If you run an e-commerce operation or any project that relies on tracking prices, stock levels or competitor moves, you already know how important real-time product data can be. Unfortunately, the sites you need most often fight back with rate limits, CAPTCHAs and outright IP bans. That’s why seasoned scrapers use residential proxies.
But which kind of proxy makes more sense: one that always remains static or the one that rotates from address to address? In this post below, I’ll explain how each option works, when should you choose for one over the other, and a few practical tips to keep your scraper working along.
What Counts as a Static Proxy?
A static proxy provides you a single IP address and you remain on it until you decide to switch. You can think of it as renting a small office: your street address will never change, so you can set up shop, keep cookies intact and revisit the same websites without raising eyebrows for their anti-bot systems.
Features of a static residential proxy (ISP):
- Sticky IP: requests come from one address
- Session-friendly: perfect for actions that mimic a logged-in user
- Predictable performance: latency and throughput rarely fluctuate from the mean
Use cases:
- Websites that require a constent login
- Paginated data that needs the same session ID from page to page
- Small-scale product checks where speed matters less than stability
What Makes a Proxy “Rotating”?
A rotating proxy reroutes every request through a fresh IP taken from a large IP pool. It’s more like working out of co-working spaces around the city. You gain anonymity at the cost of a fixed location, which is often exactly what high-volume scrapers need.
Features of rotating residential proxies:
- Automatic IP changes: per request or on a timer
- Higher anonymity: harder for anti-bot systems to pin you down and block your IP
- Great for scale: distributes traffic so one IP address never carries all the load
Use cases:
- Massive price monitoring across thousands of product URLs
- Market-wide availability checks run on tight schedules
- Competitive-intelligence crawls that can’t afford repeated CAPTCHAs
Static Residential Proxies versus Rotating Residential Proxies
| Aspect | Static Proxy | Rotating Proxy |
|---|---|---|
| IP stability | Constant | Changes on every request |
| Session support | Excellent | None |
| Ban resistance | Moderate | Very high |
| Suited for | Logged-in or multi-step flows | Web scraping & stealth |
| Cost profile | Cheaper | More expensive |
| Setup effort | Easier | A bit more difficult |
A Short Insight on Proxy Types
Residential proxies
IPs are issued by consumer ISPs like Verizon. They come in both static and rotating bundles and are tough for websites to flag and block.
Datacenter proxies
Fast, cheap IPs from servers. Great for speed, but very easy to spot if you send too many requests to a site.
Mobile proxies
IP addresses are routed through cellular networks. They rotate often and are very difficult for anti-bot systems to block. They are best for mobile-specific websites.
When Should You Use a Static Residential Proxy
Use a static proxy when you intend to look like one steady visitor:
- You log in, scroll product listings, add items to a cart or trigger any flow that expects a stable session cookie.
- You scrape a small number of pages on a predictable speed.
- Your target website bans new IPs faster than it bans repeat requests from the same IP.
Remember, overusing a single IP will still raise suspicion, so make sure to throttle your request rate and mix in short pauses
When Should You Use Rotating Residential Proxies
Choose residential rotating proxies if your intention is to scale and remain stealth:
- You have a long URL list, hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions to fetch.
- You constantly hit hard rate limits (requests per minute or per day) on a website.
- You can accept occasional slower or uneven response times in exchange for far fewer blocks.
Because each request appears to come from a different visitor, you avoid most automated anti-bot systems without needing to micromanage request delays.
Which One Should You Choose
You need to ask yourself:
- Do I need to stay logged in? If yes, static residential proxy is safer.
- How many pages am I going to scrape? Tens of thousands or more usually push you toward rotating residential proxies.
- How much IP blocking I can accept? If your campaign cannot afford to get shut out mid work, rotating residential proxies helps with that.
- Is your budget tight? Datacenter IPs are the bargain pick, but they’re also easiest to detect and block. Residential rotating IPs cost more yet are way more stealthier.
So called “hybrid” setups exist too. Some providers, like Thunderproxy, allow you to keep a static (“sticky”) session for a set window, say 10 minutes, before switching. That gives you session continuity without locking you to one address all day.
Conclusion
Proxies are never a one-size-fits-all solution. A static residential proxy offers consistency and simplicity for tasks that imitate normal human-like browsing. A rotating residential proxy, however, shines when you need to pull large amounts of publicly available data without triggering rate limits.
You need to match your choice to your web scraping goals, traffic volume and tolerance for IP blocks. Invest some time measuring what actually triggers anti-bot systems on your target website, then choose the proxy plan that avoids those triggers rather than making it too complicated from the start. In most projects, you will end up pairing both approaches: static residential IPs for logged-in endpoints, rotating residential pools for everything else.