Residential vs Datacenter Proxies: Full Comparison and Guide

You often use proxies for various purposes, such as masking your IP address for activities such as web scraping and accessing geo-restricted content. You may often not know the different types of proxies that achieve these purposes and provide the highest anonymity level.  As you read along with this blog, you will discover two of

You often use proxies for various purposes, such as masking your IP address for activities such as web scraping and accessing geo-restricted content. You may often not know the different types of proxies that achieve these purposes and provide the highest anonymity level. 

As you read along with this blog, you will discover two of the most common proxies you’re using every day;  Datacenter and Residential proxies. Let’s dive deep into these two proxies.

What are Residential Proxies?

Residential proxies are IP addresses provided to residential or homeowners from an Internet Service Provider (ISP). They are real IP addresses attached to a physical location, and thus they are seen as more legitimate.

Since Residential Proxy owners use actual IP addresses, the target websites you connect to are least likely to flag them. This is a significant advantage over Datacenter proxies that we shall cover in a forthcoming section. Residential Proxies are primarily used in web scraping projects to scrape a large volume of data and to access geo-restricted websites by keeping you anonymous.

What are Datacenter Proxies?

On the other hand Datacenter proxies are unique IP addresses provided by actual data centers located across the globe. These Data centers are corporations that offer cloud services like Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, and others whose IP does not belong to any ISP.

The Datacenter proxies are available in Public, Private, and Shared forms. Just like the residential proxies, they can also be used for web scraping, accessing geo-restricted websites by keeping you anonymous. 

But what about the differences? Well, that is what we are going to discuss from here on.

Residential vs Datacenter proxies comparison

You now know the differences between residential and datacenter proxies.Let’s dive further to discover the differences in more detail.The main difference between Residential Proxies and Datacenter proxies lies in the origin of its IP. Every other difference that arises relies on the differences between household devices and servers.

Benefits of Residential Proxies

Legitimate-Because ISPs provide residential IP addresses, they appear as legitimate. This in contrast to the datacenter proxies, which originates from cloud service providers. Due to this reason, the target device could detect them easily and even block you if you purchased them from untrusted sources.

Low risk of getting blocked- as mentioned in the above point; residential proxies are legitimate; therefore, they are not likely to get blocked by the target websites.

Anonymity is very high-Residential proxies provide a higher anonymity because since the IP address is from a person’s actual residence, the target websites would believe that they are legitimate. Therefore they have the most negligible chances of getting blocked.

Multiple locations – When your Residential Proxy package comes up with a pool of proxies, it comes with a substantial amount of IP addresses to choose from. This multiple-choice of locations allow you to select multiple rotating proxies that will most likely avoid a ban or flagship by the target websites. It will also enable you to experience your business from an international perspective as you can log from regional IPs from all over the world.  

Easy to Rotate different IP blocks

A large number of proxy providers offer the option to rotate proxies. This option helps you to get new IP addresses depending on the request and availability of the device. You can set the rotating parameters by yourself, and the presence of rotating parameters eliminates the need to have a fresh IP every few minutes or hours.

What are Residential Proxies Use Cases?

A lot of companies make use of Ad Verification and scraping flight prices.

Ad Verification- This is one of the most prominent use cases with residential proxies as you could see how Ads are displayed in other countries.Then you would be able to verify that they are working as expected in those countries. Furthermore the residential proxies would enable you to determine if the ads are real as there are numerous hackers out there who tend to own fake ads and claim their revenue.

Travel fare Aggregation-When it comes to travel fare aggregators, they collect airfare-related information from flight company websites, online travel agencies, and hotels to publish airfares on their website. There are various challenges that these aggregators face, including tight security checkups, and any bot-like behavior will be blocked. This is where the residential proxies come in handy as it helps the aggregators to overcome such challenges.

Benefits of Datacenter Proxies

In this section, we will provide you with an overview of the benefits of the Datacenter proxies. 

Availability-Compared to Residential Proxies, the Datacenter proxies are available abundantly. Quite often, you will come across plenty of companies that sell Data Center proxies. Some of these companies are secondary corporations, while others are cloud providers. Due to their higher availability, many users use them at the same time.

Speed-Speed is a remarkable feature of Datacenter proxies, and this an area where they stand ahead of residential proxies. One of the significant reasons that attributes faster speed for Datacenter proxies is that they are directly part of the server. For specific tasks, the speed matters. So in such circumstances, the Datacenter proxies have the edge.

Less legitimate but still masks your IP-Usually, when you connect to a target website using Datacenter proxies, they can determine whether you are hiding behind a proxy or not. Since there are too many spammers out there, you will be noticeable to the website as a spammer or any other nefarious user. However, the Datacenter proxy will still conceal your IP address. Therefore it’s always better to use a clean datacenter proxy when you connect to your target website.

