# What is a sticky session proxy? > A sticky session proxy keeps one exit IP for as long as a session id in your login lives, so an account signs in from one place, not a new one per click. Source: https://mosaicbrowser.com/glossary/sticky-session-proxy ## Sticky session proxy: one exit IP held by a session id A sticky session proxy is a rotating proxy gateway told to hold one exit IP, usually by adding a session id to the username, for as long as that session lives. The same id keeps the same address; a new id gets a new one, which is how one gateway gives every account its own steady exit. ![Sticky session proxy, drawn as a mosaic of tiles](https://mosaicbrowser.com/covers/sticky-session-proxy.webp) A residential gateway rotates by default: every connection leaves through whichever address in the pool is free. A sticky session is the same gateway with an instruction attached. You put an id of your choosing into the login, and the gateway routes every connection carrying that id through one address until the session ends. ## How a sticky session is spelled Each seller has its own word for it, and a line copied from one dashboard does nothing at another. As read on 2 November 2026: | Seller | Where the id goes | Example | | --- | --- | --- | | Oxylabs | username, `sessid-` | `customer-USERNAME-cc-DE-sessid-abcd1234` | | IPRoyal | password, `_session-` with `_lifetime-` | `_session-` plus an 8-character id, `_lifetime-10m` | | Bright Data | username, `-session-` | any string; a different string gets a different peer | Sources: [Oxylabs session control](https://developers.oxylabs.io/products/proxies/residential-proxies/session-control), [IPRoyal rotation](https://docs.iproyal.com/proxies/residential/proxy/rotation), [Bright Data residential FAQ](https://docs.brightdata.com/products/residential/faqs). Some sellers add a lifetime to the same field, so `-session--lifetime-60` asks for sixty minutes. Others sell sticky ports, where the port number rather than the username decides. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer. [How it works: Provider minting](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers) ## Why accounts need a sticky session proxy A site keeps a record of where an account signs in from. A rotating exit writes a new city into that record on every page load. A sticky exit writes one, the way a person on home broadband would. So the rule for anything you sign in to is a sticky session per account, never a shared one: two profiles on the same session id share an address, which is a link between them. [One proxy per browser profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/one-proxy-per-browser-profile) goes through the cases where sharing goes wrong. ## How sticky sessions fail A session ends in one of three ways: the seller's timer runs out, it sits idle too long, or the home device behind the exit goes offline. The ending is rarely announced. We learned that during our own test runs. A session asked for sixty minutes of life aged out partway through a long run. The browser started failing with `net::ERR_TUNNEL_CONNECTION_FAILED`, which looked like four third-party sites being down. A proxy check a minute later called the proxy perfectly healthy, from Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, where an hour earlier it had been in Mililani Town, Hawaii. The gateway had moved us. So a run longer than the session is not one experiment, and a cluster of unreachable sites is a proxy symptom first. A session can also die young. On one residential pool we measured four 504 errors in a row on a single session id while fresh session ids on the same gateway answered 200. Retrying the dead id was useless; a new id worked at once. ![A proxy provider in Mosaic: one gateway line that mints a separate session for every profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/shots/provider-mint.png) *One gateway line, a session per profile* ## How Mosaic handles it You paste one gateway line from your seller into Proxies as a [provider](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers), and Mosaic reads how that seller spells a session from the line itself. Each profile then mints its own session id, so no two profiles share an exit by accident. Where the seller's line has a word for duration, you can pick how long each profile's session holds; where it has none, a duration is refused by name instead of being sent in a form the gateway would ignore. A minted session that reaches nothing is replaced with a different session, not retried, and the working one is written back to the profile. A session you pinned by hand is never moved. The difference from a [rotating proxy](https://mosaicbrowser.com/glossary/rotating-proxy), and when each is the right choice, is laid out in [rotating vs sticky proxies](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/rotating-vs-sticky-proxies). ## Sources 1. [Oxylabs Developers: Residential proxies session control](https://developers.oxylabs.io/products/proxies/residential-proxies/session-control), read November 2, 2026 2. [IPRoyal Docs: Residential proxy rotation](https://docs.iproyal.com/proxies/residential/proxy/rotation), read November 2, 2026 3. [Bright Data Docs: Residential products FAQ](https://docs.brightdata.com/products/residential/faqs), read November 2, 2026 ## Questions ### How long does a sticky session last? It depends on the seller and what you ask for. Oxylabs documents 10 minutes by default, or 60 seconds without a request, extendable to 1,440 minutes; IPRoyal accepts a lifetime from 1 second to 7 days. ### Can two accounts share a sticky session? They can, and they should not. Two profiles on one session id leave from one address, which links them as surely as sharing a computer. Give each account its own session id. ### What happens when a sticky session expires? The gateway stops routing that id to the old address. Depending on the seller, the next request fails or quietly gets a new exit, so an account can find itself in another city without any error. ### Is a sticky session the same as a static IP? No. A static or ISP proxy is one address you rent for as long as you pay. A sticky session borrows an address from a rotating pool for minutes or hours, and that address can drop when the device behind it goes offline. ## Related [Rotating vs sticky proxies: which one an account needs](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/rotating-vs-sticky-proxies): Rotating vs sticky proxies: rotating changes the exit IP per connection, sticky keeps one for a session you name. Logged-in accounts need sticky. [Rotating proxy: a new exit IP per connection](https://mosaicbrowser.com/glossary/rotating-proxy): A rotating proxy sends each connection, or each few minutes of traffic, out through a different IP from a pool. Fine for scraping, wrong for a login. [One proxy per browser profile: why the sessions must differ](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/one-proxy-per-browser-profile): One proxy per browser profile means one exit per profile. With a residential seller that means one session id each, or two profiles share an address. [Residential proxy: an exit on a home internet connection](https://mosaicbrowser.com/glossary/residential-proxy): A residential proxy sends your traffic out through an address an ISP assigned to a home connection, so sites see a household rather than a data center. [Provider accounts: one gateway line, one exit per profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers): Paste your proxy seller's gateway line once and Mosaic mints a separate session for every profile, so each one browses from its own exit address.    ## See sticky session proxy on a real profile Mosaic shows the values a site reads, per profile, and runs a leak test from inside the profile’s own page. Free holds 3 profiles. Pro is $49 a month for any number. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer.