What is a Rotating Proxy ?

Rotating proxies are the proxies that change their IP address every few seconds depending upon their frequency to change the IP address or the web requests. These proxies are useful for web scraping, anonymity, bypass geo-restrictions, and avoid IP bans as well. These proxies can be filtered by country and protocol, and provide geographic coverage for all the major cities around the world with a mixture of residential, mobile and data center IP addresses, these proxies can offer you the best experience offering you unlimited bandwidth and a brand new IP every now and then.

How to set up a rotating proxy?

To set up rotating proxy, you need to follow these general steps listed here:

1. First, you need to choose a proxy service that offers rotating proxies as per your needs. You can compare features, prices, reviews and customer support of the services they offer to find the best one for your needs. Some examples of proxy services are Smartproxy, Bright Data, Oxylabs, NetNut and others, we will talk about them later on.
2. After choosing the right proxy service, you need to sign up for an account and select a proxy plan that suits your budget and requirements. You may also get a free trial or a money-back guarantee to test the service before committing to it.
3. After signing up, you need to configure your proxy settings according to your preferences and goals. You can choose the type of proxy (rotating or residential), the location of the proxy (country or city), the rotation interval (time or request-based), the authentication method (username/password or IP whitelisting) and other options.
4. After the configuration process has been completed, you can Integrate your proxy with your browser, tool or platform that you want to use. You can use extensions, applications, scripts or APIs to connect your proxy with your device or software. You can also check the documentation or contact the support team for assistance if needed.
5. After integration, you are good to go. Now you can start using your proxy for your online tasks such as web scraping, SEO monitoring, social media marketing and more. You can monitor your usage statistics, manage your sessions, adjust your settings and troubleshoot any issues through your dashboard or API.

Reputable Proxy Services that offer rotating proxies

Some of the best and reputable proxy service providers you can choose from, are listed here :

Smartproxy

Smartproxy is a reputable proxy service provider that offers residential and data center rotating proxies with low prices and easy-to-use features. It has over 40 million IPs in 195 locations and supports various use cases such as web scraping, social media automation, SEO and more.

Bright Data

Bright Data is a proxy service provider that offers every kind of rotating proxies, including residential, data center and mobile IPs. It has over 72 million IPs in 195 countries and provides many features such as geo-targeting, IP rotation, session control and more. It is suitable for large-scale web scraping projects that require high performance and reliability.

Oxylabs

Oxylabs is a proxy service provider that offers premium rotating proxies with residential, data center and mobile IPs. It has over 100 million IPs in 195 countries and provides advanced features such as city-level targeting, unlimited concurrent sessions, auto-retry and more. It is ideal for complex web scraping tasks that require high accuracy and speed.

PrivateProxy

PrivateProxy is a proxy service provider that offers a secure proxy network with a vast pool of proxies. It has over 10 million IPs in 100 countries and provides features such as encryption, authentication, whitelisting and more. It is a good option for personal use or small-scale web scraping projects.

SOAX

SOAX is a proxy service provider which offers you flexible rotating proxies with residential IPs. It has over 8 million IPs in 120 countries and provides features such as detailed geo-targeting options, traffic filtering, custom rotation settings and more. It is a great choice for web scraping projects that need precise location targeting.

Shifter

Shifter is one of the leading proxy service providers that offers rotating proxies with residential IPs. It has over 31 million IPs in 100 countries and provides features such as sticky sessions, custom headers, whitelisting and more. It is a good option for web scraping projects that need a balance between price and performance.

NetNut

NetNut is also a proxy service provider that offers rotating proxies with residential IPs. It has over 10 million IPs in 50 countries and provides features such as ISP targeting, unlimited bandwidth, dynamic IP allocation and more. It is a great choice for high-volume web scraping projects that need fast response times.

Where it is used? Use cases of rotating proxies

Rotating proxies provide you the best security and privacy online, some of the best use case scenarios for the rotating proxies are listed here :

Web scraping

Rotating proxies can help you collect a large amount of data even from those websites that have anti-scraping measures or geo-restrictions. Rotating proxies can help you by changing your IP address frequently and making your requests look more diverse and realistic to those websites and servers. A service like Piloterr is great for web scraping.

SEO monitoring

Rotating proxies can help you track your website's ranking, performance and competitors on different search engines by changing your location and avoiding rate limits or bans as well.

Social media marketing

Rotating proxies can help you create multiple social media accounts, automate tasks, manage campaigns and analyze trends by changing your identity and bypassing account restrictions or blocks.

