Proxy vs VPN, what’s the difference?

It could be said that the differences between a proxy and a VPN are very scarce, and that both are designed to give you more privacy in the network by masking part or all of your traffic. However, there are differences between them, and here are the details.

Although for certain circumstances a proxy server or a VPN may be worth the same for your purpose, they are not exactly the same. Both are born as a necessity in the network to provide greater privacy in the navigation of each user, and more in a digital ecosystem where we must ensure that our information does not reach third parties or companies.

But in modern times, users often use proxy servers or VPN to access services that can not enter from their country. A clear example is in China where some websites are inaccessible from that geographical area, or in examples where we want to see Netflix content that is not available in a country or download stuff where you need to have pirate bay proxy

So what’s the difference between a proxy server and a VPN?

What is a Proxy?

A proxy server is an intermediary between a certain program or application on our computer and the receiving server. That is to say, when you connect to a web page your information is stored as the IP, but using a proxy server you would have the IP address of that proxy, and not yours. In this way what the Proxy does is mask our IP address to the receiving server but only under a specific application and not on the rest of your navigation.

A proxy server can be used to access a web page or a service that is not available in particular, but does not encrypt or protect the rest of your browsing, so security would not be fully ensured.

Characteristics of a proxy server:

1. Mask the original IP
2. Protects access to a specific program only
3. It’s easier to set up
4. Generally cheaper than VPN

What is a VPN?

On the other hand, when we talk about a VPN (Virtual Private Network) we are talking about a higher security because it encrypts and protects all our traffic to the other server, and not just the application as we mentioned earlier.

In this way, if you want to encrypt and provide greater security to your network connection is better to use the VPN, but if you are looking for a specific access to a website perhaps you are only interested in emulating the original IP by that of the Proxy.

Characteristics of a VPN:

1. Encrypt and protect all of your traffic, not just that of a program
2. Also masks the original IP
3. It is also easy to configure
4. Generally more expensive than a proxy server