# Residential vs datacenter vs mobile proxies: what the specs actually mean

Proxy shoppers see three main pool types, and the spec sheet means something different for each.

Residential proxies route traffic through devices on ordinary consumer ISP connections. The selling point is legitimacy: a target site sees what looks like a household visitor. The tradeoffs are speed and stability, because the route depends on someone else’s device staying online. Rotating residential pools swap the exit IP per request, which trades session continuity for coverage.

Datacenter proxies come from cloud hosting ranges. They are fast, cheap to run at volume, and trivially identifiable as hosting IPs. Endpoints that care about bot traffic treat them with more suspicion, so they fit high-volume requests against tolerant targets better than account-sensitive work.

Mobile proxies exit through carrier-grade NAT, where many devices share a small set of addresses. Blocking one shared address risks locking out real subscribers, which is why these pools carry the highest premiums and are used for the strictest destinations.

When you read a provider’s specs, check what is actually being promised: stated pool size, per-GB versus per-IP pricing, whether sessions can be held sticky, and whether the pool is dedicated to you or shared across the provider’s customers. For comparing current pricing and pool specifications across providers side by side, see Proxy Compare.