Head to head

Node4 vs IPRoyal

IPRoyal is an established provider with a large residential network and a broad product range. This page compares the two on price per unit, who owns the IPs, what bandwidth costs, and what you can target. Their figures are quoted from their public pricing page on the date shown; ours are read from our own catalog.

IPRoyal figures read from their public pricing page on 5 October 2026. Prices change on both sides, so check before you buy.

Price comparison

ProductNode4IPRoyal
Residential, entry$2.49/GB
at 3 GB
$7.00 / GB
their 1 GB subscription rate; $7.35 pay-as-you-go
Residential, 10 GB$1.99/GB
at 10 GB
$5.25 / GB
their 10 GB subscription rate
Residential, top of ladder$0.49/GB
at 5 TB
$1.75 / GB
their lowest published rate, and it needs a 10 TB custom plan against our 5 TB
Datacenter, entry$1.49
at 5 proxies
$1.57 / proxy
30-day rate; $1.39 on a 90-day commitment
Datacenter, volume$0.75
at 1,000 proxies
$1.39 / proxy
their 90-day rate; every tier reads “starting from”, so their quantity pricing is not published
Shared datacenter$0.20
at 25 proxies
not offered

Feature comparison

FeatureNode4IPRoyal
Owns its datacenter IP blocksYes: blocks we own and announceNot stated on their datacenter or pricing page
Residential poolPartner network, ~25M IPs (supplier-reported)64M+ IPs (their figure)
Datacenter bandwidthUnlimited100 GB per proxy per month, pooled, then a speed reduction (datacenter page FAQ); their general pricing page says unlimited
ProtocolsHTTP(S) and SOCKS5 on every productHTTP(S) and SOCKS5
Residential targetingCountry, state, cityCountry, state, city
Mobile proxiesNot offeredFrom $117 / month
Free tierYes, no card requiredNo free tier listed; a free trial for verified companies on request

What differs structurally beyond the prices

The deepest difference is ownership. Node4's datacenter, shared and rotating products run on address blocks allocated to us: we decide how addresses are spread across subnets and when a range is rested. IPRoyal's pricing page does not state whether its datacenter ranges are owned or sourced from upstream hosts. It is worth asking any provider, because it determines who you depend on when a range gets flagged.

On residential, both sides bill per gigabyte and both step the rate down with volume; the difference is where the ladders start. Theirs opens at $7.00/GB and reaches $1.75/GB only on a 10 TB custom plan; ours opens at $2.49/GB and reaches $0.65/GB at 1 TB and $0.49/GB at 5 TB. On datacenter, both bill per proxy per month, and ours includes the bandwidth in that price. Their datacenter page's FAQ states each proxy includes 100 GB per monthly cycle, pooled across the IPs you buy, after which a speed reduction is applied, while their general pricing page describes datacenter bandwidth as unlimited; ask them which applies to your order. That matters most for steady, high-throughput work such as monitoring, and much less for low-volume jobs.

Authentication is close to a wash: both providers issue username-and-password credentials and both speak HTTP(S) and SOCKS5. On Node4 you have one credential for every product on your account, and IP whitelisting is a full alternative to it on every product: register your machines' addresses and connect with no username at all. On rotating you can also send the username with an empty password to keep country or session targeting without the secret. On residential a whitelisted connection carries no username and therefore no targeting.

Residential targeting differs at the edges. Ours is expressed as hyphenated segments in the proxy username (country, state, city and session), and a location with no available exits is refused rather than served from somewhere else. Run the same city request on both during a trial and compare what comes back.

Where IPRoyal is the better choice

IPRoyal is a larger, older business with a wider catalog. Choose them, or another provider, if you need any of these.

  • A far larger residential pool: they publish 64M+ IPs against the ~25M our partner network reports.
  • Mobile proxies, from $117/month. We do not sell mobile.
  • ISP proxies or a Web Unblocker product, so one vendor covers more ground.
  • Datacenter proxies on 60- or 90-day terms, which we do not offer.
  • IPv6 addresses, from any provider that sells them: there is no IPv6 in our pool.
  • A long track record and third-party reviews. We are a young provider with very few, which matters if procurement needs them.

Where Node4 is the better choice

Our advantages come from owning the datacenter infrastructure and from a lower residential ladder. Choose Node4 if you want any of these.

