Residential vs datacenter proxies: what’s the difference?

A proxy is a server that forwards your request, so the website sees the proxy’s IP address instead of yours. Scrapers use them to spread traffic over many addresses, to appear from a specific country, or to keep going when one address is limited.

A residential IP belongs to someone’s home connection, so the key question is whether that person agreed. Reputable providers say they pay users who opt in. But investigations have found networks built from apps with hidden SDKs, deceptive free VPNs and malware-infected devices.

• In May 2024 the US Justice Department dismantled the 911 S5 botnet, which sold access to about 19 million infected computers as residential proxies.

• In January 2026 Google’s threat intelligence team reported disrupting a large residential proxy network built partly through SDKs hidden in hundreds of Android apps.

If you buy residential proxies, ask how the IPs are sourced and whether device owners consented and are paid.

Sites combine several signals: known datacenter IP ranges, commercial databases that flag proxy IPs, the extra latency a proxy hop adds, mismatched headers and browser fingerprints, and request patterns that no person would produce. Rotating IPs alone rarely beats a well-defended site; the rest of the request has to look right too.