Proxy Glossary
Key terms and definitions in the proxy, anti-detect, and web scraping industry.
Proxy Server
An intermediary server that routes your internet requests through its own IP address, hiding your real IP from the target server.
Residential Proxy
A proxy that uses an IP address assigned by an ISP to a real home user. Highly authentic and difficult to detect as a proxy.
Datacenter Proxy
A proxy hosted in a cloud data center. Fast and affordable, but more easily detected by anti-bot systems due to known datacenter IP ranges.
Mobile Proxy
A proxy that routes traffic through real mobile devices on 3G/4G/5G networks. Carries the highest trust score among proxy types.
Rotating Proxy
A proxy setup where the IP address changes automatically on each request or at set intervals, reducing the risk of detection and blocking.
Sticky Session
A proxy configuration that keeps the same IP address for a defined period, useful for maintaining sessions on websites that track IP consistency.
SOCKS5 Proxy
A versatile proxy protocol that supports TCP and UDP traffic. More flexible than HTTP proxies and works with a wider range of applications.
HTTP Proxy
A proxy that handles HTTP/HTTPS web traffic. The most common type for web scraping and browsing.
Anti-Detect Browser
A browser that allows you to create isolated profiles with unique fingerprints, preventing websites from linking multiple sessions to the same identity.
Browser Fingerprint
A unique set of browser characteristics (user agent, screen size, fonts, canvas, WebGL, etc.) that websites use to identify and track users.
IP Ban
When a website blocks access from a specific IP address, typically triggered by suspicious activity, rate limit violations, or policy violations.
Rate Limiting
A server-side mechanism that restricts the number of requests from a single IP within a time window, used to prevent scraping and abuse.
robots.txt
A standard file that websites use to communicate crawling rules to bots. Ethical scrapers should always check and respect robots.txt directives.
CAPTCHA
A challenge-response test used to distinguish humans from bots. Common CAPTCHAs include reCAPTCHA v2/v3, hCaptcha, and image-based puzzles.
Web Scraping
The automated extraction of data from websites, typically by parsing HTML or interacting with web pages programmatically.
Headless Browser
A web browser that runs without a graphical interface. Used in automation and scraping to render JavaScript-heavy pages.
IP Pool
A collection of IP addresses managed by a proxy provider, used to rotate requests and distribute traffic to avoid detection.
Geo-targeting
The ability to route requests through proxies in specific countries or cities to access geo-restricted content or verify localized ads.