Both residential proxies and datacenter proxies are used to hide IPs, but there are some important differences between each of these proxy types.
If your business needs a proxy solution, you might want to buy datacenter proxies as they are generally faster and more affordable. But as these types of proxies come with greater risk of blocks and bans, it’s best to consider the pros and cons before you make a decision.
In this blog we will explain the difference between datacenter proxies and residential proxies, and which one is better for your business needs.
What are Datacenter Proxies? How do datacenter proxies work?
Datacenter proxies are the most common proxy solution out there. If you want to access more geolocations and need online anonymity, a datacenter proxy can hide your IP.
Datacenter proxies are IP addresses issued by cloud hosting services, rather than Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISPs issue genuine residential IP addresses, like for your home internet router. Since these datacenter IPs are assigned in batches, many are used by multiple people or businesses at the same time. Because they are not residential, they will not link you to a particular physical location. However, the way they are set up makes them an easier target to be flagged and blocked.
Why are Datacenter Proxies blocked more often?
Due to their shared nature, datacenter proxies are more likely to be detected and as a result blocked more often.These IPs are recycled so they have most likely been used many times before by different companies and they are also being used simultaneously by multiple clients. This makes them easier to detect by anti-bot protection systems. Ultimately this might result in you getting blacklisted or blocked, which will affect your ongoing scraping and data collection
What are Residential Proxies?
Residential Proxies are IPs issued by ISPs, linked to real devices in people’s homes from around the world. In the case of GoProxies, there are real people who opt-in to the proxy network and understand how their IPs are used in the IP marketplace. Clients of GoProxies can use these IPs to go undetected during their data scraping sessions, which appear as organic human users.
Put differently, residential proxies hide your IP address behind another legitimate IP address. This might be useful when you need your IP to appear as coming from a real user in a different location to bypass geo blocking for example. While a datacenter proxy is handy for hiding your IP so that it is not traced back to you, but to a datacenter.
Residential Proxies allow you access to sites with stricter detection and blocking potential, because your requests are identified as real home IPs.
Are Residential Proxies Better Than Datacenter Proxies?
The short answer - yes. Because residential proxies are linked to real world users and appear legitimate, they are more trusted by online security systems and therefore offer a lower risk of getting blocked or blacklisted. Without these triggers or detections, you receive a much more stable solution for harvesting large amounts of data.
Malicious online activity also tends to come more from datacenter proxies than residential proxies, so those are more often blocked by anti-malware, anti-bot and anti-scraping software security systems.
Residential Proxies on the whole offer a lot more location options, with more flexibility and granular targeting by city. However, if you have a specific location in mind, make sure to inquire about it with the proxy provider you are looking into.
For datacenter proxies to work well you need to have the know-how about proxy technology itself and choose a private datacenter proxy. Consider if your business really has the tech support resources needed to solve the problems that may arise with datacenter proxies.
Residential Proxy Use Cases
Some common use cases for residential proxies include market analysis, where businesses may want to keep track of their competition at specific locations, more accurate data harvesting for machine learning needs, or brand protection by being on top of counterfeit products hiding around the world that can damage your reputation and bottom line.
Some businesses also use these proxies for ad verification to avoid ad fraud and to ensure their ads appear on brand appropriate sites and features alongside the right content.
For these different kinds of use cases, you can consider taking advantage of both static and rotating residential proxies.
Static vs Rotating Residential Proxies
GoProxies offers two kinds of Residential Proxy solutions: Static and Rotating.
With Static Residential Proxies you get to tap into a pool of unique IP addresses sourced from real users. Static residential proxies are super fast and highly reliable, offering 100% anonymity. This is a great solution for longer sessions where you don’t need your IP location to change.
With Rotating Residential Proxies you get access to an unlimited pool of IP addresses spread across the globe. These IPs are also sourced from real user devices, so you can unlock the value of any website. This automated rotation of legitimate IPs provides you with an extra layer of anonymity and security for your higher demand web scraping needs.
How to Set up a Residential Proxy with GoProxies?
To get started you can get in touch with us at sales@goproxies.com, or you can fill out this form for our 7 day free trial. Either way we will get in touch with you right away to discuss the specific needs of your business and set you up with the right plan.
