Node4 vs IPRoyal
IPRoyal is a well-established provider with a large residential network and a broad product range. This page compares them with Node4 on the things that decide a purchase: price per unit, who owns the IPs, what bandwidth costs, and what you can actually target. Their figures are quoted from their public pricing page; ours are read live from our own catalog, so this page cannot drift from what we charge.
IPRoyal figures read from their public pricing page on 30 August 2026. Prices change on both sides, so check before you buy.
Price comparison
| Product | Node4 | IPRoyal |
|---|---|---|
| Residential, entry | $2.49/GB at 3 GB | $7.00 / GB their 1 GB subscription rate; $7.35 pay-as-you-go |
| Residential, volume | $0.49/GB at 5 TB | $5.25 / GB their 10 GB rate; $1.75 is a custom plan from 10 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 discount is by duration, not quantity |
| Shared datacenter | $0.20 at 25 proxies | not offered |
Feature comparison
| Feature | Node4 | IPRoyal |
|---|---|---|
| Owns its datacenter IP blocks | Yes: blocks we own and announce | Not stated |
| Residential pool | Partner network, ~25M IPs (supplier-reported) | 64M+ IPs (their figure) |
| Datacenter bandwidth | Unlimited | 100 GB per proxy per month, pooled, then throttled |
| Protocols | HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 on every product | HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 |
| Residential targeting | Country, state, city | Country, state, city |
| Mobile proxies | Not offered | From $117 / month |
| Free tier | Yes, no card required | Not published |
What differs structurally beyond the prices
Prices move; the structure of an offer mostly does not, and it is the structure that decides what a workload actually costs. The deepest difference here is ownership. Node4's datacenter, shared and rotating products run on address blocks allocated to us: we decide how addresses are spread across subnets, what an IP was used for before you got it, and when a range is rested. IPRoyal's pricing page does not state whether its datacenter ranges are owned or sourced from upstream hosts. That is not an accusation, just a question worth asking any provider, because it determines who you are really depending on when a range gets flagged.
The billing models split by product. On residential, both sides bill per gigabyte, and both step the rate down with volume. The gap is where the ladders start: theirs opens at $7.00/GB and reaches $1.75 only on a 10 TB custom plan, while ours opens at $2.49 and reaches $0.65 at 1 TB and $0.49 at 5 TB. On datacenter, both bill per proxy per month, but ours includes the bandwidth in that monthly price rather than allowancing it: their page states each proxy includes 100 GB per monthly cycle, pooled across the IPs you buy, after which a speed reduction is applied. That changes the calculation most for steady, high-throughput work such as monitoring, where a per-gigabyte meter would be the dominant cost, and matters much less for low-volume jobs like account management.
Authentication is close to a wash: both providers issue username-and-password credentials and both speak HTTP(S) and SOCKS5. One difference worth knowing: on Node4, IP whitelisting is a full alternative to credentials rather than an extra layer, on every product: register your machines' addresses and connect with no username at all, which keeps secrets out of config files and shell history. On rotating you can also send the username with an empty password when you want to keep country or session targeting without the secret. On the residential gateway the same whitelisting works, except that a connection with no username carries 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 outright rather than silently served from somewhere else. That refusal is the difference worth testing: a provider that substitutes a nearby exit for the one you asked for gives you data that looks right and is not. Run the same city request on both during a trial and check what actually comes back.
Where IPRoyal is the better choice
IPRoyal is a larger, older business with a wider catalog, and there are straightforward cases where they are the right answer rather than us.
- A far larger residential pool: they publish 64M+ IPs against the ~25M our partner network reports.
- They sell mobile proxies from $117/month and we do not sell mobile at all.
- They also offer ISP proxies and a Web Unblocker product, so a single vendor can cover more ground.
- Longer track record and a much larger customer base, which matters if vendor maturity is part of your procurement.
Where Node4 is the better choice
Our advantages are narrower and mostly structural: they come from owning the datacenter infrastructure rather than reselling it.
- We own our datacenter IP blocks, so allocation, subnet spread and reputation are under our control rather than a supplier's.
- Dedicated datacenter proxies include unlimited bandwidth, billed per proxy per month.
- Residential is cheaper at every published tier: $2.49/GB against their $7.00 at entry, $1.99 against their $5.25 at 10 GB, and $0.49 at 5 TB against a $1.75 that needs a 10 TB custom plan.
- Datacenter bandwidth is genuinely unlimited. Theirs includes 100 GB per proxy per month, pooled, after which their page states a speed reduction is applied.
- Coverage figures on our site are read from a live snapshot rather than typed into the page, so what you see is current.
Which should you choose?
You want dedicated datacenter IPs from a provider that owns the blocks and includes bandwidth in a fixed monthly cost; you run residential at a volume where a stepped per-GB rate beats a flat one; or you want targeting that is refused outright when a location has no exits rather than quietly served from elsewhere. Also a reasonable pick if you would rather authenticate by IP whitelist and keep credentials out of your configs entirely, which works on every product including residential, though a whitelisted residential connection is untargeted.
You need mobile proxies (we do not sell them), ISP proxies or an unblocker product, a residential pool larger than ours, or a vendor whose age and review history will pass procurement. Their datacenter proxies can also be bought on 60- or 90-day terms, which we do not offer.
Where Node4 honestly falls short
These apply whichever competitor you are comparing us to, and they are the things a comparison page written by us is most tempted to leave out.
- We are a young provider. IPRoyal has years of third-party reviews; we have very few. If your procurement process needs a track record, we do not have one yet.
- IPv4 only. There is no IPv6 in our pool at all.
- No mobile proxies: the product was withdrawn from sale and stays withdrawn.
- Our residential pool is a partner network, not infrastructure we own, and it is smaller than theirs.
Switching from IPRoyal: what actually changes
Most proxy migrations are one config change plus three surprises. Here is where each of them usually hides.
- 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 if your code iterates a list of hosts, it collapses to one host with rotation handled behind it.
- 2
Credentials
You will get a new username and password per service. 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. Either way, rotate the old provider's credentials out of your secret store when you cancel; leaked proxy credentials bill somebody.
- 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; do not string-replace their format into ours, because a malformed segment fails in ways a quick test can miss.
- 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 pins last as long as the peer stays online. Size the session against those, not against the previous provider's.
Test before you cut over
- Run both providers side by side on a small slice of real traffic for a few days; do not big-bang the cutover.
- Fetch your exit IP through each product and confirm the geography and IP type yourself (see the next section).
- Measure block and success rates against your actual target sites. A proxy that passes httpbin and fails your real target is a failed proxy.
- 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.
How to check the claims on this page
This page is written by one of the two vendors it compares, and you should treat it accordingly. Everything both sides claim is checkable from a terminal during a trial: ours starts free without a card, and their trial and refund terms are on their site.
- Fetch your exit IP through the proxy (any what-is-my-IP endpoint works) and run whois on it. Datacenter IPs sold as provider-owned should trace to consistent, related allocations; residential exits should sit in consumer ISP ASNs, not hosting ASNs.
- Look the exit IP up in an IP-reputation or IP-type database and see whether it is classified as datacenter, residential or proxy. Your target sites are running the same lookup.
- Benchmark success rate on your own targets and keep the numbers. Any published rate, from any provider, was measured on someone else's workload.
- 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 and datacenter, yes at every tier compared on this page: our residential entry is $2.49/GB for 3 GB against their $7.00, and $0.49/GB at 5 TB against their $5.25 for 10 GB. On products we do not sell at all, 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' actually mean?
Our datacenter, shared and rotating products run on IP blocks allocated to us, not rented from another proxy provider. It means 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.