Head to head · reviewed Sep 28, 2026
Residential vs ISP: rotation versus a lease
Residential rotating changes the exit and bills bandwidth. ISP, or static residential, keeps the address and bills the month. Sticky residential is a timer. ISP is a lease.
Residential$1.00/GB
Unitgb / ip
ISP$0.30/IP/mo
The resultSplit: session length decides
The result
Split: session length decides
Pick: it depends
ISP when the same exit must exist tomorrow. Residential when you need many household exits and can pay per GB.
In brief
What to know before you pick
- Residential is per GB. ISP is per IP per month.
- Webshare shared ISP is $0.30. Dedicated ISP starts nearer $3.
- Sticky is not static.
Same fields
The comparison
Catalog facts first. The pick above is editorial. Confirm the live rate before you pay.
| Field | Residential | ISP |
|---|---|---|
| Meter | /GB | /IP/mo |
| Cheapest published cell | $1.00/GBTie | $0.30/IP/moTie |
| That cell is on | DataImpulse | Webshare |
| Priced providers in this sample | 6 | 2 |
Buy Residential if
Country or city rotation, public pages, a job that must not depend on one address.
Skip it if The target is open and a datacenter IP already works. You need one stable login for weeks (look at ISP). The job is account farming, credential abuse, or a paywall bypass. We do not help with those.
Buy ISP if
A stable session you control, an ISP ASN, and a monthly IP you can put in a client and leave.
Skip it if You need a new city per request, or you only needed a cheap datacenter IP and the target never complained.
Residential
- The meter the search market actually prices: dollars per GB
- Country and often city or ASN targeting on the major self-serve plans
- You can start on a few gigabytes instead of a rack of IPs
ISP
- Static by design. The IP is the product
- ISP ASN without last-mile mobile latency
- Bandwidth is often a plan cap, not a per-GB tax on every retry
Sticky is a timer
Vendors let you hold a residential exit for minutes. That is not an ISP proxy. The ISP product is still there after a restart because you rented the address. If your login breaks when the timer ends, you wanted the lease.
The trap
How this comparison usually goes wrong
Calling a 30-minute sticky session a static residential IP, or pricing $0.30/IP against $4/GB as if one were a discount.
What I would do
The move
If the IP has to be in your config next week, buy ISP. If the IP should not be the same twice, buy residential.
Published rates
Residential and ISP in this catalog
Entry rates. Quotes omitted from the price sort. Not a reservation.
ProvidersScopeBillingSessionRateOpen provider
DecodoPay as you go $4/GB plus VAT. Entry subscription is $3.75/GB at 3 GB ($11.25/mo). Volume floor on the same page goes to $2/GB.Country, city, ASNPay as you goRotating or sticky$4.00/GB
OxylabsSmallest public rung cited at $30/mo for 5 GB ($6/GB). No pay-as-you-go rate on that grid. 1 TB floor cited at $2.50/GB.Country, city, ASNMonthlyRotating or sticky$6.00/GB
Bright DataList pay-as-you-go is $8/GB. A 50% coupon often displays $4/GB. KYC before residential. Do not file the coupon as the list price.Country, city, ASN, ZIPPay as you goRotating or sticky$8.00/GB
IPRoyal1 GB pack at $7.35/GB. Traffic does not expire. The 10 GB pack is lower, about $5.51/GB. Bulk floors are marketing until you see the invoice.Country, cityPay as you goRotating or sticky$7.35/GB
SOAXSandbox pay-as-you-go $5/GB plus VAT. Monthly plans start with a larger commit. Enterprise floors are not the entry rate.Country, city, ASNPay as you goRotating or sticky$5.00/GB
DataImpulseVendor rate: $1/GB plus VAT, traffic does not expire. A $50 minimum top-up applies after the intro block. This is the vendor’s number, not a lab result.CountryPay as you goRotating or sticky$1.00/GB
ProvidersScopeBillingSessionRateOpen provider
Bright DataISP is sold. The residential per-GB list is a different SKU. Do not reuse $8/GB as an ISP price.ISP ASNQuoteStaticQuote
WebshareShared ISP: $6/mo for 20 proxies ($0.30/IP) with 250 GB. Dedicated static residential on the same vendor starts much higher per IP.ISP ASN, sharedMonthlyStatic list$0.30/IP/mo
Proxy-SellerDedicated ISP cited from $3 per IP. Location changes the sticker. Unlimited traffic is the point of this meter, not a per-GB race.Country, dedicatedMonthlyStatic$3.00/IP/mo
NetNutISP and static residential are the product. Public entry rates are not stable enough to print here. Open the pricing page.ISP ASNQuoteStatic or rotatingQuote
Full page
The two pages
Specs, rates, who it is for.
Full page
Residential proxies
Residential proxies exit on IPs the vendor says were assigned to households. You pay for bandwidth. The homepage number is usually a volume floor. The number that matters first is the smallest pack you can buy, and whether those gigabytes expire.
Read ResidentialFull page
ISP proxies
ISP proxies, often called static residential, are addresses announced by a consumer ISP and hosted in a datacenter. You pay per IP per month. You get speed closer to a server and a reputation closer to a home connection. You do not get a fresh city on every request.
Read ISPFAQ
Residential vs ISP
Is static residential the same as an ISP proxy?+
On this site, yes. Both mean an ISP-announced address you keep, usually hosted in a datacenter, billed per IP.
Which is cheaper, residential or ISP?+
Whichever matches the job. A few static IPs can cost less than a heavy residential month. A million rotating requests will not fit on twenty ISP addresses.
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