If the address needs to change often, a rotating pool is the answer — but plenty of work that looks like it needs rotation actually needs the opposite.
A dynamic, or rotating, proxy gives you a gateway. Each request can leave from a different address drawn from a large pool, or you can hold one address for a session. A static proxy gives you specific addresses that are yours for as long as you rent them.
Collecting public data at volume, checking prices across regions, verifying how ads or search results appear in different countries — none of these care which address a given request came from, and all of them get blocked faster from a single address. Rotation spreads the load so no address looks unusual.
The cost model matches, too: rotating traffic is billed per gigabyte, so a job that runs once costs what it consumed rather than a month of rent.
Anything with a login is the opposite case. An account that signs in from a new country every hour looks stolen, and platforms react accordingly. The same is true of long-lived sessions: checkouts, remote desktops, anything that would break if the address moved mid-flight.
For that work a static ISP address is the usual choice — it looks like a residential provider's address but stays yours.
Most rotating pools let you pin an address for a while by adding a session token to the username. On PyProxy a sticky session holds for about thirty minutes, which is measured rather than advertised — long enough to complete a multi-step flow, short enough that the pool stays fresh.
# rotate on every request curl -x http://USER-country-us:PASS@gw.pyproxy.com:1111 https://api.ipify.org # hold one address for the session curl -x http://USER-country-us-session-ab12:PASS@gw.pyproxy.com:1111 https://api.ipify.org
If you need the same address for hours rather than minutes, that is a static product, not a sticky session.
Ask what the far end is deciding. If it is deciding whether a request looks like a person from a place, rotate. If it is deciding whether this is the same person as last time, stay put.
On every request by default. Add a session token to the username to hold one address for about thirty minutes instead.
Static ISP addresses are the equivalent: registered to an internet provider rather than a datacentre, and reserved for you.
No, it hurts. An account seen from a new address and country every few minutes looks compromised. Use a sticky session or a static address per account.
Rotating traffic is billed per gigabyte, so it is cheaper for bursty work. Static addresses are rented monthly, which is cheaper when you need the same address continuously.
