The topic of proxies has always been approached (at least, that’s how the publications I encountered did) from the standpoint of complex terminology, which often remains unclear to the layman—someone not particularly versed in these internet matters. I decided to delve into the issue, and here is what I came up with:

Given – the existence of several types of proxy servers on the market.
The task – to understand how they differ and what they are suitable for.

Types of Proxy Servers:

• Mobile proxies.
• Residential proxies.
• Datacenter proxies.

We will not consider the ethical aspect of the issue, as the use of proxies has not yet harmed anyone—except perhaps causing some emotional distress to certain employees in some organizations due to their lack of competence, but that doesn’t count.

What is a proxy? Let’s ask a neural network.

A proxy is like an intermediary between you and the Internet. You send a request through a proxy, and it then passes it on to the Internet and returns the response. It’s like your personal assistant who does all the dirty work for you while preserving your anonymity.
© ChatCPT

I won’t include here what Gemini answered on this, just to say briefly—once again, something broke (if one is to be very politically correct).

Simply put, a proxy is an additional computer that acts as an intermediary between you and the Internet resource you are accessing.

There are also various, forgive me, VPN services, but let’s not discuss the pathetic ones, as I have already come to understand that using a proxy server with a simple anti-detect browser is far superior to even the most sophisticated VPN.

This is a subjective opinion, and you can argue with it—though most likely you won’t be able to change it, but you can try!
© Author

Personally, I have used all types of proxies, and I have formed my own opinion regarding their quality, speed, anonymity, price, etc. Now, let me explain!

Datacenter Proxies (Data Center Proxy)

These are the most ordinary proxy servers, deployed in standard data centers and tied to the service provider. In other words, theoretically they help bypass restrictions (and practically they do), but they are not suitable for solving complex tasks, such as parsing well-protected Internet resources.

Such proxies are relatively inexpensive—I use US data center proxies priced at $0.70 per month and have no issues. Well, almost none.

In my case, the setup when using datacenter proxies is as follows: anti-detect browser – datacenter proxy.

Purpose – web surfing, using neural networks—in short, the standard activity of an active user.

There are practically no problems, except for the occasional loss of the ability to authenticate via Google in some browsers. For some reason, on the older datacenter proxies I have been using for over a year, I can’t log into my Google account. Whether this is related to the proxy or not, I cannot say for sure; however, when I bought a fresh data center proxy and created a new browser with new fingerprints, the authentication succeeded.

I use Dolphin Anty, for those who are interested.

So, here’s what I gleaned from using datacenter proxies:

• They are cheap;
• They are convenient to use;
• They can be detected by some websites (there were cases when my IP address was identified as not being from the US).

Residential Proxies

A more expensive and higher-quality option for proxy servers are residential proxies.

Residential proxies are IP addresses provided by ISPs to ordinary users, which makes them reliable and resistant to detection.
© 2captcha proxy service

In fact, this technology disguises the end user as a user from another country.

Once again—when you use residential proxies, you essentially put on your browser the mask of another person’s browser (not entirely, of course—only the IP address).

These proxies cost more than datacenter proxies, but they offer higher anonymity. In other words, if datacenter proxies eventually get detected—since with proper organization one might correlate an IP address with the data centers issuing it—in the case of residential proxies, one would have to correlate a pool of IP addresses that ISPs have at their disposal.

In this case, you are not buying a specific IP address but rather traffic (usually starting from 1 GB and up), since within this traffic you can change (some prefer the term “rotate”) IP addresses. In reputable services, you can configure all parameters yourself.

The Internet connection speed with residential proxies might be lower, as it depends on the speed of the particular ISP to which the IP address belongs.

Such proxies can be used without issues for parsing websites, social networks, testing applications, and other tasks that require automation.

Another significant advantage of residential proxies is that captchas occur less frequently, as these proxies are less likely to be detected by web resources. In the long run, you will spend less money if you use the combination “residential proxies + captcha solving service” rather than “datacenter proxies + captcha solving service.”

A brief summary of residential proxies:

• They are more expensive than datacenter proxies;
• They may be slower than datacenter proxies;
• They are more secure;
• They allow automating over 95% of tasks.

Mobile Proxies

Now comes a tricky question for the toxic users of the Habr community: Are mobile proxies a subset of residential proxies, or not? I hope I don’t open a portal to hell with this subheading.

Frankly, I don’t really care whether mobile proxies fall under residential proxies or vice versa. I will consider that mobile proxies exist alongside residential ones (although I’m not entirely sure about this anymore).

In my understanding, mobile proxies work roughly the same as residential proxies, but they use a pool of IP addresses from mobile operators as the source. By all accounts, this represents the high class in the ecosystem of proxy servers.

Mobile proxies are less likely than residential proxies to be detected by web resources, but they cost an order of magnitude more. Such proxies are needed for solving complex tasks related to boosting something or for working in social networks that are smarter than the rest, such as Facebook.

Personally, I used mobile proxies when boosting search suggestions for Yandex’s search engine. It wasn’t the cheapest pleasure, I’ll tell you, but everything worked. The setup was: suggestion-boosting program – overseas server – mobile proxies, and it delivered noticeable results.

Mobile proxies are also used by the very same folks who boost behavioral factors on websites. They deploy a multitude of bots on your sites to generate cookies, and precisely because they use mobile proxies for these bots, you (the site owners facing an invasion of direct traffic) cannot protect against them by simply restricting access from certain IP addresses. Ban the pool of IP addresses—and you end up banning regular users who also use these same IPs.

A brief summary about mobile proxies:

• They cost twice as much as residential proxies;
• Their speed is comparable to that of residential proxies;
• They are better protected against detection by web resources.

Thus, for ordinary web surfing, datacenter proxies can be safely used; for automation tasks, residential proxies are preferable; and for high-end tasks, mobile proxies are the way to go.

What the different between Residential Proxy, Mobile Proxy and Datacenter Proxies? A Dilettante’s Perspective