What is the difference between mobile and residential proxies?
Residential proxies use IP addresses assigned to households by consumer internet providers. You pay for traffic, not for a list of IPs, and the site sees a home connection. Mobile proxies use IP addresses assigned by cellular carriers. The site sees a phone network instead of a home broadband line.
Carriers place many subscribers behind one public address. Blocking that address can hit a lot of ordinary phones, so websites tend to treat carrier ranges more carefully than home broadband ranges. That is how mobile networks work. It is not a promise that a given site will accept your request.
Some products blur the line. SOAX includes mobile IPs in the same residential pool, so a session may exit on either type. If you need a carrier IP specifically, confirm the network name of the address you receive before you rely on it.
Mobile proxies vs residential proxies, side by side
Where our database has both products, the comparison looks like this.
- IP source: a cellular carrier (mobile) versus a household broadband line (residential).
- Billing: both are sold by the gigabyte in the prices we have verified. We do not list dedicated SIM or modem rentals, because those prices are not in the database.
- Price: mobile costs more per GB in every pair we can compare. See the figures below.
- Pool: residential pools are advertised in the tens or hundreds of millions of IPs. The only mobile pool size we have on file is Infatica, at 5M+ IPs.
- Stability: both can rotate, and both can disappear. A phone drops off the radio network. A home device can be switched off.
When mobile proxies are worth the extra cost
Pay for mobile when a small job fails on home residential IPs and the higher price per GB is still cheaper than not getting the data. Typical cases are checking a mobile ad placement, testing an app or a mobile page from a carrier address, and collecting a short list of URLs that reject household ranges.
A carrier IP does not put you above a website's terms of service. Use these proxies for work you are allowed to do. If the job is large, run a short test first: the premium adds up quickly once you leave the trial allowance.
When residential proxies are the better buy
Choose residential for volume. Price monitoring, SERP checks and large crawls burn gigabytes, and household IPs are the cheaper way to look like a normal visitor. Published residential rates in our database run from $0.49/GB (Evomi, on a subscription) and $1/GB (DataImpulse, pay as you go) up to Bright Data's $8/GB list price for 1 GB.
If you need one address that stays put, neither rotating product is the right tool. ISP proxies are static IPs registered to a consumer ISP and hosted in a datacenter. They cost per IP, not per GB.
What mobile proxies cost compared with residential
Only a few providers in our database publish a mobile price we have checked. Thordata lists mobile at $5/GB for 1 GB and $2.20/GB at 500 GB, against residential at $2/GB for 1 GB and $1/GB at 150 GB. Infatica lists mobile at $8/GB pay as you go and from $4/GB at 200 GB, against residential at $4/GB pay as you go and $3.60/GB at 100 GB. Those volume points are not identical, so compare the pay-as-you-go rates if you want a like-for-like number: $8 versus $4.
SOAX does not sell mobile as a separate line. Mobile IPs use the same rate as residential, by country tier, from $5/GB on tier 1. Bright Data offers mobile, but the price is not verified, so it is not quoted here. Decodo sells mobile proxies and includes a 100 MB trial on residential mobile proxies with a 14-day refund, but we do not have a verified mobile price per GB. Do not treat a missing price as a cheap price.
How to choose, and what to test first
Send the same small set of URLs through residential, then through mobile if the vendor sells it. Count the successes and divide the bill by that count. If residential already succeeds, the mobile premium is wasted traffic.
Start on a trial where one exists. Decodo's trial is 100 MB on residential mobile proxies. Infatica's 7-day trial is paid: $4 for residential and $8 for mobile. Terms change, so confirm them on the vendor's site before you rely on a figure from November 4, 2026. Then compare full residential plans on the ranking, which is built from the same price file.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Are mobile proxies the same as residential proxies?
No. In this comparison, residential means a household broadband IP and mobile means a cellular carrier IP. A few vendors, including SOAX, mix mobile addresses into the residential pool, so the product name alone does not tell you which kind of IP you will get.
Are mobile proxies faster than residential proxies?
Not as a rule. A carrier path adds a radio link and shared public addressing. Speed depends on the provider's gateway and the route, not on a 4G or 5G label.
Which is cheaper, mobile or residential?
Residential, in every pair where we have both prices at a similar volume. Infatica pay as you go is $4/GB residential and $8/GB mobile. Thordata is $2/GB residential and $5/GB mobile at 1 GB.
Do I need mobile proxies for social networks?
Only if household IPs are failing on a task you are allowed to run. A carrier IP does not make an unauthorized account comply with the platform's rules.