# Premium Residential Proxies

Source: PageCrawl.io Help Center
URL: https://pagecrawl.io/help/features/article/residential-proxies

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Premium residential proxies let you monitor websites that block standard datacenter IP addresses. They use real residential internet connections from 200+ countries, making your monitoring checks appear as regular user traffic. Select a proxy location, including residential options, from the **Location** dropdown in the page editor.

  [Image: Proxy location set to Residential Proxy, with the country selector open showing Any country plus United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and Canada]

### When Do You Need Residential Proxies?

Most websites work fine with the datacenter proxies already included in every PageCrawl plan. You only need residential proxies if:

- A website actively blocks datacenter IPs (you see 403 errors, timeouts, or blank pages after retries)
- You need to see content as it appears in a specific country, state, or city
- The site uses advanced bot detection that datacenter proxies cannot bypass

**Before purchasing, try these free alternatives:**

1. **Enable Stealth engine** in your monitor settings. Stealth mode is an alternative engine that handles many bot-protected sites and works on most protected websites
2. **Reduce your check frequency**. Many blocks are triggered by frequent requests. Switching from every 15 minutes to hourly or daily often resolves the issue
3. **Switch proxy location** in your monitor settings (e.g., try London instead of New York)
4. [Contact support](https://pagecrawl.io/contact-us) for help diagnosing the issue

### How Residential Proxy Bandwidth Works

Residential proxies are priced at **$10/GB** of data transferred. Every page check consumes bandwidth based on the page size:

| Page Type | Approximate Size Per Check |
|-----------|---------------------------|
| Simple text page (blog, news article) | ~0.5 MB |
| Standard e-commerce or listing page | ~2 MB |
| Heavy page with images and scripts | ~5 MB |

**Bandwidth never expires.** You can purchase 1 GB today and use it over months.

### Cost Impact of Check Frequency

Check frequency has a large impact on bandwidth consumption. The same 10 pages can cost very different amounts depending on how often you check:

| Frequency | 10 Pages Monthly Cost |
|-----------|----------------------|
| Daily | ~$10 (0.6 GB) |
| Hourly | ~$150 (14.4 GB) |
| Every 15 minutes | ~$570 (57.6 GB) |

For most monitoring use cases, daily or hourly checks are sufficient. Only use high-frequency residential proxy checks when near real-time monitoring is essential.

### How to Set Up

1. Go to **Settings > Residential Proxies** in your account
2. Purchase bandwidth (minimum 1 GB)
3. Open any monitor and change the **Proxy Location** to **Residential Proxy**
4. Select a target country for geo-targeted monitoring
5. Save and trigger a check to verify it works

### Geo-Targeting

When using residential proxies, you must select a target country from 200+ supported countries. This is useful for monitoring localized pricing, regional content, or geo-restricted pages.

### Monitoring Your Usage

- View your bandwidth balance and daily usage in **Settings > Residential Proxies**
- Usage statistics update every 15 minutes
- When your bandwidth reaches zero, monitors using residential proxies automatically fall back to datacenter proxies (your monitoring does not stop)

### Availability

Premium residential proxy bandwidth is available on **Enterprise** and **Ultimate** plans. [Contact us](https://pagecrawl.io/contact-us) if you have questions about upgrading.

### Related

- [Using Custom Proxies](/help/features/article/custom-proxies.md) for using your own proxy servers
- [Cost Calculator](/residential-proxies) for estimating your monthly bandwidth needs
- [Bulk Edit](/help/features/article/bulk-edit-pages.md) for applying proxy settings to multiple pages

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