Those who are looking for a premium way to route their internet traffic and ensure privacy should choose residential proxies. It’s widely agreed that it’s the best source of highly legitimate IPs that are unlikely to get you struggling with IP bans or other restrictions.

Despite such benefits, many proxy buyers don’t know much about them and thus make bad decisions when purchasing them. This article is a short guide for understanding residential proxies and choosing their provider.

Understanding Residential Proxies

Residential proxies are intermediary servers run on household devices using standard, ISP-verified internet connections. In simpler terms, these are proxies run at somebody’s home from an ordinary computer. It’s like asking a friend to connect from his Wi-Fi, except he is on the other side of the globe.

There used to be a time when such proxies were impossible to source since home connections were too weak and ordinary devices didn’t have much power. Datacenter proxies, run on professional servers in commercial hubs, were the only option.

Websites have noticed that datacenter IPs are often used as proxies and have started to restrict or even ban them. That’s when the need for more legitimate residential connections appeared. If you are using a real household device and an IP address with a connection verified by an ISP, no website will ban you right away.

Most of the internet traffic is using residential IPs. To start banning or restricting them will surely affect other users, which websites want to avoid. It’s much easier to blend in with a residential proxy, and that’s why they are the most legitimate type.

Residential proxies are also much better at targeting specific locations. Good proxy providers can even offer neighborhood-level accuracy. That’s because devices routing your traffic are actually running in cities where people live.

Use cases like managing multiple social media accounts or bulk purchasing are hardly possible without these benefits of residential proxies. One must have a legitimate IP address with accurate ISP and location information to avoid getting their accounts banned.

Competing types of proxies, on the other hand, are most likely to be quickly banned on websites like Facebook or Amazon. This fact alone justifies the higher price of residential proxies compared to datacenter ones. However, if you choose the correct subtype, you can lower the cost of residential proxies.

Popular Subtypes

Residential proxies are powerful enough to be shared and rotated in a larger pool of IPs. Such an option gives providers a chance to lower the prices of residential IPs without losing much performance.

• Shared residential proxies are used by two or more users concurrently. It may lower the performance, but it’s much cheaper than paying for an intermediary IP all by yourself.
• Rotating residential proxies change their IP addresses for every set period or task. They are often used with shared IP pools, but IPs can be rotated in private ones, too.

Residential proxies can also differ depending on the protocol used. Simply put, internet protocols are the rules by which a proxy server operates.

• SOCKS5 residential proxies ensure the highest level of security and performance with support for various authentication methods and traffic types. 
• HTTP residential proxies are generally considered an inferior type because they support fewer traffic types.

Where to buy Residential proxies?

Good provider choice is important when buying residential proxies more than with any other proxy type. These proxies are often sourced unethically without the IP owner’s consent. It’s crucial to look into the reputation of the provider before purchasing.

Another reason is that low-quality residential proxies can be really slow. The risk is lower with datacenter proxies, for example, as most of them are still quite powerful because of their setup. Untrustworthy residential proxy providers can sell residential proxies that are barely usable.

Let’s compare two providers to draw a picture of how a good residential proxy provider looks compared to a poor one.

Rayobyte

Rayobyte was previously called Blazing SEO. This should already give you some insight into what this provider is all about. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) use cases mostly need lots of IP addresses that can transfer huge amounts of data for analyses.

Unsurprisingly, Rayobyte is best for datacenter proxy plans with unlimited bandwidth. SEO specialists use such proxies for web scraping, which is this company’s best use case.

When it comes to residential proxies, Rayobyte falls behind the competition. Their residential IPs are pricy, starting at $7.5 per GB, and there’s a lack of locations. Most of the Rayobyte alternatives have better deals for residential proxies.

But perhaps the most telling fact is that there’s no SOCKS5 support. Any residential proxy that can be considered of high quality should have this protocol. Otherwise, you risk performance or integration issues.

IPRoyal

IPRoyal is a much better place to purchase residential proxies. It’s a fairly new player in the proxy market that has residential proxies as its flagship product. There are more than 30 million residential IPs covering almost 200 countries. 

Static residential proxy offers start at $7 per GB transferred. The best part is that you can also choose rotating ones and pay only 2.40 per IP, no matter how much data you transfer. If you still need to keep an IP for a while, there are sticky sessions.

There is SOCKS5 support, pay-as-you-go format, accurate location targeting, and multiple potential use cases specifically for residential proxies described in their blog. Clearly, IProyal doesn’t aim to be best for one specific datacenter proxy use case, such as SEO. It has an ambition to be the best at everything residential proxies have to offer.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to know when purchasing proxies. Your best chance to get the most out of it is to look for premium IPs with SOCKS5 support and unlimited bandwidth. It will ensure the least disturbances, most integration possibilities, and will save money even with heavy use. Grab a free trial and see for yourself.