What HydraProxy is built around
HydraProxy has traded since around 2020 as an independent, self-serve provider, and its centre of gravity is mobile rather than residential. The headline product is US 4G/5G access sold by the day — one day, three days, a week or a month — on unlimited bandwidth, with state-level geo targeting and a choice of the major US carriers. Rotation is interval-driven: you pick a five, ten or thirty minute cycle, or a longer session, and the IP turns over on that schedule.
Around that sits a per-GB residential pool spanning more than a hundred countries, an international mobile line, static mobile ports and a static ISP product. Billing across most of it is deliberately non-recurring — no monthly contract, a one-gigabyte minimum on residential, and a short money-back window. Public reviews skew positive, and support responsiveness is the thing customers mention most often. The recurring criticism is performance variability on the residential pool at busy hours, which is a normal characteristic of shared pools rather than anything unusual to them.
- Short-horizon US mobile access: a single day's rental is a first-class option, not an exception
- Unlimited bandwidth on the US mobile line, so heavy sessions do not meter
- Carrier choice across the major US networks, with state-level targeting
- A static ISP line and static mobile ports, which many residential-only providers do not carry
- No subscription pressure — most lines are one-off purchases
HydraProxy vs Nefo: targeting, sessions and protocols
The difference is shape, not quality. HydraProxy's residential line is a companion to the mobile business and is targeted mainly at country level. Nefo's residential network is the main product, so the targeting goes further: 227 countries, state or region and city in most countries, and ASN/ISP selection paired with a country when you need traffic that originates on a specific cable, fibre or mobile operator.
Session length is the second structural gap. HydraProxy's residential sticky sessions are measured in minutes up to roughly an hour, which is fine for scraping and short flows. Nefo holds a sticky IP from one minute to twenty-four hours, configured per credential, which matters for multi-step logins, checkout paths and long-running jobs that must not change identity halfway through.
Protocols are the third. Every Nefo credential can be issued as HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5. HydraProxy's SOCKS5 support varies by product line — the mobile pages list it, while the residential documentation has carried a pending note — so if SOCKS5 on residential is a hard requirement, confirm it for the exact line you are buying. On mobile, HydraProxy rotates on a fixed interval and its own FAQ states that manual IP change is not yet available; Nefo's mobile ports let you hold the current IP or change it on demand.
- Residential targeting: country level, versus country plus state/city plus ASN
- Sticky window: up to about an hour, versus 1 minute to 24 hours per credential
- SOCKS5: depends on the product line, versus available on every Nefo credential
- Mobile IP control: fixed rotation intervals, versus hold or change on demand
- Shared by both: prepaid, no monthly commitment
How Nefo residential proxies work
You buy bandwidth up front, from 5GB, and flexible plans are non-expiring — it sits in the account until consumed. Generating credentials costs nothing; only traffic passing through them meters. That means you can create a separate credential per job, each pinned to its own country, state, city or ASN and its own rotation behaviour, and read usage per credential in the dashboard rather than inferring it from one shared bill.
Rotating credentials take a new IP on each request, which suits wide distributed collection. Sticky credentials hold one IP for a configured window between one minute and twenty-four hours. Either way the credential draws on exits in 227 countries, 22,417 cities and 14,252 ISPs.
Mobile is a separate line: carrier-grade 4G/5G on a time-rented port, one live rotating IP per port, US state- and carrier-level targeting, rented by duration from hours up to thirty days rather than per gigabyte. Tiers differ by throughput and country coverage — the entry tier is US-only, the higher tiers add countries and speed.
