Residential proxies are IP addresses issued by Internet providers and assigned to real connections (home, office, smart devices). Traffic through such addresses looks like the behavior of a regular user, so websites and anti-bot systems are more loyal to it than to IPs from data centers.

Why are they needed: secure login to personal accounts and advertising accounts, checking local search results, monitoring prices and availability, testing interfaces for different countries and cities. Geotargeting is selected precisely – from the country to a specific city, which helps to see the content “as if it were there”.

By format, there are static (for long sessions and a “recognizable” connection) and rotating (for large-scale data collection). Check out the available options for residential IP addresses in your personal account.

How Residential Proxies Work: Backconnect, Rotation, Sticky

Provider IPs are collected into a large pool and distributed via a backconnect gateway. You connect to one “input” address (endpoint), and the system substitutes the output IP according to your filters: country, city, if necessary – a specific provider or ASN. This allows you to see pages and prices in the same way as a local user sees them.

Rotation is configured in three ways:

• by time – change of address at a specified interval;
• per event – new IP for each request or connection;
• by volume – update after X megabytes of traffic.

Sticky sessions are used for long scenarios (cabinets, forms, payments): the same address is held for 5-30 minutes or until an explicit reboot. Aggressive rotation with request frequency and parallelism limitation is more convenient for crawling and data collection.

HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols are supported. Authorization is by login/password or by IP whitelist. It is useful to set timeouts, retries and enable response code logging right away — this makes it easier to catch captcha bursts and adjust the pace.

Static vs. rotating. A static address provides a “recognizable” connection and fewer reasons for additional verification — a good choice for careful work in accounts. A rotating pool scales data collection and is more resistant to rate-limit, but requires discipline: flow limit, pauses, distribution by subnets/ASN.

IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 is certainly compatible almost everywhere, but is scarce and more expensive for large volumes. IPv6 provides a gigantic address space and is more profitable for scaling, but individual sites do not support it perfectly – it is worth testing the target resource. If you need a reserve of addresses and flexible rotation, look at IPv6 residential proxies.

What to choose: residential, data center, ISP or mobile

The choice depends on the naturalness of the traffic, the required speed and the budget. A short reminder:

Criterion	Residential	Data centers	ISP (static)	Mobile
Source IP	Home/Office Providers	Data center server subnets	Communication providers (static)	3G/4G/5G operators
Anti-bot resistance	high	average/low	high	very high
Speed/latency	average/high	high	high	average
Price	average	low	above average	high
Long sessions (sticky)	yes	limited	perfect	yes
Scaling/Streams	high	very high	average	average
Geo-accuracy	city/provider	country/region	city/provider	more often region
Typical tasks	cabinets, SERP, prices, QA	mass crawling	billing/ads-accounts	SMM, apps

When to choose what

• If you need “humanity” and city targeting, take residential ones (selection is available on the page of solutions on residential IPs).
• If you need maximum speed at a minimum request price, then proxies from data centers will do.
• For stable payment/advertising accounts, static ISP addresses are better: recognizable IP and predictable sessions.
• For social networks and mobile platforms, mobile 4G/5G proxies are appropriate – they are closer to the behavior of applications, but more expensive.

Brief conclusion. If the key metrics are conversion of actions and passing anti-bot checks, start with residential ones. If in the same scenarios you run into the cost of the request, test data-center ones; if in the stability of inputs, switch to ISP; if in the “whims” of social networks, then mobile ones.

Price and tariffs: unlimited or GB

Per gigabyte model. Pay only for the traffic you use. Convenient for pilot tests, irregular launches, and careful parsing. Monitor your traffic limit and disable media so as not to “burn” the limit.

Unlimited. Fixed price per month with no data volume limit — beneficial for constant load and team work. Check fair use, flow limit, and retries policy. Ready-made plans with unlimited traffic — in the unlimited resident packages section.

Ports, flows, sessions. More simultaneous connections — higher price, but also higher bandwidth. For offices, use sticky sessions (10–30 minutes), for mass crawling — “per request” rotation or by timer.

How to quickly estimate a budget

1. Estimate the average response: HTML/JSON is usually 80-300 KB.
2. Multiply by requests per day and days of work.
3. Add 15-25% for redirects, captchas and retracements.

If the result is close to the monthly price of unlimited, take unlimited: the price of a successful request will be lower and the forecast will be easier.

