Residential IP
A residential IP is an address assigned by a consumer ISP to a home connection. Websites treat it as a strong sign of a real person.
What a residential IP is
A residential IP address is one that a consumer internet provider assigns to a home connection: cable, DSL, fiber, or fixed wireless. It is announced by the ISP's own autonomous system, its reverse DNS typically shows the ISP's domain, and the registry record describes the block as customer access, not as hosting. Geolocation databases usually place it in the city where the ISP serves it.
Residential addresses are often dynamic, changing when the modem reconnects, and are shared by everyone in the household behind NAT.
Why it matters
Websites rank addresses by how likely a real person is behind them, and residential ranges sit at the top. Ad platforms, marketplaces, and social networks apply fewer challenges to a residential address than to a datacenter one. That is why residential proxies exist as a product, and why their quality varies: an address that was recently used for abuse, that appears on a blocklist, or that carries contradictory browser signals loses the benefit quickly.
Our anonymity score gives no deduction for a network classified as a consumer ISP or mobile carrier. The remaining signals (time zone, language, WebRTC, DNS, IPv6, headers, automation) decide the rest of the score, so a residential address with a leaking browser still scores poorly.
How we classify it
We do not maintain a paid "residential vs proxy" feed. The classification comes from the ASN name and the public datacenter list: if the network is not a known hosting range and its name matches consumer ISP vocabulary (telecom, broadband, cable, fiber, and similar), it is labeled a consumer ISP. The rule is visible on the result page, and an unknown or ambiguous name is reported as unclassified rather than guessed.
How to check
The proxy checker classifies any address as residential, mobile, hosting, VPN provider, or Tor, and explains which rule fired. IP lookup shows the ASN, reverse DNS, and registry data behind that call.
Common misconceptions
"Residential" is not a guarantee. Some providers lease residential-looking blocks to proxy services, and some fraud systems track that. A clean residential address is a good starting point; the rest of the setup still has to agree with it.