How proxies work

A proxy is an intermediate server that forwards your HTTP(S) requests to a target site. The target sees the proxy's IP, not yours. helodata operates pools of proxies sourced from real residential, mobile, and ISP networks worldwide.

Request lifecycle

┌─────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐         ┌──────────────┐
│  Your   │  HTTP   │  helodata proxy  │  HTTP   │   Target     │
│  app    ├────────►│  gateway         ├────────►│   website    │
│         │◄────────┤                  │◄────────┤              │
└─────────┘         └──────────────────┘         └──────────────┘

1. Your application sends a request to gate.helodata.io:7777 with credentials.
2. For gateway products (Residential, Mobile), the gateway parses your username string, authenticates the sub-user, then selects a backend IP matching the requested type, region, state, city, asn, and session. For ISP proxies, your client connects directly to a specific IP from your purchased list — no gateway routing.
3. The target site responds. The body streams back through the gateway to you.

Pool types at a glance

Pool	type code	IP source	Best for
Residential	gateway, type-res	Real residential IPs	Anti-bot sites, geo-restricted content
Mobile	gateway, type-mob	3G/4G/5G carriers	Mobile-only content, social platforms
ISP	per-IP list (ip:port:user:pass)	Static residential	Account farming, long-lived sessions

If unsure, jump to Choose a product.

Authentication models

helodata supports two authentication models on every product:

• User + password — pass credentials in the Proxy-Authorization header or http://user:pass@host:port URL form. Most flexible — works from any IP. The username carries all targeting parameters (see Username format).
• IP whitelist — register your egress IPs in the dashboard and authenticate by source IP. Useful for environments that can't store credentials. Targeting is selected from the dashboard rather than the username.

See Authentication for full details.

Sessions and rotation

The two credential models handle session affinity very differently.

Gateway products (Residential, Mobile) — sessions are opt-in via the session + sesstime segments of the username:

helo_s1a2b3c4d5e-type-res-region-us-session-abc123-sesstime-30

• session-abc123 — any string you choose; identifies the session.
• sesstime-30 — keep this IP for up to 30 minutes (residential cap = 30, mobile cap = 60).

Drop both segments to get a new IP on every connection (rotating mode).

ISP proxies — each IP in your purchased list is permanently stable. Rotation is a client-side concern: your code picks the next entry from the list. See Client-side rotation.