The 7 Best Residential Proxies in 2026

Seven residential networks scored on the same six criteria, with every price read off the provider’s own page in September 2026.

A residential proxy sends your request through an IP address that a home ISP assigned to a real subscriber. Teams buy them for price monitoring, SERP tracking, ad verification, brand protection and localisation testing, where a datacenter IP gets filtered before the page renders.

In this article, you will learn:

• Which controls are included at the base rate and which ones every provider bills, gates or withholds
• The six criteria we score every provider on, ordered by how much each one changes the result
• What each of the seven costs, what is included at that price, and where it falls down

Prices checked on provider pages, September 2026.

The scores are ours, not aggregated user ratings. Each provider takes one to five points on each of the six criteria below, and the total out of 30 is rescaled to ten. We left third-party review scores out on purpose. These seven sit on different review platforms with counts ranging from four reviews to over a thousand, so putting them in one column would compare nothing.

What Is a Residential Proxy?

A residential proxy is an intermediary server that routes your traffic through an IP address a home internet provider issued to a real household. To the target site the request looks like an ordinary consumer connection rather than server traffic. Providers sell access to a rotating pool, bill by the gigabyte, and let you pick a country and usually a city.

The practical difference from a datacenter proxy is where the address sits in the routing table, and anti-bot vendors treat those two positions very differently. Datacenter ranges belong to hosting companies and are published, so a filter can drop them on sight without looking at behaviour at all. Residential ranges belong to consumer ISPs, which makes blanket blocking expensive for the site: block the range and you block real customers. That is the whole trade. You pay more per gigabyte, and in return your traffic is judged on how it behaves rather than on where it comes from. A third option sits between them, the ISP or static residential proxy, which is a residential-registered address hosted in a datacenter, so it keeps datacenter speed and a fixed IP.

The jobs that justify the price are the ones where a datacenter IP fails outright or returns the wrong answer. Retail price monitoring across regional storefronts. Rank tracking, where a query issued from a Frankfurt server and a query issued from a Munich household return different results. Ad verification, where you need to see the creative a local user is served rather than the one the network claims to serve. Brand protection sweeps across marketplaces. Localisation QA before a release. Availability and fare checks on travel sites that rate-limit by network. None of that requires evading a site’s rules, and every provider on this list expects you to read the terms of the sites you fetch.

What You Control at the Base Rate

Six of the seven providers here advertise 195 countries. Five use that exact figure. The number stopped carrying information years ago, because a country counts as covered the moment the network can produce one address in it. The question that actually separates these products is narrower: once you have paid the headline rate, how much of the network can you direct, and what still costs extra?

Three things get taken away, and each one has a price you will not see on the pricing page. Targeting granularity is the first. DataImpulse includes country selection at $1 per GB and charges separately for state, city, ZIP and ASN, so the rate you compared is not the rate you will pay for a city-level rank tracker. Access is the second. Bright Data states on its own pricing FAQ that a compliance review, including a short intro call and verification of your company details, happens before the residential network switches on, so the earliest you can send a first request is measured in days. Volume is the third. IPRoyal’s advertised $1.75 per GB is a bulk-tier price, and a 1 GB purchase lands around $7. Webshare’s residential rate is a standing 50% discount off a $7 list price rather than the list price itself.

Depth is the fourth thing, and it is the one nobody advertises honestly. DataImpulse is the exception only because its dashboard exposes the breakdown: 90 million-plus IPs in total, of which India holds 1,990,597, Brazil 995,652, Vietnam 797,568, Morocco 748,344, and the United States 612,845. A US price-monitoring job on that network therefore runs against under 1% of the number in the headline. Treat every global pool figure the same way and measure what matters: send a few hundred requests through the exact country and city you need, then count distinct exit IPs and their ASNs. Twenty minutes of that beats any homepage claim, ours included.

We built our residential product around removing all four of those catches. Our residential pool covers 195 countries with over 100 million addresses, and country, region and city selection is part of the order rather than an add-on line. The rotation timer is yours to set anywhere from 2 to 60 minutes, and you can keep up to 100 saved lists, each with its own geo and rotation settings, so one project can run Warsaw on a two-minute timer while another holds São Paulo for an hour. There is no compliance interview standing between payment and your first request: the service is automatic and addresses appear in your account as soon as payment clears. The entry rate is $1.5 per GB with no volume tier attached to it.

That combination is the reason we put ourselves first, and it is built to be checked rather than taken on trust. Ask our support for a test plan, or buy a single gigabyte, point it at the country you actually care about, and use the 24-hour money-back window if the exit nodes are not where you need them. Try our residential proxies →

How to Choose a Residential Proxy Provider

Six criteria, in the order they change the outcome. Every provider below is scored on these and nothing else.

