The workload map
| Workload | Right proxy | Why |
|---|---|---|
| AI service accounts (ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney) | Static residential | Consistency is the anti-ban signal; rotation looks like account theft |
| API traffic from unsupported regions | Static residential / ISP | Fixed clean origin for gateways; see the API guide |
| Browsing agents (Operator-style, scrapers with JS) | Rotating residential | Per-session fresh IPs across target sites, real-user fingerprint |
| Dataset collection at scale | Rotating residential + datacenter mix | Volume economics; escalate to residential only where blocked |
Accounts and APIs: the static residential case
AI providers profile origin behaviour over time. An account that appears from the same residential IP every day builds trust; an account hopping between IPs, countries or datacenter ranges accumulates risk score. That's the entire logic behind using a dedicated static residential IP per account cluster — it's not about hiding, it's about being boringly consistent.
Datacenter IPs are the cheapest option and the worst fit here: entire VPS ranges carry abuse history you inherit on day one.
Agents that browse the web
Autonomous browsing agents inherit every bot-detection problem scrapers have, plus unpredictability — the agent decides where to go. Practical rules:
- Rotating residential per session, sticky within a session: the agent keeps one IP while completing a task, gets a fresh one for the next.
- Don't run agents through your account IP. Your ChatGPT/Claude account IP should never appear in scraping logs — keep infrastructure roles separated.
- Mobile proxies for the hardest targets: social platforms and marketplaces that block residential ranges still trust carrier-grade NAT IPs shared by thousands of phones.
Dataset collection economics
Training-data scraping is a cost-per-gigabyte game. The pattern that works: datacenter first, residential on failure. Route each target through cheap datacenter IPs; when a domain starts blocking, move that domain — and only that domain — to rotating residential. Typical blended costs run 3–5× lower than putting everything on residential by default.