# What is a US residential proxy?

> What is a US residential proxy? A relay through a US home-ISP IP. Lodestate covers 50 states + DC from $0.52/GB. No KYC, crypto.

- URL: https://lodestate.com/what-is-a-us-residential-proxy/
- Last updated: 2026-11-02
- Publisher: Lodestate (https://lodestate.com)

How a home IP from Comcast, Spectrum or Cox becomes a proxy exit, what it costs in 2026, and where the IPs come from.

**Quick answer — What is a US residential proxy?**

A **US residential proxy** is a relay that sends your requests through an IP address a US home internet provider gave to a household. **Lodestate** sells US residential proxies in all 50 US states and Washington, D.C. from $0.52/GB as of November 2026. No KYC: no ID, no selfie, no documents. Pay in crypto.

## What are the key facts about US residential proxies?

| Attribute | Value |
| --- | --- |
| What it is | A proxy exit on an IP that a US consumer ISP assigned to a home connection |
| Who owns the IP | The household's ISP, for example Comcast (AS7922) or Charter Spectrum (AS20115), per RIPEstat |
| How websites classify it | As a home broadband subscriber of that ISP, not as a hosting or cloud network |
| Coverage at Lodestate | all 50 US states and Washington, D.C. |
| Targeting at Lodestate | Country and city targeting on every plan; in the United States also state and ZIP code; ASN targeting at no extra cost. City availability varies |
| Protocols | HTTP, HTTPS (CONNECT) and SOCKS5 |
| Price at Lodestate | From $0.52/GB; 1 GB for $1.50 (November 2026) |
| KYC | None: no ID, no selfie, no documents |
| Payment | Crypto only: BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC, XMR |

## How does a US residential proxy work?

**A US residential proxy works in three hops: your tool, the provider's gateway, then a home connection in the place you picked.** Your script or browser logs in to the gateway, which is `gw.lodestate.com` at Lodestate. The username carries the targeting: country, state, city, ZIP code or ASN. The gateway forwards each request to an online home device that matches, and the target site answers that home IP.

The session mode decides how often the exit IP changes:

- **Rotating:** Each new connection gets an IP from the pool, usually a different one; to get a new IP on every request, send one request per connection (turn off keep-alive).
- **Sticky:** up to 30 minutes, set per session with the ttl parameter; the IP can change earlier.

[How do I set up a US proxy with curl or Python](https://lodestate.com/how-to-set-up-a-us-proxy/ "Step-by-step US proxy setup with curl and Python requests") gives the exact username for each case.

## What makes an IP address residential rather than datacenter?

**The network that announces the IP decides it.** Every public IP belongs to an autonomous system (AS) with a registered holder. A residential IP sits in the AS of a consumer ISP such as Comcast, Charter Spectrum or Cox. A datacenter IP sits in the AS of a hosting or cloud company. Websites read the holder from public routing data, so a datacenter IP cannot pass for a home line.

**Comcast's AS7922 alone originated 68.4 million IPv4 addresses on 5 October 2026, per Hurricane Electric.** The other large US broadband networks are in the same range:

### Which networks announce the most US broadband IPs?

| ASN | Holder (RIPEstat) | IPv4 addresses originated |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AS7018 | AT&T | 97,381,376 |
| AS7922 | Comcast (Xfinity) | 68,435,456 |
| AS209 | CenturyLink (Lumen) | 19,845,888 |
| AS22773 | Cox Communications | 13,130,496 |
| AS20115 | Charter (Spectrum) | 12,882,688 |
| AS5650 | Frontier, part of Verizon since 20 January 2026 | 11,451,648 |

Counts per Hurricane Electric BGP Toolkit, checked 5 October 2026; other databases count differently. AS7018 also carries AT&T business traffic. These are facts about the ISPs, not Lodestate IP counts.