1. Control included at the base rate. Check whether country, region and city selection, rotation timing and session length are part of the advertised price or billed on top.
2. Time to first request. Look for a compliance interview, a minimum monthly commitment or a volume tier standing between payment and a working proxy.
3. Pool depth where you need it. Ignore the global figure and measure the count in the two or three countries you will actually hit.
4. Protocols and integration. SOCKS5 as well as HTTP(S), IP whitelisting as well as credentials, plus whatever you already run: Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer, a browser extension.
5. Price at your real volume. Compare the rate at the volume you will genuinely use, not the headline, and check whether the discount behind it is promotional.
6. Trial, refund and support. Whether you can test before paying, how long the refund window runs, and how fast a human answers.

Two notes on reading the prices. Promotional rates are marked as such below, and several of them are time-limited or volume-gated. We do not convert between billing units, so a per-GB rate and a per-IP rate are never compared directly.

The 7 Best Residential Proxies in 2026

1. Proxys.io

We have been selling proxies since 2016, and residential is now the product most of our customers start with. The pitch is the one the section above describes: everything other networks meter, gate or hold back for a volume tier is included in the base rate here. City selection is part of the order. The rotation timer goes down to two minutes and you set it yourself. A hundred saved lists let you keep one profile per project instead of rebuilding credentials every time the target changes. Nobody has to approve you before the first request, because the service is automatic and addresses land in your account the moment payment clears. And the entry price is low enough that testing costs less than the meeting you would hold to decide whether to test.

Key details

• Best for: Teams that need specific countries and cities, fine rotation control, and a working proxy the same day
• Network: 100M+ residential IPs 195+ countries
• Session control: Rotation timer configurable from 2 to 60 minutes; up to 100 saved lists, each with its own geo and rotation settings
• Targeting: Country, region and city, selected on the order and included in the rate
• Pricing: From $1.5 per GB, billed by traffic with no IP or connection limits, on 30, 60 or 90-day windows

Reliability: our own measured success rate runs above 99%. Support answers within five minutes under our service regulations, in practice usually faster, and every purchase carries a 24-hour money-back window. Proxies are issued as IP:port:login:password, and you can switch to IP whitelisting from the dashboard instead. The company behind the service is ONLINE CONNECT LTD, registered in London under company number 15419378, trading since 2016.

Pros

• Country, region and city selection included at $1.5 per GB, with no surcharge for granularity and no volume tier attached to the rate
• Rotation timer down to two minutes plus 100 saved geo and rotation profiles, which no other provider in this comparison publishes
• Payment to working proxy takes minutes, with no compliance interview in front of the residential network
• HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 on every plan, IP whitelisting, a free proxy checker and the ProxyControl browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Opera

Cons

• The rate buys proxy traffic, not a managed pipeline: retries, CAPTCHA handling and parsing stay inside your own stack, which is what most engineering teams want and a few buyers do not
• Traffic runs on a 30, 60 or 90-day window rather than an open-ended balance, so match the window to the project instead of buying a year ahead

Our score: 9.3 / 10

Start with 1 GB, point it at the country you care about, and keep the exit IP log. If it does not hold up, the 24-hour refund covers you and you are out $1.50. Buy residential proxies →

2. Bright Data

The largest network in this comparison by a wide margin, and the one with the most product around it. Bright Data lists 400 million-plus rotating residential IPs across 195 countries, and country, state, city, ZIP and ASN targeting is included at no extra charge. Pool size on that scale stops being the binding constraint somewhere in the low terabytes a month, so most buyers are paying for headroom they will not reach. Access is the other consideration: the company states plainly that a compliance review, including a short intro call and verification of your company details, happens before you can use the residential or mobile network.

Key details

• Best for: Enterprise programmes that can absorb a compliance review and a four-figure monthly floor
• Network: 400M+ rotating residential IPs across 195 countries
• Session control: Minimum session lifetime configurable from 1 to 60 minutes
• Targeting: Country, state, city, ZIP and ASN, included in the rate
• Pricing: $8 per GB pay-as-you-go; committed plans at $499 for 141 GB, $999 for 332 GB and $1,999 for 798 GB. A 50% coupon was live at the time of checking, taking pay-as-you-go to $4 per GB for three months

Pros

• The deepest pool available, which matters once monthly volume runs into terabytes
• ZIP and ASN targeting at no surcharge
• A proxy manager, network status page, full API and a large product suite around the proxies

Cons

• The most expensive entry point here at $8 per GB list, and the real per-GB rates start at a $499 monthly commitment
• Residential access is gated behind a KYC process with an intro call, so you cannot buy and start the same afternoon, and SOCKS5 runs through the Proxy Manager rather than directly

Our score: 8.0 / 10

3. IPRoyal

IPRoyal’s differentiator is the billing model rather than the network. Traffic you buy does not expire, there is no contract, and sticky sessions run longer than most competitors allow. For work that arrives in bursts, a quarterly catalogue refresh, a one-off audit, an occasional compliance sweep, that removes the month-end problem where you either burn unused gigabytes or lose them. The pool is mid-sized at 64 million-plus addresses, and the entry rate is the catch: the advertised $1.75 per GB is a bulk-volume figure, and a small purchase lands around $7 per GB, roughly four times what you thought you were comparing.