  • Dedicated datacenter IPs from blocks we own and announce, with bandwidth included in a fixed monthly price. Their datacenter page's FAQ states 100 GB per proxy per month, pooled, after which a speed reduction is applied; their general pricing page describes datacenter bandwidth as unlimited, so confirm which applies to your order.
  • Cheaper residential at every volume both sides publish: $2.49/GB against their $7.00/GB at entry, and $1.99/GB against their $5.25/GB at 10 GB. Our floor of $0.49/GB arrives at 5 TB; their $1.75/GB needs a 10 TB custom plan.
  • IP whitelist authentication that replaces credentials entirely, on every product; on residential a whitelisted connection carries no username and so no targeting.
  • A targeting request for a location with no exits refused outright rather than served from elsewhere.

Switching from IPRoyal: what changes

Most of the work is one config change. These are the places a migrated setup usually breaks.

  1. 1

    Endpoints

    Static datacenter proxies are host-and-port pairs like anyone else's: replace the list from their dashboard with the list on our Proxies page. Rotating and residential traffic moves to fixed gateway hostnames (for example gw-residential.node4.io) instead of per-IP endpoints, so code that iterates a list of hosts collapses to one host with rotation handled behind it.

  2. 2

    Credentials

    You get one Node4 credential, and it works on every product on your account. On every product you can instead register your machines' IPs on the dashboard whitelist and connect with no credentials at all; on residential that also means no targeting. Rotate the old provider's credentials out of your secret store when you cancel.

  3. 3

    Targeting syntax

    Every provider encodes targeting in the proxy username differently, and this is the step that breaks silently. Ours uses hyphenated segments (country, state, city, session) with two-letter country codes and lowercase city names without separators. Rewrite the function that builds your usernames against our docs rather than string-replacing their format into ours, because a malformed segment fails in ways a quick test can miss.

  4. 4

    Session behavior

    Sticky-session syntax and duration are provider-specific, so a migrated workload should not assume the old provider's window. On our rotating gateways a session pins one exit for up to 30 minutes, measured from when the pin is first assigned rather than from the most recent request. Residential sessions are best effort with a 30-minute ceiling: the exit can drop sooner if its device goes offline, so switch to a new session ID after repeated failures. Both are maximums, not minimums; size the session against them.

Test before you cut over

  • Run both providers side by side on a small slice of real traffic for a few days rather than cutting over at once.
  • Fetch your exit IP through each product, run whois on it, and look it up in an IP-type database. Datacenter IPs sold as provider-owned should trace to consistent allocations; residential exits should sit in consumer ISP networks rather than hosting ones. Your targets run the same lookup.
  • Measure block and success rates against your real targets and keep the numbers. A proxy that passes httpbin and fails your target is a failed proxy, and any published rate was measured on someone else's workload.
  • Send a deliberately invalid targeting string and check that you get a refusal, not a silent exit from the wrong country.
  • Compare each dashboard's bandwidth meter against your own byte counts for the same run, before the bill is large enough to argue about.
  • Read uptime language carefully everywhere. Our 99.9% is a target, not a contractual SLA, and it is worth establishing what any provider's number legally is before it matters.

Frequently asked questions

Is Node4 cheaper than IPRoyal?

On residential, yes at every volume both sides publish for the same amount: $2.49/GB against their $7.00/GB at entry, and $1.99/GB against their $5.25/GB at 10 GB. The two floors are different commitments rather than a like-for-like row: ours is $0.49/GB at 5 TB, theirs is $1.75/GB on a 10 TB custom plan. On dedicated datacenter, our $1.49 entry rate is below their $1.57 30-day rate and above their $1.39 90-day rate, and we do not sell 90-day terms. On products we do not sell, such as mobile, the comparison does not apply. Prices on both sides change; the date this page was checked is shown above.

Does Node4 have as many residential IPs as IPRoyal?

No. IPRoyal publishes 64M+ residential IPs; the partner network behind our residential product reports around 25M. If raw pool size is your deciding factor, theirs is larger.

What does 'owns its IP blocks' mean?

Our datacenter, shared and rotating products run on IP blocks allocated to us, not rented from another proxy provider. We control how addresses are allocated and spread across subnets, and no other reseller is selling the address you are using. It does not apply to our residential product, which is a partner network.

Can I use SOCKS5 with both?

Yes. Both providers support HTTP(S) and SOCKS5.

Before you decide

Compare our products