Mobile vs residential proxies: a mobile exit is a carrier address shared by many phones, a residential exit is one household's ISP line. Measured on 13 September 2026 with the same test, our residential exits answered faster and cost less per page, while our mobile exits scored lower on fraud. Choose by the job, not by stealth alone.
Most comparisons of the two types are written from claims. This one puts two measured runs side by side: both on 13 September 2026, eight minutes apart, from the same machine, with the same curl settings and the same target page. Every number below comes from a test we published with its method, and the prices come from our own price list.
The difference in one table
| Item | Mobile proxies | Residential proxies |
|---|---|---|
| Where the IP comes from | A mobile operator assigns it to 4G/LTE/5G handsets | A consumer ISP assigns it to a household line |
| Who uses the address | Many subscribers at once, through carrier-grade NAT | Usually one household |
| What a site's lookup sees | A mobile carrier network | A consumer ISP network |
| Targeting in the username | Country, then region and city or a named carrier | Basic: country, state, city or ISP by ASN; Premium: region and city, or ISP |
| Longest sticky session | 1,440 minutes (24 hours) | 120 minutes on Basic, 1,440 on Premium |
| Price per GB | $5 for 1 GB, down to $2.30 at 500 GB | Basic $1.00, down to $0.80 at 1,000 GB; Premium $4 for 1 GB, down to $2.20 at 500 GB |
The first two rows explain the rest. A carrier puts thousands of phones behind each public address. A site that blocked that address would lock out its own customers, so platforms rarely do, and fraud databases score it low. A home address belongs to one line, and there are far more of them, so residential pools are larger and cheaper per gigabyte. QuanticData mobile proxies are bought for the carrier identity; QuanticData residential proxies are bought for reach and price.
Measured side by side on 13 September 2026
Both runs used one machine in Europe, curl 8.7.1, one request at a time and a 25-second cap. The target page was the Wikipedia homepage: 119,573 bytes of HTML on every success. Each country got five rotating exits, then two sticky sessions with a 10-minute TTL and three requests about 20 seconds apart. Ten more requests went through the worldwide gateway. Every exit address was then looked up on the Scamalytics fraud score.
The mobile run went from 16:59 to 17:07 UTC, with no carrier pinned. The residential run, on the Premium line, went from 17:17 to 17:24 UTC. Full method and per-country rows: the mobile test of 13 September and the residential test of 13 September.
| Measure | Mobile | Residential Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Countries | 8: US, GB, DE, IN, IT, BR, FR, ES | 10: the same 8, plus CA and AU |
| Rotating exits in the requested country | 40 of 40 | 50 of 50 |
| Distinct networks (ASNs) behind the rotating exits | 23 carrier ASNs | 41 ISP ASNs |
| Median time to first byte, same HTML page | 1.74 s | 1.26 s |
| Sticky-session requests answered | 48 of 48 | 60 of 60 |
| Worldwide gateway, 10 requests | 10 distinct IPs in 8 countries | 10 distinct IPs in 6 countries |
| Median Scamalytics fraud score (0 is clean) | 1 | 2 |
| Exits scoring between 0 and 10 | 65 of 67 | 75 of 80 |
Three things stand out. Both networks put every rotating exit in the country we asked for. The residential exits answered the same page faster, by about half a second at the median. The mobile exits came out cleaner on fraud score, because an address that carries thousands of phones is hard to mark as bad.
We have measured the mobile network twice since. In the Instagram and TikTok test of 4 October 2026, 17 of 17 mobile exits in six countries came out on a carrier network in the requested country, and 51 of 51 public Instagram profiles loaded. In the fraud score test of 15 October 2026, 55 exits in 11 countries were looked up on proxycheck.io: 50 of 55 scored 0 out of 100 and the median was 0 in every country.
