Mobile proxies send your traffic through addresses of mobile carriers. Residential proxies send it through addresses that internet providers assign to homes. The real difference is sharing: a carrier puts many subscribers behind one address, while a home address serves one household.
For most work, residential is the better buy. In sellers' own price lists read between July and October 2026, mobile cost a median $4.00 per GB on the smallest plan, against $3.50 for residential. At volume, mobile cost about twice as much. Mobile is worth its price only where a carrier address itself is the point.
What is the difference between mobile and residential proxies?
Both run on consumer connections, and both can rotate or hold one address. The network behind them differs, and detection databases record it. MaxMind labels an address with a user type such as "cellular" or "residential". IP2Location marks mobile carriers as MOB and fixed-line providers as ISP. A site that reads these labels knows which kind of proxy you use.
The bigger difference is how many people share an address. Carriers run out of IPv4 addresses, so they put many subscribers behind one public address with carrier-grade NAT. RFC 6598 even reserves an address range, 100.64.0.0/10, for the networks inside it.
A 2016 study at ACM's Internet Measurement Conference measured how common this is. It found carrier-grade NAT in more than 90% of cellular networks, against 17 to 18% of all access networks. Some operators in its survey reported 20 subscribers per address.
| Mobile proxy | Residential proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| The address comes from | A mobile carrier | A fixed-line internet provider |
| How databases label it | MaxMind: cellular; IP2Location: MOB | MaxMind: residential; IP2Location: ISP |
| Who else uses the address | Many subscribers at once | One household |
| Median price per GB, smallest plan | $4.00 (33 sellers) | $3.50 (65 sellers) |
| Median price per GB, largest plan | $2.20 | $1.00 |
| Targeting at HProxy | Country | State, city and ISP |
Why are sites careful with carrier addresses?
Blocking a shared address blocks everyone behind it. RFC 7021, the IETF's report on carrier-grade NAT, says a blacklisted carrier address "could negatively impact legitimate users". Limits on connections per address can misread sharing "as too many connections from a single device".
Cloudflare made the same point in a 2024 post about residential proxies. It called IP blocking "particularly detrimental for mobile networks where many users share their IPs behind CGNATs". Ordinary phones can even look like proxies to a timing check. A 2023 study from EURECOM, KAUST and Amadeus found that some carriers split TCP connections at the antenna, which made plain 4G traffic resemble proxy traffic.
That caution is what sellers mean when they call mobile addresses more trusted. It cuts both ways: you share the address with strangers, and if their traffic gets it listed, it is listed for you too.
Residential addresses get no free pass either. MaxMind's Anonymous IP database has a flag for residential proxies, and sites detect both kinds in the ways our guide to how websites detect proxies describes.
What do mobile and residential proxies cost?
We compared the per-GB prices that sellers list on their own pricing pages. For each seller we took its latest reading and its smallest and largest plan.
The fairest test compares the same seller, so we did that too. All 33 sellers with a mobile price per GB also list residential per GB.
On the smallest plan, mobile cost a median 1.17 times the residential price at the same seller. These six sellers show the spread, from their own pages:
| Seller | Mobile, per GB | Residential, per GB | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | $7.50 | $6.00 | September 26 and October 12, 2026 |
| Decodo | $4.00 | $4.00 | September 26 and October 12, 2026 |
| SOAX | $5.00 | $5.00 | September 26 and October 12, 2026 |
| DataImpulse | $2.00 | $1.00 | September 26 and October 12, 2026 |
| Evomi | $3.98 | $3.98 | September 26, 2026 |
| Proxy-Cheap | $5.99 | $1.50 | September 27 and October 12, 2026 |
Some sellers also rent a dedicated mobile port by the day or month. Those plans have no per-GB price, so they sit outside this comparison.
A free mobile proxy is rare. On October 22, 2026, only 3 of the 6,865 working free proxies on our list sat on carrier addresses, and all 3 were already flagged as proxies. RFC 7021 found that an application behind carrier NAT that never sent traffic out "did not open an incoming port". Our page on free mobile proxies covers the rest.
What is each one best at?
Residential proxies suit most work. Data collection, price checks, ad checks and search results by city all run on them at the lower price. They can also target more finely: ours go down to state, city and ISP.
Mobile proxies suit the jobs where the carrier address is the point. That means testing how a site or app behaves on a mobile network, or checking what a carrier's users are shown. Expect to pay more for every GB.
Which one should you buy?
For most jobs, buy residential proxies. Mobile loses on price: it cost more at 20 of the 33 sellers that sell both, and about twice as much at volume. It also targets less finely. Buy mobile only when the job needs a carrier address.
Our residential proxies start at $0.50/GB for one GB, with state, city and ISP targeting. Our mobile proxies cost $1.50/GB, with country targeting, rotating or sticky.
What this page could not check
- We tested no speed, success rate or block rate, on any network, ours included.
- No vendor publishes how often sites block mobile addresses against residential ones.
- Prices are the sellers' advertised per-GB prices. Dedicated mobile ports sold by the day or month are left out.
- The carrier-grade NAT measurement dates from 2016, and its operator survey is not a random sample.
- The mobile flags in our free proxy data come from one IP reputation check.
- We will check every number on this page again by January 22, 2027.
Sources
- HProxy price records: per-GB prices of 33 mobile and 65 residential sellers from their own pricing pages, read July 20 to October 14, 2026.
- Oxylabs, Decodo, SOAX, DataImpulse, Evomi and Proxy-Cheap, mobile and residential pricing pages, read September 26 to October 12, 2026.
- P. Richter et al., "A Multi-perspective Analysis of Carrier-Grade NAT Deployment", ACM IMC 2016.
- IETF, RFC 6598, "IANA-Reserved IPv4 Prefix for Shared Address Space", April 2012.
- IETF, RFC 7021, "Assessing the Impact of Carrier-Grade NAT on Network Applications", September 2013.
- MaxMind, GeoIP web services responses and Anonymous IP database documentation, read October 22, 2026.
- IP2Location, DB23 usage types, read October 22, 2026.
- Cloudflare, "Using machine learning to detect bot attacks that leverage residential proxies", June 24, 2024.
- E. Chiapponi, M. Dacier and O. Thonnard, "The Impact of the Client Environment on Residential IP Proxies Detection", ACM IMC 2023 poster.
- HProxy, mobile and residential product pages and free proxy measurement, October 22, 2026.
