What is a Datacenter Proxy?
Datacenter proxies come from dedicated servers that are not affiliated with an ISP (Internet Service Provider). They come from third-party organizations and offer high-level anonymity and IP verification. Allowing you to choose the location of your IP address gives you the freedom to stream or browse from anywhere in the world. Their main advantage is fast response times.
Datacenter proxies are most likely signed up by users in bulk. It helps users by masking their IP so that they can surf the web safely.
As we all know, datacenter proxies are the most common proxies. In fact, if you are weird and spend a lot of time thinking about proxies like I do, they are probably the first ones that pop into your brain. However, there is a good chance that you don’t know the details of how these proxies work.

It's time to investigate!
First, datacenter proxies: These proxies are completely independent of any one. Typically, you purchase datacenter proxies in bulk from a secondary source that provides you with a variety of IP addresses to use. Each proxy has its own unique IP address. Whenever you connect to one of these datacenter proxies, it will mask your identity by giving you a new IP address. This will make it appear as if you are in a different location. For example, with a datacenter proxy, you can be in Germany and get an IP address that is located in California.
The main benefit of using a datacenter proxy is anonymity. Datacenter proxies hide your identity when you are surfing the web. This means you can easily hack sneakers, scrape data, or do whatever you want without anyone knowing who you are. With the rise of social media, it’s easy for people to feel overexposed online. Datacenter IPs are a great way to combat this.
So how to use datacenter proxies? – Datacenter proxies can be used in many ways, but I want to talk about one main attraction which keeps customers coming back for more and more IP addresses.
Why Use a Datacenter Proxy?
Using datacenter and residential proxies allows you to search the web without revealing your IP address. If you want to unblock a website in your country and need to access it in a way that you can mask your IP address without being discovered by using an IP address from another country, then you must use a proxy. Datacenter proxies are used because they are slightly faster and cost a fraction of residential proxies, but for some websites, only residential proxies can be used.
Web scraping is an automated way of gathering data from websites. Using datacenter proxies for scraping gives you a better chance of overall success. Think of a web scraper as collecting diamonds in an ocean of gold mines. All the scraper wants is one diamond, but to find one, he has to wade through the gold. Once you tell the scraper what to look for, it searches whatever corner of the internet you like, Facebook, Google, etc. until it has gathered enough about a particular topic. Datacenter proxies allow you to scrape at a higher capacity. The more IP addresses you have, the better your chances of success when scraping. If you scrape using datacenter IPs vs. residential IP proxies, you are more likely to remain anonymous while scraping public information.
There are two types of datacenter proxies, depending on the protocol they follow.
Types of Data Center Proxies
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
HTTP proxies act as a middleman and show complete anonymity by forming a safe and secure tunnel between the client and the server as they cannot be traced. They read the data being transmitted and can log it. Therefore, some of these proxies support connection methods. They are only supported by the HTTP protocol, so surfing the Internet becomes easier.
- Secure Socket Proxy (SOCKS)
Another is Secure Socket Proxy (SSL) which functions by sending network packets between the server and the client (browser) through a proxy server. These are lower-level proxies used for general purposes rather than web browsing like HTTP proxies.
They are generally cheaper to purchase and are great for general use.
Enterprise data centers create IPs that give you the option to focus on multiple countries and cities. That’s because there are no data centers in every location in a country. The main potential benefit of data center proxies is that they are cost-effective, and you can increase your proxy pool without any problems.
Residential Agent

Residential proxies contain legitimate IP addresses of ISPs (Internet Service Providers), making them look like regular people and real locations on the Internet, unblockable, easily blacklisted and with expensive contracts.
So, in short, a residential proxy is an IP address that an ISP or Internet Service Provider provides to a homeowner. For example, an ISP might sell a personal Comcast IP address based out of New York to someone living in Brazil. This way, the Brazilian resident will get a connection that looks like it belongs to someone living in New York.
Why Use a Residential Proxy?
