As internet privacy and security become increasingly important, more people are turning to solutions like proxies and VPNs. But what exactly is the difference between the two? While proxies and VPNs share some functionality, they vary widely when it comes to security, privacy, speed, and more.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore everything you need to know about proxies vs. VPNs, including:
- Defining proxies and VPNs
- How each technology works
- The types of proxies and VPNs available
- Key similarities and differences
- When to use a proxy vs a VPN
- Which solution is better for most users
Let’s dive in!
What Is a Proxy Server?
A proxy server acts as an intermediary between your device and the wider internet. When you make a request to a website, the proxy receives the request instead of the site directly. It then makes the request on your behalf, receives the response from the site, and forwards it back to you.
Proxy servers provide several key functions, including:
- Anonymity: Proxies hide your IP address from the sites you visit, allowing you to browse the web privately and access blocked content.
- Caching: Many proxies store (or “cache”) frequently accessed content like web pages and images to speed up load times.
- Filtering: Organizations often use proxies to control web use by blacklisting certain sites and filtering content.
Some of the most popular proxy server providers include BrightData, Proxy-Seller, and Oxylabs.
What Is a VPN?
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) also acts as a gateway between your device and the internet. But unlike a proxy, it creates an encrypted tunnel for your traffic rather than simply redirecting your web requests.
VPNs provide several core benefits:
- Privacy: By encrypting your traffic, VPNs prevent snooping by your internet service provider (ISP) and others on the network.
- Anonymity: VPNs hide your real IP address, preventing tracking of your online activities.
- Security: The encryption provided by VPNs protects your data from cyberattacks on public WiFi and other networks.
- Access: VPNs allow you to bypass geographic content restrictions to access region-locked sites and services.
Top VPN services include ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and others.
Types of Proxy Servers
There are many different types of proxy servers available, with varying levels of anonymity, security, and performance.
Forward Proxy
A forward proxy sits between internal network clients and external internet sites, accepting requests from clients and forwarding them outside the network perimeter. Forward proxies commonly filter web content and provide shared network connections.
Reverse Proxy
Reverse proxies are positioned on the backend of web servers, receiving requests from internet clients and forwarding them to the appropriate servers internally. Reverse proxies enhance security, load balancing, and caching efficiency.
Transparent Proxy
Transparent proxies reveal your IP address to accessed web servers, but still serve as an intermediary controlling web traffic. Organizations often leverage transparent proxies for content filtering without impacting user experience.
Anonymous Proxy
Anonymous proxies hide the identities of clients from accessed web servers to provide basic privacy while browsing. However, your internet service provider and others on your network can still see your traffic.
Distorting Proxy
Distorting proxies function similarly to anonymous proxies, but provide false IP address information to destination web servers, making your traffic appear to originate from another location.
High Anonymity Proxy
High anonymity proxies frequently change assigned IP addresses for each web request, making it extremely difficult to connect multiple requests from the same user. They provide high levels of privacy for activities like web scraping.
Residential Proxy
Residential proxies utilize IP addresses assigned to physical home or business internet connections rather than data centers. This helps avoid blocking compared to datacenter IPs. Leading providers include Luminati and GeoSurf.
Types of VPN Protocols
There are various VPN protocols available, with the major types including:
OpenVPN
OpenVPN uses highly secure 256-bit SSL/TLS encryption. It offers excellent performance across devices and works with most VPN providers.
WireGuard
An emerging VPN protocol focused on speed and security, WireGuard utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography like Noise protocol framework and Curve25519.
IKEv2/IPSec
Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2) is a popular VPN tunneling protocol supported natively by Blackberry devices, iOS, and some Linux distributions.
L2TP/IPSec
Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol combined with Internet Protocol Security (L2TP/IPSec) creates VPN tunnels through a combination of the two protocols. It has slower speeds but wider compatibility.
How Proxy Servers Function
When you connect through a proxy server, your web requests first pass through the proxy rather than going directly to destination sites. The proxy forwards your requests on your behalf, receives responses, and sends them back to you.
Here is a step-by-step overview:
- You initiate a web request in your browser for a particular site.
- Instead of the request going directly to the site, it’s intercepted by the proxy server.
- The proxy examines the request. It may block or filter certain requests based on organization policies.
- If approved, the proxy forwards the request to the destination site on your behalf.
