Top-Rated Backconnect Proxy Providers: A 2024 Ranking

Backconnect proxy servers, also known as rotating residential proxies, assign a different IP address each time you connect to the internet or after a set period. For tasks like web scraping or social media automation, backconnect proxy network makes it difficult for websites to track or block you based on your IP address.

This article explains what backconnect proxies are, their potential benefits, and the top providers of backconnect proxy services.

What is a backconnect proxy?

A backconnect proxy is a type of proxy server that automatically rotates IP addresses from a pool of proxies with each new request.

How do backconnect proxies work?

Here’s a step-by-step explanation of how a backconnect proxy works:

1. The user connects to the backconnect proxy to send a request to access the target website.
2. The initial connection is to the proxy server.
3. The request is forwarded to a random proxy server by the backconnect server. Each time the user makes a request (e.g., for accessing geo restricted content), the backconnect proxy server assigns different different proxies from its pool to mask original IP address. Some proxy providers enable users to modify the frequency of IP rotation like after a certain amount of time or after a specific number of requests. You can maintain the same IP address for a period of time.
4. Request to the target website is sent to the server using a masked IP address.
5. Once the target website provides requested data, the proxy server retrieves the data and forwards it back to the user.

Top 7 backconnect proxy providers

Notes:

Flexible rotation*: Choose from various rotation settings, including timed rotation (available at intervals of 5, 10, 15, and up to 60 minutes), rotation triggered with each request, or a sticky option for a more consistent connection.

Starts from**: Since every proxy provider mentioned in the table offers backconnect residential proxies, their pricing for residential proxies is compared and assessed. The starting price for residential proxies is based on the cost of the smallest package they offer.

1. Bright Data

Bright Data offers a proxy service with four types of rotating proxies: residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile. It includes an open-source Proxy Manager, which enables customers to customize their proxy use. Users can configure the frequency of IP changes by setting a limit on the number of requests per IP, deciding the time gap between IP rotations, and choosing the size of their IP rotation pool.

2. Oxylabs

Oxylabs offers a variety of proxy types, including rotating ISP (static residential proxies), residential, and mobile proxies. A key difference between their Rotating ISP Proxies and Residential Proxies is in the duration of the session. The Rotating ISP Proxies allow users to maintain the same IP address for up to 5 hours.

While Oxylabs’ datacenter proxies don’t inherently feature rotation, they offer a Proxy Rotator tool. This tool automatically changes proxies every time a request is made to a target website. For both residential and mobile proxies, users can target specific locations within a certain country or city. There’s also an option to select proxies by geographical coordinates, though this is limited to a 10-mile radius from the specified coordinates. Each request to a target site can be assigned a different residential IP address through their system.

3. Smartproxy

Smartproxy offers a residential proxy pool of over 55 million with an automatic rotation feature. These residential IPs enable users to direct their requests through IP addresses linked to specific cities, states, and zip codes.

They support both HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 protocols, ensuring they work with a variety of tools and applications. For tasks needing a stable IP to log in and navigate websites, Smartproxy’s proxy rotation algorithm provides the option to switch IPs with each connection request or to keep a consistent IP for up to 30 minutes.

4. Nimble

Nimble offers residential proxy services, including a proxy scraping API and solutions for unblocking proxies. These proxies are suitable for use with both proprietary and third-party web scraping APIs. For those in need of a proxy service that offers scraping API functionality for Web, SERP, Maps, and E-commerce sites, and comes with integrated proxies, Nimble might be the right choice. It covers 195 locations with the ability to target by country, city, and state. Nimble’s residential proxies feature automatic IP rotation by default and provide sticky sessions that renew after 10 minutes of inactivity.

5. IPRoyal

IPRoyal offers rotating residential proxies that provide the ability to choose rotation intervals up to 24 hours. This auto-rotation feature is unique to their Royal residential proxies. For mobile IPs, IPRoyal enables manual rotation; users can rotate Lithuanian proxies every 3:40 minutes, and UK and US proxies every 6 minutes, by using the ‘rotate IP’ button. There’s also an automatic IP rotation feature that changes your IP every 3 minutes, though this is not available with the 1-day plan.

The proxy provider offers the option to automatically switch your residential IP proxy at set intervals, with user-preferred frequencies such as 1, 10, or 30 minutes.

6. NetNut

NetNut provides rotating residential proxy pool specifically tailored for data extraction tasks. By default, this proxy service changes proxies for every separate session. Additionally, it offers a customizable rotation feature for both its Residential and Mobile proxies.

7. SOAX

SOAX offers a rotating proxy pool that includes both residential and ISP IP addresses. This provider features US-based rotating ISP proxies, with sessions that can last up to 24 hours. Users have the flexibility to acquire a new IP with each request or to configure the IP to change at intervals starting from a minimum of one minute.

