How Many Static IPs Do You Need? Sizing by the Job

In short: Count static IPs by the job. Give each account your team runs its own address, give each market you check one address and keep it between runs, and add a second carrier in a market only to compare what two networks are shown. Add more only when a job needs more concurrent sessions than one proxy carries: 100, or 10 past 50 GB in a month. Each IP costs the same whether you hold one or a hundred.

How many proxies you need depends on what each address is for. For static addresses the answer is a count of jobs: the accounts your team runs, the markets you check, and the networks you compare. This guide works that count out for the jobs on our account management and region testing pages, and shows what it adds up to on the pricing page. ProxyJam sells static residential (ISP) proxies, so these are the addresses it sizes. Our editorial policy explains how articles like this are sourced and corrected.

Why do you count static addresses by the job?

Because a rotating pool and a fixed address answer different questions, and so they are counted differently. With a rotating pool, the seller holds the addresses and hands you a new one per request or per short window. You buy traffic, and the sizing questions are gigabytes and concurrent connections. Most guides that ask how many proxies you need answer that question, for scraping.

A static address is one IP you hold for the whole period you pay for. What it gives you is that it does not change, so each address is assigned to something that needs that constancy: an account’s sign-in history, a market’s baseline, a carrier’s view of a page. The number of requests hardly enters into it, because one proxy carries up to 100 concurrent sessions, 10 past 50 GB a month. ISP vs residential proxies explains which jobs need which kind.

The count is therefore a sum over jobs:

• one address per account your team runs;
• one address per market you check;
• one more address per market where you compare a second carrier;
• and a further address only where one job outgrows the session cap.

How many addresses do the accounts your team runs need?

One per account, and only for accounts you own or are authorised to operate. Sign-in checks compare each sign-in with the account’s history. Microsoft documents a detection for unfamiliar sign-in properties that “considers past sign-in history to look for anomalous sign-ins”, where the properties “can include IP, ASN, location, device, browser, and tenant IP subnet”. When a team signs in from the same address every day, the owner’s alert for an unfamiliar sign-in still means something when it fires.

A shared address mixes the histories of unrelated accounts. For an agency, that means one client’s sign-ins, allow-lists and alerts sit on the same network as another client’s. Some access is bound to a single address: Google Cloud lets you restrict an API key to the external IP addresses of its callers, and such a key is refused from addresses outside the list. Several authorised people who work on the same account share that account’s address.

Our Acceptable Use Policy draws the line. Accounts you personally own need no verification. For accounts on third-party platforms that you do not personally own, a client’s or an employer’s, we ask for evidence of your authority over them before access opens (section 2). Creating, aging or farming accounts without authorisation, and mass registration, are prohibited (section 5). So the number of accounts is set by the work you already have, and a proxy does not change how many accounts a platform allows one person or business to hold. An agency running two platform accounts for each of four clients needs eight addresses, each in the country the client operates from.

How many addresses do region testing and ad verification need?

One per market is the floor. Many sites decide what to serve from the visitor’s country, which they read from the address. Google’s guidance on locale-adaptive pages describes a site that “returns different content based on the perceived country or preferred language of the visitor”. A check from inside each market is the only way to see that content, and a site you sell from in five countries needs five addresses.

Keep each address between runs. A regional check is a comparison, this week against last week, and if the address moves between runs, a difference may come from the network and tell you nothing about the site. Renewing before the period ends keeps the same address, so a baseline can run for months; a replaced address starts a new one. Viewing your website from another country sets up one browser profile per market around that address.

Markets multiplied by the platforms you check is the ceiling. One address covers every platform you check in a market in turn, so you multiply only for a reason you can name:

• Checks run at the same moment. Separate teams or schedules checking several platforms in one market in parallel can each use their own address and keep their own record.
• A replacement ground per target. A free replacement covers an address refused by the target you identified at purchase, up to 20% of an order’s IPs a month (Terms of Service, section 2.5). An address that serves one platform has that platform as its target.

Ad verification counts the same way: one address per market the campaign bought, and more when several platforms are checked in parallel. A campaign running in four markets across three platforms needs between four addresses and twelve. Ad verification with a proxy covers the check itself and what each run should record.

When does a second carrier in the same market help?

When the question is what two networks are shown. For what one country is shown, one address is enough. Two cases need the comparison.

• The campaign targets a carrier. Ad platforms can target by network: Google’s Display & Video 360 API lists a targeting type that will “target ads to a specific network carrier or internet service provider (ISP)”. Checking such a line item needs an address on the targeted network, and an address on a second carrier is the control that shows the targeting held.
• A site varies inside the country. Each network operator can publish the location of its own address blocks in the format of RFC 8805, so two carriers’ addresses in one country can be placed in different regions. If a price or a stock level differs between two runs, a second carrier tells you whether the site varies by region or one address is placed somewhere unexpected.

The carrier we name on an address is the network that announces it. Where a country has more than one in the catalogue, you choose it in the order form; the locations page lists the countries, and the US ISP proxies page the 19 named carriers in the United States.

When does one job need more than one address?

Only when the job outgrows the session cap. The cap is 100 concurrent sessions per proxy, 10 past 50 GB a month (Terms of Service, section 2.4). A browser opens about six connections to each domain over HTTP/1.1, and a page often draws on several domains, so a handful of browsers working through one address at once can approach 100. Past 50 GB in a month, 10 is a tight limit for a team, and a team that loads video in its checks may reach that line before the month ends. Unlimited bandwidth proxies works out when that happens.

What does the count cost?

Each address is priced per IP per month, at the rate of the country and carrier you pick, from $4.30. The rate is the same at one address as at a hundred, and the same for every period, so there is no volume tier to reach and the total is addresses times rate times months. Traffic is not metered. Take the agency from the accounts example: eight client accounts, four markets to check and one second carrier. If no address is shared between jobs, it needs thirteen, each at the rate of its country; the order form on the pricing page prices that exactly before you pay.

Start with the count from the five steps. A first order can be refunded within 24 hours, once per customer, and using the proxies during that window does not void the request; on a larger order the refund covers ten addresses (Refund Policy, section 2). Add addresses when a job proves it needs them.

Where does this way of counting not fit?

• Large-scale collection. Many independent samples of many pages is a rotating pool’s job, sized by traffic. We do not sell rotating pools yet.
• City-level questions. The catalogue is sold by country and carrier, and the city of an address is not promised.
• Mobile carrier placements. They need an address on a mobile network, which we do not sell yet.
• Accounts you do not run. No number of addresses makes creating or farming accounts a permitted use; section 5 of the policy prohibits it.

If your jobs fit the count, the ISP proxies page has the catalogue: static addresses in 77 countries, each on a named carrier.