A request through a proxy makes a longer trip: from you to the gateway, on to the exit address, then to the site, and back the same way. Datacenter proxies add the least delay. Residential and mobile proxies add more, because the exit is a home or phone connection of ordinary speed.
Distance matters too. An exit on the other side of the world from the site is slower than one nearby. For scraping, latency is usually made up for by running more requests at once; for a person browsing, a nearby country feels noticeably quicker.
Questions about proxy latency
How much latency does a proxy add?
It depends on the type and the distance. A datacenter proxy near the target adds little. A residential or mobile exit adds the delay of a home or phone connection, which is often a few hundred milliseconds.
How can I make a proxy faster?
Choose an exit country close to the target, keep connections open where a sticky session allows it, and use datacenter addresses where the target accepts them.
Related terms
- Concurrent connections
- Concurrent connections are the requests a program has open through a proxy at the same moment. More of them finish a job sooner.
- Datacenter proxy
- A datacenter proxy uses an IP address that belongs to a hosting company. It is fast and cheap, and the easiest kind for a website to recognise.
- Exit IP
- The exit IP is the address your request leaves the proxy network from. It is the address the website sees and logs as its visitor.
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