Right this isn’t a review and the contents could and probably will change over time.  However, many of us need proxies for all different reasons and to change our visible IP address – yet the choice is often bewildering! For me a good or a bad proxy service makes a huge difference to my online income.   For the last year or so I’ve not really bothered with any datacenter proxy servers  simply because I get way better results from a residential IP proxy especially from geo targeting sites. If I just need different addresses to rotate for things like web scraping or hide my real ip then I use my VPN subscription for Identity Cloaker which costs a fraction of the price (about $10 a month).  This allows me static IP or rotating IP addresses in data centers all over the world and I can watch the BBC through it too.

However for residential addresses, VPNs are pretty much useless you need a specialist service provider.  It’s all personal experience but I believe these companies represent the  best value residential proxy providers that I’ve used recently.

Basically I want to buy residential proxies which are fast, that keep me safe and won’t get my accounts banned. Just residential IP proxies which work.

So instead of listing a huge number of different proxy providers and giving them all ratings ranging from 9.7 to 9.9. Then this page simply lists three that I currently use (it may change).  I’ll also try and include the reasons I am using them, so it should be a pretty good starting point to find the best place to buy private proxies.  So if you’ve decided to invest in your business and discovered no free residential proxies work anymore.  Then here’s some decent reliable companies where you can  purchase an extra IP address or many hundreds,  these three are a good place to start.   I do my market research very carefully and these are the best residential proxies I’ve found in 2020.  All of them also supply datacenter proxies too but I don’t use any of them for these types of proxy servers.

So who are the Best Residential Proxy Providers  ?

Best Residential Proxy Providers

One of the problems with many residential proxy services is that surprisingly the cost of entry to this sector is rather low.  With a nice WordPress Theme, a basic internet service and some cheap data center hosting you can actually set up yourself up as a proxy provider pretty easily.  What’s more there’s a thriving market in reselling paid proxies with residential IPs  so many companies simply buy and resell – adding little in value but adding to the price.

Unfortunately behind some of the slick, impressive proxy websites are people who haven’t a clue what they’re doing!   In fact I’ve always been rather wary of both VPN and proxy companies who have websites that look too good  – it’s often the best part of the company.  The issue is that these services will lack the infrastructure, knowledge, skill, resources and expertise to operate a fast, secure and anonymous proxy service.  Plus of course, decent residential proxies with safe residential ips.  Rather than just a Glype installation on a few rented VPS servers in a couple of data centres

Once you start using these services it’s normally quite simple to see the difference between the different types of residential proxy companies.  The good and bad ones will be quite obvious at that point, you won’t run backconnect proxies well without some decent knowledge.   However the cost to you might involve more than an initial subscription, it could also cost you that Instagram account with 400,000 followers too.  Using any residential IP address associated with extensive fraud is dangerous especially with social media and eCommerce transactions.

Whenever you use a new residential proxy service for the first time, try a limited test first and also use less important accounts.   Also ask questions and advice, about their proxy network, their residential IPs and their support.  You can’t run a decent residential proxy service without extensive knowledge of networking and residential IPs. The responses both speed and content should give you a good idea about the company and their professionalism and whether you should buy residential proxies from them.

Sounds obvious? It is but too many people end up losing important accounts whilst testing some super cheap proxy network service many which have a black listed IP address.  These providers are rated on the basis of their residential IPs but all offer standard datacenter proxies too.

So without further waffle here’s my current three favorite proxy network providers and why I am using them.

Storm Proxies 

storm proxies Great for Ticketmaster and Ticket Sites

It might sound funny but one of the first things I liked about Storm Proxies is that they refunded my money quickly.  In truth the error was my fault – I ordered a package of dedicated private proxies without realizing these were all assigned datacenter IP addresses.  As I needed residential IP addresses then these simply wouldn’t work, to be fair I got a refund quickly and without issue. This does highlight another aspect of the best proxy companies, they usually know the various platforms and which proxies work best better than you.  Especially when dealing with residential IP usage – ask them their advice.

Here’s why I have been a long time subscriber to Storm Proxies and why they’re the first on my list of best proxy providers who provide rotating residential proxies.

