In the proxy world, what people usually mean by "speed" is actually latency — because what you feel in everyday use is not bandwidth but the response time of every click. This article breaks latency down into its parts.
Definition
Latency is the total time it takes for a request to leave you, reach the target and for the response to come back (RTT — round trip time). It is measured in milliseconds and, on a proxied connection, consists of three parts:
Total latency = [you → proxy] + [proxy processing time] + [proxy → target]
Part 1: You → Proxy (Geography)
The speed of light does not negotiate: over fiber, Istanbul to Frankfurt is ~25-35 ms and Istanbul to New York ~65-90 ms as a physical lower bound. That is why proxy location is the biggest single determinant of latency. If you are working from Turkey, TR and DE exits give you the lowest baseline.
Part 2: Proxy Processing Time (Type and Load)
It normally takes the server 1-5 ms to receive and forward the request; under load that value swells. Typical additions by type:
| Type | Processing + exit overhead | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Datacenter | +1-10 ms | Direct exit on the backbone |
| ISP | +5-15 ms | Datacenter infrastructure, ISP route |
| Residential | +30-150 ms | Routing through a real home connection |
| Mobile | +40-120 ms | The inherent latency of the cellular network |
This table is not a quality ranking: the latency added by residential/mobile is the price of the trust score it provides, and in most work it is unimportant.
Part 3: Proxy → Target
The part that is often forgotten: the proxy's distance to the target. Using a Frankfurt proxy while scraping a US site adds ~90 ms to the [proxy → target] leg. The golden rule: choose the proxy close to the target, not to yourself — especially in request-heavy work, the difference piles up exponentially.
When Is Latency Critical?
- Critical: catching prices/stock in real time, races on sequential transactions, real-time bots.
- Important: scrapes of tens of thousands of requests a day (100 ms per request = hours per day).
- Unimportant: low-volume check routines, overnight batch jobs, manual browsing.
A Recipe for Reducing It
- Choose a location close to the target (the biggest gain).
- Assign time-sensitive work to datacenter/ISP, and protected work to residential.
- Reuse connections (keep-alive); don't pay for the TCP handshake on every request.
- Measure: ping test and with our speed test guide base your decisions on data.