What a proxy does
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.
Side by side
| Datacenter | Residential | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the IP comes from | Cloud and hosting providers, created in bulk. | Home broadband and mobile connections, assigned by ISPs. |
| Speed and stability | Fast and consistent. | Slower and less predictable; the connection may drop. |
| Detection | IP ranges are public, so sites can block whole blocks at once. | Blends in with normal visitors; detected by behaviour instead. |
| Typical pricing | Per IP or per GB, and much cheaper. | Per GB of traffic, often several times the cost. |
| Good for | Sites without strict bot protection, bulk tasks. | Heavily protected sites and location-specific results. |
Where residential IPs come from
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.
How sites detect proxies
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.
In Monocrawl
No proxies to manage
With Monocrawl you don’t buy, rotate or debug proxies. You call an endpoint and get structured data back, and any proxy cost is already in the endpoint’s credit price, with no multiplier for residential traffic or rendering.
If a source refuses a request, the error says so plainly and the call is not charged.
Common questions
Are residential proxies legal?
Using a proxy is legal in most countries. The concerns are how the IPs were sourced and what the traffic is used for.
What is an ISP proxy?
A static IP registered to an ISP but hosted in a data centre. It is faster than residential and looks less like a cloud server than a datacenter proxy.
Do I need proxies to use an API?
No. Proxies matter when you collect pages yourself. An API that returns the data already handles collection.
Sources