What is IP Rotation & How to Rotate An IP Address?

Unless the IP Address assigned to your Internet traffic is rotated, you will still face some forms of restrictions. Come in now and discover how to rotate IP Address – and the best providers of rotating proxies in the market.

Rotate IP Address

All the popular websites you know how an accepted number of requests you can send within a specific period of time in other to prevent their websites against spam. If you try to send more than the acceptable number, your access to the website will be denied. For many Internet marketers, exceeding these limits is what they have to do to scale up and grow their business.

If you are one of such Internet marketers, then you need to make use of a good number of proxies and then rotate them at intervals. This article is all about how to rotate IP addresses. You will also discover the top rotating proxies in the market as well as the best web scraping API.


What is IP Address Rotation?

When you are using a static proxy server, it only has one IP address attached to it. For web scraping and other forms of automation, you need to make use of more than one IP address to avoid getting banned.

With IP address rotation, you can achieve that. IP Rotation is the process by which the IP Address assigned to your web requests is not static but changes after every request or a given period of time.

For those that make use of proxies with one IP Address assigned to them, they can create a system where they have a bunch of proxies and create a proxy pool.

IP Address Rotation

Related, Public Proxy Pools, Datacenter Proxy Pools, and Residential Proxy Pools

With a proxy pool, you can create a system whereby your web requests will be routed through a randomly chosen IP Address, and the record of that IP is kept so that you won’t use one more than the others.

In all sincerity, managing a group of proxies and rotating them effectively can be very tiring, and you can make some mistakes along the way. Instead of creating your own IP address rotation system, it is best to make use of rotating proxies already in the market. For inexperienced web scrapers, using scraping APIs might be the best option.


Best IP Rotation Services

From the above, you can tell that except you are experienced, trying to effectively rotate your own IPs can be a problem for you. Because of this, I will be recommending to you, the best IP rotation services available in the market.


Best Rotating Proxies

The most common way to enjoy IP rotation is to make use of rotating proxies from providers with a large proxy pool. Residential proxies are some of the best when it comes to this regard as residential proxies are known for their reliability and compatibility with most of the popular websites on the Internet. Some of the best providers of rotating proxies are discussed below.


Luminati (Brightdata Now)

Luminati

  • IP Pool Size: Over 40 million
  • Locations: All countries in the world
  • Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
  • Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 40GB
  • Cost: Starts at $500 monthly for 40GB

Luminati is arguably the best proxy service provider in the market right now. It is the largest proxy network with over 72 million residential IPs in its pool. It proxies cut across the residential, mobile, and datacenter categories.

One thing you will come to appreciate about Luminati is that it has the best IP rotation system in the market – and gives you full control over how you want the IP rotated. It has support for session-based IP rotation, and you can also make use of their high-rotating proxies that changes IP after every request.

Luminati Residential Proxies for Minecraft


Shifter

Shifter Formerly Microleaves

  • IP Pool Size: Over 31 million
  • Locations: 130 countries
  • Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
  • Cost: Starts at $125 monthly for 10 ports

Let me tell you the truth. If you are on a low budget, there is no how you will be able to afford rotating residential proxies from one of the above providers because they are expensive. Shifter, formerly known as Microleaves, is one of the proxy providers of choice if you have a low budget.

Shifter also has a proxy pool that can be termed as large too. Shifter will also take care of IP rotation for you. However, you need to know that Shifter won’t change the IP address assigned to you after every request. IP rotation is time-based in Shifter.

Shifter Rotating Proxies


Smartproxy

Smartproxy

  • IP Pool Size: Over 10 million
  • Locations: 195 locations across the globe
  • Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
  • Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 5GB
  • Cost: Starts at $75 monthly for 5GB

Smartproxy is a favorable proxy provider because of its small monetary commitment. Unlike in the case of Microleaves that you will have to make a compromise as it does not have support for high-rotating proxies, Smartproxy has support for both high-rotating proxies and time-based rotating proxies.

Just like Luminati, Smartproxy has proxies in all countries of the world and in a few cities. With just $75, you would be allowed access to their pool. However, you need to know that Smartproxy, Luminati, and Oxylabs are priced based on consumable bandwidth – ad your connection will be cut off after your allocated bandwidth is exhausted.

Smartproxy Rotating Proxies


Stormproxies

Stormproxies Logo

  • IP Pool Size: 40,000
  • Locations: the US and EU region only
  • Concurrency Allowed: only one device per port
  • Cost: Starts at $50 monthly for 5 ports

Stormproxies have the smallest proxy pool when its pool is compared with the rest of the providers on the list. For residential proxies, it has a very small pool of 70 thousand. While this looks small compared to every other, the truth is that you can use it for even big projects.

