A dedicated proxy is a proxy that only you use. A shared proxy is one that several customers use at the same time, either the same IP address or the same pool of addresses. That is the whole definition, but what "dedicated" buys you changes a lot depending on the kind of proxy, and for mobile proxies it means something different from what most people expect.
This guide covers what each model means for datacenter, ISP, residential and mobile proxies, where the break-even sits between paying per gigabyte and paying per device, and which one fits which job.
Key takeaways
- Dedicated means no other customer uses your proxy. Shared means other customers use the same IP or the same pool, and you inherit whatever they do with it.
- For datacenter and ISP proxies, dedicated means one IP address that is yours. For mobile proxies it means a whole 4G/5G modem, while the IP itself stays shared with ordinary subscribers behind the carrier's CGNAT, which is exactly why it reads as normal traffic.
- Shared mobile pools are billed per GB and rotate across many devices; dedicated mobile devices are billed per day, week or month with unlimited traffic and an IP that only changes when you rotate it.
- At September 2026 prices, a month of VoidMob's cheapest dedicated device costs about the same as 14 GB of shared traffic. Above that, or when a session has to keep one IP for days, dedicated wins.
- Use a shared pool for high-volume, many-IP work like price monitoring. Use dedicated for long logged-in sessions, fixed-IP whitelists, streaming and anything that needs full-device control.
What Is a Dedicated Proxy?
A dedicated proxy (also sold as a "private proxy") is assigned to one customer. Nobody else sends traffic through it, so its reputation, speed and history are shaped only by what you do.
A shared proxy is used by several customers at once. With a shared static proxy, that means a handful of people on the same IP. With a shared rotating pool, it means thousands of customers drawing from the same set of addresses, each request or session landing on whichever one is free.
The difference matters for three reasons:
- Reputation. On a shared IP, someone else's scraping or spam can get the address rate-limited or blocked before you ever use it.
- Consistency. A dedicated proxy keeps the same IP until you change it. A shared pool hands you different addresses, which is great for spreading requests and bad for staying logged in.
- Cost. Shared is cheaper per unit because the infrastructure is split. Dedicated costs more per month but is often unmetered.
What "Dedicated" Means for Each Proxy Type
Providers use the same two words for very different products. Before comparing prices, check which one you are actually looking at.
| Proxy type | Shared means | Dedicated means | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter | A few customers on one hosting IP | One hosting IP, yours alone | Any IP lookup shows a hosting company, dedicated or not |
| ISP (static residential) | Several customers on one ISP-registered IP | One ISP-registered IP, yours alone | Hosted in a datacenter, so the network behind it is not a home line |
| Residential | A rotating pool of other people's devices | Often a reserved IP or session, not an exclusive device | The device belongs to someone else, so true exclusivity is rare |
| Mobile | A rotating pool of carrier devices, billed per GB | A whole 4G/5G modem and its connection | The public IP is still shared with the carrier's subscribers, by design |
The mobile row is the one people misread. Mobile carriers put many subscribers behind a single public IPv4 address using carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT). A dedicated mobile proxy gives you the modem exclusively: no other proxy customer touches it. But the public address it exits from is shared with ordinary phone users on that carrier, and that sharing is the reason platforms treat mobile IPs gently. Blocking one would cut off real subscribers too. So "dedicated" in mobile means your own device and connection, not an address nobody else on the internet uses. For how the three IP types differ at the network level, see datacenter vs residential vs mobile proxies.
Dedicated vs Shared Mobile Proxies
On the mobile side, the two models are different products, not two price points for the same thing. Here is how they compare on VoidMob, where both are sold side by side.
| Feature | Shared mobile pool | Dedicated mobile device |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Access to a pool of real 4G/5G devices | One physical 4G/5G modem, yours only |
| Billing | Per GB, plans valid 30 days | Per day, week or month |
| Traffic | Metered | Unlimited |
| IP changes | Per request by default, on a timer, or sticky while that phone stays online | Only when you rotate: button, API, rotation link or your own timer |
| Protocols | HTTP, SOCKS5 | HTTP, SOCKS5, OpenVPN; TCP and UDP |
| DNS | Public resolvers in the same country | The carrier's own DNS |
| Site restrictions | Payment, banking and government sites blocked | None |
| Speed | Varies by device | High-speed 4G/5G, premium 5G fastest; depends on location |
| Targeting | Country, region, city, ZIP or carrier per list; 2-30 countries per list | One country, carrier and region, chosen at purchase |
| Best for | Many IPs, spread-out requests | One stable identity, long sessions |
How the shared pool works
A shared plan is a data allowance on a pool of real phones and modems. You create proxy lists in the dashboard, each with its own login, location and rotation rule, up to 100 per plan, all drawing on the same gigabytes. Each list can rotate per request (the default), hold an IP for a set time (presets from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, longer over the API), or stay sticky until you change it. Sticky on a pool means "same IP while that phone stays online": if the device drops off the network, the session moves to another one.
