Obtaining access to any volume of residential IP addresses can be extremely difficult which is why they are often so expensive to obtain.  Most of us have access to one or two residential addresses, through our home internet connections and local internet service providers.  However none of these companies are ever going to release large number of these addresses. It really can be difficult to get access to any large number of these addresses.

A US residential IP address is what most Americans have assigned to their home computers.  They are allocated by Internet service providers (ISPs) for people to access the internet. Residential addresses are not commercially available in the US normally.

There is often confusion in this area though, many services who promise a US residential IP are not being entirely truthful.   Often these proxies are simply relaying ordinary datacenter addresses.

Standard VPN or Proxies Won’t Have a US Residential IP

The first myth is that you can pick up residential classified IP addresses for free online or through one of the low cost VPN services.  You won’t, the vast majority (and I’m talking 99%) here of the IP addresses allocated in this way are commercial IP addresses.  The servers these services run on are in vast datacentres, colleges or ordinary businesses – none of which will be allocated residential IP addresses.   A very few services, one mentioned below have obtained a certain number of these addresses.  However they are very careful with them as they can be rather expensive.   Residential IP addresses can be obtained from specialized companies but they’ll generally cost more than simple VPN services.

Remember the core difference between a dedicated residential VPN or Proxy and ordinary ones is how their IP addresses are classified.  If it’s not specified then presume that they are commercial addresses.  In addition the country classification can also be important especially if you’re using addresses with commercial bots or software.  Often these require addresses registered in your target market.

Obviously a residential US IP address is going to be way more useful that one from Afghanistan. So you need to be very careful that the addresses suit your requirements.  If you can find cheap residential proxies, great but make sure the addresses are worth paying for.  Quality is more important than quantity in these situations.  Paying slightly more for a genuine, static residential IP proxy will be way more effective than hundreds of hacked foreign addresses.

Residential Addresses are Only Allocated from ISPs

It’s important to remember this, wherever you are thinking of buying your residential proxies – the IP addresses have been allocated from an ISP.  It’s ultimately why they are so hard to obtain, you can get allocated blocks they are normally assigned individually to home users.  Some companies have negotiated agreements with ISP companies but they’re likely to be expensive which is why the costs are always going to be higher than for standard commercial IP addresses.

There are other ways of obtaining residential addresses.  Some companies rent the addresses directly from home users with fast connections, again it works well but adds a huge layer of expense.  You can also find some big players  like Luminati who have built a huge residential IP network.  They basically offer applications like ‘free VPN’ service to individuals in exchange for using their internet connections (and their residential IP addresses).  The customers are technically informed, somewhere in the terms and conditions.  Yet most are probably unaware of their bandwidth being sublet!

It should be noted though that the Luminati network is costly but very effective for many tasks.  If you can afford them they are a very safe option for most residential proxy tasks.

If you’re not keen on Luminati then there are a few other decent alternatives.  The fastest residential IP addresses are only accessible from a small handful of companies who specialize in this area.  They have built up large networks of residential addresses from a variety of sources including some mentioned above.

Of the companies I deal with my favorite is Storm Proxies simply because they are the only ones who actually own the hardware that these residential addresses are allocated too.  This might not seem important but without control over the hardware you are unable to ensure the proxies are secure, safe and properly configured.  Running your internet connection through some unaware random user on the Luminati network might not be suitable for everyone.

Why Are Residential IP addresses so Important?

The main reason is that they are the only way you can replicate a real home users or customer.  More and more web sites are blocking access from commercial address ranges as an easy way to stop people circumventing their filters.  If you want to run multiple Instagram accounts for example, you won’t get far using commercial IP addresses.  Most people making money out of this platform run private proxies for Instagram, allocating two accounts to each address as a maximum.  Without taking these precautions then they’re likely to wake up one morning and find that their Instagram account with a few hundred thousand followers has been deleted.

It’s easy to criticize the Luminati method but the primary requirement of using a residential IP address is to look like an ordinary home user.  Routing your request through a standard home user works which is why they are so successful.  There’s an old saying that no-one ever got fired for hiring IBM, with proxies you can probably substitute Luminati for them.

Any platform directed at social media, entertainment or selling things is primarily targeting ordinary home users.  Home users don’t come in from connections with commercial IP address ranges so it’s easy to simply block access from these automatically.  Netflix was one of the first to block access from any commercial IP address and so it’s now virtually impossible to access from a corporate site or using a standard VPN or proxy.  They did this because people were using cheap VPN services to switch their locale when they connected to Netflix usually to the US version which is way better than everyone else’s.

Any automated software which promotes, manages or even buys products from these sites needs multiple identities.  If you try and run a sneaker bot or some research tool using a single IP address or your home connection it get’s blocked pretty quickly.  The way to access multiple identities is to have access to a large range of IP addresses which are in the correct country and are classified as residential.    Great proxies like this are what separate the winners from the losers, try and do any of this using cheap or free proxies will at best waste your time.  The worst result will be when valuable accounts are blocked, filtered or even deleted.

Here’s where we get our US residential IPs, take advantage of the 48 hour trial where you can test first.

Storm

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