Choosing between a shared vs dedicated proxy is one of those decisions that looks simple on the surface but can seriously affect your results. Buy the wrong type and you'll either overpay for resources you don't need, or you'll find your scrapers getting blocked, your Instagram accounts flagged, and your sneaker bots timing out mid-drop. In this guide, you will learn exactly how shared and dedicated mobile proxies differ, which use cases demand each type, what the real performance gap looks like, and why mobile proxies sit in a category of their own. By the end, you'll know which option matches your workflow, your budget, and your risk tolerance.
What Shared and Dedicated Proxies Actually Mean
Before comparing performance numbers, let's get the definitions straight, because the proxy industry loves to blur them.
A shared proxy is an IP address that multiple users access simultaneously. You're in a pool with anywhere from 5 to 500 other people, all routing traffic through the same IP. When one user on that pool hammers Google with 10,000 requests per hour, the IP gets flagged, and everyone else suffers the consequences too.
A dedicated proxy gives you exclusive access to a specific IP address or port. Nobody else touches it. Every request that goes out from that IP is yours, which means the IP's reputation is entirely under your control.
The Third Type: Semi-Dedicated
Some providers sell "semi-dedicated" or "private shared" proxies, typically shared among 2 to 5 users. These sit between the two extremes in both price and reliability. They're worth knowing about, but they carry the same fundamental risk as shared proxies: someone else's bad behavior can get your IP flagged.
- Shared proxy: Multiple users, low cost, unpredictable IP reputation
- Semi-dedicated: 2–5 users, moderate cost, moderate risk
- Dedicated proxy: Single user, higher cost, full control over IP health
Key takeaway: The core difference isn't speed or location. It's IP reputation ownership. With a dedicated proxy, you decide how clean or dirty that IP gets.
How Mobile Proxies Change the Equation
Traditional datacenter and residential proxies have been around long enough that most major platforms have learned to detect them. Mobile proxies are different, and they change the shared vs dedicated conversation in a fundamental way.
Mobile proxies route your traffic through real SIM cards plugged into physical 4G modems. When your request hits Instagram or Amazon, it looks identical to a regular Polish smartphone user browsing over Orange LTE. That's not a marketing claim. That's how mobile carrier networks operate: millions of real devices sharing a limited pool of public IPs through CGNAT (Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation).
This matters for the shared vs dedicated debate because mobile IPs already have built-in legitimacy. Platforms like Google and Facebook are reluctant to block a mobile IP because doing so would block thousands of innocent smartphone users on the same carrier block. So the baseline trust level for any mobile IP, shared or dedicated, is higher than for datacenter IPs.
CGNAT and Why It Makes Mobile Sharing More Tolerable
On a datacenter proxy, if ten users share one IP, that's suspicious. On a mobile network, 10,000 real users share the same public IP naturally. Platforms know this. Their detection algorithms account for it. So the damage a misbehaving co-user can do to your mobile IP is smaller than it would be on a datacenter IP.
That said, mobile IPs can still get flagged if they're abused hard enough. Which is exactly why dedicated mobile proxies exist.
Performance Differences You'll Actually Notice
Let's talk numbers. In our testing across different proxy configurations running out of Poland, here's what we measured:
- Shared mobile proxy average latency: 180–400ms depending on co-user load
- Dedicated mobile proxy average latency: 80–150ms with consistent throughput
- Shared datacenter proxy average latency: 30–60ms, but much higher block rates
- Dedicated mobile proxy block rate on Google: near 0% in standard scraping scenarios
The latency gap between shared and dedicated mobile proxies isn't huge in absolute terms. But the variance is. On a shared pool, your 95th-percentile request might take 800ms because another user spiked their activity. On a dedicated port, that variance disappears.
For most scraping tasks, 400ms latency is fine. But if you're running a sneaker bot during a Nike SNKRS drop where checkout windows are 2–3 seconds wide, that extra 250ms could be the difference between copping and missing.
You can measure your current proxy performance directly with the proxy speed test tool to see how your setup compares.
Use Cases: When Shared Proxies Are Fine
Shared proxies get a bad reputation mostly because people use them for the wrong tasks. For plenty of legitimate workloads, shared mobile proxies deliver solid results at a fraction of the cost.
Low-Volume Market Research
If you're checking product prices on Allegro or Amazon a few hundred times per day, you don't need a dedicated IP. The request volume is low enough that your traffic barely registers in a shared pool.
Basic SEO Rank Tracking
Running rank checks through Semrush or a custom script? Shared mobile proxies handle this well. Rank tracking doesn't require millisecond precision, and the request patterns are naturally spread over time.
Ad Verification at Moderate Scale
Verifying that your ads are showing correctly in a specific region? A shared Polish mobile IP will give you an accurate local view without needing exclusive access to that IP.
- Checking competitor pricing once or twice daily
- Browsing geo-restricted content for research
- Testing localized landing pages
- Low-frequency social media browsing
Key takeaway: If your work is low-frequency, latency-tolerant, and doesn't require a spotless IP reputation, shared mobile proxies are a rational, cost-effective choice.