  • Customer Support – responsive and knowledgeable, these guys have been in business a long time and know their stuff.  Their business model is based on reputation and long term relationships with a rock solid money back guarantee. One of the oldest residential proxy network providers and great customer support.
  • Hardware – Storm Proxies own all their own hardware which run both their datacenter proxies and the proxy servers with residential IP addresses.  That is the actually physical servers and workstations which your traffic is routed through.  It’s actually extremely rare as most companies rent or lease the computers their proxy servers run on.  It crucially means that they can control, configure and support their servers properly and directly.  This makes a huge different to privacy, anonymity and usually speed too.
  • Static Residential IPs – yes they’re extremely hard to find most companies automatically rotate your residential IP. Storm allow you to keep the same IPs and only rotate when you need them.
  • Range of Proxies – they’re a big company  and run their own Gigabit network which they control and optimize.  Currently running at around 70,000 IPs which is a huge number in this industry.  Most types covered but certainly a great place to buy residential proxy services. Interface is simple and easy to use.
  • No Bandwidth Limits – this isn’t always a good thing because if you  get some kid downloading 2GB porn files 24/7 on a proxy on your network segment then this is going to hit the speed.  However as mentioned Storm unlike many service providers – control and run their network and hardware directly.  They have complete control over network optimization and how their proxy network operates.  The speed doesn’t seem to be affected and having unlimited bandwidth keeps the cost down.  This is important if you need to upload and download large images or videos through your residential proxies.
  • Good Reputation – this proxy network has been going for years and many of their customers come from direct recommendation. It’s a model that works for them and relies on a good, responsive service.

RotatingProxies

Private Rotating Proxies Work well for Sneakers and Instagram

A new entrant to this page, as I’ve just started using them and I’ve decided to switch from another supplier.  So as promised I’ve updated this page to only include my current suppliers of residential IPs and relegated one I’ve stopped using.  That was Smart Proxies, they’re still great proxy service providers though and depending on you requirements, might be better than my three current favourites.

The new company I’m using, focus on supplying primarily US and EU based dedicated rotating proxies.  They won’t really win any awards for their name but are certainly worth checking out.  Rotating Proxies are their specialty and also their name,  they were recommended to me by a sneakerhead that I had a few drinks with at a SEO meeting.   Now one of the attractions of Luminati is that they have invested heavily in the infrastructure which connects you to their residential IP addresses.   As such their pricing reflects this and they primarily target business customers looking for elite private proxies.  The costs are higher generally because you pay on bandwidth used for each residential IP.   Also it’s becoming increasingly obvious to users that if speed is even remotely important to you then this business grade infrastructure is essential.

Rotating-Proxies have taken this route and developed a business grade backconnect proxy network to allow access to their services.  This means several things – speed, reliability and the ability to offer facilities like unmetered bandwidth and no throttling.  They also take care to maintain anonymity by deleting logs and making sure that those HTTP headers are secure.   The most noticeable features though are they’re fast and seem to work very well with my social networking accounts including using the rotating proxy API.   Here’s a list of RotatingProxies features –

  • No Bandwidth limits – important for some us who don’t want to get extra charges or restrictions when we use our proxies.
  • Proxy Rotation – they’ve spent some time and money on developing this, the proxy rotation works seamlessly and is set to rotate every five minutes.  The back end interface is easy to use, although less powerful than something like Luminati.
  • Easy Cancellation – it’s something which is important to me.  You can cancel with a click in the members area without being interrogated by email or phone!
  • IP Addresses – for many people these are the crucial factor, great infrastructure and speed is nothing without clean, diverse and reliable IP addresses.  RotatingProxies have a huge diverse pool from a wide range of sources.  They claim to curate these IP addresses (select carefully and protect) rather than just gather as many as possible and it seems to show in my results.
  • No Bans or Blocks – now I haven’t tested in all areas only for my particular niches but these IP addresses seem top quality.  There have been virtually no blocks or bans at all, and I’m happy to see that the address pools are refreshed regularly.   The premium dedicated residential proxies are among the best quality I’ve encountered and for me have been as successful as using mobile proxies.
  • Quality and Quantity – often you get one or the other with proxy providers.  If you have the budget and the requirement the larger hyper-premium dedicated proxies are some of the best quality you can buy anywhere.

Like any other proxy company, it’s best to talk to them about your requirements and obviously the proxy price.  They’re not suitable for everyone but do have a wide range of affordable plans to cover the majority of people’s requirements.    What’s very obvious is that they take real care of their network and it’s a very safe place to buy residential proxies that will protect your accounts.

They do offer a trial but you won’t be able to use these as a source of free residential proxies as there is a charge.  It’s relatively small though and you do get to properly test out their all their networks and the IPv4 proxies properly.  Currently the charges are as follows –

  • 10 Proxies Trial for 48 hours – $4.99
  • 50 Proxies Trial for 48 hours – $14.99
  • 100 Proxies Trial for 48 hours – $28.40

This, I think is the best way to run a trial program especially for residential proxies.  A small charge to keep out the spammers and chancers who will abuse and wreck the network and wreck those residential IP ranges.  However still include a decent range of options and the chance to test out for a full 48 hours to see if their residential proxies work out for you.  This in my experience is better than just getting a small free trial where you don’t get to check features of things like private rotating servers properly.  If $5 is too much to test out a network of residential IPs then it’s probably time to try something else.

