usually billed per IP per month, more often than not - with unlimited traffic.
• Mobile proxies on dedicated devices are billed per device per day and more.

Hover over underlined price in any of provider plans to see a full price table.

Hell no. Public free proxy lists are mostly dead or very slow and the working ones may log or modify your traffic, so never send sensitive data through them. A better way to try proxies for free is a free trial.

Use our proxy checker, if it fails, the usual suspects are wrong credentials, required whitelist or a wrong port.

Yes, it's possible, but depends on proxy type. Datacenter IPs are the easiest to spot because their ranges are public and often blacklisted. Residential and mobile IPs are much harder to flag, but sites also look at behavior, request rate, headers and browser fingerprint, so even a good IP won't save a badly configured software.

No. Everything on this site is about forward proxies, which sit in front of the client and hide your IP. A reverse proxy sits in front of a website's servers and is used for load balancing, caching and protection.

When choosing between providers, look at:

• location coverage
• rotation method
• allowed use cases
• number of subnets
• average response time
• success rate

Our methodology explains how we collect and verify the numbers.