We are quite certain that you are aware about the “magic” qualities of residential proxies. And deservingly so! Such IPs allow bots to overcome virtually all the sophisticated bot detection software and captchas that you can have as hurdles on the way to your scraping missions.
By imitating real physical users, residential proxies have made themself an irreplaceable tool in the arsenal of professional marketing and business research teams relying on data collection from the Web. So, it becomes a vital part of their business to source reliable yet cheap residential proxies to conduct such operations.
Luckily, you have many providers in the market that are ready to meet your requirements and set you up with fast residential proxies for various locations Worldwide.
In this proxy market research you will learn the essence behind the best residential proxies and find out some critical details about top proxy providers that might help you make your final decision on where to buy residential proxies for your use cases.
In the top list of affordable proxy providers you will not find names that support the idea of price dumping that played a bad joke on such providers like 911.re. You can learn more about the fate of this company by following the link.
Meaning of a Residential Proxy
Let’s start with a simple question of what is a residential proxy? A Residential Proxy is a high anonymity proxy server that acts as an intermediary between your device and a target web page while replacing your original IP address with an address of a physical user. This real IP is borrowed from an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in its turn, unlike with a datacenter proxy, where it is retrieved from a pool of IPs of a datacenter, respectively. This also covers the question of what is a residential VPN is. That’s why sometimes such IPs are called ISP proxies. Now, if you are ever wondering how to find a proxy server address, read this article to discover.
The main advantage of a residential proxy over a datacenter one is that you can imitate a real user from a certain location (country or city), thus, increasing the efficiency of your online presence under a different IP.
How Does a Residential Proxy Work?
The network mechanics of a residential proxy should be known to you if you are familiar with proxies in general. So, how do residential proxies work? When you use a residential IP, all the traffic between you and the target website is funneled through an intermediary server, which changes your original IP before the requests reach the target.
(Иллюстрация: подобная картина использования residential proxy)
There are two major types of residential proxies: static and residential rotating proxy. With static residential proxies you essentially operate with one IP assigned to you by the proxy provider, and in the case of rotating datacenter proxies, you have control over a pool of multiple IPs that will be changing with each new request session. You will also be able to engage sticky sessions here, when one IP will remain for a lengthy period of time (normally, several minutes). Such a feature is useful when you need to fill out web forms in manual or automatic mode while being on the same IP. As for the traffic, you can easily have rotating proxies with unlimited bandwidth from to top proxy providers.
Key Functions of a Residential Proxy
People use dedicated residential proxy for a whole variety of use cases where it is useful to have your original IP replaced with the one from a certain geo location. Below, we give you some examples from a vast list of residential proxy application scenarios.
Data Aggregation
When we talk about data collection with the use of residential proxies we usually refer to using web scraping software on large social platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) and search engines (like Google or Bing). So, what kind of data normally gets scraped by proxy users for further analysis? It can be anything from information on products of competitors, sports statistics, contact information of decision makers, etc. Residential proxies are your best choice for tapping into data resources from a specific region or country.
Ad Verification
If you invest in advertising your product online, you don’t want to drain any of your ad budget on scam sites meant to trick you into spending more money without any good product exposure. You can avoid this malpractice by engaging in ad verification powered by residential proxies. It allows you to browse certain sites of advertisers as regular visitors from a known region to verify how your ads are displayed there. Audits of this kind allow you to take immediate actions if you happen to uncover any violations on the part of advertisers. In the same manner, you can use a residential proxy for online surveys or implement this residential proxy for online games.
Price Comparison
This area of possibilities of residential proxies normally appeals to users engaged in sales on marketplaces. In highly competitive product categories you need to stay alert to make sure your offer is picked by the end buyer. With residential IP addresses you can conduct marketplace research to update your business strategy when you feel necessary. All of that can be done virtually in real time to give you an edge over your competition on the platform.
SEO Monitoring
Agencies all across the web use residential proxies and special tools powered by such proxies to improve the SEO standings of their clients’ websites. With the right proxies you can conduct SEO crawling of some geo-restricted content to improve the link base and get better positions on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) of Google and Bing. You can also engage some tools like Scrapebox or one of the best Captcha solvers with residential proxies on board to automate some of this work yourself.
