Proxy Server
An intermediary server that sits between your device and the internet, forwarding your requests and returning responses under its own IP address.
A proxy server is a computer that acts as a middleman between your device and the websites you visit. Instead of connecting directly, your request goes to the proxy first, the proxy forwards it to the target, and the response comes back through the proxy to you. The target website sees the proxy's IP address, not yours.
This indirection is what makes proxies useful. Because the destination only ever sees the proxy's IP, you can change how you appear online: your location, your apparent identity, and how many separate "users" your traffic looks like. Swap the proxy and you swap the IP the site records.
Proxies are categorized along two axes. By IP source: residential, datacenter, ISP, or mobile - which determines the trust score the target assigns. By protocol: HTTP and SOCKS5 - which determines what kind of traffic the proxy can carry. Most commercial proxies combine a source type with a protocol, e.g. a rotating residential HTTP proxy.
Common uses include web scraping and data collection at scale, ad verification, accessing geo-restricted content, managing multiple accounts, price monitoring, and protecting privacy by hiding your real IP. A proxy differs from a VPN in scope: a proxy routes a single app or request, while a VPN routes all traffic from your device through an encrypted tunnel.
An intermediary that makes the request for you
A proxy server accepts your request, makes it on your behalf, and returns the answer. The destination sees a connection from the proxy, not from you, and everything else follows from that single substitution.
Two properties make it useful. The destination learns the proxy address rather than yours, and the proxy can be somewhere you are not, which lets you see what a visitor in that place would see.
Proxies differ in what they understand. An HTTP proxy reads the requests it forwards and can act on them. A SOCKS proxy moves bytes without interpreting them and therefore carries any TCP protocol.
They also differ in where their addresses come from, and that is what the whole market is priced on: hosting, consumer provider or mobile carrier.
The four types we sell and what each is for
Same mechanism, four different answers to the question of who owns the address:
Choosing a type
Residential rotating consumer addresses, $1.00/GB, protected targets
ISP static consumer-registered, from $1.90/mo, accounts
Datacenter static hosting addresses, from $1.15/mo, public data
Mobile carrier addresses, from $5.76/day, strictest platforms- Start from the target, not from the price list. What the destination checks decides which type can work at all.
- A proxy changes your address and nothing else. Cookies, fingerprints and behaviour are separate problems.
- Free public proxies are run by strangers who can read anything not protected by TLS. For anything with a login, they are a security incident waiting to happen.
- Test with one address before buying many. Ten seconds with curl beats a month of assumptions.
Common beginner confusions
A proxy is not a VPN
A VPN moves all traffic from a device through one tunnel. A proxy moves one application and offers targeting and rotation.
A proxy does not encrypt
Your HTTPS is protected because it is HTTPS. Plain HTTP is as readable as ever.
It does not make you untraceable
The provider knows which account opened which connection. Anonymity here is relative to the destination.
More expensive is not automatically better
For public pages, cheap datacenter addresses outperform residential at a fraction of the cost.
Related terms
See this in practice
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