Mobile proxy
Also called: 4G proxy, 5G proxy, cellular proxy
A mobile proxy routes traffic through an IP address assigned by a cellular carrier to a device on its 4G or 5G network. Because carriers place many subscribers behind a small number of addresses, mobile IPs are shared by design — which makes them unusually tolerant of heavy use.
Mobile carriers do not have enough public IPv4 addresses for their subscribers, so they place thousands of customers behind shared addresses using CGNAT. The consequence is counter-intuitive but important: on a mobile IP, sharing is the expected state. Any given address may carry the traffic of an entire neighbourhood.
Why that matters
For a phone, a mobile IP is the most natural possible network origin — a mobile device on a mobile network is exactly what a platform expects. And because the address is shared with legitimate subscribers, blocking it outright has a real cost, which changes how aggressively it gets treated.
The trade-offs
- Cost — the most expensive category, typically from $18.90 per dedicated IP, with cheaper dedicated-mobile products around $9.
- Speed — generally slower and more variable than ISP or datacenter connections.
- Rotation — many mobile proxies rotate on carrier reassignment, which you do not fully control.
When it is worth it
Reserve mobile IPs for the accounts you cannot afford to lose, and run the rest of a fleet on residential or ISP addresses. Putting an entire farm on mobile rarely pays for itself: at roughly ten times the cost of a residential gigabyte, the marginal gain per device does not justify the spend across hundreds of phones.