What 1,000 pages cost on each line
Both networks are billed per gigabyte, so the bill follows the page weight. For the 119,573-byte page of the test, 1,000 fetches move about 0.12 GB of body traffic:
| Line and pack | Price per GB | 1,000 pages |
|---|---|---|
| Residential Basic, 1,000 GB pack | $0.80 | $0.10 |
| Residential Basic, 25 to 100 GB packs | $1.00 | $0.12 |
| Residential Premium, 500 GB pack | $2.20 | $0.26 |
| Mobile, 500 GB pack | $2.30 | $0.28 |
| Residential Premium, 1 GB pack | $4.00 | $0.48 |
| Mobile, 1 GB pack | $5.00 | $0.60 |
Body bytes only: headers, TLS and retries add a little on every line. At entry prices a public page costs about five times less on Residential Basic than on mobile, and about three times less at the largest packs. Heavier pages scale the same way: an Instagram public profile weighed 207 KB on the wire in the October test, which is about $1.03 per 1,000 profiles at the 1 GB mobile price.
Which one for which job
| Job | What we would use | Why, from the numbers above |
|---|---|---|
| Public pages, prices and search results at volume | Residential Basic, rotating | Lowest cost per page; 50 of 50 exits in the requested country |
| Long logins and checkouts on sites that challenge cheap pools | Residential Premium, sticky up to 24 hours | Pool filters and 1,440-minute sessions |
| Accounts on phone-first apps such as Instagram and TikTok | Mobile, one sticky session per account | A carrier address; 51 of 51 Instagram profiles loaded on 4 October |
| Ads and offers checked by carrier | Mobile, carrier named in the username | Named carriers in each country |
| The lowest fraud score on a rotating address | Mobile | Median 1 on Scamalytics in September, median 0 on proxycheck.io in October |
| One fixed address for weeks | Neither: static ISP proxies | Mobile and residential addresses rotate by design |
A simple rule follows from this. Start on residential. Move a target to mobile when it is an app built for phones, when the job depends on a carrier, or when residential addresses get challenged there. Both networks live on the same account and take the country in the username the same way, so moving a job is a different line in the dashboard, not a new vendor. Platform by platform, the use-case pages show both sides, for example mobile proxies for Instagram and residential proxies for Instagram. The same logic one step down the price list is in residential vs datacenter proxies.
Performance, privacy and safety
Performance. On the same page from the same machine, the median time to first byte was 1.26 s on residential and 1.74 s on mobile. Your numbers depend on the target, its distance and the country you exit from, so time a few requests on your own targets before you buy volume. The proxy tester builds the commands in curl, Python and Node with timings.
Privacy. On both networks your traffic leaves through an exit you do not control. Use HTTPS: the exit then carries encrypted traffic and sees the hostname you connect to, not the page content or what you type on that site. Authenticate with a username and password or an IP allowlist, and keep proxy credentials out of shared code.
Safety and rules. Both are legal tools in most places. What you do through them still has to follow the law and each site's terms: a proxy changes where a request comes from, not what you are allowed to do.
Limits of this comparison
- One afternoon, five rotating exits per country: enough to see a pattern, not to promise a value for every address.
- The residential run used the Premium line; Basic draws on its own pool and was not part of this run.
- The mobile run of 13 September pinned no carrier; the fraud score run of 15 October did.
- Time to first byte depends on the target and the route as well as on the network.
The setting to buy and how to call it
For pages at volume, residential with the country in the username; for app accounts and carrier checks, mobile with the country and, if you want it, the carrier. Host and port for each network are in your dashboard.
# residential, rotating, United States
curl -x "$PROXY_HOST" -U "USER-country-us:PASS" https://ipinfo.io/json
# mobile, T-Mobile in the United States
curl -x "$PROXY_HOST" -U "USER-country-us-isp-t_mobile_usa:PASS" https://ipinfo.io/jsonResidential Basic costs $1.00 per GB, down to $0.80 at 1,000 GB, and comes with a free 100 MB trial. Residential Premium starts at $4 for 1 GB and falls to $2.20 per GB at 500 GB. Mobile bandwidth is $5 for 1 GB, valid 90 days, down to $2.30 per GB at 500 GB. All are one-off packs with no subscription, listed on the pricing page. For a ranking of providers by criteria, see the best mobile proxies in 2026, by criteria.