Key details

Best for: Irregular workloads that would waste a monthly subscription

Network: 64M+ residential IPs, 195 countries

• Session control: Rotating or sticky, with sticky sessions available for extended durations
• Targeting: Country, state and city, included in the rate
• Pricing: From $1.75 per GB at bulk volume; roughly $7 per GB at the 1 GB tier. ISP proxies from $1.80 per IP, datacenter from $1.39 per IP

Pros

• Purchased traffic never expires, and there is no monthly commitment
• Country, state and city targeting at no surcharge
• Chrome and Firefox extensions, a proxy tester and a WebRTC leak test, all free

Cons

• The headline rate is a bulk price; at the volumes most teams start with, IPRoyal is the second most expensive option in this comparison
• A KYC policy applies, which adds friction before a first test

Our score: 7.8 / 10

4. DataImpulse

The flat rate is the story, and the asterisks are the reason it sits fourth. One dollar per gigabyte, pay as you go, no subscription, and unused traffic rolls over instead of expiring. The pool is first-party rather than resold, and the company is ISO 27001 certified. But country selection is the only targeting included at that price: state, city, ZIP and ASN are charged on top, so a city-level job is not a $1 per GB job. And the country breakdown shows where the 90 million actually sit. India holds 1,990,597 addresses, Brazil 995,652, Vietnam 797,568. The United States holds 612,845, under 1% of the total, which is thin for anyone running US retail or US SERP work at volume.

Key details

• Best for: Cheap country-level traffic where the targets sit outside the US and Western Europe
• Network: 90M+ first-party residential IPs, 195 countries
• Session control: Rotating and sticky sessions
• Targeting: Country included; state, city, ZIP and ASN at extra cost
• Pricing: $5 for 5 GB to start, $1 per GB up to 50 GB, $0.80 per GB at 1 TB, custom above 5 TB. Seven-day refund policy

Pros

• $1 per GB with no subscription, and traffic that rolls over
• Published success rate of 99.51% with roughly one-second response times
• Documented integrations with Scrapy, Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium, Postman and a dozen more

Cons

• US depth is 612,845 IPs, under 1% of the advertised pool, so heavy US or Western European work reuses addresses quickly
• City, ZIP and ASN targeting is billed on top of the per-GB rate, which moves the effective price well above the headline for geo-specific jobs

Our score: 7.5 / 10

5. Webshare

Webshare is the cheapest way to find out whether residential proxies solve your problem at all. The free tier is not a trial: ten proxies and 1 GB a month, no card, no expiry date. The residential pool is 80 million-plus IPs across 195 countries with country, city, state, ZIP and ASN targeting set directly in the username. The pricing is where it gets slippery. List is $7 per GB and every tier runs a standing 50% discount, so 1 GB costs $3.50 and 25 GB costs $2.60 per GB. Compare that against the discount lapsing rather than against the promotional number.

Key details

• Best for: Evaluating before committing, and small mixed workloads across datacenter, ISP and residential
• Network: 80M+ residential IPs, 195 countries, 153,563 subnets, 99.97% published uptime
• Session control: Rotation interval customisable in five-minute steps
• Targeting: Country, city, state, ZIP and ASN, set in the username string
• Pricing: $3.50 per GB at 1 GB and $2.60 per GB at 25 GB, both with the standing 50% discount. Datacenter from $2.99 a month for 100 proxies, ISP from $0.30 per proxy

Pros

• A permanently free tier with 10 proxies and 1 GB a month, no card required
• Targeting set in the username, so no dashboard round trip per location
• Three proxy types on one account and one API

Cons

• The residential rate depends on a promotional discount rather than a list price, and even discounted it is more than twice ours at the entry tier
• Rotation is adjustable in five-minute steps rather than finer, and G2 reviewers flag limited geolocation precision on some targets

Our score: 7.3 / 10

6. Geonode

The lowest published per-GB rate in this comparison, and a price-match guarantee to go with it. Geonode runs its own supply through two opt-in networks it owns, Repocket and Zenshield, plus four acquired networks, so there is no upstream reseller margin. The catch is the pool. Its own product page states 2.5 million rotating residential IPs, an order of magnitude below everyone else here and well below the 30 million figure still repeated by third-party reviews. At $0.27 per GB that can still be the right trade for country-level work at volume. It is the wrong trade the moment you need thousands of distinct exits inside one city.

