Top 10 Best Residential Proxies for Bypassing Geo-Restrictions in 2025

Proxies are tools that reroute user traffic and alter the IP address that is visible to the destination sites users wish to visit.

Residential proxies provide the best and most genuine network fingerprint when compared to other more basic options like datacenter proxies, making them more difficult to ban and better for bypassing geo-restrictions.

What are Residential Proxies?

Residential proxies make use of IP addresses associated with real residential devices such as mobile phones, laptops or desktop PCs. This is the primary difference between these proxies and datacenter proxies which are operated out of commercial hosting facilities.

Ethical sourcing of residential proxies is very important and most big proxy providers obtain residential proxies legitimately through offering embedded SDKs or compensation in return for access to routing traffic through residential devices.

Residential proxies can also be split into two different types, static or rotating. Static residential proxies provide a consistent IP address for a prolonged period of time while rotating proxies will change the IP address of your connection at a set interval of time or on every single request you make.

Key Features of Best Residential Proxies

The proxy industry is very competitive and there is a large number of providers to pick but the best residential proxies tend to have some common characteristics which include:

• High-level of anonymity provided by a real residential IP Address — Real residential IP addresses are assigned by carriers like Spectrum, AT&T and other well-known internet service providers and are on their networks or ASNs. Websites can see the ASN of a connecting IP address so proxies which use datacenter IP addresses can be easily identified unlike residential proxies. This makes them much harder to detect and unlikely to be flagged.

• Access to Geo-Restricted Content — Residential proxy pools often have access to millions of IP addresses spanning multiple countries. This means users can easily change the location of the proxies they need to any country and even geolocate down to city level making them great for localized use-cases like ad-verification or regional market research.

• Reliability of the Proxy Network — One potential downside of residential proxies is their underlying connection, latency and bandwidth throughput since unlike datacenter proxies, they use residential internet connections which usually have worse performance, however, best residential proxy providers should have systems and processes which remove bad performing peers from their network, resulting in better network performance, uptime and overall stability.

• Protocol Support — HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) is how websites and browsers encode, transport, and exchange information over the web. Proxy providers should therefore offer compatibility with this protocol or other lower level protocols which can support HTTP connection. The best residential proxies support protocols including SOCKS5, HTTP and HTTP/S via connect tunneling - with these you’ll be able to do Web Scraping and most other use-cases without any issues.

• Easy Setup and Proxy Management — It's easy to focus on proxy performance and cost - they’re the most important things. However, the accompanying tooling and software provided by proxy companies is also very important when it comes to integrating proxies into business operations. Things like Proxy User management systems which allow limiting bandwidth to team-members and real-time analytics dashboards can make proxy providers stand out from the rest.

Use Cases for Residential Proxies

1. Web scraping and data extraction — Their residential IP addresses make them great for scraping and automated online data extraction.
2. Accessing geo-specific data — Residential proxy networks with large geographic coverage are useful when accessing regional content and data for market research or localized ad-verification.
3. SEO and marketing research — SEO professionals and marketers use residential proxies to monitor search engine rankings, monitor backlinks and evaluate competitor sites and activities.

Why use residential proxies instead of other types for bypassing geo-blocks?

When websites like Netflix or BBC check your connection, they look for several tell-tale signs of proxy usage. Datacenter proxies fail these checks because they use commercial IP addresses that belong to obvious hosting companies - all it takes is a quick ASN (Autonomous System Number) check to spot them. Residential proxies, however, show up as home internet connections from real ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, or BT and therefore blend perfectly with normal consumer traffic patterns.

Most residential proxy providers also maintain huge pools of IPs across every major country and city, letting you reliably access geo-restricted content from anywhere. This broad coverage means you can switch between different residential IPs even if a proxy does become blocked.

Do they work with Netflix, BBC, and Hulu?

Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Hulu all use sophisticated detection systems to block proxy and VPN access, but residential proxies bypass these because they use real residential IP addresses that aren't easily associated with proxy services.

While residential proxies work technically, it's important to note that circumventing geo-restrictions typically violates streaming services' terms of service, and providers may suspend accounts they catch using proxies.

How do you pick the right residential proxy provider?

1. When choosing residential proxies, speed and pool quality should be your primary concerns. Fast proxies handle more requests efficiently, while a large, diverse IP pool reduces ban rates through lower IP reuse. The more IP addresses in a residential proxy pool, the less likely they are to be used by other customers - meaning they're more likely to stay unbanned on your target websites.
2. Large pools typically offer superior geographic coverage too, letting you target specific countries, cities, and ISPs more effectively since there are more IP addresses in the network for each targeting characteristic you need.
3. The backconnect network - the infrastructure routing your requests through residential peers - is an often overlooked component. Poor routing leads to high latency and dropped connections, so provider infrastructure quality matters just as much as the residential IPs themselves, even with a massive pool of addresses.
4. When selecting a proxy provider, verify that the proxies are ethically sourced. Some providers obtain their residential proxies through deceptive and illegal methods. Using such proxies risks both your investment and potentially your reputation.
5. Many responsible and ethical proxy services, like Ping Proxies, partner with SDK programs. These programs compensate regular internet users for sharing their traffic and joining the proxy network.
6. This approach ensures users receive fair payment and stay fully informed about how their IP addresses may be used.
7. The software provided with residential proxies significantly impacts their effectiveness. A quality provider like Ping Proxies will offer robust tooling including APIs and a comprehensive dashboard for viewing real-time performance analytics and managing multiple proxy uses.
8. Customer support is crucial - your proxy provider's technical team should understand proxy infrastructure and solve real problems. Check user reviews focusing on reliability and support quality, and test both proxy performance and support responsiveness before committing.