That makes the pool strong at breadth. A price-monitoring job can spread thousands of requests across many carrier IPs in several countries from one plan, and nobody has to manage devices. The full feature set is on the rotating mobile proxies page.
How a dedicated device works
A dedicated plan puts one physical modem on your account. Its IP stays put until you rotate it, and rotating asks the carrier for a new address on the same carrier, country and region, with about a minute or two of downtime and a 60-second cooldown. You can rotate from the dashboard, the API, or a private rotation link, a URL that changes the IP when it is opened, built to paste into an antidetect browser's change-IP field. The shared pool has no rotation link, because it has no single device to rotate.
Because the device is yours, you also get what a pool cannot offer: traffic that isn't metered, OpenVPN to tunnel a whole phone or TV box, carrier-native DNS, and no site restrictions. Premium devices add a 5G modem, switchable TCP/IP fingerprint profiles, VLESS/Xray and remote reboot. Dedicated devices are fast either way, and premium is the faster tier. Real throughput still depends on the carrier and on the distance between your client, the device and the target, so for the best speeds run your client (a VPS, for example) in the same region as the device. Details and live prices are on the dedicated mobile proxies page.
“A shared pool gives you many IPs. A dedicated device gives you one IP that behaves the same way every time you come back.”
Which Costs Less? The Break-Even
Shared pools look cheaper because they are priced per gigabyte. Dedicated devices look expensive because they are priced per month. The honest comparison is how much data one identity uses in that month.
Mobile proxy pricing
Shared pools from $3.99/GB, dedicated devices from $49/mo.
| Data | Price | $ / GB | Valid |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | $3.99 | $3.99 | 30 days |
| 25 GB | $81.25 | $3.25 | 30 days |
| 100 GB | $250 | $2.50 | 30 days |
Prices updated
At September 2026 prices, the cheapest dedicated month is $49 and shared data costs $3.99/GB on the 1 GB plan, falling to $2.50/GB at 100 GB. On the 10 GB plan ($3.50/GB), $49 buys 14 GB. So:
- Under roughly 10-15 GB a month through one identity, shared is cheaper, as long as you don't need the same IP for days.
- Above that, a dedicated device in a low-cost market costs less, because its traffic is unlimited. Video, app testing with media, and large browser sessions get there fast.
- Dedicated prices vary by country and tier. Standard devices run from $49 to over $100 a month depending on the market; premium 5G devices cost more. Check your country on the locations page before doing the maths.
Not sure how much data your work uses? Estimate it here:
Proxy data usage calculator
Rough estimate, not a billing forecast. Real usage varies by target, media mix and caching.
About 60 MB per hour per account, over 30 days.
Prices updated
For the unmetered side of the maths, what "unlimited proxy" really means covers when time-billed plans beat per-GB ones.
Which One to Pick, by Job
| Job | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Price monitoring, SERP checks, public data at volume | Shared pool | Needs many IPs and locations, not one stable one |
| Ad verification across countries | Shared pool | Lists target 2-30 countries or specific cities from one plan |
| Managing a few long-lived business accounts | Dedicated | The same IP every login, rotated only when you choose |
| Sites that whitelist your IP | Dedicated | The address doesn't change under you |
| Streaming, TV boxes, whole-device tunnels | Dedicated | Unlimited traffic and OpenVPN |
| Payment, banking or government sites | Dedicated | These are blocked on the shared pool |
| Testing a location before committing | Shared (1 GB) or a 1-day dedicated device | The cheapest paid trials of each model |
Many teams run both: a shared plan for the high-volume work where any carrier IP will do, and one dedicated device for each identity that has to look the same every day. How many identities one device can reasonably carry is covered in how many accounts per mobile proxy.