Even automated scraping of large projects can be a cumbersome task, as IPs are blacklisted after a certain number of requests to a page. Speed doesn't matter here with large amounts of data being extracted, so you need to be careful about what to do and when. Residential proxies are generally safer, less detectable, but expensive, and because they are harder to get your hands on, they are used to scrape data from sites where scrapers are banned.
Data Centers vs Residential Proxies

It turns out that residential proxies are more popular than datacenter proxies with 72,000,000 IPs while datacenter proxies come with around 770,000+ IPs.
Since residential proxies use legitimate IP addresses, they are very secure and it is difficult to replace them if they are banned by a website. On the other hand, datacenter proxies are easily detected and since datacenter IPs are not downgraded to residential ASNs, they can easily be blacklisted by websites.

While residential IP proxies are very secure, they are also much more expensive than datacenter proxies. That’s why datacenter proxies are less popular than residential proxies despite being used in about 67% of countries around the world.
You may eventually lose the ability to browse the Web anonymously due to relisted residential IP proxies. However, some datacenter proxy companies will replace your proxy if it is blacklisted. This way, you can continue to surf the Web or conduct business with minimal downtime.
Datacenter proxies are faster than residential proxies, which means you’ll be able to scrape more in less time. If you run a company that does a lot of market research, or want to launch a product but need more information about consumer feedback, scraping is a great way to gain enough insight into your query. Web scraping tools save you time, energy, and money. Pair a datacenter proxy with a web scraper, and you’ll be set up for success.
Why Use a Residential Proxy?
- Availability allowed
Since residential proxies are proxies to which the ISP provides the IP, they are very authentic and reliable with permitted availability. Since, as mentioned earlier, datacenter proxies are provided by cloud-based proxy server vendors, you may be quickly banned from the internet if you purchase them from untrusted vendors. Proxies work by providing a gateway between you and the web server you are trying to request information from. You can anonymously handle your online activities with them.
Not all proxies are equal, and as the platform gains insight, you must understand what your organization is capable of in the software stack. In this blog, we will look at residential proxies and datacenter proxies and how to manage them.
- Extensive proxy collection with large number of spot sites and high subnet multiplicity
Proxy providers have a large number of IPs, so you can make a large number of requests without encountering a comparable IP twice. This translates into two further advantages.
A few dominant countries account for the majority of the share; however, you can find proxies in the most exceptional places.
Another natural advantage of high subnet multiplicity is that residential IPs rarely share subnets. Therefore, you don't need to stress about accidentally blocking a range of IP addresses at once.
- Rotating IP addresses
Backconnect servers also allow you to naturally rotate your IP addresses almost effortlessly. You can choose the rotation rate, and the provider will perform the IP rotation on your end.
- Great anonymity
Since they use actual devices for association, residential proxies are difficult to identify from regular clients. Whether or not the client is performing sporadic, bot-like activity, the site tends to benefit them.
- Smoother management
Managing residential proxies with a backlinked residential server is much easier and smoother. You get a URL that looks like location that connects you to the proxy server, which then picks an IP from the provider’s proxy pool. This IP will change sooner or later. However, your server address remains the same. It is very beneficial for use cases like api scraping.
Disadvantages of Residential Proxies
- More drowsy performance
Residential proxies add an element to the connection chain: the residential endpoint (the actual PC in someone's home or business). In addition, you can't be sure that the end client has good Internet. All else being equal, these proxies are relatively weak compared to datacenter IPs.
- Intermittent connection
The end user can disconnect at any time and will be disconnected because the residential proxy has a sporadic connection. This way, whether the provider allows you to save a similar IP for 20 minutes or XNUMX minutes, there is no guarantee that you will have the option to do so. Only shared IP backconnect servers bring all customers into a comparison pool, which means that you need to share the IP with others.
- Higher price
The prices of residential proxies are relatively high because residential proxies are more persistent in acquiring and keeping up with data center proxies.
Why Use a Datacenter Proxy?
- Rapid and stable response
Some tasks require faster proxies, and datacenter proxies usually have quick and stable response times than residential proxies, allowing you to complete all tasks in a more limited time.