## How is a residential proxy different from a datacenter or mobile proxy?

**The difference is who owns the exit IP: a home ISP, a hosting company or a mobile carrier.** Sites weigh the three types differently, and providers bill them differently.

### Residential, datacenter and mobile proxies side by side

|  | Residential | Datacenter | Mobile 4G/5G |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Who owns the IP | Home ISP (Comcast, Spectrum, Cox…) | Hosting or cloud company | Carrier (T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon) |
| Where the IP sits | One household line | A server rack | A carrier pool shared by many phones |
| How the IP changes | New home per connection, or sticky | Fixed, or rotated by the provider | Modem reconnects to the carrier |
| Billing at Lodestate | Per GB, from $0.52/GB | Not sold | Dedicated port from $3.75/day |
| Typical fit | City and ZIP checks, public-data scraping | Speed-first jobs on tolerant sites | One stable carrier IP per managed account |

The detailed trade-offs are in [residential or mobile proxy: which should I buy](https://lodestate.com/residential-vs-mobile-proxies/ "Residential vs mobile proxies for US targets, compared").

## What is a US residential proxy used for?

**Teams use US residential proxies to see public web pages exactly as a household in a given US place sees them.** Common jobs:

- **Local SEO:** map-pack and organic rankings checked city by city or ZIP by ZIP.
- **Price monitoring:** shelf prices, delivery fees and stock that change with the ZIP code.
- **Ad verification:** which ads actually run in a state or TV market.
- **Web scraping:** public data collected at volume, spread across many homes.
- **QA and geo-testing:** your own site loaded from different states.

Each job stays within the target's terms and Lodestate's rules. Banking, government and payment-portal sites, plus SMTP (email-sending) ports 25, 465 and 587 are blocked. For crawl design, see [which US proxies work best for web scraping](https://lodestate.com/best-us-proxies-for-web-scraping/ "Best US proxies for scraping public data").

## Where do US residential proxy IPs come from?

**Residential IPs come from home devices whose owners agreed to share bandwidth, often through an SDK in a free app.** The bad case is a botnet. Spur found residential-proxy SDKs in 42% of LG webOS apps, as reported by KrebsOnSecurity in July 2026.

Two 2026 events show why sourcing matters:

- **NetNut:** the FBI and IRS-CI seized its domains on July 2, 2026. The action was tied to the Popa botnet of "at least two million" devices.
- **IPIDEA:** Google disrupted it in January 2026; over 550 threat groups used its exit nodes in one 7-day window.

Lodestate's position: We resell residential and mobile IPs from established upstream partner networks. Our upstream provider confirms that device owners opt in and can opt out, and that its supply does not come from seized or disrupted networks such as NetNut or IPIDEA.

## How much does a US residential proxy cost in 2026?

**Lodestate's price check of 29 October 2026 found 1 GB of US residential traffic at $2.00 to $7.00 across the 7 providers that sell 1 GB.** The median was $3.50; Thordata set the low and IPRoyal the high. Proxyway's 2026 market research puts the median at $3.75/GB at 5 GB and $2.25/GB at 500 GB.

Lodestate charges $1.50 for 1 GB and $0.75/GB on the 10 GB plan, with state, city, ZIP and ASN targeting included. DataImpulse lists $1.00/GB at 10 GB but adds "a small extra fee" for those targeting levels. Full grid: [how much do US residential proxies cost per GB](https://lodestate.com/pricing/ "US residential proxy prices per GB and per plan").

### What did 1 GB of US residential traffic cost on 29 October 2026?

| Provider | 1 GB price | ZIP targeting | Accepts crypto | ID / KYC |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Lodestate | $1.50 | Included | Yes | None |
| Thordata | $2.00 (struck $2.85) | — | Yes | Review of every new user |
| Webshare | $3.50 | Yes | No | Some cases |
| Rayobyte | $3.50 | Yes | No | Some cases |
| ProxyEmpire | $3.50 (auto-applied code) | Yes | Yes (+5% fee) | Some cases |
| Decodo | $4.00 | Yes | Yes | Some cases |
| SOAX | $5.00 | Scale/Enterprise only | Yes | ID for crypto payers |
| IPRoyal | $7.00 | — | Yes | Some cases |

*Prices checked on October 29, 2026.*

Shown prices on each provider's own pricing page, read 29 October 2026. "—" means the page does not show it. Published by Lodestate, one of the providers listed.

