Residential vs. data center proxies; which proxy wins the battle? Most business owners are knowledgeable about proxies and the benefits they provide when carrying out market intelligence and staying ahead of the competition. But confusion crops up when faced with the decision to use data center proxies or residential proxies.

Don’t worry. We will break it down for you

A proxy, for starters, is a go-between a computer connected to the internet and the web server that the user is trying to access. The proxy ensures that there is no direct contact between the two. It achieves this by making the web request on behalf of the device and delivering the response to the device on behalf of the web server.

The proxy hides your device’s real IP address and, instead, uses a proxy. It masks your physical location as well, allowing you to visit geo-blocked websites.

There are two main types of proxies – data center and residential proxies, which can be categorized as either shared or private proxies.

A private proxy is when one user has exclusive use of a proxy, while a dedicated proxy is when several users share a number of proxies and their costs. Shared proxies are cheap, but if one user misuses a proxy, it affects every other user. They are also associated with a lot of downtimes.

Residential Proxy

A residential proxy server is a type of proxy provided by internet service providers to homeowners. When using this proxy, your real IP address and location will be replaced with a proxy attached to a particular device and its corresponding location.

Data Center Proxies

Data center proxies are created in data centers. They work independently and have nothing to do with your internet service provider or internet connection. Whenever you access the internet, an artificial IP address and location are revealed instead of your real IP.

Residential Vs. Data Center Proxies

1) Legitimacy

Residential proxies are initially assigned to homeowners, and vendors re-issue them to internet users seeking online anonymity. They are real IP addresses attached to real locations. Web administrators view users with residential proxies as real traffic.

Data center proxies, on the other hand, are created in bulk. They are easily recognizable due to their similarity in appearance and the fact that they do not trace back to an ISP. Most websites will block them with the assumption that anyone hiding their identity has ill-intentions.

2) Affordability and Availability

Creating multiple data center proxies is easy, but collecting residential proxies takes time and effort. And it gets harder when you need a residential proxy attached to a specific location such as Iran proxies.

This makes data center proxies relatively cheaper. They are also more readily available from various vendors compared to residential proxies.

3) Speed

As earlier mentioned, data center proxies are independent of your internet connection and ISP. This makes them fast compared to residential proxies.

With data center proxies, you can collect more information from the web fast. Or, if you have a travel aggregator website, you can scrape more data from your sources in less time. It saves your resources.

4) Availability in Bulk

The web is an excellent source of data for any business that seeks to understand its customers and competitors. But extracting data undetected requires that you make each web request with a different proxy IP address.

Data center proxies are easily available in bulk, but residential proxies are not. With a pool of data center IP addresses, you can continually change your IP addresses as you scrape to avoid detection.

Which Is The Best Proxy?

There is no clear winner between residential and data center proxies. The choice you make will depend on your needs. If you need a reliable proxy to use in the long term, residential proxies are your best bet. They are especially great for data scraping.

If your main concern is completing your projects fast without exposing your real IP address, work with data center proxies.

Data center proxies are also excellent for web scraping. But you need to get them in bulk and rotate the IP addresses as you scrape the data.

Get a vendor who will provide data center proxies that are not traceable to the cloud server provider. In order to prevent this, a good vendor will take measures such as using subnets.

Conclusion

Accessing the web without taking any internet safety measures exposes your business to cybercriminals. A proxy is a great way to remain anonymous while allowing you to collect market-related data from websites without raising the suspicion of the website administrators.

Data center proxies are fast, affordable, and easily available in large numbers, while residential proxies are reliable, legit, and hard to detect.

Weighing the differences of residential vs. data center proxies, we can confidently state that both are effective in providing the online anonymity you need on the internet. Your choice will depend on your budget, needs, and the quality of proxies your vendor is able to provide.