Residential vs datacenter proxies

The question we get most is not "which proxy is best" but "why is one twice the price". The answer is simple: the difference is not speed, it is who owns the IP.

Datacenter IPs belong to hosting companies

When you rent a server from a hosting provider, that server gets an IP from a block the provider owns. Those blocks are publicly registered and easy to recognise. A large site just checks: does this IP belong to a data centre or to a home internet provider? If it is a data centre, suspicion starts immediately.

Residential IPs belong to people at home

Residential IPs come from genuine home internet connections. To the target site, your request looks like an ordinary person browsing at home. That is why they cost more — not because they are faster, but because they are harder to tell apart from a real visitor.

So when do you use the cheap one?

When your target does not bother checking. Public APIs, news sites, documentation, government portals, or your own site — none of them care where your IP comes from. For work like this, paying for residential burns half your money for nothing.

When does the expensive one turn out cheaper?

If you use datacenter against a hostile target, most requests get rejected. Quota is still consumed even when the request fails, because the data really did travel through our network. So 1 GB of datacenter with, say, a 30% success rate actually costs more than 1 GB of residential at, say, 95%.

The cheapest way to find out

Buy 1 GB of datacenter. Run your job. If the success rate is above 80%, stop there and keep using it. If it is under 50%, move up to residential. That experiment costs almost nothing and can save a lot every month afterwards.