Full definition
The most common proxy decision a buyer makes is residential vs datacenter. Here's the trade-off in one paragraph: residential proxies are 5–20× more expensive than datacenter, 2–5× slower, and have higher variance, but they pass any reasonable anti-bot system. Datacenter proxies are blazing fast and dirt cheap, but get blocked instantly by Cloudflare, Akamai, DataDome, PerimeterX, and most major retailers.
Decision tree: if your destination is a small site with no real anti-bot, datacenter is fine and saves you 10× on cost. If you're hitting Google, Amazon, Walmart, Nike, Instagram, TikTok, or anything fronted by Cloudflare/Akamai — you need residential. Mobile is residential's big brother for social platforms specifically. ISP/static is the hybrid for long-running sessions.
We have detailed comparisons of residential, datacenter, mobile, and ISP proxies.