Shared vs Private vs Dedicated Proxies

The words describe how many customers use an IP at once. They say nothing about the IP type: a dedicated proxy can be a datacenter IP or an ISP IP. "Private" is a marketing word, not a separate sharing model: most sellers use it for dedicated, some for semi-dedicated.

A dedicated proxy is one IP address that a provider assigns to a single customer for the length of the rental. Every request you send leaves from that IP, and no other customer's requests do, so the IP's history on any site is your own. You get it as a host and port with credentials, or by allowlisting your own IP, and it stays the same until the term ends.

At ProxyField, dedicated IPs come in two kinds, both per IP for a 30-day term that you renew yourself in the dashboard, with no auto-billing, at one price for any quantity:

• Dedicated datacenter IPv4: $1.39 per IP. Fast server IPs for sites that do not block datacenter ranges.
• Dedicated ISP (static residential): from $2.29 per IP. IPs registered to internet providers, for sites that do.

Buying them is covered on private proxies, and the two IP types in ISP vs residential proxies.

A shared proxy is an IP that several customers use at once. The provider splits the cost of each IP between them, so shared proxies cost the least per IP and are often sold as large lists of datacenter addresses.

The problem is the neighbors. If another user of your IP floods a site with requests or breaks its rules, the site blocks or flags the IP, and you inherit that block. You cannot see what the others do, and you cannot use the IP where the site expects one user per address, such as a login. Semi-dedicated proxies, shared by two or three customers, reduce the risk without removing it.

Free proxy lists are the extreme case: shared by everyone, run by unknown operators, often already blocked. The risks are covered in are free proxies safe.

Usually not, but not always: most sellers use "private proxy" and "dedicated proxy" for the same product, one IP for one customer, while some call a proxy shared with one or two other customers (semi-dedicated) "private", and a few use "private" for any proxy that needs a password. The label alone doesn't tell you, so ask the seller three questions before you buy:

Only datacenter and ISP IPs can be dedicated in this sense. A rotating residential IP is never yours for a term: a sticky session can hold one for up to 36 h, and only while its exit node stays up. For one IP that stays yours for 30 days, the choice is a dedicated datacenter or dedicated ISP IP (ISP vs residential proxies).

Paid shared proxies from a seller you can identify are usable for low-stakes work, with two separate risks: their reputation is shared, and, like any proxy, the operator can see connection details.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's guide warns that "circumvention tools that promise privacy or security are not always private or secure", and that the owners of encrypted proxies "can see the data you send to and from other secure websites" (EFF Surveillance Self-Defense, last reviewed 2017). Free lists are worse: a 30-month study of 640,600+ free proxies from 11 providers found only 34.5% of them active at least once, and 16,923 that manipulated content (Mehanna et al., "Free Proxies Unmasked", 2024). More in are free proxies safe and are proxies safe.

Fine on a shared proxy: checking how a site looks from another country, testing a tool, light scraping of public pages over HTTPS. Avoid on a shared proxy: banking, email, password managers, purchases, anything logged in, and allowlists that trust the IP. Before you use any proxy, check: who runs it, its privacy policy, and whether it supports HTTPS and SOCKS5. Never install a certificate, an extension or an app from an operator you can't identify.

ProxyField doesn't sell shared lists. It doesn't record the content of your traffic or the pages you visit, HTTPS goes through a CONNECT tunnel and is not decrypted, and connection metadata is kept for up to 30 days (trust and privacy).

These are marketing words, not standards. Here is what sellers usually mean, and what you can check yourself:

What matters is how the IP behaves on your target, which only a test shows. ProxyField does not sell "fresh" or "virgin" tiers. For its residential pool, ProxyField's line is this: the pool is clean for Google, checked and segmented. The Easy Trial (1 GB for $2.95) runs on the same pool as a 1 TB order, so a test shows what you would get at volume.

• One account, tool or allowlist that needs the same IP: dedicated. Use a dedicated ISP IP if the site blocks datacenter ranges, a dedicated datacenter IP if it does not.
• Many requests to many pages: a rotating residential pool, not a list of dedicated IPs. Rotation spreads the traffic, and you pay per GB instead of per IP: rotating proxies.
• Light, non-critical tasks on a tight budget: shared IPs from another seller can work over HTTPS, as long as no login, payment or allowlist depends on the IP; ProxyField does not sell them.
• Both: many teams keep dedicated IPs for logged-in work and a rotating pool for data collection.