Multiple Accounts Management
If you need to maintain and manage several accounts on social media or streaming platforms, you have a risk of getting red-flagged by the system unless you take necessary precautions. One thing you can do is use special anti-detect browsers coupled with reliable residential proxy IPs to hide you from the integral security systems of social platforms or marketplaces that you use.
7 Best & Cheapest Residential Proxies
We have compiled a list of proxy providers with the most promising deals on the fastest residential proxies in the industry. These companies all have a lengthy reputation of market leaders and enjoy excellent track record with their users worldwide.
1. PrivateProxy
PrivateProxy is a premium residential proxy provider with great emphasis on customer care and tech support. The geography of IPs of PrivateProxy’s pools is also impressive. You will be able to order proxies for web scraping, lead generation or for sneaker bots for all popular locations in the World.
Free trial is available upon request and based on your use case. If you are a reputable business, you will easily claim your desired proxies for testing and enjoy the support from account managers thereafter. Switching IPs is also possible if your proxies fail to operate.
As for the price on one of the best static residential proxies in the market, the rates start at $5 per IP per month with instant activation and unmetered bandwidth.
Summary: Residential proxy provider with outstanding customer support.
Locations: All most demanded locations around the World.
Support: 24/7 qualified live tech support.
Price: from $5/month for one residential IP. Trial available for most use cases.
| PROS | CONS |
| Great customer support.Vast pool of proxies to choose from based on location. One of the best rotating proxies with an easy-to-manage interface. User-friendly dashboard and APIs.Affordable pricing. | Trial is available based on use cases and not to all individual customers. |
2. Smartproxy
Smartproxy is a proxy service provider that is famous for catering to the SEO market with its undeniably great selection of residential IPs. Based on the information from its site, Smartproxy is ready to deliver to you one of the best residential proxies to buy from a whopping selection of 40+ million IP pool, featuring over 195 locations.
All of the residential proxies offered by the provider have been tested and are ready to be deployed from a user-friendly dashboard available to all users.
As far as the payment is concerned, you can opt for “pay as you go” plans that give you an option to pay exactly for as much service as you use.
Residential IPs of Smartproxy would be a great choice for all sorts of web scraping missions including bot-based scraping.
Summary: One of the best places to buy proxies with flexible payment plans.
Locations: 195+ locations worldwide.
Support: 24/7 customer support.
Price: from $12.5/GB for one residential IP. Flexible payment plans with money-back guarantee.
| PROS | CONS |
| Huge collection of IPs with great proxy rotation speed. Over 195 locations globally, including IPs from 8 major cities. Great feedback from users on the level of service. | No trial available, 3-day money back option is offered instead.Some find the provider to be professionally SEO oriented and too tricky for regular users in terms of setup. |
3. Bright Data (Luminati)
Bright Data is one of the residential proxy service providers trusted by research companies, marketing agencies and leading brands around the Globe. Its residential IPs are successfully used for collecting vital strategic information across many nations, and can be used by brands in MAP monitoring systems (as a part of brand reputation management) among other things.
Bright Data is also famous for building convenient proprietary user tools for simplifying proxy geo targeting. You can use such tools right from its virtual servers to improve your geo-based SERP scraping based on your location preferences.
Although, you have a possibility to order your proxies here as an individual user, Bright Data is more suitable for corporate clients. The provider applies some Know-Your-Customer practices to rule out some use cases it may consider inappropriate.
Summary: Handy proxy features and user-friendly tools.
Locations: All major countries and cities worldwide.
Support: 24/7 live tech support via chat or phone with account managers.
Price: from $15/GB for one residential IP. 7-day free trial for business customers.
| PROS | CONS |
| Top residential proxy software for managing your IPs during web scraping campaigns.Great live tech support with over-the-phone or live chat consultations.Lengthy trial period available to business users. | May not be the best choice for beginners, since the company is targeting businesses with long-term contacts.Manual activation of proxies that can be tough for novice users. |
4. Oxylabs
Oxylabs is famous for being one of the leading suppliers of ethically sourced residential proxies. It features a vast pool of the best rotating residential proxies, white-listed from all major locations around the planet. The whole proxy network includes over 100 million of IPs available to its users.
Similar to other large providers like Smartproxy, Oxylabs offers special plans on its residential IPs that allow customers to buy them “on demand” through a series of monthly residential proxies plans.
