Pros & Cons
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- Large residential proxy pool
- Ethical IP sourcing
- Dual authentication available
- Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox
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- No free trial
- Not-so-customer-friendly refund policies
- Limited browser extension capabilities
- TrustPilot reviews marked as suspicious
IPRoyal Specs
| # of Residential IP Locations | 195 |
| # of Residential IPs | 32000000 |
| Accepts Cryptocurrency | |
| Browser Extension | |
| Mobile Option | |
| Pay-as-You-Go | |
| Protocols Supported | HTTP |
| Protocols Supported | HTTPS |
| Protocols Supported | SOCKS5 |
| Support Types | Discord |
IPRoyal’s proxy service is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s reasonably priced and easy to use. On the other hand, the company’s strange refund policies, suspicious-looking reviews on TrustPilot, upcharges for proxy name changes, and limited browser extension features keep us from fully recommending it. Other proxy services that serve similar audiences, like MarsProxies or Soax, don’t come with the red flags we encountered while reviewing IPRoyal. Ultimately, the service works as advertised, but there’s room for improvement.
How Much Does IPRoyal Cost?
IPRoyal accepts the following payment types: Alipay, Apple Pay, credit cards, more than 25 cryptocurrencies, Google Pay, and PayPal. Below is a summary of the pricing for each service, as well as a description of each proxy type:
IPv4 Datacenter Proxies
IPRoyal’s IPv4 datacenter proxy pool consists of IP addresses in 50 countries. The locations can be targeted by city and state. Each IP address is dedicated, which is excellent. These types of proxies are best for businesses that need to access IP addresses over longer time periods. Datacenter proxies are $1.57 per proxy for up to 30 days, $1.48 per proxy for up to 60 days, and $1.39 per proxy for up to 90 days. Each plan includes unlimited traffic, SOCKS5 support, and dedicated IPs. IPRoyal only offers IPv4 proxies. If you’re looking for speedier, more secure, and more abundant IPv6 proxies, consider trying out a service suited for larger companies, like Oxylabs.
ISP Proxies
These proxy servers are best for small business owners who want to do market research, website comparison, or data collection projects, like search and site scraping. You can use the proxies for different time periods, from as little as 24 hours ($1.80 per proxy), up to 90 days ($2.40 per proxy). IPRoyal offers discounts when you purchase proxies in bulk. Each ISP proxy is yours and yours alone, without any data restrictions.
Whichever plan you choose, you’ll be able to access guaranteed residential IPs with city and state-level targeting. The proxies support HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols, and you can manage access via username/password authentication or IP whitelisting, too.
Mobile Proxies
Need to manage multiple social media accounts on the go? Consider trying IPRoyal’s mobile proxies. 24 hours of access is $10.11 per day, while the other plans for this type of proxy are monthly. 30 days of access is $130 per month, 60 days is $123.50 each month, and 90 days is $117 per month. It’s a little more expensive than MarsProxies, which starts at $8.49 for one day. IPRoyal offers unlimited bandwidth for its pool of 4.5 million auto-rotating residential IPs and supports 3G, 4G, and 5G.
Residential Proxies
When you need to hide your IP address when doing comparative research or data collection from the perspective of an at-home user, a residential proxy is a good option. IPRoyal has a massive residential network of more than 32 million residential proxies in 195 countries. You can target these locations by country, state, or city, and from the dashboard, you can designate a sticky session of up to 7 days or get a new IP for each request. Like the ISP proxies, authentication using a username/password combination or whitelisting, and the proxies support HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols.
The residential proxies start at $7.99 for one gigabyte of data, and go up to $5.15 per gigabyte for 50GB, though there are usually discounts available. You can also save a little money by buying a monthly subscription. Before discounts, the plans are more expensive than MarsProxies’ residential pay-as-you-go options, but they offer a lot of flexibility for a growing business.
Reviews From Current Customers
IPRoyal has a score of 4.6 out of 5 stars on customer review site TrustPilot. That’s higher than Soax’s 4.2, and a little lower than MarsProxies’ 4.7. There are a number of very effusive 5-star reviews left over the past seven days that name specific customer service representatives, with one reviewer even requesting a bonus for “John.”
Below is a snapshot of recent IPRoyal customer reviews on TrustPilot. Positive reviews usually mention that proxies are affordable and dependable, while negative reviews criticize the proxy locations or take issue with the company’s refund policies.
(Credit: TrustPilot/PCMag)Something I haven’t seen when reading TrustPilot reviews for other proxy services is the alert below:
(Credit: TrustPilot/PCMag)TrustPilot is basically signalling that some of the reviews may not be genuine, which is not good. TrustPilot uses fraud detection to weed out or flag potentially fake reviews. Notes like the message above both tell us that some of IPRoyal's reviews may not be authentic.