Cheap- As long as you buy Datacenter proxies on budget and bulk, they are pretty cheap compared to Residential proxies. In addition to this, if you buy from a good provider, they will be secure as well. Considering that there are plenty of proxy providers out, another factor contributes to their low prices.

Better for harvesting Data- If you are in a business that requires high-performing proxies to harvest or mine any data, without doubt, the datacenter proxies are your ideal choice. In need of such a situation, you need to make sure that you purchase a reputed seller. You also need to know the know-how.

Versatility- Due to the distribution of IP addresses availed by Datacenter proxies, you have the option to pick any IP addresses at specific time intervals. As a result of this mechanism it will be harder for the target websites to block you from scraping data from them.You can, for instance, select an IP in a US city when scraping data from a website in France.

What are Differences between Residential and Datacenter proxies?

What most people will miss in these circumstances is that there are quite a lot of spammers who spam reputed websites frequently. In order to do so, they would use different IP addresses to get around the target website filters. The proxy that is most suited for this situation are the Datacenter proxies. This is primarily because they can easily be obtained in bulk compared to Residential proxies.

While most users are genuine Datacenter proxy users there are few of those with nefarious intentions who are using datacenter IPs. Legitimate users of Datacenter proxies usually emerge from corporate offices whose bosses encourage their employees to use them.So in order to make sure that only legitimate users use the datacenter proxies websites often employ high level security measures.  

Such security systems will be able to identify that you are using a Datacenter IP. First, they would grab your Datacenter proxy’s IP info and check if you are using a Datacenter Gateway.  If so, you will be placed inside a small subset of users under extra scrutiny. 

From then onwards, specific security systems will go the extra mile to check through which port that you are connected through. Most of the Datacenter proxies will have several ports open.So it all comes down to security and legitimacy. 

When to use Residential proxies and datacenter proxies

If you need faster proxies, the Datacenter IPs will do the trick who will also help you to mask your IP address. Speed, security, and legitimacy are the main differences between residential and datacenter proxies.

Although they are challenging to acquire, residential proxies will have no alarm bells ringing when you use them as they are legitimate. When you desire to Scarpe large volumes of data, the residential proxies are the overwhelming winner.

Residential proxies, on the other hand, offer diverse geographical locations. So you will have a wide variety of locations to choose from. As a result, you would need to decide a location in which to access the geo-restricted content and then a  residential proxy based on that particular location.

Datacenter proxies can suit you if you understand how proxies function with some tech knowledge. Otherwise, it will be the Residential proxies that would be your ideal choice.

So all the differences mentioned here would make your choice a lot easier. Now since you are armed with the differences between residential and datacenter proxies, it’s time to move to larger comprehensive projects.

Frequently asked questions about Datacenter proxies and Residential proxies

Is the location of a proxy important?

Yes, the location is undoubtedly essential. This is because certain websites impose geo-restrictions, which implies that you would connect to them when accessing specific areas. For example, you would need a proxy in the USA to access a US website from anywhere else globally, which is solely targeted to the US audience.

Does Datacenter proxies have a high percentage of bans?

Yes, the Datacenter proxies have a high percentage of block rate because IP addresses assigned to them from a pool belong to the same network in the form of a subnet mask. So if one IP is blocked, most likely, the entire subnet mask could be blocked.

On the other hand, residential proxies have a low percentage of block rate as they tend to be more legitimate.

Why are residential proxies usually slow?

The residential proxies tend to be slower than the datacenter proxies due to several reasons. Firstly the IP addresses are rented from other devices. Secondly, the residential proxy providers do not have complete control over a residential proxy’s whole path, from ISP to how it connects to the internet. Thirdly, there is an additional device (Central Proxy Server) between you and the proxy server which directs your data to the residential IPs. These factors attribute to the slowness of residential proxies 

How can ProxyScrape help you with the two Proxies

Now we hope that you are aware of the significant differences between residential proxies and datacenter proxies. You also know when to use them. ProxyScrape can provide you with several Residential Proxies to suit your needs. All our Residential Proxies come with a pool of proxies, additional GB, and a choice of HTTP or HTTPS protocols. Please check here for further information.

As far as the Datacenter Proxies are concerned, we too offer a range of proxies, and please check them out on our premium page.

Conclusion

The Residential Proxies and Datacenter proxies both hide your IP address, thus enabling you to be anonymous. Though both perform common tasks, there are significant differences between the two proxies. One such example being, it is harder for the target website to detect the residential proxies and impose a ban. This, however, doesn’t mean you should discard the datacenter proxies. As they too offer unique benefits.

We hope that you can now easily differentiate the two with the basic understanding that you obtained through this article.