Key details

• Best for: High-volume country-level collection where per-GB cost dominates everything else
• Network: 2.5M+ rotating residential IPs, 195+ countries
• Session control: Rotating and sticky sessions
• Targeting: Country and city
• Pricing: From $0.27 per GB. Trial of 10 GB for $5, renewing at $50 a month. Static residential from around $1.50 per IP

Pros

• Cheapest per-GB rate here, with a written price match within 24 hours
• Owns its supply networks outright, so sourcing traces back to two named opt-in programmes
• The $5 trial gives you 10 GB against your own targets before any real spend

Cons

• 2.5 million IPs is the smallest pool in this comparison by roughly a factor of twenty-five, which caps how hard you can push a single geo before addresses repeat
• The trial rolls into a $50 monthly plan unless you cancel inside the three-day window

Our score: 7.0 / 10

7. Proxy-Cheap

Straightforward and inexpensive for small jobs, with no setup fee and no monthly commitment. Rotating residential is billed per gigabyte with unlimited threads and both sticky and rotating sessions, and payment goes through cards, PayPal, Alipay or crypto. Two things keep it last. Targeting stops at country level, so regional and city work is out before you start. And the company’s own pages disagree with each other about the size of the network, which is not a detail you want to discover after the invoice.

Key details

• Best for: Small country-only tasks with no commitment
• Network: 50M+ residential IPs per the product page; the same page’s meta title says 155M+
• Session control: Sticky and rotating sessions, unlimited concurrent threads
• Targeting: Country only
• Pricing: List $2.99 per GB. Promotional tiers at $1.50 per GB from 3 GB, $1.20 per GB from 4 GB and $0.78 per GB from 51 GB

Pros

• No setup cost, no minimum commitment, cancel any time
• Unlimited concurrent threads on residential plans, which several competitors cap
• Chrome extension and Firefox add-on, plus HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS support

Cons

• Country-level targeting only, which rules out regional price monitoring, city-level rank tracking and localisation QA
• Pool size and country count are stated inconsistently across the site’s own pages, at 50M and 155M IPs and at 180+ and 195+ countries

Our score: 6.7 / 10

The Seven Compared

Prices checked on provider pages, September 2026.

Rank the three criteria that decide your job, then buy against those. On the two that move the result most, control included at the base rate and time to a working proxy, Proxys.io wins outright: 195 countries with region and city selection in the order, a rotation timer you set from two to sixty minutes, a hundred saved profiles, and $1.5 per GB with no tier and no interview in the way. The cheaper options either meter the targeting you need or run on a pool too thin to hold a single city, and the pricier ones charge for scale that only binds in the terabytes. Buy one gigabyte, run three hundred requests through your real target, and read the exit IP log before you scale. The 24-hour refund makes being wrong cost $1.50.

FAQ

Which controls are included in the base rate?

Ours include country, region and city selection, a rotation timer from 2 to 60 minutes, up to 100 saved profiles, HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, and IP whitelisting, all at $1.5 per GB. DataImpulse bills state, city, ZIP and ASN on top of its $1 rate. Proxy-Cheap offers country only.

How fast can I get a working residential proxy?

With us, minutes: the service is automatic and addresses appear in your account as soon as payment clears, with a 24-hour refund if they do not suit. Bright Data requires a compliance review including an intro call before its residential network switches on, so budget days rather than minutes.

How deep is the IP pool in the country I actually need?

Measure it rather than read it. DataImpulse’s own breakdown shows 612,845 US IPs against a 90 million total, under 1%, and the same ratio holds across the industry. Buy 1 GB, run a few hundred requests through your target country and city, and count distinct exit IPs and ASNs.

How do I check a provider before I trust it with a project?

Look for a registered company and a trading history, a refund window short enough to act on, and support that answers in minutes rather than days. Then test the IPs themselves: run them through a proxy checker for blacklist status and WebRTC leaks before you build anything on top.

What does 1 GB of residential traffic actually get me?

Roughly 2,000 to 10,000 HTML pages, depending on page weight and whether you load assets. A 500 KB product page at 2,000 fetches is about 1 GB. At $1.5 per GB that run costs $1.50, which is why testing on your real targets is cheaper than modelling it.

Can I cut the cost by mixing proxy types?

Yes, and most teams should. Send unprotected endpoints and internal QA through datacenter proxies at a fraction of the per-GB rate, keep residential for the targets that actually filter server ranges, and use ISP proxies where you need a fixed address at datacenter speed.