Customer Support Options
You can quickly and easily chat with IPRoyal’s customer support via the live chat window on your dashboard or on the website. You can also get help by emailing support@iproyal.com. If you want to troubleshoot your issues alone, you can use the documentation on the IPRoyal Help Site. My experiences with the IPRoyal customer service team were positive. The team members I interacted with were polite and helpful.
I like that the company has an extensive library of YouTube videos to walk you through the proxy setup process. You can also join the IPRoyal community channel on Discord.
Can You Trust IPRoyal?
You’ll want to do your research before choosing a proxy service. Like their more secure cousins, VPNs, proxy services can see what you’re doing online while you use them. That’s why I ask proxy companies questions about data collection and retention policies. You should know what companies are doing with all of the information you entrust to them.
You should also be wary of companies that obtain IP addresses through shady methods. Some companies use third-party botnets for remote IPs, so you may end up sharing a residential proxy with someone without their consent.
According to IPRoyal’s proxy sourcing policy whitepaper, the company obtains IPs from people who are using Pawns, an app owned by the company, where people can fill out surveys or play games to earn money. On the Pawns website, the company states, repeatedly, that customers will share their bandwidth and receive payment for it, which is good.
Enterprise-level proxy service Oxylabs is also very transparent about its IP sourcing. It obtains bandwidth from people using an app called Honeygain. Soax and MarsProxies did not specify which apps the companies are using for proxy sourcing.
Interview With IPRoyal
How does IPRoyal obtain residential proxies?
IPRoyal sources Residential Proxies through our proprietary app, Pawns.app. This approach enables us to maintain a pool of real, active residential IP addresses from genuine devices in a fully transparent way.
For user/residential proxies, does IPRoyal use active and informed consent for endpoints?
Yes, we ensure all participants in our residential proxy network provide active and informed consent. Users are clearly notified about their participation and can opt out at any time through app settings.
Does IPRoyal operate its own proxy networks with servers in various locations?
IPRoyal built its own residential proxy network, which serves as the source of its Residential Proxies. The company operates and manages the entire infrastructure in-house. For Datacenter and ISP Proxies, we use dedicated servers in different locations across the globe to ensure optimal speeds, stability, and coverage for our clients.
Does IPRoyal directly own its datacenter proxies, or does the company use a third-party service to host them?
IPRoyal hosts its Datacenter Proxies through trusted third-party datacenters, but the management is handled in-house. With full control over the infrastructure, we can ensure top performance and reliability for our clients.
Does IPRoyal collect user data?
IPRoyal does collect user data, but only as necessary to provide and improve our services.
What kinds of data does IPRoyal collect?
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IPRoyal collects the following types of data, as outlined in our Privacy Policy:
Personal information, such as name and email address provided during account creation or when communicating with our team.
Usage data, including how users interact with our website and services, such as IP addresses, browser types, and general browsing behavior.
Technical data about devices used to access our services, including device-specific details like operating system and device identifiers.
How is data stored? How long does IPRoyal store user data?
IPRoyal retains user data only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. Log data (including IP addresses, location, and device information) is stored for six months. Once the data is no longer needed, it is either securely deleted or anonymized to prevent identification of the data subject.
If customers have questions or concerns about the service, how can they receive assistance?
Customers can contact IPRoyal’s support team 24/7 via live chat or email. Our dedicated account managers and sales team are also available for custom solutions. Additionally, they can join our Discord community to get help, share feedback, and connect with other users.
Analyzing IPRoyal’s Terms of Service Agreement and Privacy Policy
IPRoyal’s privacy policy language is a little dense in some places, but overall, I didn’t have trouble understanding the terms as written. As I mentioned in the MarsProxies review, the two companies have very similar privacy policies.
Several sections use the exact same language, including the section about logged data, which states that IPRoyal’s logs may include your IP address, location, traffic data, computer or device information, and website interactions. That’s an awful lot of possible data collection. However, proxies are not really privacy tools anymore, so I won’t knock the company for the policy. I’m just pointing out (again) that IPRoyal can see and log what you’re doing online, so take that into account.
IPRoyal is incorporated in the United Arab Emirates with its headquarters in Ajman. Knowing a company’s location is important because data handling and storage laws differ from country to country. The UAE has somewhat unusual data retention regulations for certain types of information. For example, data related to financial institutions must be kept for a minimum of 5 years, and employee records should be kept for at least 7 years after the employee leaves the company. In the interview above, IPRoyal told me the company keeps customer data for as long as necessary, but anonymizes or purges log data after six months. If you want to opt out of personal data processing, email your request to privacy@iproyal.com.