What to pay attention to in the conditions

• billing by calendar or from the date of purchase;
• rollover of unused GB or “burnout”;
• limits on streams/ports and regions;
• authorization methods (login/password, whitelist IP), HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS5 support.

Detailed plans and calculator are in the Prosox pricing.

Where Residential Proxies Provide the Most Benefit

Parsing and crawling

What to take: rotating resident with an interval of 1-5 minutes or “per request”.
Settings: stream limit, pauses with scatter, gzip, media cutoff.
Useful: if there is a lot of traffic, unlimited is more profitable.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Check

What to take: city targeting + sticky 5-15 minutes.
Settings: change subnets/ASN, stable User-Agent, neat pauses.

Verification of advertising and creatives

What to take: static provider IPs or resident IPs in sticky mode.
Settings: fixed city, persistent cookies/storage, limited parallelism.

SMM and multi-account

What to take: residential or mobile 4G/5G; 1 IP = 1 profile.
Settings: sticky 10–30 minutes, distribution of actions by time, warm-up before key steps.

Other scenarios (price monitoring, QA localization, maps/catalogs) are solved by similar settings – choose a country/city and session mode for the frequency and duration of actions.

Anti-ban checklist: 6 settings that save you from unnecessary checks

• Pace and parallelism. 1–3 requests/sec per domain, random pauses, limit threads; at 429/403 — reduce speed and change IP/subnet.
• Session mode. Accounts and forms — sticky 10–30 minutes; parsing — rotation «per request» or by timer 1–5 minutes; 1 IP = 1 profile.
• Fingers and headers. Constant User-Agent within a session, consistent language/timezone/geo; disable DNS/WebRTC leaks, store cookies for «long» profiles.
• Captchas and limits. Warm up the session with safe transitions, increase intervals, alternate subnets/ASN; use lightweight endpoints (HTML/JSON without media) if possible.
• Logs and quality control. Record the response code, time, size, geo/ASN, session label; regularly cross out “bad” IPs with a high percentage of captchas/errors.
• Security. IP whitelists, different keys and ports for projects, minimum rights and access revision; store logs for a limited period and without unnecessary data.

Legality and AUP

Residential proxies are legal when used within the law, the rules of the platform, and the provider’s acceptable use policy (AUP). Spamming, hacking, DDoS, bypassing payment barriers, and collecting personal data without a reason are prohibited. Record only the necessary telemetry, limit the storage period of logs, and check the requirements of target jurisdictions before launching.

FAQ

1. How are residential ones different from data centers and ISPs?
   Residential ones are addresses of real providers, they look like traffic of ordinary users. Datacenter ones are cheaper and faster, but they are more often subject to filters. ISP proxies provide a static “provider” IP for long sessions.
2. What is a sticky session and when to enable it?
   Sticky holds the same IP for a specified TTL (for example, 10-30 minutes). It is needed for logging into accounts, placing orders, QA scenarios. For parsing, rotation “per request” or by timer is more effective.
3. What rotation frequency should I choose?
   For mass crawling — 1–5 minutes or “per request”. For forms and accounts — sticky with a reasonable TTL. If you catch captchas, reduce parallelism and increase the interval.
4. IPv4 or IPv6 — which is better?
   IPv4 is compatible “everywhere”, but more expensive. IPv6 gives a huge pool and is profitable at large volumes. If the target supports both stacks, consider the option of residential IPv6 for scaling.
5. How much does it cost and how not to overpay?
   Compare the price not only per GB, but also the cost of a successful request. With a constant load, unlimited is often more profitable.
6. Where to get started quickly?
   Select the country/city and session mode of the Prosox residential IPs in your personal account, get the proxy data, then test your scenario.
7. Is it legal to use residential proxies?
   Yes, as long as you follow the law, provider AUP, and site rules. Cannot be used for spam, hacking, DDoS, or data theft. Keep only necessary telemetry and protect personal data.
8. Are they suitable for SMM and applications?
   Yes. Mobile/resident addresses with sticky mode are especially useful for social networks and mobile accounts.

It’s time to practice

Residential proxies provide “user” context and precise geotargeting – this increases the conversion of actions and reduces anti-bot triggers. Start with short pilot tests: select a country/city, session mode (sticky or rotation), measure the cost of a successful request and scale ports and flows, maintaining a careful pace.

Ready to start? We will help you select a pool of residential addresses for your scenarios and choose the optimal payment model.