A residential proxy for Japan gives you an IP from a Japanese internet provider. Japanese sites then treat your requests as a visit from Japan. Use it for jobs that need a local view: prices in yen, stock on Japanese stores, Japanese search results, and checks in one city.
Three facts shape the purchase. Japan holds 188.6 million IPv4 addresses, and four groups hold over half of them. Free Japanese proxies are mostly cloud servers, and all of ours were flagged on October 25, 2026. And "proxy service" means two things in searches about Japan. Our residential proxies target Japan at $0.50/GB for one GB.
Which proxy does this page mean?
Searches about Japan use "proxy" for two different services. A shopping proxy buys goods from Japanese stores and ships them to you. Google's suggestions show this use, with searches such as "is japan rabbit a good proxy" and "how do japanese proxy services work".
This page covers the other kind: an IP proxy. It sends your requests through a Japanese address, so websites see a visitor in Japan.
Which networks does a Japanese IP come from?
APNIC, the internet registry for the Asia Pacific region, lists every block of addresses it gives out, with the holder's country. Its file of October 26, 2026 lists 188,591,360 IPv4 addresses for Japan, in 4,738 blocks held by 1,183 holders:
SoftBank holds 42,891,776 addresses. NTT DOCOMO holds 28,640,768 under two records, OCN 21,586,944 and KDDI 15,204,352. Another 16,980,224 sit under the early-registration block of the Japan Network Information Center.
Small holders barely register. The 785 holders with 16,384 addresses or fewer share 1,947,904 addresses, 1.0% of the total. After KDDI come ARTERIA Networks, JCOM, So-net, OPTAGE and BIGLOBE.
Most Japanese users can also reach sites over IPv6. APNIC Labs measured 62.2% of users in Japan as IPv6-capable in the 30 days to October 23, 2026. A year earlier the share was 59.2%, and in October 2020 it was 40.8%.
How big are the Japanese pools sellers advertise?
Small next to Japan's address space. We read the Japan pages of six sellers through our server on October 25, 2026, and three printed a Japan number:
| Seller | Advertised | Of Japan's IPv4 |
|---|---|---|
| Shifter | 3.1 million+ | 1.6% |
| Oxylabs | 2,633,211 | 1.4% |
| PlainProxies | 506 thousand+ | 0.27% |
PlainProxies also states "15.2M+ unique IPs/month", 8.1% of Japan's IPv4, next to its 506 thousand. A count over a month and a count at one moment are different numbers. Oxylabs' figure covers residential and datacenter addresses together. Decodo, NodeMaven and Byteful print only worldwide numbers on their Japan pages.
So ask a seller what a number counts, and over how many days. We do not publish a pool size per country ourselves.
What can you do with a Japanese IP?
Google's help page says "IP addresses are roughly based on geography", and your location "helps to show you nearby results". With a Japanese address, sites show you what they show people in Japan:
- Prices and stock. Read the yen prices, offers and stock that Japanese stores show to local shoppers.
- Search results. Track rankings and local results as a searcher in Japan sees them.
- City checks. See what a site shows in Tokyo, Osaka or Yokohama, with Residential Premium.
- Ad checks. Confirm that a Japanese campaign appears in Japan, and how it looks there.
Residential Lite targets the country at the lowest rate. Residential Premium adds city and network targeting. Our page on Japanese proxies lists 224 cities in 44 regions and 85 networks, from the Premium pool lists of October 9, 2026.
A proxy changes your IP and nothing else. A site's own rules still apply to your work. Detection services list residential proxies too: MaxMind's Anonymous IP database has a flag for them. Our guide to how websites detect proxies covers the other checks.
Why are free Japanese proxies mostly cloud servers?
Because that is where they run. Our collector reads the free proxy lists published online. Since May 13, 2026, it has seen 6,932 Japanese addresses on those lists, and 4,196 of them ever worked. On October 25, 32 were working:
27 of the 32 ran on datacenter networks, with Amazon, Oracle and Akamai at the top. A cloud address in Tokyo looks Japanese, yet sites can tell it is a server. Use free proxies only to test your code. Our free proxy list for Japan shows the working ones.
How do you pay from Japan?
Two ways work at our checkout:
- Card, from $10. Visa and Mastercard are accepted.
- Crypto, from $3. Our guide to buying proxies with crypto shows what each network charges to send a payment.
Both ways fund one balance, and the balance never expires. PayPal is not offered at our checkout. Our payment options page lists every method.
How many GB does a Japanese job use?
Count the pages first. HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2024 put the median desktop page at 2,652 KB and the median mobile page at 2,311 KB. At those sizes, one GB holds roughly 380 full desktop page loads.
Text-only requests use far less. Run twenty typical pages through the proxy, check the traffic in the dashboard, and scale from there.
Which one should you buy?
For most Japanese jobs, buy Residential Lite with Japan as the country, at $0.50/GB for one GB and $0.44 per GB at volume. Free Japanese proxies lose: they are flagged cloud servers. Choose Residential Premium when the job needs a city, a network or a sticky session of up to 24 hours. It costs $1.49/GB for one GB and $1.00 per GB at volume. Our residential proxies page has the full price list.
What this page could not check
- We tested no speed, success rate or block rate, on any network, ours included.
- We do not publish which Japanese networks our own exits come from, or how many there are.
- APNIC's file counts addresses given out, which is neither the addresses in use nor a count of users.
- Seller pool numbers are as advertised on October 25, 2026. PlainProxies' page could only be read from its title and description.
- The free proxy figures come from one day and one IP reputation check.
- We will check every number on this page again by January 25, 2027.
Sources
- APNIC, delegated-apnic-extended-latest, file of October 26, 2026 (records to October 24), read October 25, 2026.
- APNIC, RDAP records for the largest Japanese address blocks, read October 25, 2026.
- APNIC Labs, IPv6 use per economy, Japan, data to October 23, 2026.
- Google, search suggestions for "japan proxy" and "japan residential proxy", read October 25, 2026.
- Google Search Help, "Understand and manage your location when you search on Google", read October 25, 2026.
- HTTP Archive, Web Almanac 2024, Page Weight chapter, December 30, 2024.
- MaxMind, GeoIP Anonymous IP database documentation, read October 25, 2026.
- Shifter, Oxylabs, PlainProxies, Decodo, NodeMaven and Byteful, Japan location pages, as advertised on October 25, 2026.
- HProxy, residential pricing page, payment options page and Japan page, read October 25, 2026.
- HProxy, free proxy measurement for Japan, October 25, 2026.
