Web Scraping with Proxies: Residential vs Datacenter vs Mobile in 2026

Proxies are the backbone of any serious web scraping operation. Without them, your IP gets blocked after a few hundred requests. But not all proxies are equal — choosing the wrong type can waste your budget or get you detected anyway. Let's break down the three main proxy types and when to use each. The Three Proxy Types Datacenter Proxies Datacenter proxies come from cloud providers (AWS, GCP, OVH). They're fast and cheap, but websites can easily identify them because their IP ranges are publicly known. Best for: High-volume scraping of sites with minimal anti-bot protection Cost: $1-5 per GB Speed: Fastest (1-10ms latency) Detection risk: High Residential Proxies Residential proxies route traffic through real consumer ISP connections. They look like regular users browsing from home, making them much harder to detect. Best for: Scraping sites with strong anti-bot measures (Amazon, Google, social media) Cost: $5-15 per GB Speed: Medium (50-200ms latency) Detection risk: Low Mobile Prox