Proxy-Cheap catalogue vs Nefo catalogue
Proxy-Cheap has run since around 2018 as a self-serve, price-led proxy shop, and the defining thing about it is catalogue width. In one dashboard you can buy rotating residential bandwidth, static residential (ISP) addresses, datacenter IPv4, mobile proxies in both static and rotating forms, and — unusually for this market — IPv6 on both the residential and datacenter side. Very few providers bother to sell cheap IPv6 at all, and that alone keeps a certain type of customer on Proxy-Cheap indefinitely.
That breadth comes with a purchasing shape. The static products are rented per IP, per month, so your cost is driven by how many addresses you hold rather than how much traffic you push. The rotating products are priced by the gigabyte but presented as bandwidth plans with a monthly frame around them. Both are perfectly sensible models; they simply mean your spend is tied to a recurring cycle.
Nefo is no longer that narrow. Alongside residential proxies and 4G/5G mobile, it now sells datacenter proxies, static IP proxies, IP Vault addresses, servers and marketplace APIs. Residential access is sold as prepaid bandwidth starting at 5GB, and on the flexible plans that bandwidth does not expire: it sits in the account until traffic consumes it. Generating credentials is free, so the only thing that draws down your balance is traffic.
When to stay with Proxy-Cheap
This is the honest part. If any of the following describes your setup, Nefo is not a replacement and switching would cost you capability:
- You buy IPv6 proxies in the specific forms Proxy-Cheap offers. Nefo does sell dedicated static IPv6 addresses, but Proxy-Cheap is broader here, with IPv6 on both the residential and datacenter side.
- You need the exact Proxy-Cheap mix of datacenter and monthly per-IP rentals rather than Nefo's own datacenter and static-IP models.
- You need static ISP addresses in a country outside Nefo's 24, or Proxy-Cheap's specific rental terms, for account-linked work where the IP itself must not change.
- Your workload is steady and predictable, so a fixed monthly rental is easier to forecast and approve than a consumption balance.
- You value single-vendor consolidation across many IP types more than you value the per-line specifics.
Prepaid residential bandwidth instead of a subscription
The practical difference for a rotating-residential user is when the meter runs. On a plan-shaped model, an unused month is a month you paid for. On Nefo's flexible plans, bandwidth is prepaid and non-expiring — a quiet fortnight simply leaves the balance where it was, and you top up when it runs low rather than on a calendar date. That matters most to seasonal, project-based and irregular workloads: retail price monitoring that spikes around sales periods, one-off market research, agencies running short client engagements.
The entry point is 5GB ($4.50), which is the useful part when you are evaluating rather than committing. You can put a real workload through those 5GB before deciding anything, without a subscription to remember to cancel.
On the technical side the residential product is conventional in the ways that matter for a drop-in swap:
- HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, all with username and password authentication — the same integration shape Proxy-Cheap uses.
- 227 countries and territories; the United States is targetable down to state and city, and several other countries to region and city.
- ASN/ISP targeting: pin traffic to a named network operator within a country, which is the lever to reach for when a target site treats certain networks differently.
- Rotating sessions with a new IP per request, or sticky sessions holding one IP from one minute up to roughly 24 hours, configurable per credential.
- Unlimited credential generation at no cost, so you can issue a separate credential per target, per client or per job and read usage back per credential in the dashboard or as CSV.
Proxy-Cheap reviews, geolocation accuracy and support
Public reviews of Proxy-Cheap are mixed rather than bad — roughly average on the large review sites, across a substantial volume of reviews. The consistent praise is for price and for the static products, which long-term users generally describe as clean and stable. The recurring criticisms cluster in three places: support responsiveness and a firm line on refunds when a proxy does not suit a particular target site, occasional mismatches between the advertised and observed location of rotating residential IPs, and rough edges in the web dashboard. Plenty of customers report none of this, so treat it as a distribution of experience rather than a verdict.
