Home / Blog / Proxy 101 / Difference Between Dedicated and Shared Proxies
This blog will explore 2 of the most used proxy types, dedicated and shared proxies, with their functionalities, advantages, disadvantages, and use cases to help you select the best one.
Today, we live in a digital world full of cyber threats. As a result, we can see a significant surge in using various security measures to protect applications and data against these threats.
Using proxies is one of the popular security measures used by many organizations and individuals. In addition to security, proxies offer a range of benefits like improved performance, high anonymity, bypassing geo restriction, and more. However, we should have a good understanding of different proxy types and select the best one for specific scenarios.
So, this blog will explore 2 of the most used proxy types, dedicated and shared proxies, with their functionalities, advantages, disadvantages, and use cases to help you select the best one.
A proxy server acts as an intermediary between a user’s computer and the internet. It takes requests from a user, forwards them to the internet provider (ISP) then sends back responses
Proxies improve your experience on the Internet by hiding your IP address and making you anonymous, ensuring online activities. Furthermore, you can use proxies for request filtering, access controlling, bandwidth management through caching, and server load management.
Dedicated proxies refer to IP addresses that exclusively serve only one client or organization privately. Since they are not shared among many users, dedicated proxies deliver exceptional performance and high-level security. Furthermore, this exclusivity ensures that users and IP addresses are not getting blocked due to activities from other users.
Dedicated proxies ability to provide unique IP addresses makes them invaluable for several use cases :
Shared proxies are IP addresses allocated to several users at one time. Compared to dedicated proxies, shared proxies are far more affordable since the cost is distributed among many users. However, their performance and security is significantly lower dedicated proxies because due to bandwidth limits.
Although shared proxies are less secure and low on performance, they are still used for many day-to-day activities:
You already know that dedicated and shared proxies mainly differ in terms of the exclusivity of the IP address. However, the differences are not limited to that. Here is a detailed comparison between shared and dedicated proxies, highlighting their differences and similarities.
Based on what we discussed above, you should now have a good understanding of shared and dedicated proxies. So, let’s discuss what we need to consider when deciding between shared and dedicated proxies.
Well, the decision should be mainly based on whether you need an exclusive proxy or not. However, there are some other factors that might contribute to this decision.
Overall, dedicated proxies are suitable for tasks that require high security, privacy, and performance, while shared proxies are suitable for most day-to-day tasks, such as casual browsing or simple scraping tasks.
By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision that meets your requirements, whether for the robustness of dedicated proxy servers or the flexibility of shared ones.
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