Forward Proxy
A proxy that acts on behalf of clients, forwarding their outbound requests to the internet and hiding the client's real IP.
A forward proxy is the "classic" proxy: it sits between a client and the internet, taking the client's outbound requests and forwarding them to their destinations. The target server sees the forward proxy's IP, not the client's. When people say "proxy" in the context of scraping, automation, or anonymity, they almost always mean a forward proxy.
The forward proxy hides and represents the client. This is what lets you change your apparent location, rotate IPs, and distribute requests so they look like many users. Residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies are all forward proxies distinguished by where their IPs come from.
Contrast this with a reverse proxy, which represents servers rather than clients. A forward proxy answers the question "how do I reach the internet as someone else?" A reverse proxy answers "how do I receive internet traffic on behalf of my servers?" The direction of representation is the whole distinction.
Forward proxies are configured at the client: you set a host, port, and credentials in your browser, scraper, or bot, and outbound traffic flows through the proxy. Providers expose a single gateway endpoint that fronts a large IP pool, so one configuration can rotate across thousands of addresses.
The kind everybody means by proxy
A forward proxy sits between a client and the internet. You configure it, you send requests through it, and it fetches on your behalf. When people say proxy without qualification, this is what they mean.
Corporate networks use them to enforce policy and cache. Individuals and businesses use them for the two properties that matter commercially: the destination sees the proxy address, and the proxy can be somewhere useful.
The forward direction also determines who trusts whom. The proxy has to authenticate you, because you are the customer. A reverse proxy authenticates nobody and inspects everybody, because it is protecting the destination.
Ours, concretely
One gateway for residential, individual addresses for the static products:
Two shapes
Gateway proxy.sotaproxy.com:10000, targeting in the login
Addresses your-ip:50100 HTTP, your-ip:50101 SOCKS5
Both are forward proxies: you configure them, they fetch for you.- Configure per application rather than system-wide when you need several identities on one machine.
- The proxy address is not what the destination sees on residential: it sees the exit device, which is why whitelisting our hostname at a target does nothing.
- Authentication is by login and password, or by whitelisting your server address on residential lists.
- Both HTTP and SOCKS5 are available on every product.
Forward proxy misconceptions
It does not protect a website
That is the reverse direction, and it is a different product entirely.
It is not automatically transparent or elite
Those describe which headers it adds. Ours add none.
It does not cover the whole machine
Only applications you configure use it, which is a feature for multi-account work.
It is not a firewall
It decides what you can reach, not what can reach you.
Related terms
See this in practice
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