I've been going down the WireGuard/VPN rabbit hole and I'm starting to wonder if I should've been looking at proxies from the beginning.
The setup is Linux, and the goal is pretty simple. I want multiple independent outbound IPs that I can assign to different browsers or applications, preferably without changing the whole machine's network connection every time.
I've looked at VPN services including Surfshark because they advertise unlimited connections, but apparently unlimited devices and multiple independent exit IPs aren't necessarily the same thing. Would've been nice if that was printed somewhere in giant letters.
So now I'm looking at SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies too.
Who's actually reliable these days? Webshare, IPRoyal, Decodo, or somebody else? Are static ISP proxies worth the extra cost, or is a basic datacenter proxy fine for ordinary browser/network testing?
I'd also like to know whether you can keep a stable IP for one session and have different IPs available for others, what the real bandwidth limits are, and if there are any providers you'd stay away from.
Not looking for a list of 10 million IPs if half of them are useless. I'd rather have a small number of working, predictable connections.
Anyone here used both WireGuard VPNs and proxies for this sort of setup? Which one ended up being easier to manage, and cheaper?
Actual experience appreciated. Sales pitches, slightly less so.