How to get residential proxies
Tags: residentialproxies, howto, tips, proxyserver
Published: 2020-07-22 11:14:45

**The proxy market** is constantly expanding and lots of new names are coming to the market. That means that proxies, as a product, are pretty useful and popular among businesses and individuals. There are two main types of proxies - **residential proxies** and **datacenter proxies**, with residential IPs being widely used for such purposes as web scraping, market research, online privacy, working with automatic bots, etc. 
**With that being said, this article will overview how to easily get residential proxies and which 3 providers can offer you the best services in 2020.**
 
**[SMARTPROXY] (https://smartproxy.com/)**

Smartproxy doesn’t price per proxy, so you can access the whole pool with unlimited connections and put your scrapers into max gear if you’re looking for reliable residential proxies to scrape websites. Smartproxy now offers **40 million IPs** proxy pool so it’s more than enough knowing the fact that you can access the whole pool. Their residential proxies are also fast and aren’t flagged so you can use them for SEO matters, working with social marketing on all major social networks, copping sneakers, testing affiliate programs, etc. Here are some specifics of Smartproxy residential proxies:
-Unlimited connection
-40M+ IPs from 195+ locations
-Up to 10min. sticky sessions
-HTTP(s) proxies
-Easy to use Dashboard
-[Proxy address Generator](https://smartproxy.com/proxy-address-generator)
-[Chrome proxy extension](https://smartproxy.com/proxy-extension)

Smartproxy is also one of the cheapest proxy provider in the market with the starting price of $75 for a monthly plan. Besides, you can also get **[a discount](https://prf.hn/click/camref:1101ldzVd/pubref:how-to)** for all the pricing plans with the code **SMARTPRO**. With everything that Smartproxy is offering for its customers, it would be a *smart* choice to get residential proxies from them.

**[SHIFTER](https://shifter.io/)** 

Shifter (also known as Microleaves) is a residential proxy network that consists of over **31 million IPs** around the world (at least this is what they claim). Their network rotates between IP addresses and ports your connection every 5 minutes. They don’t provide a clear number of how many countries they support. Their website simply suggests that they cover every city in the world so let’s assume this is true. What is interesting about this proxy provider is that they are offering you backconnect proxies. These proxies are a special kind of proxy that connects to our entire proxy pool and gets assigned a new residential IP address every rotation time, depending on your settings.
When it comes to purchasing proxies from Shifter, it gets a little tricky - the reason for that is that Shifter sells a number of proxy ports, you choose according to your need. But you also have to choose between **Basic Backconnect proxies** and **Special Backconnect proxies**. According to them, it’s a huge difference between what your proxies will be capable of. That is also seen in the price range - for 25 Basic proxies, you will pay $250 monthly. For Special proxies - 25 ports will cost you $500 per month. Shifter isn’t a cheap proxy provider and sometimes buying a number of ports instead of purchasing traffic isn’t the wise move. Nevertheless, Shifter can offer you great services and fast proxies that can be used for social media, scraping, sales intelligence, etc. You can read more about them [here](https://proxyway.com/reviews/shifter-proxies).

**[PACKETSTREAM](https://packetstream.io/)**

PacketStream is a new addition to the proxy market. Started sometime in 2018, this American provider is still in toddler shoes. But despite being of young age in a proxy market, this provider definitely can offer some amazing proxy services and that’s what matters the most. 
**I would also like to mention that PacketStream isn’t merely a service – it’s a marketplace**. And here’s the interesting part - on the provider’s website, you can not only buy proxies but also sell your own traffic; in other words, your device effectively becomes a proxy itself.
This straightforward business model has allowed PacketStream to collect an impressive number of residential IPs in short notice. It’s also dumped the prices to impressive lows – with no entry threshold.
Some of the PacketStream features:
-Low price
-Good performance
-HTTP(S)
-Country targeting

At the moment, PacketStream offers around **7 million** residential proxies. The number is very fluid, as it depends on people who participate in the provider’s bandwidth-selling program. As for the price, you can pay $50 per month for their cheapest plan that includes 50 GB traffic so it could be worthed for those who want to try proxies for the sake of knowing how to work with them and use them with various automatic bots.

**Also…**

...it’s not so difficult to get residential proxies - the market has plenty to offer, you only need to know **what you’re looking for** and **how you will use these services**. Apart from these 3 providers that I’ve mentioned in the article, you can also check **[Proxy Market research 2020](https://proxyway.com/guides/proxy-market-research-2020)** for more various alternatives that also could suit your needs.