Just like Shifter, Stormproxies also does not have support for high-rotating proxies. Its pricing is not based on bandwidth but on ports. Each of the ports gets the IP address assigned to it changed after every 5 minutes. Stormproxies pricing is the cheapest on the list.

Stormproxies for etsy


Oxylabs

Oxylabs Logo

  • IP Pool Size: Over 70 million
  • Locations: all countries
  • Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
  • Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 20GB
  • Cost: Starts at $300 monthly for 20GB

If you are looking for proxy experts to partner with, then Oxylabs should be top on the list. When it comes to the size of IPs they have in their pool, the statistics on their websites show 72 million, which brings it to be almost the same as Luminati when it comes to their proxy pool size.

However, most people will prefer to make use of Luminati. Oxylabs will provide you with premium services like never before, such as a dedicated account manager. When it comes to IP rotation, you also do not have to worry as the Oxylabs system takes care of that effectively and efficiently on your behalf.

Oxylabs Rotating Proxies


Best Web Scraping APIs

If you do not have an experience using proxies, and what you require them for is scraping, then using a scraping API is better than using proxies. Scraping APIs uses proxies and take care of their management.

They also make sure they take care of other things that will lead to your access being blocked, including preventing the occurrence of Captchas. With a scraping API, you do not need to think of the anti-scraping techniques put in place by your target website. Below are the best scraping APIs in the market.


ScraperAPI

Scraperapi Logo

  • Proxy Pool Size: over 40 million
  • Supports Geotargeting: depend on the plan chosen
  • Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API calls
  • Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
  • Special Functions: Solves Captcha and handles browsers

Scraper API is arguably one of the best scraping APIs in the market. It is perfect for those with less experience in scraping as they do not have to think of handling any anti-scraping issues themselves.

Scraper API will help you handle proxies, headless browsers, and Captchas, so you do not have to. Getting the HTML of a page is as simple as sending an API request. Scraper API is quite popular among big businesses, and they even handle over 5 billion requests monthly.

Scraper API


ScrapingBee

Scrapingbee Logo

  • Proxy Pool Size: Not disclosed
  • Supports Geotargeting: Yes
  • Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API credits
  • Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
  • Special Functions: Handles headless browser for JavaScript rendering

ScrapingBee is also one of the web scraping APIs I recommend. This is because they have built a system that works, and when you are using them, you are in good company with the likes of Zillow, Woo-commerce, Deloitte, and SAP in their customer list. ScrapingBee has a large pool of IP addresses.

They route their clients’ requests through, and they make sure IPs are rotated efficiently. Also important is the fact that they can also help you handle headless browsers.

ScrapingBee Web Scraping


Crawlera

Crawlera Logo

  • Proxy Pool Size: Not specific – tens of thousands
  • Supports Geotargeting: Yes
  • Cost: Starts at $99 for 200,000 requests
  • Free Trials: 10,000 requests within 14 days
  • Special Functions: Avoid Captchas

Crawlera was developed by Scrapinghub, a popular scraping tool provider. Crawlerahighly recommends as it even gives you a free trial of up to 10 thousand free requests to test out their service. I will advise you to claim this free trial before making any monetary commitment.

Crawlera will help you handle proxies and make sure proxies do not appear – and you only pay for successful requests. However, it does not handle headless browsers on its own as the others do – it needs Splash for that.

Crawlera Web Scraping


FAQs about Rotate IP Address


  • Is IP Rotation Necessary?

Depending on the proxy use case, IP rotation can be required or not. If you need to exceed request limits or operate more than one account on the same system, proxies have to be rotated else; you will be banned. However, when you do not need to change IP, IP rotation is not required.

  • Why Use Rotating Proxies?

Rotating proxies take care of IP rotation themselves. When you choose to make use of the service of a rotating proxy, you do not have to worry about rotating IPs yourself.

  • Why Use a Web Scraping API?

Web scraping APIs help you evade all the anti-scraping checks put in place by websites to prevent scraping. With them, you do not have to worry about proxies and Captchas. Just send an API request and get the page returned to you.

Read more,


Conclusion

When it comes to using proxies, except what you require them for requires static proxies, you need to rotate them efficiently. Doing so can be difficult for some people and can even lead to mistakes. However, by making use of rotating proxies in the market or web scraping APIs, the burden is taken off you.

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