Residential proxies are an essential part of numerous businesses and individual activities alike. From highly complicated applications such as web scraping to improved anonymity and privacy, a good residential proxy pool covers it all.
Independent of your personal use case, whether that’s for bypassing geographical restrictions or for better privacy, residential proxy providers are a dime a dozen nowadays. Each one tries to tell you they’re the best, but there are clear differences between all of them.
We’ve decided to review the most popular and well-known residential proxy providers. Each provider has a few different types of proxies and other solutions, however, we’re focusing on their residential proxy network.
Which Types of Residential Proxies Are the Best?
There are at least three major types of residential proxies: static, rotating, and dedicated. Every residential proxy type has its own benefits and drawbacks.
Type | Exclusivity | Performance | Rotation | Pricing model |
---|---|---|---|---|
Static residential proxies | Shared or private | High | None, unless built by user | IP based |
Dedicated proxies | Private | Highest | Depends on the provider | IP or traffic based |
Rotating proxies | Shared | Each user decreases performance | Rotation customizable depending on provider | Traffic based |
Your choice of residential proxy type should primarily depend on the use case, secondarily on budget. Static residential proxies (also known as ISP proxies) are best when you need a small number of IPs that have top-notch performance.
Rotating residential proxies are a catch-all as they can do most tasks well. You can use them for SERP scraping, travel fare aggregation, various monitoring tools, etc.
Dedicated residential proxies are best used for use cases where you need to maintain an identity for a long period of time. These are usually account management over various platforms, some cybersecurity applications, etc.
Best Residential Proxy Providers to Consider in 2024
IPRoyal
Residential proxy pool size: 32M+
Pricing model: Traffic-based
IPRoyal is one of the best residential proxy providers on the entire market today. They have a decently sized pool when compared to other, older competitors, however, they provide highly competitive pricing with a unique model. Residential proxy quality does not falter either and their commitment to continually upgrading the network definitely shows their work.
With over 32 million residential IP addresses scattered across 195+ countries, you’ll definitely be able to find enough proxies in nearly any location in the world. Many of them come from highly sought-after locations such as the United States and Germany, so there are plenty of residential proxies to go around even if you need IPs from those countries.
You can also further narrow down your residential proxy network down to a city or a state level, allowing you to select a highly niche set of IPs.
Additionally, the IP addresses provided are fully dedicated. You can be sure that no one is using the same residential proxy in tandem with you.
Rotation options also stand out as you can retain a single IP address for up to 7 days. Other rotation options include switching residential proxies on each request or any other time up to the aforementioned limit.
IPRoyal’s pricing structure is unique as well and it benefits the end-user instead of the company. They use traffic-based pricing that has no expiration date. Many other companies use a subscription-based model wherein if you fail to use up the traffic, you still pay the same amount each month.
So, instead of having to pay each month, you only pay when you’ve used up your residential proxy traffic. Such a model saves a lot of money in the long and, if you buy bandwidth in bulk, you get even more savings.
Finally, all of the user support is no slouch either. Residential proxy performance matches most premium providers in success rates (~99.7%) and if you run into any issues, IPRoyal customer support is available 24/7.
MarsProxies
Residential proxy pool size: 1M+
Pricing model: Traffic-based (subscription-based available)
MarsProxies are an up-and-coming residential proxy service. While they’re relatively new to the market, they know how to capture an audience and create the best residential proxies for them.
What most people will notice right off the bat is how simple and intuitive the entire purchase and integration process is. You can get to the integration step with just a few button clicks. Getting lost in complicated dashboards isn’t a problem either as their dashboard is slick and simplified.
In addition to the focus on ease-of-use, you can buy residential proxies at highly discounted and competitive rates when compared to many other providers. It’s a residential proxy service for those who want to squeeze out the most out of the least.
Highly competitive pricing isn’t the only major benefit – residential proxy performance is also something of note. While the residential IP address pool is comparatively smaller than most, it still covers more than 190 locations from all over the world.
Additionally, you get country, state, and city-level targeting options if you want to further narrow down your personal residential proxy network.
Finally, you’ll get just as much customer support as with any other residential proxy provider while the pool itself seems highly resistant to downtimes.
SOAX
Residential IP pool size: 155M+
Pricing model: Subscription-based
SOAX is a provider seemingly tailored to the absolute top of the business world. A huge pool of residential proxies, good performance, and response rates, and numerous other tools available. It could be a one-stop shop for many use cases.
If response rates are to be believed they may be hosting some of the fastest residential proxies on the market as well. With more than 155 million residential proxies covering more than 195 locations, it’s basically impossible to not find enough IP addresses for any use case.
