How rotating proxies work

A rotating proxy gives your traffic a different exit address over time, so a site sees many visitors instead of one. This page explains when the address changes on PrivateByte, and why that is not always on every request.

What rotates

The exit address belongs to a connection. When your client opens a new connection to the proxy, the proxy picks a new exit IP for it. When your client keeps a connection open and sends more requests on it, those requests leave from the same address until the connection closes.

That is why different tools behave differently with the same proxy:

Tool	Default behaviour	How to get a new IP
cURL	New connection per command	Run the command again
Python requests	New connection per get(), reused in a Session	Skip the Session, or send Connection: close
Scrapy	Reuses connections	Set Connection: close in default request headers
Browsers (Playwright, Puppeteer)	Reuse connections inside a context	Open a new browser context

Each tool has a guide: requests, Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer, httpx, Node.js, Go and cURL.

Rotating or sticky

A rotating tier changes the address as above. A sticky session does the opposite: it asks the proxy to keep one address for a set time, for a login or a multi-step flow. The datacenter tier rotates only. Standard can do either. See sticky sessions.

Why a reused connection is cheaper

Opening a new HTTPS connection costs about 4 KB of handshake before any of your data moves. A reused connection skips that. So reuse saves money on small requests and gives you a steady address, while a new connection per request gives you a new address and a bigger bill. Pick per job. The numbers are in how usage is counted.

Which tier rotates

• Datacenter: rotates on every new connection. US only during the beta. The lowest rate per GB.
• Essential and Standard (residential): rotate on every new connection too. Standard can also hold one IP for a set time with a session.
• Other tiers (CleanProxy, mobile and so on): see their entries in the tier list.

See the full list on the proxy connection format page and the tier overview.

Related

• Datacenter proxies
• Proxy cost calculator