Static or Rotating Residential Proxies: Benefits and Drawbacks

A great number of business enterprises and emerging startups are naturally inclined to enhance their online presence to develop better products by accessing valuable sources of information.

Most requirements and needs revolve around business intelligence, from price comparison data, marketing, and SEO to e-commerce websites, travel aggregation platforms, and web testing, to mention just some of the most popular use cases for proxies.

However, as the online space has become more and more prone to malicious software, the websites that can be targeted for valuable information have increased the level of protection to keep illegitimate sources of traffic away.

Now, since most business users deploy dedicated scraping software to access the required online content, they equally need the right proxies to open the online doors and obtain the necessary information.

Though there are multiple types of proxies available, we will now analyze some of the most popular proxy solutions in the market: static and rotating residential proxies.

To better understand when to use static or rotating residential proxies, we first need to discover what makes them special.

Static or rotating residential proxies?

Though it may seem easy to simply indicate which are the best proxy servers for web scraping activities, we need to emphasize that static residential proxies are cheaper than the rotating residential ones, but they might be more than enough for users interested in a particular type of data extraction job.

So, it is clear that these proxy solutions work great for most web scraping activities and users can take advantage of both static and rotating residential proxies to obtain the targeted content.

Nevertheless, as we tried to underline, we have to understand first the difficulty of our web scraping projects before choosing the right tools. 

At the same time, we need to check if our scraping job requires a stable IP connection (static) or one where we need to employ a rotating system, so the rotating residential proxies might be better suited for the task.

Thus, though both proxy solutions provide IP addresses from reliable ISPs, they should be used for different online scraping jobs. 

Let’s have an overview of what static and rotating residential proxies are, and what are their benefits and drawbacks.

What are static residential proxies?

Static residential proxies are becoming more and more popular in the industry as these data center-based solutions are delivered to proxy providers by ISPs from all over the world offering a high level of legitimacy in the online space.

Further on, since static residential proxies are directly related to Internet Service Providers, they offer users who go online the required degree of security and privacy to engage in more difficult scraping sessions than in the past.

So, are the static residential proxies working just like the rotating ones? Do they hide a user’s IP address allowing access to various online sites?

Static residential proxies provide users with a number of IP addresses that are offered by Internet Service Providers. This element of security makes them a bit more difficult to be detected as data center IPs, allowing users to enjoy extended web scraping sessions without getting blocked.

Let’s see what are the main pros and cons of static residential proxies.

Advantages provided by static residential proxies

There are multiple reasons a business would want to take advantage of static residential proxies instead of choosing the more expensive alternative provided by rotating residential networks.

Let’s discover some of the main benefits provided by static residential proxies.

Static residential IPs are easy to use

Most companies that are involved in various online projects - from sales and marketing to social media and SEO purposes - prefer first to obtain the necessary information via static residential proxies before making the step towards the rotating ones.

Later on, when the success of the business depends on using a powerful set of proxies, the companies that do not want to risk any failures will employ rotating residential IPs. As the difficulty level of web scraping jobs increases, most business users start choosing rotating residential proxies in a natural manner.

Finally, since static proxies need to be configured only once for online activities that require preserving the same IP address, they are many times selected for their accessibility.

Static residential IPs are fast

One of the main advantages provided by static residential IPs and very much appreciated by numerous companies in the market resides around speed. 

Since static residential IPs are supported by a powerful data center infrastructure, they are less dependent on the Internet Service Provider’s network or the quality of the Internet connection from a particular jurisdiction.

Users should not be surprised to discover that most static residential proxies are provided by servers residing in locations that are recognized for the high quality of the Internet. Nevertheless, static residential proxies are able to provide several geolocation details, and this element offers users the appearance of engaging in organic browsing connections.

Static residential IPs are cheap

Static residential IPs are cheaper than rotating ones as they do not deliver the same level of access and privacy in the online space.

Since static residential IPs sometimes get blocked or restricted from accessing some online locations, they are somehow less reliable for online projects that demand powerful resources. 

In those particular cases, users need to find the middle ground between price and quality when choosing what types of proxies to use.

Static residential IPs offer legitimacy

An important element that we need to remember about static residential proxies is that they offer users a high degree of anonymity and legitimacy in the online space.

Since static residential proxies are provided by various ISPs in the world, they are connected to a physical location and have the ability to offer users engaged in data collection projects the appearance of residential home users.

With these proxies at work, users can engage in a great number of data scraping projects as they have the advantage of masking their activities as normal browsing sessions.

Shortcoming of static residential proxies

Though static residential proxies may seem like a great deal for companies that require fast and cheap IPs for their projects, we have to emphasize that static residential proxies do come with a major drawback when we compare them to rotating residential ones.

Static residential IPs are easy to detect

The main drawback of static residential proxies is that they are easy to detect by websites that installed anti-scraping mechanisms in place, which makes them less desirable for companies and startups that want to engage in difficult web scraping jobs and need reliable tools.

