Data center proxies are anonymized IP addresses that are not necessarily associated with either a real device or a real Internet Service Provider. Instead, as the name implies, they just live in a server rack owned by the proxy company. This means they tend to be less authoritative, but are cheaper and faster with better uptime.
It depends on your needs. Data center proxies work great for eCommerce use cases and certain shopping sites, and can cut down massively on the costs incurred while data scraping even with their higher ban rates simply because they don’t charge for bandwidth. On the other hand, there are some use cases DC simply won’t work for. You can contact support to learn more about what addresses are best for your use case.
Rotating data center proxies let you take advantage of a large proxy pool so you don’t have to worry about managing your IPs manually, but they’re more expensive. Dedicated data center proxies give you a single static connection - these are a super cheap, super fast, super reliable option, but they work best when you have someone knowledgable enough to help you manage the rotations when the IPs inevitably get banned from your target site. Semi-dedicated proxies are the same as dedicated, but shared between 3-5 users at once - which means you no longer have total control about what the IPs are connecting to and when. So play nice.🙂
We believe in a three-pronged approach to handling data center proxy abuse: prevention, detection, and response. You can learn more about our abuse processes and our approved use cases here.