On a shared proxy, you and a few other customers send traffic through the same address at the same time. The vendor splits the cost, so you pay less per IP. You also split everything a website attaches to that address.
What sharing costs
- Rate limits. A site's per-IP allowance is divided among everyone using the address. If two co-tenants hit the site you care about, each gets a fraction.
- Reputation. If another customer gets the address blocked on a site, it is blocked for you too, whatever you did.
- Bandwidth. Shared plans often come with a traffic allowance per IP, because the address's bandwidth is being divided.
When shared is fine
Sharing costs you little when your targets are unlikely to overlap with other customers', when the sites are lenient, or when you are testing. It costs a lot on popular, strict targets, and for logged-in accounts, where another user's behaviour can put your account at risk. For those, pay for a dedicated proxy.
On ProxyHive
Shared ISP and datacenter IPs are used by up to 3 customers, include 1 GB of traffic per IP, and more is bought per GB. Dedicated IPs carry only your traffic, with no bandwidth cap. Prices for each plan are on the ISP pricing page.
Common confusion
A rotating residential pool is shared in a looser sense: many customers draw exits from the same network, just not at the same moment on the same address. "Shared" in a static proxy plan means simultaneous use of one address. Dedicated vs shared proxies works through the maths of when a shared IP stops being the cheaper option.