Ad verification

Rotating proxies can help you verify if your ads are displayed correctly, reach the right audience and avoid fraud by changing your geo-targeting and avoiding detection by ad networks.

Brand protection

Rotating proxies can help you monitor your brand reputation, detect counterfeits, enforce compliance and protect your intellectual property by changing your source and avoiding legal issues or blocks

Advantages of rotating proxies

Some of the advantages of rotating proxies are listed here :

• Rotating proxies allow you to access a large pool of IP addresses that change frequently, making it harder and harder for websites to detect and block your request to access their services.
• Rotating proxies provide you a high security and anonymity by masking your location and identity online, that gives you the benefit to bypass geo-restrictions and access the content from different countries around the world.
• Rotating proxies enable you to perform different operations like web scraping, SEO monitoring, social media marketing and other tasks like that, which require a high volume data collection without any bandwidth limitations at all.
• Rotating proxies are easy to use and can be integrated with various tools and platforms as per your need. You can choose from different types of rotating proxies like residential, datacenter and even mobile IPs depending upon your needs and the tasks you are willing to perform.

Disadvantages of rotating proxies

Along with all the benefits we discussed, there are some drawbacks of rotating proxies as well which are listed here :

• Rotating proxies are slower than static ones. They require extra steps of assigning a new IP address from the gateway server which makes it a bit slower as compared to a static proxy server.
• Rotating proxies have lower bandwidth as compared to datacenter or ISP proxies. The reason behind that is, that they use IP addresses from either residential or mobile devices.
• Residential proxies are not supported by some websites or platforms that require persistent sessions and cookies, and some websites may detect and block rotating proxies if they use a blacklisted IP address.

How to speed up the rotating proxy?

Although rotating proxies are slower than the all others like static proxies, they can be optimized for speed by using following steps :

1. Choose a proxy server location that is close to your target websites and or your own location. This will reduce the latency and improve the response time for your request site.
2. Avoid bandwidth limit or throttling by choosing a proxy service that offers you unlimited bandwidth or a high speed connection. You can even use compression tools to reduce the size of your request in order to save the bandwidth as well.
3. Always use residential IPs instead of data centers whenever possible. Residential proxies are more likely to bypass anti scraping measures and look like a real user, while datacenter proxies are faster and they are more likely to get detected and blocked by the websites.
4. Always customize the rotation time of your proxy according to your needs. You can choose how often the IP address of your proxy changes from seconds to a few hours. You can even use sticky sessions or custom headers in order to maintain persistent sessions with a website in case you need.

How to avoid black listed IP addresses while using rotating proxies?

Blacklisted IP addresses are a great hurdle in the web scraping process and accessing a web site, these IPs can be avoided while using rotating proxies, by using the following means.

• Always choose a reputable proxy service that offers high quality IPs from different sources and locations. Avoid free or public proxies that can already be blacklisted by many websites at the time you use them.
• Use residential proxies instead of datacenter ones if possible. Residential proxies look as if they were a real user, and bypass anti-scraping measures while datacenter proxies are easiest to be detected and blocked by website administration.
• Rotate proxies frequently in a random way, this prevents sending too many requests from the same IP address and avoids triggering the rate limit of the website without getting banned.
• You can also use sticky sessions or custom headers to maintain a persistent session on a website if you want or need it for some kind of work.
• Always use different user agents and browser parameters for each request, this will make your requests more diverse and realistic and avoid being flagged as a bot. You can even use browser extensions and proxy management tools to automate this process if you want. That will give you an added benefit for your work.

Rotating Proxies vs Residential proxies

Rotating proxies and residential proxies are two different types of proxies that have some similarities and differences as well. The main difference is that Rotating proxies are proxies that change their IP address every few minutes or requests, while residential proxies are proxies that use IP addresses from real devices of real users.

Some similarities between rotating proxies and residential proxies are :

• They both, rotating proxies and residential proxies provide high anonymity and diversity by masking your real IP address and location.
• Rotating and residential proxies both can bypass anti-scraping measures and geo-restrictions by making your requests look more realistic and natural.
• Both proxies are shared by multiple users who access a pool of IP addresses together.