I highly recommend at least skimming the Payments and Refunds section of IPRoyal’s Terms of Service. This section got my attention:
(Credit: IPRoyal/PCMag)Basically, you may not get your money back if you have unused funds in your account. That’s not a very good policy. Also, if you encounter a service defect, you have 24 hours to request a refund. After that, you’re out of luck. Again, not a very generous refund policy.
Much like Soax, IPRoyal has a Know Your Customer policy to keep the company and its customers safe. The process starts when you sign up for an account. IPRoyal checks your IP address, email, and other identifying information to identify any potential fraud risks. To purchase a proxy plan, customers must verify their identity. IPRoyal also has an automated alert system to inform the company of suspicious customer activity. If you need to report someone for misusing IPRoyal’s services, send an email to abuse@iproyal.com.
Hands On With IPRoyal
While completing the sign-up process for IPRoyal, the company requested my phone number, which is unusual for a proxy service. I provided a Google Voice number, and the account was approved.
IPRoyal’s explanation for this requirement is as follows: “For security reasons, and to ensure we can reach you if needed—especially to assess your eligibility to use our network and potentially enable two-factor authentication (2FA) in the future for safety reasons—we require your phone number. If you were using a generic personal email address (like Gmail or Yahoo), we would not ask for your phone number. You can test this behavior yourself by trying to sign up with a common-use email address.”
I tested the behavior as instructed, using a free personal email address provided by Zoho Mail. IPRoyal still required a phone number. I tested it again, using a free address from Proton. IPRoyal did not require a phone number this time. It looks like the service has whitelisted some email address domains, but requires phone verification for anything else.
After entering the Google Voice number, I needed to verify my email address. I encountered a bit of a snag here when the link to verify my email sent me to a site without a matching certificate, which isn’t great. I emailed my contact at the company to inform them of the issue, and they responded promptly, stating that the team was investigating the problem. When I tried the link again after a few days, the issue was resolved.
(Credit: IPRoyal/PCMag)After successfully verifying my email address, I purchased 1 gigabyte of residential proxy access for $7.35. I really liked that IPRoyal shows you, up front, how much you’ll pay each month. It takes the guesswork out of creating project budget proposals, which is especially important for business clients.
Make sure that you don’t have Auto-Top Up enabled at the top of your payment screen. According to IPRoyal’s help page, “For the Residential PAYG plan, the Auto top-up feature enables you to automatically add traffic to your account whenever it falls below a certain threshold. The system can create a new order for a specified amount of traffic and charge it to your credit card or IPRoyal balance.”
I like that the Auto-Top Up function is opt-in only. I’d advise you not to enable this payment option to avoid extra charges.
(Credit: IPRoyal/PCMag)On the checkout screen, an IPRoyal dashboard pop-up informed me that I hadn’t set up a multi-factor authentication (MFA) method for my account. As someone who usually writes about online privacy and security, I appreciated the reminder. You don’t need to be a security expert to enable another form of authentication for your account. Simply visit your IPRoyal account settings menu, open the MFA QR code image, and scan it using an authenticator app.
I navigated back to the dashboard to set up my residential proxies. As I mentioned in the pricing section, you can target IP locations by country, state, and city. I chose San Jose, Costa Rica, as my proxy destination.
Something I haven’t seen before: You have to pay 20 cents each time you want to change a proxy name, which seems a bit excessive. Other companies don’t charge to change a proxy name. IPRoyal provided me with testing credits, but, on principle, I opted not to use them to change my proxy name to something more familiar. “Bl69X2PdMuMCykUj” is just who I am now.
(Credit: IPRoyal/PCMag)After downloading my proxy list in CSV format, I clicked on the Tools section on the IPRoyal dashboard to download the company’s browser extension. There’s a Chrome extension and an add-on for Firefox.
Location Spoofing
I used the Chrome extension for my location spoofing test. The extension has limited features. You can save your favorite servers by clicking on the heart icon below them in the browser extension window.
(Credit: IPRoyal/PCMag)The browser extension did not automatically fill in the proxy information I generated using the dashboard, so there was no syncing there, which is not very user-friendly. I filled in my information again in the extension window and connected to a server. In the future, I’d like to see options to paste a server list into a window or to upload a file containing a server list.
To test whether IPRoyal can truly obscure your IP address, I connected to a server. I verified my new sticky IP address by visiting BrowserLeaks. IPRoyal successfully spoofed my location by making my browser traffic appear to originate from a server in San Jose, Costa Rica.
(Credit: Browserleaks/PCMag)