Proxy & scraping in plain English
Definitions, how-it-works explanations, and FAQs for the vocabulary every developer, growth team, and scraper runs into.
Proxy types
The different flavors of proxy you can buy — what they are, who they're for, and which one fits your job.
Residential Proxy
A residential proxy is a proxy server that routes your internet traffic through an IP address assigned by an Internet Service…
ISP Proxy
An ISP proxy is a residential proxy whose IP address is registered to a real Internet Service Provider and served from managed…
Mobile Proxy
A mobile proxy is a proxy server that routes your traffic through an IP address assigned by a mobile carrier (3G, 4G, or 5G) to a…
Datacenter Proxy
A datacenter proxy is a proxy server whose IP address comes from a cloud or hosting provider, rather than an Internet Service…
Rotating Proxy
A rotating proxy is a proxy service that automatically assigns a different IP address to each request (or at fixed time…
SOCKS5 Proxy
A SOCKS5 proxy is a proxy server that uses the SOCKS5 protocol to forward arbitrary TCP and UDP traffic between a client and a…
HTTP Proxy
An HTTP proxy is a proxy server that understands and forwards HTTP (and via the CONNECT method, HTTPS) traffic, operating at the…
How proxies work
The plumbing — IP pools, rotation, sticky sessions, and the geo-targeting controls every proxy gateway exposes.
Proxy Server
A proxy server is an intermediary system that sits between a client and a destination server, forwarding requests on behalf of…
IP Pool
An IP pool is the collection of IP addresses a proxy provider can assign as exit IPs for customer traffic, typically spanning…
IP Rotation
IP rotation is the practice of switching the source IP address of outgoing requests on a defined cadence (per request, per time…
Sticky Session
A sticky session is a proxy configuration that pins the same exit IP to a client for a defined window or for the lifetime of a…
Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting in proxy services is the ability to choose the geographic location of your exit IP — by country, region, state,…
Anti-bot & fingerprinting
How modern targets identify and block scrapers — and what each layer of detection actually looks at.
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a challenge-response system websites…
Browser Fingerprinting
Browser fingerprinting is a technique websites use to identify and track visitors by collecting a set of attributes from the…
TLS Fingerprint
A TLS fingerprint is a hash derived from the specific structure of a client's TLS handshake (cipher list, extensions, ALPN…
Headless Browser
A headless browser is a real web browser running without a graphical user interface, controlled programmatically through APIs…
User Agent
A User-Agent is an HTTP request header that identifies the client software making the request — typically including browser name,…
Use cases
The jobs people actually use proxies for — pricing, SEO, ad verification, brand defense, and everything else.
Web Scraping
Web scraping is the automated extraction of structured data from websites using HTTP requests, browser automation, or APIs,…
SERP Scraping
SERP scraping is the practice of programmatically extracting search engine results page (SERP) data — organic listings, ads,…
Price Monitoring
Price monitoring is the systematic, often automated tracking of product prices across competitor websites and marketplaces, used…
Ad Verification
Ad verification is the practice of programmatically auditing where, when, and how digital ads actually appear — checking…
Brand Protection
Brand protection is the systematic monitoring of online channels — marketplaces, social media, search results, paid ads, and the…
Standards & rules
Internet plumbing and the unofficial rulebook — ASNs, rate limits, robots.txt, and the bots that bend them.
ASN
An ASN (Autonomous System Number) is a globally unique identifier assigned to a network operator (ISP, hosting provider,…
Rate Limiting
Rate limiting is a server-side defense that caps how many requests a single client (identified by IP, account, or session) can…
robots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website (e.g. example.com/robots.txt) that tells web crawlers which URLs the…
Sneaker Bot
A sneaker bot is automated software designed to purchase limited-release sneakers (or other limited-stock items) the moment they…
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