Luminati Proxies (Now Brightdata)

where to buy residential proxies

Great for all Tasks but the Premium Choice !

These are the biggest players in the residential proxy market, largely because of their business model.  They have been around for many years, and are largely believed to have the largest proxy network in the world.  If you want a million IPs then they’re certainly the nearest you’ll get to unlimited proxies anywhere in the current market!  They also heavily market themselves as a legitimate proxy provider for large organisations and cultivate Fortune 500 links.   So if you’re looking at doing anything remotely dodgy over your proxies then it’s probably worth skipping Luminati.

Now just for the record I’m not entirely comfortable with the way that Luminati obtain their residential IP addresses.  However they have improved their transparency over the last few years and to get well over a million IPs the model does seem to work.  If you don’t know basically they obtain their IP addresses by routing proxy server traffic through standard home users all over the world.

How do Luminati do this?  It’s a fairly unique setup as Luminati provide free applications like a VPN service called Hola which is extremely popular. Users are allowed to route through the Hola P2P network using their VPN software in exchange for allowing traffic from the network to use their own bandwidth and idle processing time.  That’s right, you can use the VPN for free but you have to allow traffic to be routed through your own residential IP address and computer!  This is how Luminati are able to supply millions of residential IP addresses all over the world, by routing them through Hola PCs.

Previously this agreement was hidden carefully in the terms and conditions, but at least now it’s displayed fairly prominently on their FAQ.    Yet still many Hola users are unaware that other people are using their bandwidth and processing power.  Personally I’d never use Hola because of this, but I do use Luminati as it’s so reliable and safe and your IP address will literally be a real home user.

  • Anonymity –  there’s no doubt having the ability to route your connection through anyone of millions of IP addresses across the planet is going to provide a decent level of privacy.  This is supplemented by the many filters that the Luminati dashboard has so you can control where your traffic is routed.
  • Ultimate Residential Addresses – Luminati’s weakness is in many ways it’s strength too. These are real people’s computers and IP addresses and such are virtually undetectable from almost all social platforms for example.  If appearing to be from a residential address is your number one priority then Luminati is the best option.
  • Sticky IPs – you can’t get static addresses because of the way their model works but you can get ‘stickly’ IPs which will stay the same for ten minutes.  This is normally enough for things like ATC checkouts and most e-Commerce sites.
  • Support – Luminati support is fast and efficient, and also their dashboard allows you to configure most options yourself.  THere are a host of filters which can tailor how your proxies operate and which IP addresses are used.
  • Geographical Scope – residential addresses can be hard to obtain especially in certain countries.  Luminati has by far the widest distribution of residential addresses, so if you need a wide variety of countries this is probably your best option.
  • Costs – Luminati has the reputation of being the best but very expensive.  This high cost reputation is not entirely fair as their prices have fallen over the years although it does cost more than most.   This is mainly due to charging per gb unlike my other preferred providers.  The power of the dashboard and the various filter options also means you can limit the number of proxies that you actually need to use at any one time.  It’s not the cheapest option though.

Buy Proxies in Bulk  But Only What You Need

So there you are – the three best (in my opinion) Residential Proxy Providers that I am using at the moment.  Are they really the best/cheapest places to buy a residential proxy ? Well I don’t know for sure,  but they all work for me and are definitely worth checking out.  If you’re looking to buy private proxy services for a specific need, they’re a great starting point.

The mistake many people make in purchasing private proxies with residential IPs  is to think that volume is the most important consideration. Now obviously you need enough to support your activities but quality is the crucial factor. Buying huge numbers of slow proxies with spammed, blacklisted IP addresses is going to cause more harm than good. You’re way better off reducing the number of residential IPs you use and increasing the quality. These companies will all support your efforts if you work with them, it makes sense for them to create successful partnerships.  Too many of the places where you can buy residential proxies cheaply simply take your money and run.

It’s often a difficult choice, you can find cheap residential proxies advertised on many sites but the vast majority are awful and are often just running spammed datacenter IPs.  Some providers are better for different platforms and locations, only you will know when you’ve found a company that works for you.  Whichever provider you choose, before you buy proxies from anyone make sure you ask questions about which  are best for your specific purpose.  Also make sure you use any tests or trials that are available first to see if everything works ok for you.