Rotating vs Sticky Proxies: How IP Sessions Work

A proxy gives you an exit IP address. What matters next is how long you keep it. Providers sell two behaviours: rotating, where the address changes often, and sticky, where it stays the same for a while. Choosing the wrong one is a common reason a scraping job fails or a login keeps getting signed out.

Rotating proxies

A rotating proxy assigns a new exit IP from a pool, typically on every request or every new connection. You connect to one gateway address and the provider handles the change behind it. Rotation spreads requests across many IPs, which keeps any single address under a website's rate limit and makes requests harder to link together. It suits large crawls, price checks and any job where each request is independent.

Sticky proxies

A sticky proxy, or sticky session, keeps the same exit IP for a set time, such as a few minutes, or until the connection drops. Providers usually let you choose the duration, and you request a session by adding a session ID to the username or by using a specific port, depending on the provider. Stickiness suits anything that needs one identity across several steps: logging in, filling a basket, paging through results behind a login, or a site that signs you out when your address changes. Sessions on residential networks can end early, because the device carrying your traffic may go offline.

Static proxies

A static proxy never changes. Datacenter and ISP proxies are normally static: you rent an address and keep it. That gives you a stable identity and, for some services, an address you can ask a partner to allow-list.

Should you use a rotating or a sticky proxy?

Use a rotating proxy when every request stands alone, such as a large crawl or a price check, because spreading requests across many addresses keeps each one under the rate limit. Use a sticky proxy when several steps must come from one identity, such as signing in, paging through results or completing a basket.

How to test which one you have

Run the proxy through the proxy checker. It makes three requests on separate connections and lists the exit IP of each.

• Different addresses each time. The proxy is rotating.
• The same address every time. The proxy is static, or you are inside a sticky session.
• Some requests failing. The pool or the exit devices are unreliable. See proxy errors and fixes.

Three requests in a few seconds will not reveal how long a sticky session lasts. To measure that, send a request once a minute for a while and note when the address changes. You can look up any address in the IP lookup to confirm that the location stays where you expect. For how one provider behaves, trust your own tests over its marketing page.

Which should you use?

• Collecting many independent pages. Rotating.
• Anything with a login or a multi-step flow. Sticky, with a duration longer than the whole flow.
• Accounts that should look consistent over time, or allow-listing. Static.

Whatever you pick, the type of address matters as much as how it rotates. Read residential vs datacenter proxies before you buy.