What should I use for web-scraping, static IP or rotating IP?

The difference between static IP and rotating IP

Rotating IP corresponds to static IP. In layman's terms, rotating IP refers to the IP that is dynamically allocated when users surf the Internet. The IP used every time you surf the Internet is different. Corresponding to it is a static IP, which is an IP address fixedly assigned by the operator. This IP address can be assigned to only one user.

The difference between rotating IP and static IP is: rotating IP needs to automatically obtain an IP address when connecting to the network for users to access the Internet normally, while static IP is fixed and can be directly connected to the Internet without obtaining an IP address.

What is web crawler?

The web crawler is a program or script that automatically grabs website information according to certain rules. At present, the main application fields of web crawlers are search engines, data analysis, information aggregation, financial investment analysis, and so on. However, to prevent information from being crawled, websites usually have an anti-crawler mechanism, which identifies crawlers based on IP. Therefore, it is necessary to frequently change the IP address for data crawling.

Should the crawler use a static IP or a rotating IP?

First of all, the static IP proxy has a relatively long time limit, which is suitable for hosting computer servers, facilitating data exchange, supporting remote desktop access, etc. Static IP proxy is more suitable for small-batch crawling tasks. The time limit of rotating IP proxy is shorter, and IP service providers can allocate and rotate IP addresses as needed. This means that IP address rotation can be easily implemented using a rotating residential IP, avoiding being detected and blocked by the target website. Therefore, rotating IP is more suitable for large-scale web crawling.

In addition, by choosing a reliable proxy IP provider, such as PYPROXY, Brightdata, Oxylabs, IP2WORLD, etc., the probability of being detected by the target website can be effectively reduced, thereby realizing efficient data collection and crawling.

Conclusion

To sum up, rotating IP addresses and static IP addresses are suitable for different scenarios. Static IP addresses are more affordable if the user has less data to fetch and no time requirements. If large-scale and efficient data collection is required, rotating IP proxies are more cost-effective. At the same time, users also need to choose a reliable proxy IP provider, pay attention to privacy and security issues, and avoid security risks when using proxy IP.