Choosing the Right Proxy Type

SOAX offers two network types for proxy traffic: residential (WiFi) and mobile. Both are included in every plan at the same credit rate, and both are enabled by default on new proxy packages. You don’t need to pick one or the other upfront. You can use both at the same time, or disable one on a per-package basis if you want to control which network type your team uses. This page helps you understand when each network type works best.

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Residential (WiFi)

Residential proxies route your traffic through real home internet connections. The IPs belong to genuine ISP subscribers, so websites see them as regular household traffic. SOAX’s residential pool includes over 155 million IPs across 195+ countries. When to use residential proxies:

• Web scraping at scale. Most anti-bot systems treat residential IPs as legitimate traffic. This gives you higher success rates on difficult targets like search engines, ecommerce platforms, and social media sites.
• Price monitoring. Residential IPs let you check pricing from specific countries and cities without triggering geo-based blocking or CAPTCHA walls.
• Ad verification. You can view ads as a real user would in any location, making it easier to detect fraud, misplacement, or geo-targeting issues.
• SEO monitoring. Track search rankings from different locations using IPs that search engines treat as genuine users.
• General-purpose data collection. If you’re not sure which network type to use, start with residential. It covers the widest range of use cases.

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Mobile

Mobile proxies route your traffic through real mobile carrier connections on 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. The IPs come from carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, and others worldwide. SOAX’s mobile pool includes over 30 million IPs from carriers globally. When to use mobile proxies:

• Mobile-specific content. Some websites and apps serve different content to mobile users. Mobile proxies let you see exactly what a mobile visitor would see.
• App testing and verification. If you’re verifying how your app or mobile ads appear across carriers and regions, mobile IPs give you an authentic testing environment.
• Highly protected targets. Some websites that aggressively block residential IPs are more lenient with mobile traffic, because mobile carrier IPs are shared across many real users by design. This makes them harder to block without affecting legitimate visitors.
• Social media platforms. Mobile IPs are common for social media access, so they tend to blend in well on platforms that scrutinize connection types.

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How they compare

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You don’t have to choose

Both network types share the same credit pool and burn at the same rate per geographic tier. There’s no price difference between residential and mobile traffic in the same country. When you create a proxy package, both are enabled by default. If you want to restrict a package to only residential or only mobile traffic, you can change this in the package settings. This is useful when you want to isolate use cases, for example giving your scraping team residential-only access and your mobile QA team mobile-only access. For details on setting up and configuring packages, see Package Management.

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Other network types

SOAX also offers datacenter and ISP proxies for specific use cases. These use different IP sources (data center infrastructure and static ISP-assigned IPs respectively) and are suited to tasks where speed or IP consistency matters more than appearing as a typical home or mobile user.

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Next steps