In plain English: a proxy changes one thing about you: your IP address. Your browser gives away plenty more, such as its version, your screen size, the fonts you have installed and the way your graphics card draws images. Put together, those details form a browser fingerprint, and websites use it to recognise a device. Run 50 genuine client accounts from one ordinary Chrome install, each on its own proxy, and a platform still sees one device with 50 addresses, so it may wrongly treat unrelated accounts as linked.
A multi-profile browser (the industry calls them "antidetect" browsers) fixes that by giving each profile its own separate, consistent set of these details, its own cookies and its own proxy.
Do I even need one?
Probably not, if you're just starting out. For one or two accounts of your own, your normal browser, or two ordinary browser profiles, is plenty. These tools earn their keep when someone legitimately looks after several accounts for different people, such as a freelancer handling a few clients' shop or social media accounts, and needs each one kept fully apart so one client's logins never mix with another's.
What they're not for: making extra accounts a platform doesn't allow, getting back onto a platform after a ban, or hiding who you are from a service you've agreed to be straight with. Every platform has its own rules on multiple accounts, so read them first.
The well-known options
Prices and free allowances change often, so check each one's website before you decide. In broad terms:
Multilogin
The long-established name in this space, with team management and cloud sync. Aimed at larger agencies and teams, and priced to match.
Dolphin Anty
Popular with social media and affiliate marketers, with a free plan covering a small number of profiles. Lighter than Multilogin and easy to find your way around.
GoLogin
A lower-cost, cloud-based option that covers the main features and suits people working on their own.
Incogniton
Has a free tier, which makes it a sensible place to try the idea out, though it runs out of features sooner for bigger setups.
Kameleo
Known for emulating mobile devices, so worth a look if your work is mostly about apps.
AdsPower
Popular with online sellers, with an API for people who want to automate.
Vision
A paid option aimed at larger businesses.
Features worth having
- One proxy per profile, with HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 support, and website name look-ups (DNS) sent through the proxy as well.
- Steady fingerprints: canvas, WebGL and audio (the ways a browser draws graphics and handles sound, which differ slightly from device to device), plus fonts, kept the same within each profile.
- WebRTC handling that reports the proxy's address rather than yours. Our WebRTC leak guide explains why that matters.
- Separate cookies and storage, so no profile can see another's logins.
- Cloud sync, if more than one person needs the same profiles.
- An API (a way for your own scripts to control the browser), only if you plan to automate.
Setting one up with our proxies
All of our proxies work with the browsers above, over HTTP(S) or SOCKS5, with a username and password. The routine:
- Count the accounts you genuinely manage. You'll want one profile and one proxy for each.
- Create a profile for each account in the browser.
- Paste one proxy's details into each profile's proxy settings. For accounts, choose a sticky session or a fixed address, so the address doesn't change while you're logged in.
- Open each profile and check its address before you log in to anything.
Common mistakes
- Sharing one proxy between profiles. It undoes the separation you set up. One profile, one proxy.
- Copying a profile to make the others. If the browser allows it, give every new profile its own freshly generated fingerprint.
- Rotating addresses on logged-in accounts. An address that keeps changing under a signed-in account leads to log-outs and security checks.
- Treating it as permission. A separate profile doesn't make a second account acceptable where a platform's rules say one per person.
