When using residential proxies, you need to continuously rotate IP addresses to be able to do your tasks effectively. Constantly rotating through multiple IP addresses though would sometimes do more harm than good. Sticky proxies were made so that you can do a proxy rotation at a certain time interval. This time interval ranges from 1 minute, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and so on.

This time interval would be called a sticky session and once that time frame passes, the proxies will then rotate. As you're using residential IPs though, there’s no assurance that you’re using the same IP address for the entire sticky session because the user’s device may suddenly disconnect forcing you to utilize another IP address. The longer your sticky session is, the more likely for this to happen.

How Do Sticky Proxies Work?

Similar to rotating proxies, sticky proxies also use a backconnect server that acts as a gateway to your proxy provider’s proxy network. You’ll be given a single hostname or IP address that will give you access to a proxy pool with an abundant amount of IP addresses. You can also use multiple sticky IP addresses by changing the port number or session ID and you don’t have to alter the gateway. You’ll be given all the benefits when using a proxy server like preventing bans and avoiding CAPTCHAs.

When Should You Use Sticky Proxies?

Sticky proxies are the type of proxies that are best used for tasks that require you to complete multiple new requests in a row. For example, you want to use a bot to automate the checkout process on an e-commerce or sneaker website. The bot needs to send out request after request and continuously changing proxies each time it sends a request might cause the entire process the fail. Sticky proxies are needed if you want to ensure that the process would succeed every time.

Another good example would be when you want to create and manage multiple social media accounts. Sticky proxies would enable you to switch to a different IP address at your desired time interval and enable you to create as many accounts as you like.

Conclusion

Sticky proxies are best when you don’t want to continuously rotate through multiple IP addresses but only rotate on a time interval that you want. Use cases, where you might need to utilize sticky proxies, are automating checkout processes on target websites, filling out online forms, and creating multiple social media accounts. As static IPs can only be used by datacenter proxies, sticky proxies will be the closest thing to static proxies you can utilize.