I’ve bought more proxies than I want to admit. Some of them were fantastic, while some of them were a complete waste of money that ended up causing more trouble than they were worth.
If you want to actually use your proxies for real work, then you need to make sure that these proxies are the real deal. No cheap crap, but real and tested proxies with residential IP’s that won’t get flagged as soon as you open up your browser window.
Getting the right proxy is hard, and finding a reliable source of proxies is even harder. I have gone back and forth with a bunch of suppliers, but I still cant 100% recommend any of them. My best advice is to test each proxy and once you find good ones, buy in batches from that provider.
Keep on testing different ones since you never know when a certain supplier will get blacklisted.
What To Look Out For?
The funny thing is that most beginners focus on completely the wrong things.
They’ll spend hours comparing speeds, bandwidth limits, and random technical specifications, while ignoring the stuff that actually matters.
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Real Residential IP
The first thing I care about is whether the IP comes from a real residential internet provider. When I check the IP, I want to see names like Verizon, Comcast, Vodafone, BT, Deutsche Telekom, and similar providers. If I see AWS, Azure, OVH, Hetzner, or DigitalOcean, I’m already less interested.
That’s because most platforms know exactly where datacenter traffic comes from.
So, it makes sense to look out for Residential IPs sourced from real ISPs, and avoid datacenter proxies, or VPS proxies that are marketed as “residential”, these are usually the cheap ones.
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Sticky Sessions
The second thing I look for is sticky sessions.
For account management, I generally want the same IP to stay attached to the account for a while.
Think about it from the platform’s perspective. Normal users don’t magically teleport between different internet connections every few minutes. They sit down, open their laptop, and browse.
Your proxy setup should look the same.
A good test you can do is check your IP every now or then. If you keep the same IP for 30 minutes or more, then its likely a decent one (the best proxies keep the same IP for hours), but if it switches with every request, then you likely good a bad proxy that will get flagged right away.
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IP pool size
Another thing people forget to ask about is the size of the provider’s network.
A larger residential pool usually means you’re less likely to receive IPs that have already been abused by thousands of other users. So always ask for how big the pool is. How many countries and how many ASN’s.
The larger the pool, the better. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
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Reputation
Finally, I always check what other people are saying.
BlackHatWorld, Reddit, affiliate forums, and Discord groups. They’re all useful. You can also find some of these discussions on our own forum, iAmAffiliate!
If dozens of people are complaining that a proxy provider constantly gets Facebook accounts flagged, I pay attention.
Usually, a solid way is to just search on Google:
“ProviderName Facebook accounts”
“ProviderName Google Ads”
“ProviderName TikTok”
Usually, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Thats why I usually focus on using one service and sticking with it. For a while now, I have been super happy with ProxyEmpire
How I Test New Proxies
Whenever I buy a new proxy provider, I never trust the marketing.
Every proxy company claims they have the cleanest IPs, the biggest network, and the lowest detection rates. That’s marketing, I want evidence.
Step 1: Verify ISP and Location
The first thing I do is check the IP itself. I use sites like:
IPInfo or Whoer and verify that the location, ISP, and timezone actually make sense.
If I bought a Chicago residential proxy and it suddenly appears somewhere else, that’s not a great start.
Step 2: Check blacklist status
After that, I check abuse databases.
Run IP through:
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- AbuseIPDB
- Scamalytics
- IPQualityScore
I don’t expect perfect scores. Almost every residential IP will have some history.
What I don’t want to see is a giant collection of fraud reports and abuse complaints.
Step 3: Browser fingerprint consistency
Then comes the part most people completely ignore, browser consistency. I’ve seen people buy good proxies and still get flagged because their setup looked ridiculous.
The proxy says New York. The browser timezone says Budapest. The language says Hungarian. WebRTC is leaking their home IP. At that point, the proxy isn’t the problem, but the setup is.
That’s why I always test everything together rather than testing the proxy in isolation.
Test with:
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- browserleaks.com
- pixelscan.net
- creepjs
Look for the timezone, location, language, and WebRTC. Make sure they all make sense.
As an example:
US proxy:
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- Timezone: America/New_York
- Language: en-US
Step 4: DNS leak test
Visit websites like: dnsleaktest.com
Check the DNS location aligns with proxy location.
Bad:
US proxy
but DNS servers appear in Serbia.
Step 5: Speed and stability
You can use the classic speedtest.net to check how your proxies are performing.
Step 6: Start Using It
The final test is always a sacrificial account.
Never risk your best accounts immediately. Create a throwaway account and use the proxy for a few days.
Log in, browse normally, like a few posts, and do some regular actions.
If the platform immediately starts asking for phone verification or security checks, you’ve learned something valuable before risking an important account.
What if you want to automate most of this?
If you are tech-savvy, you can also create a custom script that checks most of these things on your computer through batch files. I use Claude Code to make my own tool, and I will maybe make it public for everyone, but in general, what I do is this:
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- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://ifconfig.me
This command connects through your proxy and displays the IP. If it works correctly, it should show an IP that is not your real home address one, which means the proxy works.
- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://ifconfig.me
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- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT -U USERNAME:PASSWORD https://ifconfig.me
This is another way to test whether your proxy is properly authenticated. If it works, it should show the proxy IP, if not, you should get an error that you can use to diagnose what the problem is and fix it.
- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT -U USERNAME:PASSWORD https://ifconfig.me
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- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://TARGET_WEBSITE.com
Sometimes proxies work fine on everything but the website you need it to work on. For these cases, you just enter your target website and it should reach your target. If it times out or doesn’t load, there is likely a problem somewhere.
- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://TARGET_WEBSITE.com
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- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://httpbin.org/headers
This is useful for troubleshooting more advanced issues. It shows you what traffic is passing through and what is not working as intended. I usually feed the results to my AI and then it tells me more.
- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT https://httpbin.org/headers
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- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT -o /dev/null -s -w “Total Time: %{time_total}\n” https://google.com
This is the standard speed test, just written in code. You should get an output time in seconds, the lower it is, the faster your proxy! Aim for under 1 second if possible.
- curl -x http://PROXY_HOST:PROXY_PORT -o /dev/null -s -w “Total Time: %{time_total}\n” https://google.com
What Actually Gets People Caught
People love blaming proxies. In reality, proxies are often the least interesting part of the setup.
Most account problems come from mistakes:
- Switching countries every day.
- Using the same browser fingerprint everywhere.
- Leaking your real IP through WebRTC.
- Sharing accounts across multiple people.
- Logging into old accounts from completely different locations.
- Reusing cookies between identities.
- Using a bad Anti-detect browser
I’ve seen people spend hundreds of dollars on premium residential proxies and then destroy the entire setup with a single careless mistake.
That’s why I always say the proxy is only one piece of the puzzle. If you want, you can use proven proxies like ProxyEmpire. Providers like these are great, and I cant not recommend them to anyone looking for a good product.
A decent residential proxy combined with a clean browser profile and consistent behavior will usually outperform the most expensive proxy network in the world, being used badly.
The goal isn’t to build a setup that looks impossible to detect. The goal is to build a setup that looks boring. Boring is usually what survives.
