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How to choose between a residential agent and an ISP agent?

In current cross-border business (e-commerce, social media marketing, data collection), proxy IP is a core guarantee tool. However, many practitioners often wonder “Should I choose a residential proxy or an ISP proxy”? Selecting the right one can avoid risks and ensure efficiency, while choosing the wrong one may lead to business disruptions and cost waste. Especially in overseas scenarios, the authenticity, stability and geographical coverage of the proxy IP are of vital importance.

Novproxy offers precise control over overseas proxy IPs, highlighting two key advantages: it covers 190+ countries worldwide and can meet various needs. This article will delve into the core differences, scenario selection, and risk avoidance aspects to help you make the best decision, enabling Novproxy to better serve business growth.

I. understand the key differences: Residential agent vs ISP agent

What is a residential agent?

Residential proxy is the IP address owned by an Internet service provider (ISP) and allocated to home users. These proxies are bound to the physical addresses of real users (such as their computers, smart devices, or mobile phones connected via WiFi).
The residential proxy will send your internet traffic to the proxy server, and then the proxy server will route the requests to the residential device. Therefore, the connection path is as follows: your device -> proxy server -> user device -> network.

What is an ISP proxy?

ISP proxy (or called static residential proxy) attempts to combine the best features of both data center proxy and residential proxy. Similar to residential proxies, they are owned by the Internet service provider rather than the network hosting service provider; similar to data center proxies, they are hosted on servers in data centers and do not involve end users.

Dimension	Dimension	ISP agent
IP source	Real IP for home broadband, bound to physical address	Static IP for data center servers, with ISP identification
Core features	Extremely high degree of authenticity, simulating natural human interactions	Combining authenticity and stability, with faster speed
Stability	Generally, affected by fluctuations in the home user network.	Excellent. Server deployment has an extremely low downtime rate.
Identify risks	Extremely low – difficult to distinguish the identity of the agent	Low – unlikely to be misjudged as a data center agent
Typical scenarios	Data collection, low-sensitivity account account-building	Long-term operation of cross-border e-commerce, advertising placement

II. Scenario-based Selection: 3 Core Requirements Corresponding Solutions

1.High concealment priority scenario: Choose residential agent and combine with Novproxy dynamic IP

When the business requires extreme simulation of real users (such as anti-crawler data collection, social media account creation), residential proxies are the preferred choice. In such scenarios, the requirement for IP authenticity is much higher than stability, and the Novproxy overseas dynamic residential proxy can perfectly meet this need:

• Anti-crawler data collection: When the anti-crawler mechanism of the target website (such as overseas e-commerce platforms, academic databases) is strict, the IP of Novproxy comes from real home broadband in 190+ countries around the world, which can avoid 90% or more of IP blocking risks. It supports flexible switching of IPs from 1 to 120 minutes, and is compatible with HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS5 protocols, suitable for various crawler tools.
• SEO Monitoring: Marketing agencies use search engines to track the position of local keywords, study topics, and analyze competitors.

2.Stability-oriented scenario: Select ISP proxy and combine with the performance advantages of Novproxy

Long-term projects (such as the operation of cross-border e-commerce stores and precise advertising placement) have extremely strict requirements for network stability, and ISP agents have a significant advantage. If overseas resources are needed, Novproxy service with a static ISP can be given priority:

• Cross-border e-commerce anti-correlation: When operating multiple stores on platforms such as Amazon and Shopify, Novproxy’s ISP proxy can provide a stable and static IP, preventing store reviews from being rejected due to IP issues.
• Overseas advertising placement: When placing precise ads on Google and Facebook, the high-speed network provided by Novproxy ISP can ensure that the advertising materials load quickly. At the same time, precise geographical targeting (such as targeting specific cities in Europe and America) can increase the reach of the target users, balancing the efficiency of placement and account security.

3.Compromise requirement: Flexible combination of the two types of agents

If the business requires both authenticity and stability (such as balancing data collection and account management), a “residential proxy + ISP proxy” combination solution can be adopted: Use Novproxy’s dynamic residential proxy to complete frequent data collection, use its ISP proxy to maintain core accounts, and achieve efficient allocation of IP resources through a unified backend management system.

III. Key to Avoiding Pitfalls: 3 Decision Dimensions

Regional requirements: When there is a need for scarce regional IPs (such as in small language-speaking countries in Southeast Asia), the global IP coverage capability of Novproxy can be regarded as a key consideration factor.
Business cycle: For short-term testing, choose residential agent (lower cost); for long-term operation, choose ISP agent (higher cost-effectiveness).
Risk control level: Overseas platform verification, operation of high-value accounts. Prefer Novproxy ISP proxy or dual ISP proxy (for ultimate security).