What Is the Difference Between Paid and Free Proxy Servers?

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What is the difference between paid and free proxy servers? You can get an answer only by comparing two options.

Paid proxies give you the following advantages:

  • you can choose them by parameters (region, access rate, response time, etc.);
  • they are stable;
  • while paying for services, you may require a quality service in accordance with your payment;
  • you do not need to worry that your servers may “die” tomorrow by the reasons above.

Paid proxy disadvantages are as follows:

  • you have to pay for proxy services and downloaded traffic;
  • your anonymity is maintained when you use the Internet (depending on the proxy anonymity type), but in case of inspection by relevant services, the whole connection chain can be tracked since all user actions are logged by paid proxies;
  • in the case of a long chain of paid proxies (4-5 servers), your payment will significantly increase;
  • it’s hard to switch between proxies, except for cases when you have paid for access to several proxy servers.

Failures of paid proxies are possible, which is quite unpleasant after your money has been paid.

Let’s consider advantages of free proxies:

  • no fee, so you don’t have to pay at all;
  • you can easily switch between proxies;
  • sometimes you can find free proxies with same properties and specifications as paid proxies have;
  • you can actually hide your actions on the Internet;
  • when connecting proxies into chains, you don’t have to pay as well, however, most likely, the access rate will decrease significantly.

And let’s consider disadvantages:

  • while the service is free, in case of any failure, you are the only person to address your claims to;
  • there is a small number of long-livers among free proxies since they turn into paid ones or disappear in course of time;
  • not all of them are capable to change IPs since the most of them function to accelerate the speed (caching);
  • in some cases, they can pose a threat, i. e. break your PC or infect it with viruses;
  • it’s not so easy to find free proxy lists with long-living servers since these lists become outdated soon.

You can see that free proxy disadvantages prevail over their advantages. So it’s better to use some paid proxy service (such as 5socks.net).