Also, Oxylabs features a proprietary data gathering tool for web scraping and crawling. This tool becomes available to you once you subscribe to a 100+ IPs plan from the company.
Summary: Premium residential proxy provider for enterprise sector.
Locations: All countries and all major cities globally.
Support: 24/7 live tech support with dedicated account managers.
Price: from $10/GB for one residential IP. 7-day trial for business customers.
| PROS | CONS |
| Great reputation of a one-stop-shop for ethically sourced residential proxies.Remarkable top-notch performance of hand-picked residential IPs.Impressive 100+ million pool of residential proxies. Proprietary web scraper powered by proxies for businesses. | No support for iOS devices unlike most of other residential proxy suppliers. Expensive entry-level plans that would turn down most novice proxy users. |
5. SOAX
SOAX is a well-known proxy provider that features IPs between regular and premium quality.
The main thing that makes it stand out from the crowd of the best residential proxy providers is the functionality it offers to its clients as far as managing locations and rotations on its IPs. Right from the dashboard you can select the rotation increments that you require for your IPs and select the region (country, city or ASN level).
The only drawback that SOAX’s proxies have is speed. They are a bit on the slow side compared to the rest of the residential proxy list. As far as payment, you can choose from a variety of plans starting at $99 for 8GB and 300 ports with a 3-day trial.
Summary: Residential proxy provider for corporate sector.
Locations: 100+ locations with country and city targeting.
Support: 24/7 tech support with chats and tickets.
Price: from $99 for 8GB. 3-day trial for business customers.
| PROS | CONS |
| Good selection of IPs from various cities and countries.User-friendly interface of the dashboard for convenient management of IP rotation and location selection. Affordable corporate payment plans. | Rather slow speed of the residential IPs. Limited number of ports on some of the plans. |
6. GeoSurf
GeoSurf is a premium residential proxy provider with a great focus on the quality of its IPs. It features a great selection of 3+ million handpicked and tested residential proxies from 192 countries across the World. The list of cities is also quite impressive: over 1000 metropolitan areas are supported with static and unlimited bandwidth residential proxies. So, if you have a geo-targeting mission planned, you will have just about all required proxies in your arsenal if you go with GeoSurf.
But such marketing positioning comes at a cost. GeoSurf is one of the most expensive proxy providers in the industry.
Summary: Premium proxy provider of expensive residential IPs.
Locations: 3+ million IPs covering 192 countries worldwide.
Support: 24/7 tech support via Skype or email.
Price: from $15/GB. Demo session for prospect clients.
| PROS | CONS |
| Great quality of premium residential proxies.Wide selection of IPs from 192 countries across the planet. | High cost of residential proxy plans. Only HTTP proxy protocol residential proxies available. |
7. IPRoyal
IPRoyal is a residential IP proxy provider that stimulates you to scale your proxy-powered projects up in order to make the residential proxy plans more affordable. So, you start with a rather expensive plan per GB and can reach figures of $1.00 per GB with “pay-as-you-go” options. Apart from making the IPs more affordable, spending more cash with IPRoyal would mean having access to improved customer care and SOCKS5 peer-to-peer proxies.
The drawback of IPRoyal is its limited proxy pool size. Of course, if we compare the company’s offering to the leaders in this list. However, some clients will find this feature limiting their project scaling opportunities in some geographical areas. Nevertheless, the overall pool of the provider includes over 2 million IPs from over 150 countries worldwide.
Summary: Affordable premium proxy provider for wide-scale operations.
Locations: 2+ million IPs in 150+ countries worldwide.
Support: 24/7 live chat tech support.
Price: from $4/GB. No free trial available.
| PROS | CONS |
| Great customer service to high scale users. Flexible payment plans that lead to low per GB or per IP pricing. | No free proxy trial offered.Limited pool for some destinations. |
8. Webshare
Webshare is yet another provider that targets affordability and price-to-performance ratios. You have access to several million IP addresses in 30 countries. On the purchase page, you can customize some of the parameters of your proxies to find the setup that best fits your requirements.
Another useful feature here is automated swap of the failing proxies. So, if your server starts to malfunction, you don’t need to contact support, and your IP will be changed to a new one automatically. Overall, you can expect a solid performance with prices set slightly below the market average.
