Residential proxy
A proxy whose exit address belongs to a consumer ISP, so the traffic appears to come from an ordinary home connection.
A residential proxy routes your request through an address assigned by a consumer internet provider. To the destination the traffic looks like it came from a household broadband or fibre line rather than a server.
#Why it is treated differently
Filtering systems classify addresses partly by the network that owns them, identified through the ASN. Ranges registered to consumer ISPs carry far less suspicion than ranges registered to hosting companies, because real customers sit behind them and blocking one can affect many innocent users.
#Trade-offs
- Slower and less predictable than datacenter proxies, because the path traverses a real consumer line.
- Usually billed by traffic, per gigabyte, rather than per address.
- Widest quality spread of any category. Two providers quoting a similar price can behave very differently.
#Sourcing
Addresses are obtained through consented peer networks, SDKs bundled into applications, or partnerships with ISPs. Sourcing practice varies considerably between providers and is worth asking about directly.
#Commonly confused with
An ISP proxy is registered to a consumer ISP but hosted in a datacentre — it combines residential registration with datacentre performance, and is billed per address.
#How the four categories compare
The categories differ on who owns the address, not on the protocol. Everything else follows from that one fact.
| Category | Address registered to | Usual billing | Typical scrutiny |
|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter | A hosting company | Per address | Highest |
| ISP | A consumer ISP, hosted in a datacentre | Per address | Moderate |
| Residential | A consumer ISP, on a real line | Per gigabyte | Low |
| Mobile | A mobile carrier | Per gigabyte or per port | Lowest |
No figures appear in that table on purpose. Scrutiny varies by target and changes over time, so any number we printed would be wrong somewhere.
#Questions worth asking before you buy
The category tells you little about a specific provider. These questions separate them.
- How is consent obtained from the people whose addresses you use? Ask for the wording shown to them, not a policy summary.
- Is the address held for the length of a session, or can it change mid-request? This decides whether sticky sessions are usable.
- What counts as billable traffic? Failed requests and response headers often do. See bandwidth billing.
- How is a country or city selected, and what happens when the pool cannot satisfy it? Silent widening is common.