ISP, datacenter or residential proxies: how to choose
Most buying mistakes in proxies are a mismatch between the line and the job. The three lines differ in who owns the address, whether it changes, and how you pay.
What separates the three
A datacenter address sits in a data centre and is registered to a hosting company. An ISP address is registered to a consumer internet provider but hosted in a data centre, so it is static. A residential address comes from a consumer connection and rotates.
That ownership is what a target site can see. Sites that filter on it will accept ISP and residential addresses more readily than datacenter ones.
How each is billed
Datacenter and ISP are rented per IP for a term. Residential is billed per gigabyte of traffic. The meter decides which line is cheaper for your job, not the headline number.
A decision rule
Work down the list and stop at the first line that fits.
- Does the target accept server addresses? Use datacenter. It is the cheapest per address.
- Do you need the address to stay the same across a term, and does the target filter server ranges? Use ISP.
- Do you need a new address on every request, in volume, with no fixed location? Use residential.
Location
ISP and datacenter let you choose country, region and city. Residential does not: the pool picks the exit address. If the location of the address matters, that settles it.
Keep reading
Put it into practice
Create an account and place a small first order.