Introduction
If you are serious about privacy, using a proxy service with your favorite devices is a good idea. Proxy services hide your IP address, keeping your real device address confidential to protect your online privacy. IPRoyal is a feature-rich and relatively standard option, but it surprises us with its sneaker proxy service, which helps you get to the front line when the latest hot shoes drop. Although the proxy pricing per gigabyte is higher than we would like, the company also offers fixed IP address proxies at more balanced prices.
How much does IPRoyal cost?
IPRoyal follows a standard proxy pricing model, including gigabyte pricing for home users on what the company calls the Royal Proxy Network using desktop or tablet devices, in addition to fixed residential proxies.
The Royal Proxy Network is sold to residential users based on gigabytes. Prices for this type of proxy start at $7.00 per gigabyte and decrease to $2.45 per gigabyte if you purchase 5,000 gigabytes at once. These prices are high. Plans are also available for up to 10,000 gigabytes monthly, although you will need to contact the company for a custom quote if you choose that volume.
Fixed residential proxies are more reasonable, starting at $1.80 for a proxy with a 24-hour license. Long-term plans cost $2.70 per month for a 30-day plan for one proxy, dropping to $2.55 per month for 60-day plans and $2.40 per month for 90-day plans. IPRoyal also offers separate mobile options billed monthly, starting at $130 per month for a 30-day plan. The cost drops to $81 per month for a 90-day plan.
If you do a lot of streaming or want to use your proxy strictly for viewing geo-restricted content, the monthly fixed proxy is your best option. Although the number of available countries and proxy blocks is much lower, trying to stream any content based on gigabytes (especially at the prices mentioned above) will quickly take a toll on your budget.
IPRoyal does not offer a free trial for its paid services. However, there is a free proxy list with over 6,800 IP addresses on the IPRoyal network to choose from. You can install these manually or use a browser extension to start your connection, which is also free. Given the network’s size and the over two million IP addresses in more than 195 countries covered by IPRoyal’s residential plan, we are pleased with the number of options the service offers here.
The company accepts payments via all major credit cards, PayPal, and more than 70 different cryptocurrencies.
IPRoyal also serves data center clients. However, the pricing structure for these proxies varies significantly depending on how many you want, the country you want the IP addresses from, and the features you want to include in your plan. Basic pricing starts at $1.39 for a proxy on a 90-day plan and increases from there, depending on the mentioned variables.
What do you get for your money with IPRoyal?
IPRoyal offers a wider range of features compared to standard web proxies, including coverage in more than 195 countries, over two million IP addresses to choose from in the top-tier plan, and additional options such as automatic IP address switching and instant IP address changing.
If
You have set up a proxy on your home router. You can connect an unlimited number of devices to the IPRoyal network, and the top-tier plan provides options for connecting via the HTTPS protocol or through SOCKS5. For an introduction to what each means for you and your internet security, head to our explanation of proxies.
One interesting feature that IPRoyal offers, which we haven’t seen in any other proxy service, is what the company calls “sneaker proxies,” which some may misunderstand as related to botting. In reality, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a proxy server and bot specifically designed to help you purchase sneakers before anyone else.
For those who haven’t immersed themselves in the sneakerhead world, we don’t know much about this culture, so we reached out to sneaker expert at PCMag, Joe Maldonado, to talk about the usefulness of such a service. According to Maldonado, “It’s great because I don’t have to put in any effort to set up a bot for getting sneakers on release or restock. It should be able to know that I want it based on my previous usage.”
Your Privacy with IPRoyal
IPRoyal is based in the United Arab Emirates. People concerned about privacy may feel uneasy using a service based in this country, given its record on privacy violations. However, because most of its IP addresses route through servers in other countries, this is less of a concern than it might be if a VPN company were able to log your traffic in the country of origin where the company is headquartered.
If you want to read IPRoyal’s terms of service, you can check them out through the link here. They are somewhat unclear and a bit hard to read. You should look to VPNs like ExpressVPN for a clearer example of what to expect.
Using IPRoyal
We had no issues configuring the IPRoyal proxy on our test computer and on the Firefox browser, which we used to test the IPRoyal browser extension.
Once they provided us with the proxy address and username and password via the IPRoyal dashboard (as shown below), we used that to configure our desktop and web traffic to route manually through the IPRoyal network. We selected an IP address from what IPRoyal calls the “High-End Pool” and also used an IP address closest to our test device in Denver, Colorado. We used the Firefox browser extension to implement the proxy in the browser, although you can also perform this configuration manually, which varies depending on your preferred web browser. The Firefox extension allows you to create new proxy profiles for each country you want to connect from and easily copy/paste them from the dashboard into the extension.
From there, you can select the region you want to use from a dropdown in the top right of your web browser. IPRoyal offers extensions for only Chrome and Firefox, leaving a fair number of alternative options like Edge, Safari, and Opera out of service.
Streaming media is important to consumers, but streaming services like Netflix sometimes block or limit access when you use a VPN service. That’s why you might prefer proxy services, as their IP address blocks make it easier to browse options until you find one that works freely. We tried the regions we typically include when testing Netflix on VPNs: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. All were completely open on IPRoyal’s home-based proxy network. Typically, we find some VPN services limited. (Check here for our definitions of open and limited.)
Whether
You would be able to stream your content at a quality that justifies the proxy investment or not; that’s a completely different matter. It depends on performance, and as you will see below, the proxy may not be the best option. Speed and Performance of IPRoyal
To understand the impact of proxy on your internet experience, we conduct a series of tests using Google’s speed test tool and find the percentage change between the test results with and without the proxy enabled.
In the test, we found that IPRoyal has little to no impact on upload speeds. However, download speeds were a completely different story.
As noted above, while connected to a local Denver proxy from Boulder, Colorado, our testing system, which operates on a direct link to the home router, reported a 94.2% reduction in download speed. For transparency, we are still at the beginning of our proxy coverage here at PCMag, so we do not yet have any idea how moderate or exceptional this result is. For anyone looking for acceptable speeds while maintaining the original IP address, a VPN may generally be a better option, as most of our tests on those products show a much lower speed reduction than what we see here.
Remember that network connections can change, and your experience may differ from ours. These results are a snapshot comparison and not a definitive judgment on performance. We believe that features and overall value are far more important than speed, and we advise against judging a proxy service solely based on these results. A Good Proxy for Sneaker Enthusiasts
While many of the core features of the IPRoyal experience might be familiar to long-time users of proxy services, the company still manages to add something new with the addition of a sneaker search proxy bot that will keep you ahead of all the latest releases. Although the price per gigabyte for proxies may be steep if you just want to stream geographically restricted content on Netflix, the company offers various service options to fit your personal situation. Whether it’s for data collection, unblocking geography, or just getting the latest sneakers on the web, IPRoyal is a viable proxy provider.
Technical Specifications of IPRoyal
Accepts cryptocurrency
Browser extension
Mobile option
Number of countries: 195
Number of IP addresses: 2,000,000
Pay-as-you-go
Supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5
Table of Contents
How much does IPRoyal cost?
What do you get for your money with IPRoyal?
Your privacy with IPRoyal
Using IPRoyal
Speed and Performance of IPRoyal
A Good Proxy for Sneaker Enthusiasts
Technical Specifications of IPRoyal
Source: https://me.pcmag.com/en/proxy/20813/iproyal
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