Rotating vs sticky proxies

9 November 2026

A rotating proxy gives you a new exit address with each connection or after a short interval; a sticky proxy keeps the same address for a session of set length. Rotation spreads independent requests across many addresses. Sticky sessions are for any task where the site must see the same person from start to finish, such as signing in or paying.

How rotation works

Most providers put a single gateway, with a fixed host and port, in front of a pool of exit addresses. Your software only knows the gateway; the gateway picks the exit.

1. Your software opens a connection to the gateway and sends its request, or a CONNECT for an HTTPS site.
2. The gateway picks an exit according to its rule: a new exit per connection, the exit tied to your session ID, or an exit that changes after a set time.
3. The exit opens a connection to the site, and the site sees the exit's address.
4. That connection stays on the same exit until it closes. The next request only gets another exit if a new connection is opened for it.

That last step has a practical effect that is easy to miss. Once a CONNECT succeeds, the connection becomes a tunnel, as RFC 9110 specifies, and the gateway sees only encrypted bytes from then on. Every request your software sends inside one tunnel leaves from the same address, even with a proxy sold as "new IP per request".

Modern browsers and HTTP libraries also reuse open connections for consecutive requests to save time. So rotation is really per connection, not per request. If you want a genuinely new address, close the connection and open another.

A sticky session works by binding an identifier you choose to one exit for a set period. Many providers carry this identifier inside the username of the proxy login. Every connection with the same identifier goes to the same exit until the period ends or the exit fails.

Stickiness on mobile networks

On a mobile network, part of the decision belongs to the carrier. RFC 6888 requires the carrier's NAT to use, by default, the same external address for all sessions of one subscriber. As long as the exit stays connected, every site sees one address.

The carrier does, however, reshuffle its public addresses among subscribers from time to time. A sticky session on a mobile exit is therefore bounded by the carrier's policy, whatever duration the provider promises. On the other hand, the exit may get a new address when it reconnects to the network.

Why sites care when your address changes

Your signed-in state does not live in your address. It lives in a cookie the browser sends with every request, the mechanism defined in RFC 6265 to let a server keep a session on top of stateless HTTP. Technically, then, an address change does not end the session.

Many services, however, record the address at sign-in and compare it with later requests. One cookie suddenly arriving from another address, or another network, looks like session hijacking. The service then asks you to sign in again, sends a verification code, or ends the session. Wallets and banks are stricter about this than most.

In the other direction, many sites count rate limits per address. Spreading requests over different addresses does not exempt you from a site's terms, and sites link requests by signals other than the address as well.

The address is not the only signal

Changing the address changes nothing else about your request. The cookies stay the same, and so do the browser type, its language, time zone and screen size. One browser sending the same cookies from ten addresses within minutes looks to the site like one user hopping between networks, not ten users.

Constant rotation therefore suits requests that carry no identity, such as reading public pages without an account. When you are signed in, a changing address adds contradictions to your requests and hides nothing.

Concurrent connections on a sticky exit

A sticky session puts all your connections on one exit, and that exit has limits. On mobile networks, RFC 6888 itself requires support for a per-subscriber limit on external ports. If your software opens hundreds of connections at once through one session, the exit may refuse some or slow down. Spread parallel work over several sessions, each with its own independent task.

Comparison

How to test a proxy's behaviour yourself

Ask for your address through the proxy several times at intervals and compare:

for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do
  curl -s -x socks5h://HOST:PORT --proxy-user USER:PASS https://ipinfo.io/ip
  echo
  sleep 60
done

Each curl call here opens a new connection. With a rotating proxy the addresses differ; with a sticky session they match until it expires. To measure the real session length, run more rounds and print the time next to each address.

Then test connection reuse: put the same URL twice in a single curl command. curl normally reuses the open connection, so the same address appears twice even through a rotating proxy.

How to choose and configure

• Make the sticky session longer than the task. If signing in and finishing take twenty minutes, do not start on a session that ends in ten.
• Start the sensitive task early in the session, not near its end, especially on mobile exits.
• Do not mix the two modes on one account. An account that signs in from a fixed address and then receives requests from changing ones looks suspicious.
• With a rotating proxy, close connections when you really want a new address, rather than assuming every request leaves from a new one.
• Respect the site's limits and terms. Changing address is not permission to send more requests than it allows.

With syriaproxy the same address lasts about two hours, then Syriatel changes it, as it does for its subscribers' phones. Your account has a Request a new address button if you want to switch sooner. Why this matters when opening wallets and accounts is covered in Keeping the same Syrian IP.

FAQ

See your current address, network and country with the free My IP tool, and reload it to see whether it changed.