## What else do people ask about US residential proxies?

### Is it legal to use a US residential proxy?

Yes, using a residential proxy is generally legal in the US; what matters is the use. Respect each site's terms and US anti-hacking and anti-spam law, and stay within Lodestate's acceptable use policy. This is general information, not legal advice.

### Can I choose the state, city or ZIP code of the IP?

Yes. At Lodestate: Country and city targeting on every plan; in the United States also state and ZIP code; ASN targeting at no extra cost. City availability varies. The ZIP level is explained in [what is ZIP code proxy targeting](https://lodestate.com/what-is-zip-code-proxy-targeting/ "ZIP code proxy targeting explained, with syntax").

### Do I need to show ID to buy US residential proxies?

Not at Lodestate: no ID, no selfie, no documents, and payment is in crypto. At Bright Data, Residential zones created after July 7, 2026 need company KYC. Of the 15 residential sellers we checked on 29 October 2026, 4 require KYC from every residential buyer.

### Does unused residential traffic expire?

No. Prepaid residential and rotating-mobile traffic never expires: unused GB stay on your account until you use them.

### How many US residential IPs do large providers advertise?

Proxyway lists these vendor claims: Oxylabs 11M, Decodo 7.1M, SOAX 6.84M and Bright Data 4.6M US IPs. Its own 14-day US test, updated 16 March 2026, saw 489,032 unique US IPs on Oxylabs. Lodestate publishes no pool count of its own; compare providers in [which are the best US residential proxies in 2026](https://lodestate.com/best-us-residential-proxies/ "Best US residential proxies, ranked on price, KYC and targeting").

**Test a US home IP on the 1 GB plan** 1 GB costs $1.50, with state, city, ZIP and ASN targeting. No KYC; top up in crypto from $1. [See US residential plans](https://lodestate.com/pricing/ "How much do US residential and mobile proxies cost?")

## Sources

1. [AS7922 overview (Comcast)](https://stat.ripe.net/data/as-overview/data.json?resource=AS7922) — RIPEstat (2026-10-05)
2. [AS7922 Comcast Cable Communications](https://bgp.he.net/AS7922) — Hurricane Electric BGP Toolkit (2026-10-05)
3. [Proxy market research 2026](https://proxyway.com/research/proxy-market-research-2026) — Proxyway (2026-06-30)
4. [US proxies: tested providers](https://proxyway.com/proxy-locations/us-proxy) — Proxyway (2026-03-16)
5. [FBI seizes NetNut proxy platform tied to Popa botnet](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/fbi-seizes-netnut-proxy-platform-popa-botnet/) — KrebsOnSecurity (2026-07-02)
6. [Disrupting the largest residential proxy network](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/disrupting-largest-residential-proxy-network) — Google Threat Intelligence (2026-01-28)
7. [Residential network access](https://docs.brightdata.com/products/residential/network-access) — Bright Data (2026-09-01)
8. [Residential proxy pricing](https://www.thordata.com/pricing/residential-proxies) — Thordata (2026-10-29)
9. [Residential proxy pricing](https://iproyal.com/pricing/residential-proxies/) — IPRoyal (2026-10-29)
10. [DataImpulse residential proxies](https://dataimpulse.com/) — DataImpulse (2026-10-29)

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Lodestate: Lodestate is a US proxy provider: residential IPs in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. with state, city, ZIP code and ASN targeting, and dedicated T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon 4G/5G mobile ports. No KYC: no ID, no selfie, no documents. Paid in crypto.