Summary: An affordable provider with a solid proxy pool.
Locations: 2+ million IPs in 30 countries worldwide.
Support: 24/7 live chat tech support.
Price: from $7/GB. No free trial is available.
| PROS | CONS |
| Good provider for newbies on proxy market. Affordable pricing policy. | No free proxy trial is offered.Limited locations are available. |
9. RayoByte
RayoByte can be described as a respectable provider with middle sized pool of available IPs. Here you can find a selection of handpicked ISP addresses prepared for the most durable work. All IPs can be swapped if you face any kind of performance issue.
Almost all of the needed proxy settings can be controlled through the provider’s dashboard. There, you also have access to constant online support for any tech related questions. The price policy of RayoByte is more flexible compared to other players on the market. You have access to about a thousand IPs, all for the same price. You can also try the two day trial period to run all the needed tests before finally purchasing the server.
Summary: One of the best performing datacenter proxies on the market.
Locations: Several million IPs in more than 150 countries worldwide.
Support: 24/7 live chat tech support.
Price: from $15/GB. 2 day free trial is available.
| PROS | CONS |
| Provider with solid base of top performing servers. Dedicated customer support is available at all times. | Prices set a bit higher than the market average numbers.More corporate targeted offers overall. |
10. NetNut
NetNut is a solid player on the market, with more than 50 million IPs available to you. With rotating addresses, you can target your project in more than 200 countries around the world. More than this, you can target countries up to a city or state with support for unlimited threads. You also have a choice between all the popular protocols, like SOCKS5, HTTP, or HTTPS proxies.
If you are looking for mobile proxies, NetNut can also cover your needs. At the time, you had access to more than 250 thousand mobile IPs around the world, covering networks from 3G to 5G. In the same way, you can use more sophisticated rotating or static residential proxies with more than 200 thousand servers like this.
Summary: A solid provider for business and corporate clients.
Locations: Several million IPs in more than 150 countries worldwide.
Support: 24/7 live chat tech support.
Price: from $20/GB. 7 day free trial is available.
| PROS | CONS |
| Large pool of IPs with great performance. Strong customer support and custom plans for servers. | Most of the offers are targeted at corporate clients. |
Cheap vs Premium Residential Proxy Providers
You may think that it makes perfect sense to start buying cheap residential proxies to save money on IPs from day one, and, after a certain time, start revising your budget requirements as you scale up your data mining or scraping missions. And, although it may sound logical to buy proxies with this approach in mind, it may not be quite appropriate in the proxy business.
Here are a few things you should consider before you decide to commit your funds with a cheaper residential proxy provider.
You may check residential proxy with a few IPs for one area but your inexpensive plan will not have enough flexibility to choose a city or exact location from the IPs available to you.
Another important aspect you may encounter is scaling up your scraping mission. You will likely require an extended pool of IPs to keep up with the data harvesting from your competitors and with premium residential proxy providers you will always be on the safe side while requesting more IPs as you grow. Where with cheaper suppliers you will quickly reach the upper limit and will be forced to freeze your mission.
Yet another factor that you should be considering is the overall speed and reliability of your residential proxies. With cheap IPs you will have much higher chances of using shared IPs with other customers of the same provider. This will definitely result in slower speeds of the whole residential proxy network and extra frustration on your side.
And finally, with a cheap proxy provider you will never expect the level of tech support that you need for any situations outside of the ordinary operation. This can even be a critical factor if you lack necessary technical skills to handle all proxy-related work yourself.
Residential Proxies vs Other Types of Proxies
If we want to spot a difference between residential and ISP proxy, for instance, it would make more sense to describe cases where residential proxies are more frequently used due to their technical specifics regardless of the availability of even some of the best datacenter proxies.
Here are some of such areas:
1. Using proxies on sites with sophisticated geo-based anti-bot systems. If you start your sneaker copping mission or web scraping operation of a marketplace without proper residential IPs under the hood of your bot, you are likely to get blocked by the website with an integral anti-bot system. Any of the serious online retailers feature anti-bot and anti-spam systems that prevent any but valid real user IPs from entering. This way, we can see the difference between residential and datacenter proxy. With a residential proxy you can register like a regular user and proceed with checkout or data mining overriding the site’s defense.
