A datacenter proxy routes traffic through an IP address hosted in a commercial hosting provider — AWS, Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean — rather than a residential ISP. Datacenter IPs are fast, cheap, and highly detectable.
Use them for public-data scraping, CI/CD egress, geo-testing, and anything where the target site does not actively fingerprint IP reputation. Expect per-GB pricing in the $0.10-$0.50 range versus $2-$8 for residential.