Ordering proxy channels by hand through a dashboard works fine for a handful of channels. Once the count reaches the hundreds and renewal has to track budget spend, the manual approach breaks down — that is where the API takes over. Here is the typical order-and-renew cycle, the difference between a dedicated address and a gigabyte package, and what to do when a country is out of stock.
The typical cycle: from catalogue to renewal
Working with the proxy API follows the same pattern regardless of channel type. First, the catalogue is queried: available types, countries, and current prices — showing what is actually in stock before placing an order. Next comes ordering a specific channel with a type and country, and the API returns connection credentials in response — address, port, login, and password, ready to drop straight into a workflow. While the channel is active, its state is tracked with a separate call: remaining traffic for metered plans, or the term left for a dedicated address. The cycle ends with a renewal if the resource is still needed, or a release if the task is done and paying for idle time makes no sense.
Dedicated address versus a gigabyte package
A dedicated datacenter or ISP address is billed monthly: you pay a fixed price for a term, the address stays yours for the whole paid period, and renewal is just a new payment for a new term. Residential and mobile channels work differently: billing runs per gigabyte, and the address itself is issued per session — a new request or a session timeout can hand you a different IP from the pool. This matters at integration time: code that holds one address in a variable for the whole script breaks on session-based channels and needs to re-request the address for every new session. A detailed look at when one type pays off over the other is in mobile versus residential proxies.
Polling traffic usage without adding unnecessary load
Usage on metered channels does not update instantly after every request — the data syncs with a delay, and hitting the usage endpoint every second does not return fresher numbers, it just burns through the request limit. A sane practice is checking the remaining balance every few minutes, or tying the check to the completion of a large task batch rather than to every single request through the proxy. The same interval discipline applies elsewhere in the catalogue, for instance when configuring IP rotation via API: frequent polling does not speed up the result, it only spends the limit.
When the country you need is out of stock
The catalogue returns an explicit out-of-stock status for a given country and channel type, not a timeout or a generic error — which lets you handle the situation in code instead of guessing what went wrong. There are three working options: wait and retry later if the pool restocks regularly; switch to a neighbouring country in the same region if the geo is not critical; or ask support through a ticket about the expected restock window for that direction. Coding only the happy path, with no handling for empty stock, is a common reason a script breaks in production instead of falling back gracefully.
Storing and rotating issued credentials
Connection credentials — address, port, login, password — deserve the same treatment as any secret: environment variables or a secrets manager, not hardcoded in the script. The provider does not rotate a channel's login and password in the background, so rotation is the client's responsibility: if credentials are suspected of leaking, reorder the channel rather than trying to change the password on an already-issued resource. The full list of active channels, their status, and credentials is easiest to check in the dashboard, which also shows which resources are about to expire and need renewing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are credentials available right after ordering, with no wait?
Yes, the API returns connection credentials synchronously in the order response — there is no separate polling-based activation step for proxies, unlike email activations, where you have to wait for an incoming letter.
What happens to a channel if it is not renewed in time?
A dedicated address is released once the paid term expires and can be handed to another client, so renewal is worth planning ahead of time. Metered channels simply stop responding once traffic or the billing period runs out, with no penalties or account blocks.
Does the API need to be told a channel is being released, or is it enough to stop using it?
It is better to call the release explicitly through the API: that frees the resource immediately instead of waiting out the term, and stops billing if the plan includes auto-renewal.
The full set of ordering, renewal, and monitoring methods is covered in the technical API documentation. Current types and countries are listed in the proxy section.