AI agents browse for users: they read pages, fill forms and come back with a result. Sites now sort them from other bots and verify the ones that sign their requests. Cloudflare classifies bot traffic as search, agent, training or transact, and has treated signed agents as verified since July 1, 2026. Big agents identify themselves: OpenAI signs every Operator request and publishes the IP addresses of ChatGPT-User. A proxy fits an agent for place, sessions and a company's own egress, on sites that allow the visit. We read the sellers' pricing pages on October 26, 2026. Pools with sticky sessions cost $0.99 to $8.00 per GB at entry. Our Premium pool holds a session up to 24 hours from $1.49/GB.
The sections below cover how sites verify agents, where a proxy fits, what it does not change, and which proxies fit agent sessions.
How do websites tell AI agents apart?
By what the traffic does, and by proof of who sent it. Cloudflare's bot documentation sorts tracked bots by behavior:
| Behavior | How Cloudflare describes it |
|---|---|
| Search | crawling to build search indexes or RAG databases |
| Agent | agents a user sends to visit a page for them |
| Training | crawling to train or fine-tune models |
| Transact | checkout or other transaction actions |
The same page says signed agents count as verified since July 1, 2026. Verification matters because names alone prove little. Cloudflare's Web Bot Auth post says "user agent headers alone are easily spoofed". Checks therefore add IP validation and cryptographic signatures, with HTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421) as the standard.
How do the big AI agents identify themselves?
In the open. OpenAI's crawler documentation says ChatGPT-User visits a page "when users ask ChatGPT or a CustomGPT a question". It publishes ChatGPT-User's IP addresses. For its Operator agent, OpenAI told Cloudflare that it "signs all Operator requests so site owners can verify they genuinely originate from Operator".
An agent that signs its requests gives a site something to verify and allow. An unsigned agent behind a proxy looks like any other visitor, so it gets whatever the site gives unknown traffic.
Where does a proxy fit for an AI agent?
Where the place or the session of a visit matters, on a site that allows the visit:
| Agent job | Proxy type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Act for a user abroad | Residential, by country | the local version |
| Hold a login or a cart | Sticky residential or ISP | one address per task |
| Many agents at once | Rotating residential | spreads the visits |
| Company network egress | Datacenter or static ISP | a fixed address |
| Calls to an AI API | None | limits are per account |
Set the proxy on the browser or HTTP client itself, since an instruction in a prompt changes no network route. Our guides to proxies for Playwright and Puppeteer show the setting. Our explainer on rotating and static residential proxies covers the session choice. For pacing on sites that allow automated visits, see fixing 429 errors and our web scraping guide.
What does a proxy not change for an agent?
- Account limits. A limit per account or per key stays, whatever the address. Our page on LLM API rate limits explains why.
- The site's rules. A proxy changes where a request comes from. It grants no permission, and RFC 9309 says robots rules "are not a form of access authorization" either way.
- Verification. A proxy cannot make an agent verified; a signature from its operator does that.
- What a site detects. Sites read more than the address, as our page on how websites detect proxies shows.
What are the best residential proxies for AI agent sessions in 2026?
Pools with sticky sessions and targeting by place, since an agent's task often runs as one session. We read each seller's own pricing page on October 26, 2026:
| Seller | Price per GB, Oct 26 | Why it fits agents |
|---|---|---|
| HProxy Premium | $1.49/GB from 1 GB | sessions to 24 hours, city |
| HProxy Mobile | $1.50/GB from 1 GB | sticky up to 7 days |
| Evomi | $0.99 from 15 GB | rotating and sticky |
| Decodo | $3.75 at 3 GB, monthly | sticky, ZIP and ASN |
| MarsProxies | $4.99 at 1 GB | rotating and sticky |
| Bright Data | $8, or $4 with a code | session control, companies only |
Entry prices for pools with sticky sessions spread eightfold:
Bright Data opens its residential network only to verified companies. For ten sellers compared in full, see our best residential proxies guide.
What does HProxy offer for AI agents?
Residential Premium targets by state, city and ASN, with sticky sessions from 3 minutes to 24 hours. It costs $1.49/GB for one GB, down to $1.00/GB at 1,000 GB+. Our mobile proxies cost $1.50/GB per GB with sessions up to 7 days. A static ISP address or datacenter IP gives an agent a fixed egress. Threads are unlimited, and the balance never expires.
For coding agents, see proxies for Claude Code and proxies for AI coding tools. Our docs cover the gateway, pricing lists every product, and the free proxy checker tests an address.
What this page could not check
- No test of any network. We measured no speed or success rate at any seller, ours included, and ran no agent.
- One network's classes. Cloudflare's behavior classes describe its own network, and other sites decide in their own ways.
- One company's agents. OpenAI's page and quote describe its own agents only.
- Prices as published. The table shows each seller's own figures of October 26, 2026, without a purchase to confirm them.
- No legal advice. Site terms and laws differ by site and country.
- Check by January 26, 2027. Bot classes, signing standards and prices change, and every figure here needs a fresh read by then.
Sources
- Cloudflare documentation, Signed agents and verified bots, updated October 8, 2026, read October 26, 2026.
- Cloudflare, "Forget IPs: using cryptography to verify bot and agent traffic", May 15, 2025, read October 26, 2026.
- OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers, read October 26, 2026.
- IETF, RFC 9309, Robots Exclusion Protocol, September 2022.
- Evomi, Decodo, MarsProxies and Bright Data, residential pricing pages, read October 26, 2026.
- HProxy, residential, mobile, ISP and datacenter product pages and price list, read October 25 and 26, 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How do websites tell AI agents apart from other bots?
How do the big AI agents identify themselves?
Should an AI agent use rotating or sticky proxies?
Can a proxy raise an AI agent's API rate limits?
What are the best residential proxies for AI agent sessions?
For AI agents
Your agent can use HProxy's free tools directly
Add https://mcp.hproxy.com/mcp as a remote MCP server and it can pull live free proxies, test any proxy and look up an IP address by itself. No key, nothing to install.