Is Your "Dedicated" Proxy Actually Dedicated?
Much of what is sold as a dedicated mobile proxy is port access: a port on a modem that the provider also sells to other customers. Both give you a carrier IP. Only one gives you the device. Questions that separate them:
- Will any other customer ever use this modem? A dedicated device has one answer: no.
- Who decides when the IP changes? On a real dedicated device, you do. If the provider's gateway rotates you every few minutes and you can't turn it off, you are on shared hardware.
- Do you get device-level controls? A rotation link or API call, a whole-device tunnel like OpenVPN, and on higher tiers a reboot, all only make sense when the modem is yours.
- Is the traffic unmetered? Per-GB billing on a "dedicated" plan usually means the provider is sharing the connection and metering each customer.
- Can you buy short terms? Daily and weekly plans let you test the hardware before committing; being pushed into long contracts is a warning sign.
Ask these before you buy. The answers separate a device you rent from a port you share.
Troubleshooting
Shared pool IPs get blocked quickly. Narrow targeting makes it worse: a list pinned to one city or ZIP has fewer devices to draw from, so the same few IPs come back. Widen it to the region or country. If a checker labels the IP as "business", set the list's ISP to a mobile carrier: that label usually means the phone was on Wi-Fi.
A sticky session on the pool dropped. Sticky holds the IP while that phone stays online, and phones go offline. For predictable sessions, use a timed rotation (for example 60 minutes); for a connection that must not change at all, use a dedicated device.
A dedicated IP still gets flagged. Check that you aren't carrying cookies or tokens across IP changes, and that the browser's timezone and language match the device's country. Platforms correlate session state with the network; the IP is only one signal.
The dedicated connection briefly drops. Carrier networks reset connections during maintenance, and every rotation takes the modem offline for a minute or two. Configure your client to reconnect automatically with a short backoff.
Dedicated costs add up across several devices. Audit which workloads really need a fixed identity. Anything that is fine with a different IP per request belongs on a shared plan.
FAQ
What is a dedicated proxy?
A dedicated proxy is a proxy assigned to one customer only, so no one else's traffic affects its speed, history or reputation. For datacenter and ISP proxies that means one IP address that is yours. For mobile proxies it means a whole 4G/5G modem, while its public IP is still shared with the carrier's ordinary subscribers through CGNAT.
What's the difference between dedicated and shared mobile proxies?
A shared mobile proxy is a data allowance on a pool of carrier devices used by many customers, billed per GB, with IPs that rotate per request, on a timer, or stay sticky while a phone is online. A dedicated mobile proxy is one physical modem assigned to you, billed per day, week or month with unlimited traffic, and its IP only changes when you rotate it.
Are shared proxies safe to use?
They are fine for work where any IP will do, such as public data collection and price checks. The risk is reputation: other customers use the same addresses, so an IP can arrive already rate-limited. Mobile pools soften this because carrier IPs are shared with real subscribers anyway, but for logged-in, long-lived sessions a dedicated device is more predictable.
Is a dedicated proxy worth it?
It is worth it when you need the same IP for days, a whitelisted address, unmetered traffic, or full-device features like OpenVPN. At September 2026 prices, a month of VoidMob's cheapest dedicated device costs about the same as 14 GB of shared data, so heavy users of a single identity usually save money too.
Can I use both on the same project?
Yes, and many teams do: a shared plan for high-volume requests and a dedicated device for each identity that must stay consistent. Keep each session on one of them, since switching a logged-in session between a pool IP and a dedicated IP looks like the account moved.
What's the cheapest way to test each option?
There is no free trial. The cheapest paid tests are a 1 GB shared plan and a 1-day dedicated device, which is enough to check speed, location and how a target site treats the IP.
Wrapping Up
Dedicated vs shared isn't about one being better. A shared pool gives you breadth: many carrier IPs, many locations, pay for what you use. A dedicated device gives you depth: one modem, one IP that stays until you move it, unlimited traffic and full control. Work out whether your job needs many IPs or one stable identity, check where your monthly data lands against the break-even, and pick the model that matches. Rotating mobile proxies cover the first case; dedicated devices cover the second.
One Modem, Yours Alone
Dedicated 4G/5G mobile proxies with unlimited traffic, on-demand rotation and OpenVPN. Daily, weekly and monthly terms, no KYC.