8. Infatica

Infatica provides rotating residential proxies that come with the ability to target specific cities and ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers). The service offers a range of proxy rotation settings. These include a timed rotation option, which can be set to change every 5 minutes and up to every 60 minutes, a rotation that occurs with each new request, and a sticky sessions for more persistent connections.

Advantages of using backconnect proxies

Offer greater anonymity

When compared to regular proxies, backconnect proxies provide higher anonymity. All proxy server types hide or mask users’ IP addresses when they are surfing web pages. However, there is still a risk of being blocked or blacklisted if you make multiple requests to the same website. 

The source of IP addresses differs between proxy servers. For example,  the IP source of residential proxies is registered under an ISP (Internet Service Provider). An Internet Service Provider does not provide IP addresses for datacenter proxies. Backconnect proxies assign IP addresses from a residential proxy IP pool to users. Backconnect proxies, unlike residential proxies, assign a new IP address to each different request to a specific website.

Accelerate scraping projects 

Similarly, backconnect proxies speed up scraping since backconnect proxies constantly rotate users’ IP addresses. User’s IP address is automatically changed per minute in the rotating method (deciding whether to use the same proxy or use a new one).

Overcome the limited number of scraping requests

Most websites use anti-bot tools to prevent scraping their websites by the same person many times. When you send many requests to the same website, the website may detect and block you. 

In this case, you must limit the frequency of requests or schedule time to crawl the same website. These options, however, slow down your scraping process. Making requests through different IP addresses can help you overcome these obstacles. Backconnect proxies change your IP address for each request to the same website, allowing you to make millions of requests simultaneously.

Disadvantages of using backconnect proxies

1. Pricey

Backconnect proxies are more expensive than other types of proxies since they provide greater anonymity and a lower risk of being blocked with unlimited requests. 

2. Slower when scraping long-distance servers

Backconnect proxies may be slow when making requests to servers that are far from your proxy’s origin server. They may take a long time to forward your request to the target website, which may be in another country. 

A general backconnect proxy process consists of four components: user, backconnect proxy, proxies, and targeted website. Assume you are in the United States, send a request to a server in Turkey, and your backconnect proxy is in France. In this case,

1. You send a request from the United States to France. 
2. In France, a backconnect proxy server changes your IP address with another IP address from a proxy pool.  
3. Your masked IP address is forwarded from France to Turkey to make a request. 
4. The targeted website in Turkey provides the requested information to the backconnect proxy in France. 
5. It is then sent to the United States.

How are backconnect proxies useful in web scraping projects?

1. Website performance testing

Performance testing, also known as Perf Testing, is the process of testing a website’s speed, stability, and scalability.  Website testing is essential for understanding current bottlenecks and pain points and what needs to be improved before launching a website. A/B testing (a website testing technique) is used by almost all large companies, including Google and Microsoft, to optimize their products. For example, Microsoft runs monthly 1,000 A/B tests on Bing, its search engine. A/B testing has helped Bing increase its annual revenue per search by 10-25%.  Primary checks falling under these three steps are as below: 

• Load testing: ensures that the website responds as expected after various peak points such as high traffic and transaction load.  
• Stress testing: identify the website’s breaking point after the peak traffic and high data processing. 
• Spike testing: measure the website’s performance to see how it handles unexpectedly high traffic. 

Backconnect proxies help website developers and designers test their websites and make the necessary changes accordingly. They mask your activities, get over rate limits, and avoid honeypots (computer systems created to attract hackers and block them from accessing websites).

2. Massive amount of data scraping

You must make many requests and change your IP for each request if you want to scrape a massive amount of data without being detected. You cannot change your IP address for each request with a regular proxy. Backconnect proxies overcome the difficulties by allowing users to utilize multiple IP addresses. Bacconnect proxies mask IP addresses by assigning a different and new IP address for each data request. 

3. Ad Verification

Bots, called click fraud, might generate fake data activities like clicks and impressions. Real user activities could be manipulated, or they could be misdirected to a different link or ad. The money you spend on advertising will not provide a return to the company. Websites may run multiple ads simultaneously, and it may be difficult to check whether ads appear in the intended location. Backconnect proxies are used to verify ads and prevent ad fraud. Proxies allow website owners to check their ads are seen by real people, in the right place, and on a safe platform.  

Using a backconnect proxy helps advertisers monitor backlinks/redirects and detect if ads are displayed on a phishing website. It enables businesses to save their advertising budget and boost the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

Further Reading

If you want to learn more about web scraping and how it can benefit your business, feel free to read our articles on the topic:

• Using Proxies for Web Scraping: How-to, Types, Best Practices
• Headless Browsers in Web Scraping: Challenges & Best Practices
• ETL Pipeline: What it is, Why it matters, Use Cases/Applications

Also, don’t forget to check out our sortable/filterable list of proxy service / server.

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