Guides
The ultimate proxy selection guide: a decision tree by use case, region, ASN, and price
Most proxy-selection mistakes come from optimizing the wrong axis. Start with what you need to do, then pick the class, region, and ASN. Here is the decision tree we use internally at IPCombo, with no brand names attached.
Step 1: what are you actually doing?
Most people shop for the cheapest provider, the most popular one, or the one with the slickest dashboard — and end up with a tool that does not fit their use case. Start with the use case, not the provider. The four buckets below cover about 95% of consumer scenarios.
Streaming (Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, regional sports): residential or mobile required, region matched to the catalog you want. Banking and fintech (rewards portals, brokerage logins, neobanks): mobile preferred, region matched to the account signup country. AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Midjourney): residential in US/JP/KR/SG. Development (CI, scraping, API testing): datacenter is fine, region barely matters.
Pick the wrong bucket and the asymmetry is brutal. Overpaying with residential for dev costs you a few dollars a month. Under-specing with datacenter for streaming costs you the entire setup.
Step 2: how to pick the region
Region is the second-most-expensive mistake after IP class. The rule: match the IP region to the service's primary signal. For most services, that is the account signup country. For some (most AI tools, most streaming), it is wherever the company decides to ship the full product.
Two reliable heuristics. First, the service's pricing page: if there is a separate /jp or /sg landing with local currency and local pricing tier, the full product ships there. Second, the help docs and status page: if a region is listed under 'available regions' with feature parity, the IP region should match.
For AI tools, the safe regions are US, JP, KR, SG — in roughly that order of 'full reasoning + full quota'. EU works for chat but not for Sora-class video. Other regions work partially, with feature gating that providers do not publish.
Step 3: how to read the ASN
ASN is the organization that owns the IP block. Look it up with whois or any of a dozen free tools. The class of ASN tells you the class of IP: ASNs in the 10000-30000 range are mostly US and EU cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure). ASNs starting with CHINANET, COMCAST, ATT are residential. ASNs with names containing 'MOBILE' or a carrier name are mobile.
IPCombo's per-target IP column shows the ASN of each exit. If the row for Netflix shows a cloud ASN, you will be blocked. If it shows a residential or carrier ASN, you pass. This is the same lookup the services do — you just see it before they reject you.
Step 4: price ranges and provider types
Pricing tracks IP class. Datacenter proxies run $0.50 to $3 per GB. Residential run $5 to $15 per GB. Mobile run $15 to $50 per GB. Static residential (ISP proxies) sit in between, around $2 to $6 per IP per month. The same provider often sells all four, with quota design that nudges you toward the cheaper class.
Provider types: pure datacenter (cheapest, smallest catalog), pure residential (mid-priced, largest catalog), full-stack (all four classes, premium pricing), and P2P-based (residential over a peer network, cheapest residential but flakier). The decision is rarely provider-vs-provider at the same tier — it is tier-vs-tier.
One last check before you pay: run IPCombo with the provider's exit as your proxy. Look at the per-target real IP column. If the IPs for the services you care about are all in the recommended class and region, you have found your match. If not, no amount of dashboard polish will fix it.
Want more guides?
All posts