2. GEO-sensitive tasks. We have considered some of the most popular tasks for using popular private residential proxies in the beginning of this article. So, to recap some of them, we can say that if you want to have credible data from a given location around the world as far as your ad campaign goes, for instance, you will not be able to get it without a good residential IP. The same thing goes for SEO-related tasks that should reveal the keywords and combinations for a given region or country.
3. Improved browsing anonymity. Residential IPs are highly anonymous proxies that will make you appear to target websites as a regular physical person without revealing the fact that you are using a proxy. This is not the case with VPNs and DC proxies, where the use of an altered IP is not hidden in most cases, making it easier to get into IP blacklists.
Consider Buying Best Proxies by Privateproxy
At PrivateProxy we know probably all possible concerns of novice and more experienced users looking for the best residential proxy solutions that the market has to offer.
The best way to get on board with us is to describe your use case to our seasoned account managers via the live chat, so that we will secure a pool of high-performing residential IPs for a country or city that you need.
We have flexible payment plans on all of our proxies, so you will be able to save money with each scaling phase of your project.
And one thing we are greatly proud of is our live tech support. We want you to know that no matter what concern or issue you have over the residential IPs at your disposal, we will always be there for you to resolve it in no time. So, stay focused on your mission and we will take care of the proxies for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
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What is a residential proxy?
A residential proxy is a proxy server with an IP address representing a real person on the web. It is assigned by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to a homeowner and then borrowed by the proxy provider for you to use on geo-sensitive missions.
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How is a residential proxy different from a datacenter proxy?
Datacenter proxies originate from data centers, and residential proxies originate from Internet Service Providers.
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Is it safe to use free or public residential proxies?
You are subjecting yourself and your system to a risk of data leakage and loss if you happen to use any free or publicly available residential proxy IPs. We advise all our users to pay for their proxy service in order to get not only the IPs but also the tech support that comes along with the private proxies.
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How Much Will a Residential Proxy Cost You?
This entirely depends on the traffic that you are expecting to use on the servers, number of IPs and the quality of servers (premium dedicated IPs or shared proxies). Normally, the pricing plans with a fairly good proxy provider start from $5-$7 for one IP with unlimited bandwidth.
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Why Choose a Residential Proxy?
It is wise to use a residential proxy if you want to collect some information online that is available only to IPs from a certain area. Also, residential proxies are your best choice for overriding access control systems on some platforms that do not allow using them for some select locations.
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Are There Residential IPs with Unlimited Bandwidth?
If you want your residential IP to have unlimited bandwidth, you need to inform your proxy provider about this requirement. Most advanced plans have unlimited bandwidth but for some locations it may not be an option.
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Who is the best residential proxy provider?
It is the one that meets all of your expectations and requirements as far as proxy solutions go. We are doing all of what it takes to be such a provider for all our residential proxy users.
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When do you need residential proxies?
You need residential proxies when you want to access websites with geo-restrictions. This can be helpful in web scraping missions that require multiple IPs from the same geographical area.
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How did you select residential proxy providers for this list?
We have studied and picked the leaders in the industry of residential proxies. The providers on the list have spent a lot of time and effort to make their offerings appealing to the proxy end users (corporate and individual).
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What Happens When You Use Residential Proxies?
When you use a residential proxy server your original IP gets replaced with the IP of a regular physical Internet user from a given geographical area. In order to make it happen your proxy provider borrows real user IPs from an ISP of a certain country or city worldwide.
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How Do Residential Proxies Work?
A residential proxy funnels all the traffic from you to a target site and the other way around through itself, while replacing your original IP with an IP of a real physical Internet user. This allows you to conceal the fact that you are using a remote online platform from your original location.
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Can I Buy Static Residential Proxies?
Of course. Residential proxies can be static or rotating depending on the use case scenarios. With a static residential IP you can use a single IP exclusively for the whole duration of the proxy lifetime.
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Can I Get a Free Trial?
Yes. If you are a business user and if you have a successful track record with us, we will gladly provide you with proxies for a free trial.
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At Private Proxy, you can purchase a residential type of proxy with IP addresses that belong to real households. This IP is assigned by the regular ISPs, so in the end, your address will look completely legitimate and clean. In this guide, we will talk about all of the basic settings and learn how to use residential proxies.