Residential vs mobile proxy

What is the difference between residential and mobile proxies?

The difference is the network behind the IP. A residential proxy exits through a home connection, so the website sees a consumer ISP. A mobile proxy exits through a SIM card on a 4G/5G network, so the website sees a mobile operator, and usually an address shared by many of its subscribers.

Residential or mobile proxy: which is harder to block?

Mobile IPs are usually harder to block, but the gap on real websites is small. Carriers share each public IPv4 address among many subscribers with carrier-grade NAT; Cloudflare wrote that one such address may represent hundreds or even thousands of users. Blocking it would hit real people, so sites treat carrier IPs with caution.

The measured results are closer than the theory suggests:

• Real targets. Proxyway's 2026 tests on sites such as Amazon, Google and Instagram measured a median success rate of 75.26% for mobile pools and 74.43% for residential pools.
• Infrastructure. The same report found medians of 99.63% for mobile and 99.28% for residential before target defences come into play.
• Rate limits. Cloudflare measured that CGNAT addresses are rate-limited about three times more often than other IPs.

In short, request pacing and behaviour matter more than the IP type. Test both on your own targets before you scale.

Which is cheaper per GB?

Residential is cheaper per gigabyte; a dedicated mobile port is cheaper when one IP carries a lot of traffic. On our own price list, as of October 2026:

When should I choose a residential proxy?

Choose residential when the job is mostly volume and the target is not built around phones:

• Scraping public data across many pages, where cost per GB decides the budget (web scraping).
• SEO and SERP tracking by country and city (SERP tracking).
• Price monitoring on marketplaces and travel sites (price monitoring).
• City-level checks, since residential targeting goes down to the city in any of 190+ countries.

New to the topic? Start with what is a residential proxy.

When should I choose a mobile proxy?

Choose mobile when the target is mobile-first or when the carrier itself matters:

• App and mobile website QA on a real carrier connection.
• Mobile ad verification: which ads phone users of each carrier see (ad verification).
• Agency work on clients' existing accounts, with one stable carrier IP per client workspace (social media management).
• Targets that are strict with home IPs, after a residential test failed.

For a stable IP under your control, rent a dedicated mobile proxy; for carrier IPs spread over many requests, buy rotating mobile traffic. Background: what is a mobile proxy.

Residential vs datacenter proxy: what is the difference?

A datacenter proxy runs on a server in a data centre, so its IP belongs to a hosting or cloud company; a residential proxy exits through a home connection, so its IP belongs to a consumer ISP. Websites can look up who owns an address, and hosting ranges are the easiest to recognise as automated traffic.

Datacenter proxies are usually faster and cheaper per GB, and they suit lenient targets and internal testing. Nameless Proxy does not sell datacenter proxies, nor static ISP proxies. If your targets accept datacenter IPs, a datacenter provider may cost you less than our residential traffic; if they do not, residential from $0.53/GB is the next step.

How do I test residential and mobile proxies before I commit?

Run the same small test on both and compare the cost of a successful request, not the price per GB. A test that fits in one minimum top-up of $25:

1. Buy the smallest units. 1 GB of residential traffic costs $1.88; a one-day dedicated port costs $2.63. The rest of the top-up stays on your balance.
2. Pick 50 to 100 real URLs from your own project, in the country you need.
3. Send the same requests through both, at the same pace, with the same retries and timeouts.
4. Count what matters: successful responses, response time, and blocks or challenge pages.
5. Divide the cost by the successes. A cheaper gigabyte that fails twice as often is not cheaper.

If both pass, keep residential for volume. If only mobile passes, rent a port for that target and keep residential for the rest.

Can I use both residential and mobile proxies?

Yes, and many projects should. One prepaid balance pays for every product: top up once in crypto (minimum $25), then buy residential traffic, a dedicated port or rotating mobile traffic from it. Unused balance stays on your account and never expires, but it is not refundable.

A common pattern is residential traffic for the bulk of the work and one dedicated mobile port for the few targets that need a carrier IP. Residential and rotating mobile traffic never expires, so nothing is lost between projects.