Geo-targeting for residential proxies follows the regular industry practices. You can pick IPs based on their country, state, or city, narrowing down your focus if necessary.
Sticky sessions for residential proxies are on the weaker side as SOAX only allows users to retain IP addresses for up to 60 minutes. You may have to pick ISP proxies if you want longer sessions.
Pricing, however, is the weak spot for SOAX. They have some of the highest prices in the industry with the cheapest residential proxy plan starting out at $99 per month for just 15 GBs. While the “per GB” rate is decent, the high amount of bandwidth and steep initial costs could dissuade some users.
Everything else is as you would expect from a well-established company selling residential proxies. Complete customer support with 24/7 working hours, dedicated account managers (for some users), 99.9% network uptime, and the like.
SOAX has all the bells and whistles if you want to buy residential proxy services that won’t disappoint in quality. But you’ll have to pay a premium price as well.
Webshare
Pool size: 30M
Pricing model: Subscription-based
Webshare is a smaller company that sells residential proxies among many other types. It started as an independent brand but has since been acquired by another company. However, it seems that Webshare retains the independent feel and focuses on smaller businesses.
One of the standout features that few competitors on the market have is that they offer free proxy servers. They’re not free residential proxies, though, as the company has only paid plans for those. We believe the free servers to be datacenter proxies.
For a smaller company, Webshare does have quite a sizable pool of residential proxies that cover 195 countries all over the world. Interestingly, they seem to have a large portion of Chinese IP addresses, which can be highly beneficial to some companies.
Their residential proxies, performance-wise, are definitely competitive. There’s support for both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols, 99.97% network uptime, and an intuitive dashboard.
While they state themselves to be the cheapest option on the market, it definitely doesn’t seem so, at least for residential proxies. Pricing-wise they are in direct competition with IPRoyal who also give bigger discounts for larger packages while MarsProxies have a lower starting price for the smallest package.
Additionally, their model is subscription-based. While it’s somewhat of an industry standard, you have to be sure to use up all of the bandwidth allotted to your rotating residential proxies as otherwise you’ll be paying even more per gigabyte.
Webshare is a good choice for those who are just starting out and want a simple process. While you’re not getting the best bang for your buck, there’s something to be said about intuitive dashboards and easy integration.
Bright Data
Pool size: 72M+
Pricing model: Primarily subscription-based, expensive traffic-based option available
Bright Data is one of the most established brands in the data extraction and proxy industry. While they began their endeavors as a datacenter and residential proxy service, they have since expanded to provide data acquisition tools and even datasets themselves.
They’re clearly tailored towards larger businesses that can make use of their wide product offering. In terms of residential proxy servers, you’re definitely getting something of high quality albeit at a steep price as well.
In terms of pool size, it’s not something extreme for a large-scale company – 72M+. That’ll still be more than enough residential proxies to serve nearly any customer as they also cover 195+ locations with those IPs as well.
Bright Data also supports HTTPS and SOCKS5 for their residential proxies. While that’s an industry standard nowadays, it’s nice to see that it’s an added feature.
Pricing-wise Bright Data is one of the most expensive. They do have traffic-based pricing called “Pay-as-You-Go”, however, it’s the most expensive per gigabyte. All other residential proxy plans are subscription-based and start from a whopping $499 per month.
You can get a residential proxy free trial, which is nice, but it won’t go far as you’ll still need to buy a plan eventually. If you can shell out hundreds of dollars per month for residential proxy servers, Bright Data might not be the best option.
What Are the Cheapest Residential Proxies?
While we do our best to always provide the most up-to-date information, rotating residential proxies fluctuate in price a lot over time. Always double-check with the provider to see if the pricing still stands.
Additionally, subscription-based providers have wildly different plans available. All pricing shown below is rounded up on the closest possible option for rotating residential proxies. That means that if a provider only has 50GB and 200GB plans, for our 100GB listing we’ll be using the 200GB plan or any other option that’s the cheapest. Otherwise, you’d be unable to meet your traffic requirements.
Provider | 1GB | 10GB | 100GB | 250GB |
---|---|---|---|---|
IPRoyal | $7 | $52.5 | $455 | $1050 |
MarsProxies | $4.99 | $44.9 | $399 | $935 |
SOAX | $99 (15GB plan) | $99 (15GB plan) | $739 (150GB plan) | $999 |
Webshare | $7 | $60 | $550 | $1312.5 |
Bright Data | $8.14 (Pay-as-You-Go) | $81.4 (Pay-as-You-Go) | $840 (Pay-as-You-Go) | $1999 (339 GB plan) |
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