- The site generates a response as if the proxy made the original request itself.
- The proxy receives the response and forwards it back to your browser.
- You see the content served from the website, delivered via the proxy server.
This allows the proxy to act as a gateway controlling web traffic while also hiding your identity from accessed sites.
How VPNs Function
When connected to a VPN, your web traffic gets routed through an encrypted VPN tunnel before exiting onto the public internet. This protects your traffic from snooping while also hiding your identity.
The VPN process includes these core steps:
- You initiate a request to a public website while connected to a VPN server.
- The request gets encrypted by VPN client software running on your device.
- The encrypted data travels through a VPN tunnel to the VPN server.
- The VPN server decrypts the data and forwards the request to the destination site.
- The site response travels back through the tunnel to the VPN server.
- The VPN server encrypts the response and sends it through the tunnel back to your VPN client software.
- Your device decrypts and processes the response, displaying the site content.
So rather than accessing sites directly, your web traffic takes an encrypted detour through VPN servers, enhancing privacy and security.
Key Similarities Between Proxies and VPNs
While proxies and VPNs utilize very different technologies under the hood, they do share some common high-level attributes, including:
- Both proxies and VPNs hide your IP address from accessed internet sites and services.
- They can bypass geographic restrictions to access content blocked in certain countries.
- Proxies and VPNs route your web traffic through an intermediary server rather than directly.
- They are compatible with most devices, browsers, games, and streaming platforms.
- There is often some performance overhead, resulting in marginally slower speeds.
Key Differences Between Proxies and VPNs
While proxies and VPNs fill similar roles, they have very notable differences across a range of factors:
Security
Most free or public proxy servers offer little if any encryption. This leaves your data exposed to attacks on the local network. Paid proxies may support HTTPS encryption to sites, but still have security gaps.VPNs encrypt 100% of traffic end-to-end by default with modern standards like AES-256 or ChaCha20-Poly1305 to secure against hacking of traffic internally or externally.
Privacy
While proxies do hide your IP address superficially, many still leak identifiable data like DNS requests that can give away your identity or enable tracking. VPN services block DNS leaks, mask your origin point, and prevent most tracking techniques or data exposures.
Speed
Proxy servers often use caching to accelerate web performance, but free proxies in particular still tend to be slower overall. Leading commercial VPN providers leverage hundreds or thousands of servers worldwide with high bandwidth capacities, providing speeds nearly as fast as a direct internet connection once connected.
Compatibility
Proxies work seamlessly with all web browsers, but often don’t support traffic from other apps. VPNs require client software installation but then encrypt traffic system-wide from all applications simultaneously.
Reliability
Free and public proxy servers frequently have reliability issues with downtime and failed requests. Prominent VPN services offer 99.9% or better uptime with global server infrastructure and smart failover capabilities.
Features
Beyond basic IP/location masking and geo-unblocking, VPN services include many additional features like malware blocking, ad removal, split tunneling, double VPN, TOR over VPN, and more. Most proxies simply handle routing web requests and have minimal if any extras.
When to Use a Proxy
Here are a few of the most common use cases where proxy servers excel:
- Accessing geo-restricted streaming content cheaper than a full VPN
- Anonymization for basic web browsing
- Supporting legacy systems and IoT devices
- Light scraping/crawling needs
- Filtering web use on internal networks
When to Use a VPN
The highest value applications for VPN services include:
- Public WiFi security (coffee shops, hotels, airports)
- Preventing ISP tracking and selling of your usage data
- Improving privacy across all apps and web traffic system-wide
- Streaming or downloading torrents securely
- Evading government censorship to access restricted sites and services
- Enhancing security for remote work access to internal tools and apps
The Verdict: VPN vs Proxy
For most mainstream use cases including public WiFi security, streaming access worldwide, and preventing ISP monitoring, a commercial VPN service provides vastly enhanced privacy, security, speed, reliability, and features compared to proxy servers.
Proxies do work well for some niche purposes like geo-unblocking streaming video cheaply or adding a layer of light obscurity. But free public proxies in particular should typically be avoided altogether due to major trust, privacy, and security drawbacks.
So while proxies serve a purpose, leading VPN services like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access outshine proxies across critical criteria. VPNs do have a cost premium, but provide tremendous value protecting online privacy, security, and access.