Some differences between rotating proxies and residential proxies are :

• Rotating proxies can be either residential or data center proxies at the same time while residential proxies are always residential.
• Data center rotating proxies use IP addresses from servers of cloud and web hosting companies while residential rotating proxies use IP addresses from real devices of real users.
• Rotating proxies have a larger pool of IPs from different countries, locations and sources while residential proxies have a smaller pool of IPs from fewer locations and sources as compared to rotating proxy pools.
• Rotating proxy providers usually offer tens of millions of IP addresses from hundreds and thousands of countries while residential proxy providers offer only millions of IP addresses that too, from dozens of countries.
• Rotating proxies are slower and more expensive than residential proxies while residential proxies are faster and cheaper than rotating proxies.
• Rotating proxy providers usually charge based on how much traffic you consume through their proxy pool while residential proxy providers usually charge based on how many IP addresses you need or how many ports you can access through their proxy service.
• Depending on your needs and goals, you may choose either rotating or residential proxy for your web scraping or other online tasks. You can also use a combination of both types of proxy for optimal results.

Rotating Proxies vs Datacenter Proxies

Rotating proxies and data center proxies are two types of proxies that have different features and use cases. Rotating proxies are proxies that change their IP address every few minutes or requests, while data center proxies are proxies that have a fixed IP address hosted in a server.

Some differences between rotating proxies and data center proxies are :

• Rotating proxies can be residential or data center while data center proxies are always data center oriented.
• Residential rotating proxies use IP addresses from real devices of real users while data center rotating proxies use IP addresses from cloud servers as well as web hosting companies.
• Rotating proxies are more likely to bypass anti-scraping measures and geo-restrictions while data center proxies can be easily detected and blocked by website administration.
• Rotating proxies provide more diversity and anonymity by changing IPs frequently while data center proxies may have low subnet diversity and simple detection parameters that are not good for web scraping business at times.
• Rotating proxies are slower and more expensive than data center proxies while data center proxies are faster and cheaper than rotating proxies.
• Rotating proxies require an extra step of assigning a new IP address from a gateway proxy server while data center proxies have direct connections to the target website.
• Rotating proxies also use IP addresses from residential or mobile devices that have lower bandwidth than data center IPs.
• Rotating proxies are often sold by traffic or bandwidth usage while data center proxies are often sold by IPs or number of ports.
• Rotating proxy providers usually charge based on how much traffic you consume through their proxy pool while data center proxy providers usually charge based on how many IPs you need or how many ports you can access.
• Depending on your needs and goals, you may choose either rotating or data center proxy for your web scraping or other online tasks. You can also use a combination of both types of proxy for optimal results.

Residential Proxies vs Datacenter Proxies

The main difference between residential and data center proxies is the source of the IP address. Residential proxies use IP addresses that are assigned by internet service providers (ISPs) to real devices of real users, such as laptops, phones or smart TVs. Data center proxies use IP addresses that are hosted in servers of various cloud and web hosting companies, such as Amazon AWS, Digital Ocean or others.

Some other differences between residential and data center proxies are :

• Residential proxies are more likely to look like real users and bypass anti-scraping measures, while data center proxies may be easier to detect and block by websites.
• Residential proxies have a larger pool of IPs from different locations and sources, while data center proxies have a smaller pool of IPs from fewer locations and sources.
• Residential proxies are slower and more expensive than data center proxies, while data center proxies are faster and cheaper than residential proxies.
• Residential proxies often sell by traffic or bandwidth usage, while data center proxies often sell by IPs or number of ports.

How to choose the right Proxy Service for you

To choose the right type of proxy service for your needs, you need to consider some factors that can be important for the work you need a proxy for. Those factors are listed here.

Your budget and requirements

Different proxy services have different pricing plans and features depending on the type of user base they are targeting. You can compare their costs, benefits, reviews and customer support to find the best suitable for your needs. Some examples of proxy services are Smartproxy, Bright Data, Oxylabs, NetNut, which we already talked about, you can check them above in the section of top of the line proxy providers.

Your target website and task

Different websites and tasks have different levels of protection and difficulty requirements. You should choose a proxy type that can bypass anti-scraping measures, geo-restrictions and IP blocks effectively as per your needs. Generally, residential rotating proxies are more reliable and diverse than data center rotating proxies, but they are also slower and more expensive.

Your rotation settings and targeting options

Different rotation settings and targeting options can affect your scraping speed, accuracy and success rate. You should choose a proxy service that allows you to customize your rotation interval, (which can be either time-based or even request-based as well), your location (either your country or city) and other options according to your preferences and goals for the use of the proxy you are choosing.

Your concurrent connections and bandwidth usage

Different concurrent connections and bandwidth usage can affect your scraping performance, scalability and cost. You should choose a proxy service that offers unlimited or high concurrent connections, unlimited or high bandwidth usage, fast response times and low fail rates according to your needs.