Here is a situation that plays out constantly. A team is getting blocked. They switch provider, pay a similar amount, point their scraper at the new endpoint — and the block rate does not move.
The usual conclusion is that the target got harder. Often the real explanation is that they did not actually change networks.
How the market is layered
There are far more proxy brands than there are proxy networks. Acquiring residential IPs at scale means building an SDK, getting it embedded in consumer apps, handling consent and payouts, and maintaining the relationships that keep it there. It is slow, expensive, and legally involved.
Reselling it is a website and an API integration.
So the market stratifies. A relatively small number of operators run the acquisition. Above them sit resellers, some transparent about it, many not. A polished dashboard and a distinct brand tell you nothing about whose network is underneath — those are the cheap parts.
None of this is scandalous. Reselling is ordinary distribution and the upstream network can be very good. It matters in exactly one situation: when the reason you are switching is to escape blocks.
Checking before you commit
Trials exist. Use them for this rather than for a speed test.
Pull two or three hundred IPs from each provider, then compare them at the network level rather than address by address. Individual IPs will differ — that is what rotation does. Subnets are what you care about, because blocks are usually applied to ranges.
# collect, then reduce each address to its /24 and its ASN
cut -d: -f1 provider_a.txt | awk -F. '{print $1"."$2"."$3".0/24"}' | sort -u > a.txt
cut -d: -f1 provider_b.txt | awk -F. '{print $1"."$2"."$3".0/24"}' | sort -u > b.txt
comm -12 a.txt b.txt | wc -l # shared subnetsIndependent pools of that size typically share almost nothing. If a meaningful share of subnets appears in both lists, you are looking at one network with two invoices.
Do the same by ASN. Two pools drawing from a completely different mix of ISPs are genuinely different. Two pools concentrated in the same handful of ASNs are not, whatever the marketing says.
The questions worth asking a provider
You will not always get a straight answer, but how they respond is informative on its own.
- Do you operate your own acquisition network, or resell? Both are legitimate. Evasion is the signal.
- How are the IPs sourced and consented? A provider who cannot describe this either does not know or would rather not say.
- Can I see a sample of live IPs before buying? A refusal is telling. It is the only way to run the check above.
- How many customers share a given subnet at once? Pool size is marketed. Concurrency is what actually determines whether an address arrives pre-burned.
What to do when it turns out you did not switch
Two options, and picking by price gets it wrong.
Find a genuinely independent network — verified by the subnet comparison, not by branding. Or accept that the pool is fine and your problem was never the IPs. If you are being blocked on TLS fingerprint or request timing, every pool on the market will fail identically and you can burn a lot of money proving it one provider at a time.
Run the diagnosis before the migration. The signals sites actually check will tell you within an afternoon whether the address was ever the problem, and our residential pool is only worth paying for if it was.
Frequently asked questions
Do proxy providers share IP pools?
Frequently. A large share of the market resells access to a smaller number of underlying networks. Two providers with different branding, dashboards and pricing can hand you addresses from the same subnets.
How can I tell if two providers use the same pool?
Pull a few hundred IPs from each, map them to ASN and /24 subnet, and compare. Genuinely independent pools overlap very little. Resellers of the same upstream overlap heavily, and you will see it immediately.
Does shared infrastructure make a provider bad?
No. Reselling is normal and the upstream network may be excellent. It only matters when you switch specifically to escape blocks - then you need a genuinely different pool, and a rebrand of the one you just left will not give you that.