- Better data collection
If you are a business that needs a good performing proxy to collect information, then a data center proxy is the best way to go. Remember to buy it from a trustworthy proxy provider and be proficient in using it.
- Illegal and protective
Even if sites can determine if you are using a datacenter proxy, a datacenter proxy will still mask your IP address. If you use a datacenter proxy, you will usually run into issues with being blocked or any restrictions.
- Great value for money
It is relatively cost-effective compared to residential proxies and is approaching users with limited budgets.
Disadvantages of Data Center Proxy:
- Fewer locations
To make an IP node, you need a bare metal base, which means it actually exists. As you can guess, this makes it a common fund enterprise to build its own data centers in various areas. Still, it is difficult for a data center company to truly be able to provide inclusiveness on a global scale.
This is where suppliers become integral, for example, ensuring that our IP pool is curated and purchased from different suppliers around the world to ensure that there are no fundamental limits to scale.
- Easy to detect
Datacenter IPs are not part of residential ASNs (identifying the number of the company that provides the IP) and the subnets are likely to be of very little variety. Subsequently, concerned websites will see that you are using a proxy, whether it is completely anonymous or not. Depending on the target domain you wish to extract data from, this may or may not be a problem.
- Trouble using
Traditional data center providers will provide their customers with a proxy list containing the unique IPs of all purchased nodes in a text file. They are inconvenient to use even under the most convenient conditions. You will simply invest valuable time and energy in proxy management and figure out alternative ways to extract the information behind you from a specific URL to get some value.
- Bandwidth availability
Some organizations offer unlimited bandwidth but charge you for each string you connect to. The problem is that it limits your ability to make requests and restricts you to a single port. So if you want to keep an eye on different locations at the same time, you can't. It simply doesn't scale.
However, they allow you to interact with multiple threads, enabling you to focus on your target location and make many requests simultaneously. While it may seem like unlimited bandwidth is an advantage, it hinders your ability to scale your use case and limits you to a single request unless you pay for a long period of time.
Management of residential and datacenter proxies
We can easily manage residential proxies: they cover your real IP by routing your internet traffic and requests through an intermediary server with an alternate IP address. Like this, the site resources you are visiting do not follow your actual IP address.
Both types of proxies (static residential proxies) remain associated with similar IPs unless you choose to detach or change to another server. Then again, rotating residential proxies naturally change IP addresses based on set criteria, for example, after a certain number of minutes. We can also manage datacenter proxies just like we manage residential proxies. Datacenter proxy servers handle your requests to retrieve specific sites.
From that point on, the server overrides your IP address by assigning it to an alternate IP address before sending the request. Before sending the input back to you, the requested comment is sent back using the most recently assigned IP address. Like this, the website will not know the actual source of the request.
Which Agents Should You Choose?
So, for residential vs datacenter proxies- it all boils down to whether you need high security and authenticity or faster proxies which basically help you protect your IP. Speed, security, and authenticity are the main differences between datacenter and residential proxies.
Using a residential proxy is ideal in most situations because it doesn’t leave an impression. It won’t trigger any security warnings, which is especially important if you’re trying to collect a lot of information. Identity-sensitive data is where committed residential proxies win.
Residential proxies mainly cover more geographical locations. So if you wish to get content from a specific location, first check if the proxy you are interested in covers that area. In any case, datacenter proxies will work, provided that is your impression.
The difference between datacenter and residential proxies
Data Center Proxy | VS | Residential Agent |
---|---|---|
Cheaper (sometimes free) access | VS | High acquisition cost |
Fast speed | VS | Slower speeds, but static proxies are just as fast as datacenter proxies |
Often considered to offer basic anonymity, not that safe for regular users | VS | Secure and provides a high level of anonymity |
Most datacenter proxies have used | VS | Residential IP is unique and can |
The main difference between datacenter proxies and residential proxies is that datacenter proxies are easily available, cheaper, faster but only offer basic anonymity and have been used before, whereas residential IPs are more secure, offer a high level of anonymity but may be slower than datacenter proxies (as they offer more IP addresses).
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