Two of those themes are worth thinking about structurally rather than emotionally. Location accuracy on a rotating residential pool is a property of pool sourcing and of the geo-IP database the target site consults, and no provider is immune to it — the useful defence is targeting you can verify. Nefo's answer is ASN/ISP targeting alongside country and US state or city, so you can constrain traffic to a named operator and check what the target actually sees rather than trusting a country label. Free tools for IP lookup, blacklist checks and fingerprint testing are published on the site for exactly that verification loop.
The refund question is largely defused by the pricing model rather than by policy. When the smallest purchase is 5GB ($4.50) of non-expiring bandwidth, a failed evaluation costs you a few dollars and no ongoing commitment, so the dispute that generates most refund complaints in this market does not really arise.
Mobile proxies: two rental models
Both providers sell mobile, but they are billed on different axes, and this is where the comparison is least like-for-like. Proxy-Cheap offers static mobile proxies rented per IP per month and rotating mobile billed by the gigabyte. Nefo rents a 4G/5G port on a real carrier modem for a duration — hours up to 30 days — with one live IP on the port at a time, which you keep or change on demand. Bandwidth is not metered separately; the port is the unit, with a speed tier attached.
That makes Nefo's mobile product a better fit for work where you want steady use of one carrier IP for a defined window and expect to rotate it deliberately, and Proxy-Cheap's rotating mobile a better fit for bursty consumption where you only want to pay for traffic. US state-level and carrier-level targeting is available on the Nefo side; the cheapest tier is US-only, with wider country coverage on the higher tiers.
How to switch from Proxy-Cheap to Nefo
If you are moving rotating residential work, this is a configuration change rather than a rewrite. Both providers speak standard HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 with username and password authentication, so the code path that already sends traffic through Proxy-Cheap sends it through Nefo once the host, port and credentials change. Targeting and session behaviour are set when you generate the credential rather than through in-request parameters, so the useful first step is to map each distinct Proxy-Cheap configuration you run to its own Nefo credential.
A sensible sequence: buy 5GB, generate one credential per target with the country, state or ASN you currently use, and run the smallest job that reliably exposes a failure — the login flow, the checkout path, the page that blocks first. Compare success rate against your Proxy-Cheap baseline on the same targets on the same day, since target-side defences move around and a week-old comparison is not a comparison. Sticky-session length is the parameter most worth tuning during this: many flows that appear to fail on rotation are simply losing state mid-sequence.
There is no reason to cancel anything while you do this. Prepaid bandwidth does not expire, so running both in parallel for a month costs you whatever traffic you actually send. If part of your workload is static ISP in countries Nefo does not cover, the realistic outcome may be a split — that stays where it is, and only the rotating residential or mobile portion moves.
Frequently asked questions
For rotating residential traffic it can be, because you pay per gigabyte instead of per monthly plan or rental. Nefo goes from $0.90/GB at 5 GB to $0.53/GB at 10 TB, and unused bandwidth never expires. The page does not compare Proxy-Cheap's rates, so price your real volume on both. See pricing.
Yes. Static residential ISP IPs are sold in 24 countries from $1.76 for 7 days to $39.17 for 360 days, dedicated, with HTTP(S) and SOCKS5. Nefo also sells datacenter proxies, static datacenter IPs, IPv6 and IP Vault. Proxy-Cheap is broader on IPv6, so compare if that is your main use.
No, and it is better not to. Bandwidth is prepaid and non-expiring from 5 GB, so running both in parallel costs only the traffic you send. Keep Proxy-Cheap as your baseline, test the same targets on both in the same week, and decide with data.
Largely yes. Both use HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 with username and password, and Nefo also supports an IP allowlist. Targeting is written into the username, for example -country-us, -city-losangeles and -session-<id>, so code that builds usernames needs its format updated.
No. Bandwidth stays on your balance until you use it, and generating credentials costs nothing. That is the main difference from a per-IP-per-month or plan-shaped billing cycle, where idle capacity is still paid for.
Yes. Residential proxies can be pinned to a country, state, city or ISP/ASN, from 227 countries and territories, 22,417 cities and 14,252 ISPs/ASNs. It is the lever to reach for when a target treats certain networks differently. See residential proxies.