What Is a Concurrent Session?

Think of sessions as the “lanes” your proxy traffic uses. Every time your script, browser, or app sends a request through a proxy and maintains a connection, that’s a session. If you open ten browser tabs with the same proxy, that’s ten sessions. If your scraper is running 500 threads at once, that’s 500 concurrent sessions.

Proxy providers often cap the number of concurrent sessions to ensure network stability and to prevent a single user from overwhelming the pool. For example, a plan might allow 100 concurrent sessions, meaning you can only have 100 active connections at any given moment. Once you exceed that limit, new requests may be throttled or rejected. At Massive, we provide unlimited concurrent sessions.

For developers, understanding this limit is crucial: high-volume tasks like scraping, SEO monitoring, or sneaker copping may require dozens or even thousands of concurrent sessions. Managing them efficiently helps you avoid wasted bandwidth, IP bans, or failed tasks.

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Example (Python scraping with proxies)

import requests
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor

proxy = "http://user:pass@proxyserver:port"

def fetch(url):
    return requests.get(url, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy})

urls = ["https://example.com/page/" + str(i) for i in range(100)]

# This will create 100 concurrent sessions through the proxy
with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=100) as executor:
    results = list(executor.map(fetch, urls))

Web Scraping at Scale

When running a large scraper, each thread may open its own session through the proxy. More concurrent sessions mean more pages collected in less time.

E-commerce and Sneaker Bots

Sneaker bots often launch hundreds of checkout tasks in parallel. Each task uses a concurrent session, which is why session limits directly impact bot performance.

Data Collection Across APIs

Proxies enable automated queries to APIs. Concurrent sessions let you send multiple requests simultaneously without waiting for one to finish before starting another.

Match Your Plan to Your Needs

If you run a lightweight script, a low session cap is fine. But for high-volume scraping, choose a plan with enough concurrent sessions to avoid bottlenecks.

Close Idle Sessions

Don’t leave unused sessions open. Idle sessions still count toward your cap and can block new connections.

Use Rotation Wisely

Pair session concurrency with IP rotation. This avoids suspicious spikes in traffic from a single IP, reducing the risk of bans.

A concurrent session is simply one active connection through a proxy. Running multiple sessions at the same time speeds up tasks like scraping, but also consumes more of your allocated session pool. Managing them well keeps your proxies efficient, prevents errors, and ensures you stay within provider limits.