Comparing Private Vs Public Proxies (You Get What You Paid For)

Once you’ve decided to use residential proxies instead of data center proxies, your next decision is whether you should use public or private residential proxies.

When it comes to using residential proxies for your business, you can choose between public or private. The difference between public and private residential proxies is that public proxies are available to anyone who wants to use them while private proxies are owned by a company that controls who has access to them.‌

In this article, we’ll walk you through the differences between the two so you can decide which is best for you. If you’re looking for specific information, use the table of contents to jump to a specific section.‌

Private IP vs Public IP

Using a proxy protects your true IP address. Your proxy choices include:‌

Public proxies: These proxies are free for anyone to use. No one controls who uses them. These are the most vulnerable and unstable types of proxies. Most public proxy servers don’t use an HTTPS connection, which means the data isn’t encrypted.‌

Private proxies: These proxies are owned by a company that has control over who uses them. Private proxies can be dedicated to you or shared with other users authorized by the company that owns them. When a proxy is shared with other authorized users, this is called a semi-dedicated proxy.‌

Let’s take a deeper dive into public proxies vs private proxies so you can decide which is the best fit for you.

Public Proxies

The biggest advantage of public proxies is that they’re free to use. While this is appealing, there are some major drawbacks to public proxies that make them unsuitable for most enterprise use cases, including:‌

Hacking

This is the biggest issue with public proxies that makes them a nonstarter for most businesses. They are more susceptible to malicious actors and hackers since they have access to the same IP addresses you do. If you’re using a public proxy to access sensitive information, it can be intercepted.‌

Performance

Because you’re sharing bandwidth with other users, public proxies can be slower than private proxies. Obviously, this issue will be more or less significant depending on how many people are sharing the proxies, but public proxies are often slow and overloaded.‌

Access

When other people are using the same IP addresses that you are, you have no control over what they’re doing on the internet. If someone using the same proxy IP address that you’re using gets banned from a website, you’ll lose your access to that site as well. This is called the “bad neighbor effect,” and can interfere with the efficiency of your projects.‌

Reliability 

If too many people are using the same IP address, it can become slow or completely unresponsive. It may not be available when you need it.‌

Captchas 

Your chances of encountering captchas are much higher when using a public proxy. When one IP address tries to access a site multiple times, it can be seen as spam and trigger a captcha.

Types of Private Proxies

There are two types of private proxies, dedicated and shared.‌

Dedicated

When you buy dedicated proxies, you’re the only one who will have access to it. Because there are no other users, you have complete control over how and when they’re used.‌

Shared

As the name implies, shared proxies are available to more than one user. These are often known as “semi-dedicated” proxies. If you’re buying a shared proxy, you’ll want to make sure the company you’re buying it from vets its clients so that you’re not exposing yourself to a security risk when using it.‌

Benefits of Private Proxies

When you purchase private proxies from an ethical company, there are a lot more controls in place regarding who accesses the IP addresses. Although private proxies are more expensive than public proxies, they offer numerous advantages. A dedicated private proxy with a residential IP is the gold standard in proxies for enterprise use. Private proxies give you increased control and security compared to public proxies.‌

Some of the benefits of using a private proxy include:‌

Speed

Since private proxies limit the number of users, there isn’t as much competition for bandwidth. This means your projects will go faster and have less chance of getting bogged down.‌

Control

You are completely in control of your dedicated private proxies. You don’t have to worry about being banned for someone else’s bad behavior.‌

With shared private proxies you don’t have as much control, but the number of people you’re sharing them with is greatly reduced. Additionally, the other users will have some degree of accountability to the company that owns the proxies.‌

Public proxies have some use cases where they are incompatible, such as travel fare aggregation. Private proxies, however, allow you to take full advantage of the versatility offered by residential proxies.‌

Security

As long as you’re buying your private residential proxies from a trusted source, you can rest assured that your personal data won’t be compromised. Private proxies also offer the highest degree of anonymity.‌

Reliability

Undoubtedly, one of the main reasons you chose residential proxies instead of data center proxies is because they’re less likely to be perceived as a bot by websites. Using public proxies increases the chances that your IP address will be flagged as a bot, increasing bans and slow-downs.‌

With a private proxy, however, you know you can rely on it for all your data-gathering needs.‌

Support

When you’re using a private proxy, like one from Rayobyte, we’ll help you with any issues you’re having with the proxy and your use case. With a public proxy, if you encounter a problem, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.‌

Private Residential Proxy Uses

Private residential proxies are ideal for many different enterprise uses, including:‌

Price scraping

Monitoring your competitors’ prices is a standard part of doing business. Private proxies allow you to conduct price scraping research quickly and efficiently.‌

Ad monitoring and verification

Private proxies allow you to check for ad fraud with fewer interruptions. You can check for fraudulent impressions and conversions as well as make sure the ads are reaching their target audience.‌

Social media

Social media is ubiquitous in our society. Consumers expect brands to reply to questions and complaints on social media almost instantaneously. Private proxies allow you to automatically monitor mentions of your brand online and send targeted messages. You can also gain insight from social media about your customers and their needs.‌

Optimizing SEO

You can’t have an effective SEO strategy without a clear understanding of where you rank against your competition regarding keywords. Private proxies let you maximize your search engine results page (SERP) data acquisition. Monitoring localized results also allows small businesses to compete in their niche.‌

Attracting talent

Your staff is the heart of your business, so attracting the most qualified employees is vital to the success of your company. By scraping employment data for pay rates and benefits packages, you can find out what strategies are the most effective for finding and keeping the best talent.

Sourcing a Rotating Private Proxy with a Residential IP

There’s one more important consideration when it comes to choosing a rotating residential private proxy provider: sourcing.‌

Many companies that provide residential proxies engage in questionable or outright fraudulent sourcing practices. Malicious actors will simply steal IP addresses when unsuspecting users download a free app, while other companies will bury confusing consent notifications at the bottom of a convoluted terms of service agreement.‌

Ethical proxy sourcing with Rayobyte

Rayobyte is committed to the ethical sourcing of proxies. All of our IP addresses come from users who have given their intentional, informed consent and they are fairly compensated for the use. They also have a say in how their IP addresses are used, and they’re able to easily withdraw their consent at any time. Aside from your moral convictions, this matters to your business for practical and economic reasons as well.‌

Your customers expect you to vet your vendors, and being associated with an unscrupulous proxy provider can damage your brand reputation. Additionally, you may be held financially liable in the case of class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of users who’ve had their IP addresses stolen. There may also be legal implications if your company is responsible for compliance reporting and tracking internal security measures.‌

One of the best ways to find out how your proxy provider is sourcing residential IP addresses is to ask. If you don’t get a clear and comprehensive answer that includes the measures they’re taking to ensure ethical sourcing, you should not do business with them. At Rayobyte we are happy to give you a guide detailing exactly how we source our residential IP addresses and where they come from.‌

Our commitment to ethics doesn’t stop with our sourcing practices — we also make sure our customers are engaging in above-board business practices. We don’t allow our proxies to be used for black-hat practices. This not only protects our reputation but yours as well.‌

Rayobyte Solutions

Rayobyte offers you the world’s most reliable rotating residential proxies. No other company is willing to work as hard as we are to help you achieve success. We want to be your partner — not just your proxy provider.‌

Our residential proxies are optimized for web scraping. They offer you the authority, reliability, subnet diversity, and ethical practices that will guarantee you the up-time and protection from bans. Reach out to us to discuss the best data strategy solutions for your company.‌

Final Thoughts

Rotating residential proxies may be more expensive than other options, but they are the best option for use cases that require a high degree of authority. They perform better than data center proxies and offer the best solution on the market today. Whether you’re looking for HTTP, HTTP(S), or SOCKS protocols, we can provide a package tailored to your company’s needs. And since we know web scraping and using proxies can be a complicated process, we’ll give you 24/7 access to our team of experts to answer any questions you have and resolve any issues as soon as they occur.

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