What Is a Residential Proxy?

The basic idea

Every connection on the web arrives from an IP address, and the type of that address says something about where it came from. Residential IP addresses are issued by consumer internet providers to homes — the addresses ordinary people browse from every day.

A residential proxy forwards your requests through one of those addresses. To the website on the other end, the request looks like it came from a typical home connection in the country and city the address belongs to.

When a residential proxy is the right tool

Residential proxies earn their keep when the address type matters:

• Checking that location-dependent content — prices, listings, search results — looks right in a specific market.
• Research that should reflect what a real person in that country would see.
• Workflows where datacenter addresses are treated differently from home connections.

Rotation and sticky sessions

Residential proxies usually support rotation: each request (or every few minutes) can exit from a different address, which spreads activity across the pool. Sticky sessions do the opposite — they pin one address to your session for a set duration, which you need whenever a flow must look continuous, like logging in or filling a cart.

With IsabiProxy you choose the mode when you generate the proxy, and you can run both styles side by side.

Getting started

Create an IsabiProxy account, pick Residential, choose a country (and a city where stock allows), and generate your credentials. The Chrome extension or any standard HTTP/SOCKS5 client connects in seconds — see the quick start guide for a five-minute walkthrough.