The 5 Best Private Proxy Services of 2023 – Proxyway

What Is a Private Proxy?

A private proxy, also called a dedicated proxy, is an intermediary IP address assigned to one user only – after purchase, you won’t have to share it with anyone else.

When you use private proxies, you have full control over which websites are being accessed and what kind of data is received. As a result, you can avoid the “bad neighbor” effect: your proxies won’t suddenly get banned because someone else has abused them. Private proxies are the most trustworthy choice for businesses and those with a specific goal – to have the least amount of blocks possible.

Private proxies are almost always datacenter IPs. That’s because most residential proxies belong to real devices which can’t be dedicated to one user. 

Can There Be Private Residential Proxies?

Yes. Some companies have started registering their datacenter IPs under residential internet service providers. This gives the datacenter proxies a residential ASN, which websites identify as real users. Such proxies are called static residential proxies or ISP proxies. 

If you’re looking for them instead of private datacenter IPs, visit our list of the best ISP proxies. 

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Private Proxies

Advantages

• Security.

  You don’t have to share private proxies, meaning there is less chance your personal data will be compromised. You also won’t have to worry about others doing something illegal with the proxies that could get you into trouble.

• Speed.

  Private proxies are much faster than semi-dedicated or shared proxies because you don’t have to share bandwidth with anyone else. They hardly slow down your browsing speed at all.

• Smallest number of blocks.

  Once again: if no one else is using your proxies, you can be sure they won’t be blocked by websites like Google or Amazon. It’s also harder to get blocked when you start working with these IPs because you have full control over them.

Disadvantages

• Price.

  Because you’ll be using the IPs alone, there won’t be anyone else to shoulder the cost. As such, you can expect to always pay more for the privilege of having your proxies for yourself. You can find cheap private proxies, but they’ll still be more expensive than

  shared IPs

  .

When to Use Private Proxies

People use private proxies over shared proxies when they want more predictability and performance. Here you don’t buy access to a pool of proxies like with residential addresses; instead, you rent a set number of IPs, sometimes for a long term. So, it’s in your best interest to take care of them. This is hard to do when someone else uses the same IP address. 

It frequently happens that people first try out shared proxies because they’re cheap. Once they find out that those proxies don’t work well enough, they migrate to private IPs. This is a natural progression. Or maybe they need a consistent identity, which shared rotating proxies couldn’t provide. A few years ago, private proxies were big for social media account management precisely for this reason; now, they’re being phased out by mobile IPs.   

Private datacenter proxies get blocked more than residential or mobile addresses, so it’s hard to use them with tough websites: travel fare aggregators, social media networks, or sneaker stores. Still, they have more raw power and no traffic limits; if you know what you’re doing, you can scrape fast and keep blocks in check. Nowadays, popular use cases for datacenter IPs include brand protection, market research, SEO, and scraping some large e-commerce websites. 

When using private proxies, it’s a good tactic to either get the whole subnet for yourself, or to go for as many subnets as possible. I suggest the former if you know what you’re doing, and the latter if you have less experience. 

Why You Should Never Use a Free Private Proxy

A free dedicated proxy is, first of all, a scam. Not many things in life are actually free and when it comes to free online services, somebody somewhere is most likely making money from your data. Anyone who falls for a free dedicated proxy risks:

• Their private information getting leaked (think credit card info, passwords and other crucial data).

• Target websites getting injected with malicious ads (read more about it in our “

  free proxies are bad

  ” blog post).

• Being redirected to a website full of ads, so someone could make some money from you. Not the most dangerous scenario, but it can get super annoying (just imagine copping sneakers with such proxies).

There’s another important point to make. If your dedicated proxy is supposedly free – you probably got it from one of the free proxy lists. And, well, that makes it a shared proxy because it’s nearly impossible that you will be the only one using it.

How to Choose the Best Private Proxy Provider

Research all of them. Analyze their websites, see how they position themselves. Usually, there are two ways of presentation:

• Proxies for business.

  Proxy providers for business will usually state their use cases as market research, SEO, brand protection, price monitoring, e-commerce, and so on.

• Proxies for personal use.

  Proxy providers for personal use will usually talk about geo-blocks, website unblocking, sneaker copping (which is a business, but somehow it usually goes along with personal use), Pokemon Go, Netflix,

  Craigslist proxies

  , and so on.

I recommend contacting the provider before purchasing their product, to ensure that there are no hidden fees. They will also usually ask you about your target websites and the goals you would like your proxies to achieve. Tell them as much as you can – they can help you by optimizing the proxies specifically for your needs.

Also, don’t forget to read reviews. While it goes hand in hand with research, it’s worth mentioning separately. Proxyway is a review site, so if you’re here – you are already on the right path to choosing the best provider!

The Best Private Proxy Providers of 2023