What is a residential proxy? Here’s everything you need to know
Learn why residential proxies are the best option for true anonymity online
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What is a residential proxy?
A residential proxy is a type of proxy server. Proxy servers act as an intermediary for all the traffic between your devices and the websites you connect to. Using a proxy server means all your internet traffic looks like it’s coming from the proxy server’s location, improving online anonymity, and allowing access to geo-blocked content such as YouTube videos not available in your country.
Normally, proxy server providers route your traffic through a data center. Residential proxies instead route your traffic through computers or phones connected to typical home ISPs. This makes residential proxies even more anonymous, better hiding the fact you’re using a proxy and minimizing the chance your connection will be blocked.
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What does a residential proxy do?
Features and benefits of a residential proxy
Residential proxies conceal your identityBy connecting through a residential proxy, the websites you visit will never be able to see your real IP address, masking your internet browsing activity.
Residential proxies supercharge web scrapingPulling publicly available data from websites can be a goldmine of useful information, but if you do it from a single IP address, you may be quickly blocked by web-scraping detection software.
By connecting through a residential proxy, your IP address changes each time, making your web scraping virtually impossible to block.
Residential proxies are far less likely to be blockedTraditional data center proxies use a small number of IP addresses, making it relatively simple for websites to block if they wish. Residential proxy services often have tens of thousands of IP addresses in hundreds of locations worldwide, which makes blocking them more challenging.
You can have multiple IP addresses at the same timeGood residential proxy services enable you to connect through an unlimited number of IP addresses at the same time. You can automate hundreds of connections from one location. This is great for managing several social media accounts at the same time without being flagged by the provider as suspicious, for instance.
Residential proxies are fastCompared to virtual private networks (VPNs) and shared proxies, residential proxies typically offer faster speeds as there’s less overhead, and fewer people use the same servers concurrently.
How much does a residential proxy cost?
Residential proxies cost significantly more than data center proxies on a per-month, per-GB basis, but typically offer better results because the proxy connection is better masked.
As an example, the Wise datacenter proxy plan fromSmartproxycosts $200/month for 400GB. In comparison, the Starter residential proxy plan, also $200/month, only includes 20GB.
You can choose the more economical Micro residential proxy plan, which is $75/month for 5GB of data. For many business applications, this amount of monthly data will be more than enough.
Residential proxy FAQ
What are residential proxies used for?
Residential proxies can be used by individuals and businesses for any application where they want traffic to appear as if it’s coming from another location. Residential proxies are used heavily in digital advertising, affiliate testing, market price monitoring, web scraping, and social media automation.
Are residential proxies legal?
The use of residential proxies is entirely legal. Of course, you shouldn’t use a residential proxy to perform any illegal activity.
For example, residential proxies are often used to make web scraping harder for websites to block. It’s legal to use a residential proxy to scrape websites that are publicly available, but illegal to scrape content from private websites.
What’s the difference between residential proxy and VPN?
A proxy will route all your internet traffic through an intermediary device. A VPN service performs a similar role but also encrypts all the data being transferred. This is more secure but has more overhead.
Residential proxies are the best choice for those looking to perform hundreds or thousands of requests, as they’re typically cheaper and faster than VPNs at scale. VPNs are a better choice for personal use, protecting yourself from hackers, and preventing ISP tracking.
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You can read more about the differences in our guide onproxies vs VPNs.
What is a rotating residential proxy?
A rotating residential proxy gives you a new IP address from a pool each time you make a new connection. If you run a script to scrape content from a thousand pages of web content, for example, those connections will be sent from up to a thousand different connections. This type of proxy is difficult to track and block.
How long do residential proxies last?
With a good residential proxy service, you can set how long your IP address will remain constant before being assigned a new one. Typically, there’s a maximum of around 30 minutes. Rotating residential proxies change the IP address for every request you make.
Main takeaways
Further reading
So you can better understand the roles of virtual private networks and proxies, we’ve put together a guide onthe difference between a VPN and a proxy. You can read abouthow VPNs keep your data safethrough the use of encrypted tunnels, and our pick of thebest free and paid proxiesavailable today.
TechRadar created this content as part of a paid partnership with SmartProxy. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of TechRadar.
Richard brings over 20 years of website development, SEO, and marketing to the table. A graduate in Computer Science, Richard has lectured in Java programming and has built software for companies including Samsung and ASDA. Now, he writes for TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, PC Gamer, and Creative Bloq.
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