Start with datacenter, move up only when blocked
Datacenter proxies are the fastest and cheapest, and against a site with no bot detection they are all you need. Paying residential rates to scrape a target that never checks is money spent on nothing. Try the cheap option first and escalate only when you see blocks.
Rotating for crawling, sticky for anything with a session
A crawl where each request is independent wants a different IP every time, that is rotating mode, and it is what makes rate limits apply per IP rather than per person. Anything that holds state across requests, like a login or a multi step form, needs the same IP for the duration. Changing address mid session is itself a signal.
Geo targeting changes what you see, not just whether you are blocked
Search results, prices and availability differ by country and often by city. If you are scraping any of those, the exit location is part of the data, not an implementation detail. Country targeting is available on every pool that supports geo selection.
Concurrency is what actually gets you caught
Most blocks come from request rate, not from the IP itself. Rotating across a large pool raises the ceiling, but a target watching for patterns will notice a hundred requests a second arriving from a hundred different addresses in the same second. Pace the crawl.
What to buy
Start on datacenter per GB. If you are seeing blocks, move to residential rotating. Metered bandwidth does not expire, so testing a small amount of each against your actual target costs very little.
Common questions
How many proxies do I need for scraping?
Fewer than most people assume. What matters is requests per IP per minute, not the size of the pool. Rotating mode gives you a fresh address each request, so a modest amount of bandwidth covers a large crawl.
Will proxies stop me getting blocked entirely?
No. They remove the IP as a reason to block you. Browser fingerprint, request headers, timing and behaviour are separate signals, and a fast enough crawl gets noticed whatever address it comes from.