Datacenter Proxy

A datacenter proxy is an IP address that originates from a cloud provider or datacenter (like AWS, OVH, Hetzner). They are fast, stable, and cheap but are easily identifiable as non-residential traffic.

Most sophisticated websites maintain blocklists of known datacenter IP ranges, which is why datacenter proxies have lower success rates on protected platforms.

When to use:
- Non-protected websites
- High-volume scraping where speed matters
- Internal testing and automation
- Bulk operations where occasional blocks are acceptable

How it works

The provider rents IP blocks directly from a hosting company and announces them from one or several racks. Every IP carries the cloud provider's ASN (AS16509 for AWS, AS24940 for Hetzner, AS197540 for netcup, and so on). Anti-bot vendors maintain block lists keyed on these ASNs and on the /24 subnet. If one IP in a subnet gets flagged scraping a site, the whole range often gets banned together.

Inside this constraint, datacenter proxies are unbeatable on raw performance: 1Gbps+ per IP, sub-5ms latency to most major peering points, and unlimited bandwidth with no per-GB billing. They are the right tool when the target has no real anti-bot layer (public APIs, internal QA, monitoring scripts hitting your own infrastructure) or when occasional blocks are acceptable and re-running is cheap. For anything behind Cloudflare, DataDome, or PerimeterX, an ISP or residential proxy is the realistic option.