What are Shared Proxies, and Who Should Use them?

November 14, 2023

What are shared proxies

After reading this article, you should be able to understand more about shared proxy servers and their features.

Sharing proxies allows you to change your IP address and location at a reasonable price. However, they might not be appropriate for all activities.

How Do Shared Proxies Work?

When most people refer to “shared proxies,” they refer to IP addresses that cloud hosting providers store in their datacenters. Technically, mobile and residential IPs are also shared, but they go by different names. Additionally, “shared,” a feature with many values, is less expensive than residential and mobile proxies.

Multiple people can use one IP address to access the Internet by serving as a middleman. With a shared proxy server, several users can utilize the same server to access several websites. While most people can access the most popular websites using these IP addresses, they have issues.

When to Use Shared Proxies

web scraping. Shared proxies may be helpful if you don’t need to scrape websites on a big scale or if the websites you’re targeting don’t have robust protection. Your web scraping tools may cause blocking and rate restriction issues if they establish too many connections from the same IP address.

Downloading torrents. We think it’s crucial to pay authors for their work. Still, not everyone is. Torrenting is significantly safer when you use a shared proxy since it prevents IP address tracing.

Removing location-based content limitations. You can obtain a shared IP address in a lot of countries. You may read the news, watch videos, and view prices exclusive to particular locations.

People who are concerned about their privacy or security online may choose to use shared IP addresses, a practice known as IP concealment. Many websites provide a new IP address, which is used to identify your computer.

Which websites can be accessed with shared proxies? This depends a lot on how your neighbors use their area and how they have used it.

Types Of Shared Proxies

Shared Rotating Proxies

Shared rotating proxies are more straightforward to maintain than proxy lists when proxy rotation is necessary. With this model, you usually only pay for the traffic you use.

When you click that button, you will instantly get a new IP address and be connected to the service provider’s proxy pool. Every time you connect, or at least every half an hour, the gateway server will rotate your IP address from its pool. Just carry out the procedure again.

Shared Proxies List

A shared proxy list is a list of IP addresses shared within a text document and can be used in any manner.
A shared proxy list is a fantastic choice if you don’t want to change your IP address.
These IP addresses don’t have any fancy settings or location-changing capabilities, such as port-number changes.

Shared Proxies Pros & Cons

Pros

Obscurity. Similar outcomes can be obtained with a shared rotating proxy as with a dedicated one; however, changing your IP address with a shared rotating proxy gives you even more anonymity.
Cost. The main benefit of shared proxies is their affordability. The most economical way is to have other people pay for your proxies.

Cons

Move slowly. Even with IP addresses, you will still need to share bandwidth with other users on a 1 Gbps connection, and speed will suffer as a result.

Comparing Other Types of Proxies with Shared Proxies

Semi-Dedicated Proxies Vs Shared Proxies

A semi-dedicated proxy can be shared by two or three people, whereas a shared proxy can have numerous users. In this case, everything comes down to the proxy service’s advertising strategy; there is no hard and fast rule.

Dedicated Proxies Vs. Shared Proxies

Dedicated proxies are IP addresses within a data center specifically designed for a particular use case, such as social media, event tickets, or shoe sales. You can, therefore, expect them to work more efficiently. Obviously, the cost has increased significantly.

Are shared proxies worth it?

In situations where:

You’re targeting certain niche websites. Not every website can provide security on par with Google.

You only need the technology to experiment; you are only getting started with web scraping. A great learning tool is sharing an IP address.

Your budget is too tight to pay for a private proxy. Shared datacenter proxies are ineffective for social media bot creation and sneaker scalping.

Bottom Line

If you’ve decided you need a shared proxy, you might want to look at our list of the best shared proxies. The list includes numerous top-notch service providers who have mastered our stringent testing procedures and years of use.

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