- Prepaid from 5GB; flexible plans do not expire
- HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, authenticated by username/password or IP allowlist
- Rotating (new IP per request) or sticky (1 minute to 24 hours)
- 227 countries; state, city and ASN/ISP targeting in most countries
- Credential generation is free — you pay only for traffic
- Mobile 4G/5G on carrier-modem ports, billed per duration
How to migrate from HydraProxy to Nefo
Mechanically this is a host, port and credential swap — both sides support username and password authentication, so no client library changes. What actually breaks jobs is rotation semantics. Code written against HydraProxy's interval rotation assumes the IP changes on a clock; on Nefo you choose explicitly between per-request rotation and a sticky TTL. Go through your jobs and decide which model each one needs before you touch configuration, because a scraper that quietly relied on a thirty-minute cycle will behave differently under per-request rotation.
Test on your own targets rather than a generic IP checker. Buy the smallest plan, generate two credentials — one rotating, one sticky at the duration your flow needs — point a staging run at them, and compare success rate and block rate against the sites you actually care about, in the geography you actually need. Pool behaviour is target-specific, and no third-party benchmark will predict it for your workload.
If your US mobile work is on HydraProxy, keep it running during the evaluation. Mobile on both sides is rented by duration, so a short overlap costs little, and it keeps the comparison honest. Compare in your own units too: GB per successful record for residential, and hours of port time for mobile. For very heavy single-session traffic, an unlimited-bandwidth daily mobile rental can beat any per-GB residential rate, and that is worth checking rather than assuming.
- List which jobs need a stable IP, and for how long, before changing config
- Re-express interval rotation as either per-request rotation or an explicit sticky TTL
- Run the test against real targets in the country, state or ASN you need
- Keep the existing mobile rental live during the overlap window
- Measure in GB per successful record, not in raw request counts
When you should stay with HydraProxy
Stay if the work is fundamentally US mobile. Account management, app testing on carrier IPs, and anything where a fixed daily fee for unlimited bandwidth on a mobile ASN is the economic model — that is what HydraProxy is designed around, and it does it well. Stay also if you depend on static mobile ports. Nefo sells static residential ISP IPs, static IP proxies and datacenter proxies, plus IP Vault for keeping a residential or mobile IP over time, but it does not sell static mobile ports, so on that exact requirement there is genuinely a gap.
Move if residential is your main workload and you keep hitting the edges of a country-level pool: you need a specific city or a specific ASN, you need a session to survive hours rather than minutes, you want SOCKS5 on residential without checking whether it has shipped for that line, or you want per-credential targeting and usage to be the primary interface rather than a secondary product.
Running both is a reasonable outcome. Neither account model penalises it — both are prepaid, neither requires a subscription, and the two strengths barely overlap.
Frequently asked questions
For residential, yes. Nefo is residential-first, with 227 countries, US state, city and ASN targeting, SOCKS5 on every credential and sticky sessions up to 24 hours. For US mobile on unlimited bandwidth by the day or static mobile ports, HydraProxy remains the stronger fit.
Yes, structured differently. A Nefo mobile port sits on a real carrier modem with one rotating 4G/5G IP, US state and carrier targeting, rented from hours to 30 days, not per GB. HydraProxy rotates on a fixed interval, while a Nefo port lets you hold or change the IP on demand.
Yes. Nefo sells static residential ISP IPs (dedicated, 24 countries, rented for 7 to 360 days from $1.76 for 7 days; see ISP proxies), datacenter proxies and static IP proxies. It does not sell static mobile ports, so there is no like-for-like equivalent for that HydraProxy product. IP Vault is another way to keep a residential or mobile IP.
Nefo flexible plans are non-expiring, and the expiry type is shown on any promotional or subscription plan. HydraProxy's residential purchases are also non-recurring, so this is parity rather than a reason to switch.
A sticky Nefo credential holds one IP for a window you set from 1 minute to 24 hours, while rotating credentials take a new IP per request. HydraProxy's residential sticky sessions run in minutes up to about an hour, so long multi-step flows are the usual reason people move.
Yes. Nefo targets state or region and city in most countries, including the US, and a specific ASN or ISP within a country. HydraProxy's residential targeting is mainly country level. Compare plans on pricing.