Mobile proxy guides & research

Practical documentation from operating a real-device 4G/5G fleet — how detection actually works, what breaks, and how to fix it. 13 articles and counting.

Guides

• What Is a Mobile Proxy? How They Work, What They Fix, and What They Don'tA complete, honest guide to mobile proxies: how traffic actually reaches a phone on a carrier network, why CGNAT makes mobile IPs harder to block, the real speed ceiling, and how to tell a good provider from a bad one.

Comparisons

• Dedicated vs Rotating Proxies — They Solve Opposite ProblemsDedicated sticky proxies and rotating pools are not competing products; they solve opposite problems. Here is which one fits account management, which fits scraping, and why picking wrong is the most expensive proxy mistake.
• Mobile vs Residential Proxies — Where the IPs Come From and Which One You NeedMobile and residential proxies differ in where the IP originates, how much it is trusted, what it costs, and how it was sourced. An honest comparison, including the residential sourcing-ethics question most providers avoid.

Data & research

• Most Mobile Proxies Can't Prove a Rotation Worked — Here's How to Test YoursA rotation that returns success in ~2 seconds did not change your IP. The elapsed-time tell, why providers report success on command-acceptance, and how to verify your own.

Troubleshooting

• Cloudflare Error 1015 — "You Are Being Rate Limited" Explained and FixedWhat Cloudflare Error 1015 actually means, how it differs from 1020 and the 100x ban codes, and the fixes that work — for ordinary visitors, API clients and teams running at scale.
• Cloudflare Error 1020 — "Access Denied" Explained and FixedError 1020 means you matched a Cloudflare firewall rule, not a rate limit — so it does not expire. The real triggers, the fixes for visitors, and the header and TLS fingerprint issues that catch developers.
• HTTP 407 Proxy Authentication Required — What It Means and How to Fix ItWhat a 407 proxy error actually means, how it differs from 401, and why it appears even when your credentials look correct — encoding, auth schemes, protocol mismatches and proxy chains.
• HTTP 429 Too Many Requests — What It Means and How to Fix It ProperlyWhat a 429 actually is, how it differs from Cloudflare's Error 1015, how to read Retry-After in both formats, and how to write backoff that matches the rate limit algorithm you hit.
• Mobile Proxy Not Working — A Diagnostic Checklist That Actually Isolates the Cause"Proxy not working" is four different problems wearing the same sentence. How to tell a dead proxy from a working proxy that is being blocked, in about two minutes.
• Mobile Proxy Slow? How to Tell a Real Problem From the PhysicsAbout 2-3 MB/s is the normal ceiling on a mobile proxy, and it is the cellular uplink — not a defect. How to tell that apart from slow connects, a bad tower, a wedged device, and a failing upload.
• Proxy Connection Refused — Causes and How to Fix Each OneWhat ECONNREFUSED really means, how it differs from a timeout or a reset, and the specific proxy misconfigurations that cause it — wrong port, wrong scheme, allowlists, firewalls and IPv6.
• Rotation Says Success But the IP Never Changes — How to Diagnose ItA rotation that returns success in ~2 seconds did not change your IP; a real one takes ~6. The elapsed-time tell, the four faults that look identical, and the curl recipe to separate them.
• YouTube "Sign in to Confirm You're Not a Bot" — What Causes It and How to Fix ItWhy YouTube shows "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot", what actually triggers it, and the fixes that work — for normal viewers, yt-dlp users, and teams running at scale.