A sticky session pins a single IP address to your connection for a set period instead of rotating on every request. For anything that spans multiple steps — login, cart, payment, confirmation — that consistency is the difference between a smooth run and a wall of CAPTCHAs.
Why sites care about IP consistency
Web applications tie session state to the visitor. When the IP suddenly changes mid-flow, the site sees a different 'person' completing a logged-in action, which looks suspicious and triggers re-authentication or blocks.
- Keeps cookies and session tokens aligned with one IP
- Avoids mid-flow logouts and re-verification
- Reduces CAPTCHA and fraud-check friction
When to use sticky vs rotating
Use sticky sessions for multi-step, stateful flows. Use per-request rotation for stateless, high-volume tasks like scraping listings where each request is independent.
- Sticky: checkout, login, account actions
- Rotating: scraping, monitoring, discovery
- Tune session duration to match the flow length