When such cases arise, users look for proxies that can deliver results and the required quality can only be provided by companies that offer the best rotating residential proxies in the industry.

What are rotating residential proxies?

There are two elements we need to take into account when talking about rotating residential proxies.

First of all, residential proxies are most of the time related to home network users, regular people who use IP addresses at home to connect to the Internet. Since these home IP addresses come from a local ISP, they usually reveal a set of data about the person who uses a particular IP.

For instance, by analyzing the IP, we can discover many relevant details about the user, such as the country of origin, the ISP, the town, and even the street name.

As for the rotating part of residential proxies, this element generally refers to the possibility of taking advantage of a rotating system that permits users to change (rotate) the exit IP addresses when getting involved in web scraping activities that require such a system.

It is worth noting that a rotating proxy can be equally designed to automatically connect to a pool of proxies to obtain a new residential IP address at every rotation session. For instance, we may have the basic rotating residential proxies that assign (rotate) a number of residential IP addresses in a random fashion.

With a rotating residential proxy network in place, users are less likely to meet restrictions or direct bans from the targeted web sources. So, the chances of reaching a particular piece of information increase very much, especially when dealing with geo-restricted websites.

Advantages of rotating residential proxies

Rotating residential proxies represent one of the best solutions for businesses that need to obtain reliable content from various online sources for a high variety of projects.

Let’s try to understand why rotating residential proxies are generally recommended for companies that need to obtain valuable data for business purposes, such as product development or marketing campaigns.

Connect from anywhere

One of the most popular reasons for choosing a rotating residential network is that users can connect from anywhere in the world as they can choose the exact geolocation.

With a great number of countries at your disposal, you can access local websites to ‘appear’ as a local user in order to obtain various advantages, such as avoiding any online barriers that may restrict your access.

Anonymous connection

Since we are talking about a rotating residential proxy network that offers millions of IP addresses that are connected to real people from residential areas, we are obviously thinking about a high level of legitimacy and anonymity.

In addition, with an IP rotation system that makes sure the user remains anonymous even when engaged in web scraping jobs, we can easily understand that the user’s anonymity is preserved even when dealing with some of the most difficult data extraction jobs.

Legitimacy

As we previously mentioned, an impressive number of residential IP addresses offer business users engaged in web scraping jobs the possibility to send and receive legitimate requests in the online space.

As the user can choose the exact geographical location for the IP addresses to access websites as a local user, the level of legitimacy increases dramatically.

Total access

As the rotating residential network offers users the ability to access data from multiple web sources at a global scale with a home network IP or multiple IP addresses - while taking advantage of an advanced rotating system - users who engage in web scraping jobs have complete access to the online sources of interest.

Shortcomings of rotating residential proxies

Though a rotating residential proxy network may sound great and it represents the ideal choice for any business that desires high performance, there are a few shortcomings we need to mention.

Limited speed

Though residential proxies are great tools for numerous web scraping jobs, we need to emphasize that high velocity is not one of the main highlights. 

We need to recall that residential proxies are actually based on IP addresses from home network users and they are dependent on the local ISP network.

As speed can not be guaranteed, the users involved in web scraping depend on the local conditions delivered by the Internet Service Provider.

The only step one can take when using a strong proxy platform is to make sure the selected residential IP addresses come from a country or jurisdiction that is generally appreciated for the quality of the Internet service.

Superior price range

As it is well-known that a rotating residential network represents the best alternative for companies that want to obtain valuable data from web sources without any issues, it is natural to find these IPs in a superior price range.

So, this is an element to be considered by users interested in web scraping before deciding on the best tools for the job. At the same time, users need to determine if the scraping jobs at hand may be approached with a static residential proxy that can be found at a cheaper price.   

Static or rotating residential proxies: What to choose for your business?

Before purchasing a set of rotating or static residential proxies, you have to determine how difficult it is to obtain data from the websites of interest.

Most of the time, businesses that require proxy solutions for their web scraping activities on a regular basis know very well what the right tools are and how to take advantage of them.

If we may come forward to assist our customers, we would first advise them to start with the static residential proxies - since they are cheaper - and check if they are enough to get the job done.

At the same time, we need to emphasize that static residential proxies do not rotate the exit IP address and should work very well with websites that prefer to ‘see’ a user employing a static IP address when browsing online.

Furthermore, there are difficult web scraping jobs and experienced users know when static residential proxies are not enough anymore and they should take advantage of rotating residential proxies.

Rotating residential proxies are very much preferred by emerging startups and large business enterprises that have to engage in difficult data extraction activities to obtain the required content for sales intelligence, social media, app testing, and SEO.

More than anything, rotating residential proxies are used by companies that require fast access to relevant business data and need to incorporate that particular information into product and business development.

Users less accustomed to choosing the right proxies should first test both static and rotating residential proxies to make sure what the differences are and how they react in real-life online scraping jobs.