Sticky vs Rotating Sessions - Pick the Right Strategy

Session strategy is one of the most commonly misunderstood proxy settings. Here is exactly when to use each one.

Rotating sessions

The proxy IP changes on every request, or after a short, configurable interval. This distributes your traffic across a large pool of IPs, which is exactly what you want for high-volume scraping of public, unauthenticated pages - product listings, search results, price data - where each request is independent and does not need to look like it came from the same visitor as the last one.

Sticky sessions

The proxy IP stays the same for an extended period - typically anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the provider. This is required whenever a site expects continuity: logging into an account, adding items to a cart across multiple pages, or any multi-step workflow where the site would flag a sudden IP change mid-session as suspicious.

How to choose

Ask one question: does this task involve a login, a cart, or any multi-step flow where the site tracks you as one continuous visitor? If yes, use a sticky session long enough to cover the full workflow. If you are just pulling public data point by point with no login or session state, rotating IPs on every request gives you better distribution and avoids burning through a sticky session's rate limits unnecessarily.