What is a residential proxy?

How do residential proxies work?

A residential proxy relays your request through a device on a home internet connection, so the target website answers that device instead of you. You never talk to the device directly: a gateway sits in the middle and picks it for you.

What is a residential proxy network?

A residential proxy network is the pool of home connections behind a provider's gateway, together with the software that routes traffic to them. The devices belong to people who share part of their bandwidth, usually through an app or an SDK that asks for their consent. Proxyway's 2026 market research found that residential pools are mostly Android devices.

Few brands build their own pool. Many, including Nameless Proxy, resell established partner networks and add their own gateway, prices, rules and support. That is why sourcing matters:

• Consent. Every device owner should have opted in knowingly, with a way to withdraw.
• Hidden SDKs are the bad source. In January 2026, Google disrupted IPIDEA, which it called the world's largest residential proxy network. Google counted more than 600 apps carrying its proxy code, and more than 550 threat groups using its exit nodes in a single week.
• Pools overlap. When the FBI seized NetNut's domains in July 2026, Krebs on Security reported Google's assessment that many popular residential proxy brands were white-labeling that same network. One IP can serve several brands.

Our partner requirements, and their limits, are on the sourcing page.

Residential proxies explained: what does the website see?

The website sees the exit's IP address and everything that comes with it: the internet provider that owns it, its network number (ASN) and its approximate location. It does not see your own IP. Compare the three cases:

Rotating or sticky: how long do I keep one IP?

You choose per request, in the username. Without a session ID, the gateway gives each new connection a fresh exit IP: that is a rotating proxy. Add a session ID and a length in minutes, and the same exit is kept for up to 60 minutes: that is a sticky session.

Rotating suits many independent requests, such as checking thousands of public product pages. Sticky suits flows that must stay on one IP, such as paginated results or a multi-step form on your own site. The full comparison, with examples: rotating vs sticky proxies.

How to use residential proxies

Using a residential proxy takes four things: credentials, the gateway address, a username with your targeting, and a client that supports proxies. Almost every HTTP library, scraping framework and browser does.

1. Buy a pack and copy the credentials. The dashboard shows your proxy username and password. You can also whitelist your server's IP instead of using a password.
2. Pick the port. 7777 for HTTP and HTTPS, 7778 for SOCKS5.
3. Add targeting to the username. The format is USERNAME-country-{cc}-city-{city}-session-{id}-ttl-{minutes}; every part after the base username is optional.
4. Test with one request that prints the exit IP and its location, then plug the same proxy URL into your tool.

# Rotating exit in Kenya (HTTP/HTTPS port)
curl -x http://USERNAME-country-ke:[email protected]:7777 https://ipinfo.io/json

# Sticky exit in Dubai for 20 minutes
curl -x http://USERNAME-country-ae-city-dubai-session-test1-ttl-20:[email protected]:7777 https://ipinfo.io/json

# SOCKS5, with DNS resolved on the proxy side
curl --socks5-hostname gw.namelessproxy.com:7778 -U USERNAME-country-za:PASSWORD https://ipinfo.io/json

import requests

proxy = "http://USERNAME-country-eg:[email protected]:7777"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

r = requests.get("https://ipinfo.io/json", proxies=proxies, timeout=30)
print(r.json()["ip"], r.json().get("country"))

What are residential proxies used for?

Residential IPs show you the prices, search results and ads that local visitors see. Lawful uses we build for:

What are the limits of a residential proxy?

Residential proxies are useful, not magic. Plan for these limits:

• Success depends on the target. Proxyway's 2026 tests measured a 99.28% median infrastructure success rate for residential pools, but 74.43% on real targets such as Amazon, Google and Instagram. Retry with backoff and compare cost per successful request.
• Exits are real homes. A device can go offline, so a sticky session can end before its time. Build retries into long flows.
• Speed varies. A home connection is slower and less predictable than a server; keep timeouts generous.
• Targeting has a floor. At Nameless Proxy, targeting stops at the city: no ASN, ISP, ZIP-code or state targeting.
• The rules still apply. Site terms, data-protection law and our policy do not change because the IP is residential.

Residential, mobile or datacenter: which proxy type do I need?

Start with residential for most scraping, SERP and price work. Move to a 4G/5G mobile proxy only for strict, mobile-first targets: carrier IPs cost more per GB but are shared by many real subscribers. Datacenter IPs are the cheapest and fastest, and the easiest to recognise; Nameless Proxy does not sell them. Side by side: residential vs mobile proxy.

How much does a residential proxy cost?

At Nameless Proxy, residential traffic costs $1.88/GB on the 1 GB pack and falls to $0.53/GB on the 1 TB pack, as of October 2026. Traffic is billed in decimal GB and never expires. You top up a USD balance in crypto (minimum $25) and buy packs from it, with no subscription: see pay-as-you-go residential proxies and the pricing page.