Which proxies to choose: mobile, home, ISP or datacenter

Who owns the IP and why it matters

A site sees the proxy address and checks first who it belongs to. ASN databases name the owner of the range: a home provider, a mobile carrier or a hosting company. The answer decides what the request gets: the page, a captcha or a block.

That gives four address types. Residential addresses come from providers that serve ordinary flats. Mobile ones belong to cell carriers. ISP addresses are registered to a provider but live on servers. Datacenter IPv4 and IPv6 belong to hosting companies.

Proxy types at a glance

• Mobile, the Cell Mobile plan: platforms trust them most, rotating or sticky sessions up to 2 hours, from $2.15 per GB.
• Residential, the Start and Max plans: home IPs, country or city targeting, from $0.49 per GB.
• ISP, the Hybrid ISP plan: a provider address on a server link, a fresh IP for each request or a static one in the login, from $0.95 per GB.
• Datacenter IPv4, the Nitro Datacenter IPv4 plan: fast static addresses for open sites, from $0.65 per GB.
• Datacenter IPv6, the Cosmos Datacenter IPv6 plan: billions of addresses and the cheapest gigabyte, IPv6 sites only, from $0.17 per GB.

Unlimited packages sit apart. They are billed by time, their traffic is not metered, and they pay off at large volumes where a site lets datacenter IPs through. All per-GB plans side by side are on the per-GB plans page.

What makes mobile proxies strong

A carrier sends thousands of subscribers online through a small set of addresses. In one day a mobile IP serves hundreds of phones, and a platform that bans it cuts off real users. Social networks and apps know this and show these addresses fewer captchas.

• Instagram, TikTok and other apps expect traffic from a cell network, so a mobile address looks natural to them.
• An IP change inside the carrier network raises no flags: phones get a new address on every reconnect anyway.
• A sticky line keeps the address under its session ID, so an account works from one IP while the home device is online.
• 4G and 5G networks in 70+ countries, with the country set for every list.

A mobile gigabyte costs more than the rest. Use it for accounts and apps, and run bulk data collection on ISP or datacenter addresses. The mobile proxies page has the details.

What country targeting gives you

Sites show different things in different countries: prices, stock, search results, ads, and some content is closed by geo. A proxy from the right country opens the same page a local visitor sees.

• Search results and rankings in a specific country.
• Prices, currency and stock at foreign shops.
• Ad and landing page checks by country.
• Access to services that only work inside their own country.

You pick a country on Start, Max and Cell, while Hybrid, Nitro and Cosmos run on US addresses. Residential Start Residential is the cheapest wide choice: 200+ countries, a gigabyte from $0.49. The country lists of every plan are on the regions page.

When you also need the city

Inside one country sites adapt to the region too. Google ranks local businesses by city, marketplaces work out delivery times and stock by regional warehouse, and delivery, taxi and classifieds services run city by city.

• Local search: a site ranks differently in Chicago and in Dallas.
• Marketplaces: prices, stock and delivery times for a given city.
• City-bound accounts: a login from an IP in the same city triggers fewer security checks.
• Anti-detect: the city, the provider by ASN and the device type match the profile fingerprint.

City, region, ASN and device come with residential Max Residential. It also keeps a sticky session for 3 to 1,440 minutes, so a profile works from one address the whole time. Profile setup is covered on the anti-detect proxies page.

ISP and datacenter proxies: speed and price

An ISP proxy address is registered to an internet provider, while the traffic runs over a datacenter link. Marketplaces and search engines that cut hosting ranges let these addresses through, and the speed stays at server level. Hybrid ISP changes the IP on every request, so your scraper needs no rotation logic of its own. An IP in the login makes a line static.

Datacenter IPv4 on Nitro Datacenter IPv4 suits sites without bot protection: APIs, uptime checks, open catalogs. Every line keeps its own address, and a gigabyte costs from $0.65. New addresses come with a timer or a new list.

Datacenter IPv6 on Cosmos Datacenter IPv6 costs the least, from $0.17 per GB, but opens only IPv6 sites: Google, YouTube and sites behind Cloudflare. Check the domain first with nslookup -type=AAAA example.com. The pool holds billions of addresses, and each request leaves from a new one.

How much traffic you need

The math is short: requests per day times the response size times 30 days. A marketplace page weighs about 400 KB, a search results page about 120 KB, an API response a few dozen. The calculator fills in typical numbers for the task and shows the monthly price on the plans that fit.

Purchased traffic lasts 3 months, and every bigger step lowers the price of a gigabyte. If you land at thousands of gigabytes and the site lets datacenter IPs through, compare an unlimited package: its traffic is not metered.

When per-GB plans beat unlimited

An unlimited package is billed by the term. You get a list of a set size, 5,000 to 50,000 IPs on average per day in World MIX, and a thread limit, while traffic goes unmetered. A per-GB plan counts only gigabytes but draws addresses from pools of millions of IPs: requests spread across a huge number of addresses, and threads are unlimited.

The line runs along volume. The smallest World MIX package, 5,000 IPs, costs $252 a month, and the same money buys about 390 GB on residential Start Residential. Use less, and Start costs less. A 50,000-IP package pays off only from 2,840 GB a month. Mind the address type too: packages hand out datacenter IPs while Start gives home ones, and sites that block hosting ranges let only Start through.

Move the sliders: traffic per month and how many IPs online you need. The widget compares the monthly price on Start and on a package and shows the volume where the package starts to pay off.

Where the choice is clear

• Anti-detect browser: residential only, Start or Max. When the city, ISP or device type matters for the profile, only Max fits.
• Telegram and social media: Max Residential or mobile Cell Mobile, with a sticky line per account.
• Local search and marketplaces by city: Max Residential only, the city is picked there and nowhere else.
• Search results, prices and stock by country: Start Residential, and for the USA also ISP Hybrid ISP.
• More than 50,000 IPs online: per-GB plans only, packages do not go that far.
• Hundreds of gigabytes a day on open sites: an unlimited package costs less.