Use Cases: When You Need a Dedicated Mobile Proxy
Some workloads will punish you for using a shared proxy. Here's where dedicated mobile proxies justify the cost.
Social Media Account Management
Instagram and Facebook track IP history aggressively. If you're managing client accounts or running growth tools, a single flagged IP in a shared pool can trigger account checkpoints across every session on that pool. With a dedicated port, the IP history is yours alone. You log in, you stay logged in.
High-Volume Scraping
Scraping 50,000+ pages per day through a shared pool means your requests compete with other users for bandwidth, and your block rate climbs as the pool's aggregate behavior triggers rate limits. A dedicated port running through a real Orange LTE modem handles sustained volume without triggering CAPTCHAs.
Sneaker and Limited-Release Bots
Nike SNKRS, Footlocker, and similar platforms have aggressive bot detection that analyzes IP behavior across sessions. A shared IP that's been used by another bot user is already on a watchlist. Your dedicated mobile IP starts clean and stays clean as long as you manage it responsibly.
Account Creation at Scale
Creating multiple accounts on any platform requires unique, clean IPs. Shared proxies fail here because the IP has already been used by other account creators in the pool.
- Managing 10+ social media accounts simultaneously
- Automating LinkedIn outreach campaigns
- Running sneaker bots during high-competition drops
- Scraping 100,000+ pages per week
- Creating and warming up new accounts
Shared vs Dedicated Proxy: Cost Breakdown
Let's be direct about money. Shared proxies are cheaper per IP because the provider splits infrastructure costs across multiple paying customers. Dedicated proxies cost more because you're funding the full hardware, SIM, and bandwidth yourself.
Here's a practical comparison for mobile proxies specifically:
- Shared mobile proxy (typical market rate): $1–3/day per IP
- Dedicated mobile proxy at Proxy Poland: $11 for 24 hours, $30 for 7 days, $60 for 30 days
At first glance, shared looks cheaper. But factor in block rates, IP reputation issues, and the operational overhead of managing bans and CAPTCHAs, and the math shifts. A dedicated mobile port that completes 50,000 clean requests beats a cheap shared proxy that completes 20,000 with 30% needing retries.
Also worth noting: Proxy Poland uses unlimited bandwidth on flat-rate plans. No per-GB charges. If you're scraping at high volume, that pricing structure alone changes the comparison significantly. Check the full pricing breakdown to run the numbers for your specific volume.
And if you want to verify that your proxy is actually hiding your real IP, you can use the what is my IP tool to confirm your traffic looks like a Polish mobile user.
How Proxy Poland's Dedicated Mobile Ports Work
Proxy Poland runs dedicated ports on physical 4G modems using real Orange LTE SIM cards, located in Poland. When you rent a port, you get exclusive access to one modem and its associated mobile IP. Nobody else touches that connection while it's yours.
Here's what that means in practice:
- Your traffic exits from a real Polish mobile IP, indistinguishable from a smartphone
- You can rotate the IP on demand via API call in under 2 seconds (the modem reconnects to the carrier and gets a fresh IP from the CGNAT pool)
- Auto-rotation is available if you prefer scheduled IP changes without manual API calls
- Both HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols are supported, plus OpenVPN for full tunnel configurations
- Bandwidth is unlimited: flat rate, no GB caps regardless of how much you transfer
Based on our infrastructure, over 50,000 IP rotations happen across the modem farm every day. The rotation mechanism is clean: the modem drops its LTE connection and re-registers with the carrier, pulling a new IP from Orange's CGNAT pool. This is exactly how a real phone behaves when it switches from WiFi to mobile data.
For anyone running header analysis or debugging proxy behavior, the HTTP headers inspector shows exactly what your requests look like to target servers. You want to see mobile carrier headers, not datacenter fingerprints.
Free Trial Before You Commit
Proxy Poland offers a free 1-hour trial with no credit card required. That's enough time to run a real benchmark, test your bot configuration, or verify that the IP passes detection checks on your target platform. Most proxy providers don't offer this because their IPs wouldn't survive the scrutiny.
Which Option Should You Actually Choose?
Here's the honest summary. If you're running light workloads, testing a new project, or working with a tight budget, shared mobile proxies can get the job done. The mobile IP baseline trust level compensates for some of the reputation risk that comes with sharing. But if you're managing social media accounts, running bots on competitive platforms, or scraping at serious volume, a shared vs dedicated proxy comparison will always land in favor of dedicated. The IP is yours, the reputation is yours, and the results are predictable.
Proxy Poland's dedicated mobile ports give you a real Orange LTE SIM, unlimited bandwidth, 2-second IP rotation, and a free trial to verify everything before paying a cent. That combination is hard to match with shared pools, regardless of how cheap they look upfront. See Proxy Poland's dedicated mobile proxy plans and start your free trial today.