With all that in mind, let’s look at the best proxies for bypassing geo-restrictions in 2025.

Ping Proxies

Pros

1. They offer Datacenter, Static Residential ISP and Residential Bandwidth
2. There residential proxy network is large and growing
3. Pricing across all product lines is affordable
4. They own and operate their own Static Residential ISP proxy infrastructure in four countries
5. They offer a Public API which can be used for reselling and service management
6. They offer a full self-service dashboard
7. They provide responsive customer support via ticket, email, Discord and Telegram.
8. They have a Trustpilot score of 4.8, with 95% of users considering them worthy of five stars.
9. They offer city and ISP targeting on their residential plans free of charge

Cons

1. They do not offer dedicated account managers to enterprise clients.

Webshare

Pros

1. They have free proxies available
2. They offer residential and datacenter proxies
3. They have a dashboard to simplify proxy management

Cons

1. Pricing is quite complicated with shared/dedicated, bandwidth and network priority options
2. There is little customizability of proxies

Bright Data

Pros

1. They have one of the largest residential and datacenter proxy networks
2. Offer dedicated account managers
3. Have an established reputation as one of the leaders in the proxy and web-data collection industry

Cons

1. Their proxies are more expensive than most
2. Their setup and configuration are relatively complex, and more suited to enterprise clients.

IPRoyal

Pros

1. They offer both residential and datacenter proxy types
2. They have a large and growing network
3. They have flexible pricing plans for users
4. Their customer support is highly rated and they have have lots of positive Trustpilot

Cons

1. They possess a smaller IP address pool compared to some of the heavyweights like Oxylabs and Bright Data

Oxylabs

Pros

1. They possess a large pool of residential and datacenter proxies
2. Their proxies are fast and have high uptimes
3. They have advanced features worthy of enterprise tools

Cons

1. They are expensive and unsuitable for casual or individual users

Smartproxy

Pros

1. They are affordable
2. They provide a user-friendly dashboard and an easy-to-follow setup process
3. They provide different proxy types and IP rotation

Cons

1. They only have Static Residential ISP Proxies in a very limited number of countries

SOAX

Pros

1. They provide users with an easy-to-use dashboard
2. They are flexible in their pricing

Cons

1. They have a smaller pool of IP addresses compared to competitors
2. They are relatively more expensive than other vendors with similar reach

Infatica

Pros

1. They provide residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies
2. They have reasonably good coverage globally
3. They are affordable and have generous bandwidth allowances

Cons

1. They have a relatively smaller network compared to other Oxylabs and Bright Data

Storm Proxies

Pros

1. This is an affordable proxy provider
2. They provide unlimited bandwidth on a number of plans
3. They have IP rotation features on some plans

Cons

1. They have limited coverage as regards available locations
2. They also have a relatively smaller IP pool than other providers on this list
3. They have bad Trustpilot reviews at the time of writing with a score of 2.2 out of 5 stars

NetNut

Pros

1. They offer unlimited bandwidth with some of their residential proxies
2. They provide users with rapid browsing speeds

Cons

1. They are relatively expensive for individual users
2. They have a smaller IP pool than most providers in their price range

Best Practices for Using Residential Proxies

Here are some guidelines to maximize the effectiveness of and ensure the legality of residential proxies:

1. Have a good browser fingerprint — Great proxies will only get you so far. Modern anti-scraping systems look at several characteristics such as your browser fingerprint and inspect things like your TCP/IP traffic, browser versions and even font list to build a browser fingerprint which they then check to see whether it looks realistic. These systems often rely on machine learning techniques and are difficult to overcome but using good anti-detect browsers and ensuring javascript rendering is enabled can help minimize the risk of being detected.
2. Ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards — It's important to maintain high ethical standards when web-scraping. Make sure you know your local laws and comply with them, usually, this means avoiding collecting personal identifiable information (PII) and ensuring you don’t overload websites or agree to ToS which you then break with your scraping activity.
3. Regularly updating and rotating proxies — Both these acts can help enhance anonymity, prevent detection, avoid overuse of a single proxy, preserve proxy health, etc.
4. Use proxy management tools — Proxy management tools (such as certain browser extensions or management dashboards) can help to organize, monitor, and rotate proxy use. They streamline proxy usage and will make your life easier when deploying and using the aforementioned proxy services.

Conclusion

For most users, Ping Proxies stands out as a great choice, offering a wide selection of services and an excellent balance of features, performance, and affordability. Their growing residential network and responsive customer support make them ideal for both beginners and experienced users who want a self-service platform.

For enterprise-level operations requiring extensive infrastructure and dedicated support, Bright Data remains the industry leader, though at a premium price point and firmly aimed at Fortune 500 clients. Their vast IP pool and advanced features justify the cost for large-scale operations.

If you are on a very tight budget then you should consider Webshare and their free proxies tier. While their features may be more limited, they provide a viable entry point for users looking to test residential proxies without initial investment.