The short answer
A proxy server is a computer that sits between your device and the websites you visit. Instead of connecting to a website directly, you send your request to the proxy, the proxy forwards it to the website, and then passes the response back to you. The website sees the proxy's IP address, not yours.
That's the whole idea. Everything else, such as residential versus datacenter, rotating versus static, HTTP versus SOCKS5, is detail about which middleman you use and how it behaves.
An everyday analogy
Imagine you want to buy something from a shop that only lets each customer in once a day. You could send a friend to buy it for you. The shop sees your friend, not you. If you have twenty friends in twenty different neighbourhoods, you could check prices in twenty shops at once, each friend reporting back what they saw.
A proxy is that friend. A proxy provider is an agency with thousands or millions of friends in every city in the world, which you can hire by the hour or by the errand.
What does a proxy actually change?
When you connect through a proxy, the website sees:
- A different IP address. The proxy's, not yours.
- A different apparent location. Whatever country or city the proxy's IP is registered to.
- A different network type. A home broadband line, a mobile carrier, or a datacenter, depending on the proxy.
A proxy does not automatically change:
- Your browser fingerprint (screen size, fonts, graphics card, installed plugins).
- Your cookies and logged-in accounts.
- Your behaviour, such as how fast you click or how many pages you load.
This is why proxies on their own don't make you anonymous to sophisticated websites. They change the network layer; you're still responsible for the rest. Our guide to browser fingerprinting and proxies goes deeper.
Why do people use proxies?
Proxies are a huge industry, and almost all of it is business use:
- Web scraping and data collection. Companies gather prices, product details, reviews, search results and public data at scale. Without proxies, they'd be blocked after a few hundred requests. See web scraping proxies.
- Ad verification. Advertisers check that their ads appear correctly, in the right places, to real users in specific locations. See ad verification proxies.
- SEO monitoring. Agencies check how websites rank in Google from different cities. See SEO proxies.
- Market research and price comparison. See market research proxies.
- Account management. Social media managers and e-commerce sellers run multiple accounts from separate IPs. See social media management proxies.
- Sneaker and limited-release buying. Bots use sneaker proxies to enter raffles and queues.
- Testing and QA. Developers test how their sites behave for users in other countries.
- Privacy. Individuals hide their home IP from the sites they visit, although a VPN is often a better tool for that. See proxy vs VPN.
The main types of proxies
Proxies are usually classified by where the IP address comes from, because that's what determines how websites treat you.
| Type | IP source | Trust level | Speed | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter proxies | Cloud and hosting providers | Lower | Fastest | Cheapest |
| Residential proxies | Real home internet connections | High | Medium | Per GB, moderate |
| ISP proxies | ISP-registered IPs hosted in datacenters | High | Fast | Per IP, moderate |
| Mobile proxies | 4G/5G cellular networks | Highest | Medium | Most expensive |
They're also classified by protocol (HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5), by whether the IP changes (rotating or static), and by whether you share them (dedicated or shared).
Proxy tip: If you want to try these ideas on a real network, Geonode sells pay-as-you-go residential bandwidth that doesn't expire, so a small balance is enough to experiment with rotation, sticky sessions and geo-targeting. See our Geonode proxies guide for how its products fit together.
Forward proxies and reverse proxies
Everything above describes a forward proxy: it acts on behalf of the user. There's also a reverse proxy, which acts on behalf of a website, sitting in front of its servers to balance load, cache content and filter attacks. Cloudflare and Nginx are common examples. When people talk about buying proxies, they mean forward proxies. See forward vs reverse proxy.
Are proxies safe?
Proxies from reputable paid providers are generally safe to use. Free public proxies are a different story: many are unreliable, slow, already blocked, and some are run specifically to log or modify traffic passing through them. Never send passwords or payment information through a proxy you don't trust. Read the risks of free proxies.
Are proxies legal?
Using a proxy is legal in most countries. Like any tool, what matters is what you do with it. Breaking a website's terms of service, collecting personal data unlawfully, or committing fraud is not made legal by a proxy. See are proxies legal?.
How to choose your first proxy
- Decide what you need it for. Scraping, accounts, sneakers, privacy, testing.
- Pick a type. For most beginners with real tasks, a pay-as-you-go residential plan is the safest place to start; for simple testing, a few datacenter proxies are enough.
- Choose a provider with a trial or small plan. See best proxies for beginners and our main guide to the best proxies.
- Test it. Check the IP, speed and whether your target site loads. See how to check if a proxy works.
Proxies you probably already use
You may have gone through a proxy today without configuring one. A few everyday examples:
- Websites behind a CDN. When you load a site served by Cloudflare, Akamai or Fastly, you're talking to a reverse proxy that fetches pages from the site's real servers on your behalf. See forward vs reverse proxy.
- Work, school and library networks. Many organisations send browsing through a filtering gateway, often configured automatically with a PAC file, so staff never type in a proxy address.
- Hotel and airport Wi-Fi. Captive portals and content filters frequently sit on the network path as transparent proxies.
- Privacy relays built into devices. Apple's iCloud Private Relay passes Safari traffic through two separate relays so that no single company sees both who you are and which site you visit. That's a forward proxy design, built into the operating system. See proxy vs VPN for how relays compare with VPNs.
The commercial proxies covered on this site are the same idea, sold with control. You decide the IP type, the country or city, and whether the address changes on every request or stays fixed for weeks.
If the vocabulary is new, keep our proxy glossary open in another tab, and read how proxies work when you want the technical detail. For a neutral reference outside this site, MDN's guide to proxy servers and tunneling is clear and well maintained.
FAQ
Is a proxy the same as a VPN?
No. A VPN encrypts all traffic from your device and routes it through one server. A proxy usually handles traffic for one application and may not encrypt it. See proxy vs VPN.
Does a proxy hide my IP address?
Yes, from the websites you visit, as long as the proxy is configured correctly and there are no leaks. Your ISP can still see that you're connecting to a proxy. See proxy anonymity levels.
Can I use a proxy on my phone?
Yes. Both iPhone and Android support proxy settings for Wi-Fi networks. See proxy setup on iPhone and Android.
Why are some proxies so cheap and others expensive?
Datacenter IPs are cheap to produce in bulk. Residential and mobile IPs come from real consumer connections and cost far more to source. See cheap proxies.
Editorial note: Proxy providers change their pools, features and prices often, so treat any figures here as typical ranges at the time of writing and confirm current terms with the provider before you buy.