With a rotating proxy you set one host and port, and the provider changes the exit address for you, usually on every new request or connection. It is the standard way residential networks are sold, and the standard tool for collecting many independent pages without concentrating traffic on one address.
When it fits
Rotation suits work where each request stands alone: product pages, search results, listings, public profiles. Spreading requests across many exits keeps each address under the site's per-IP limits and limits the damage when one address is blocked.
It fits badly where the site remembers you. Logins, carts, checkouts and multi-step forms break when the address changes halfway through. For those, a sticky session holds one exit for a while, and a static IP holds it for as long as you rent it.
How to tell it is rotating
Keep one connection open and the exit may stay the same; many rotating gateways switch per new connection. Test with separate requests and count distinct exits:
for i in $(seq 1 10); do
curl -s -x http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT https://api.ipify.org
echo
done | sort -u | wc -l
On ProxyHive
Residential is the rotating product. ISP and datacenter IPs are static, one endpoint per IP; buy several and you can rotate across them in code, as how to rotate proxies in Python shows.
Common confusion
"Rotating proxy" names the product; IP rotation names the practice, which you can do yourself with a list of static proxies. Rotating vs static proxies covers when each hurts and when each helps.