IPRoyal Review: Budget-Friendly Proxies That Get the Job Done (Mostly)

Looking for a proxy service that won't demolish your budget? IPRoyal might catch your eye with its competitive pricing and straightforward setup. But before you commit, there are a few quirks worth knowing about—like upcharges for renaming proxies and some eyebrow-raising refund policies that might make you pause.

Let's be clear: IPRoyal works. The proxies do what they're supposed to do. But after spending time testing the service and digging through the fine print, I found enough odd details to make this recommendation more cautious than enthusiastic.

What IPRoyal Offers (And What It'll Cost You)

IPRoyal accepts practically every payment method imaginable: credit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Alipay, and over 25 cryptocurrencies. Here's what you're actually paying for:

Datacenter Proxies operate from 50 countries with city and state targeting. Each IP address is dedicated, which is a solid feature. Pricing runs from $1.39 to $1.57 per proxy depending on your commitment length (30, 60, or 90 days). You get unlimited traffic and SOCKS5 support, though the service only offers IPv4—no IPv6 options here.

ISP Proxies work well for market research, website comparison, or scraping projects. These range from $1.80 per proxy for 24 hours up to $2.40 for 90-day access. Bulk purchases come with discounts, and each proxy is exclusively yours with no data caps. They support HTTPS and SOCKS5, plus you can manage access through username/password authentication or IP whitelisting.

If you're managing multiple social media accounts or need mobile-specific IPs, 👉 check out professional-grade residential and mobile proxy solutions that offer better value with their 4.5 million auto-rotating IPs supporting 3G through 5G networks.

Mobile Proxies start at $10.11 for 24 hours, with monthly plans ranging from $117 to $130 depending on subscription length. It's pricier than some competitors that start around $8.49 daily.

Residential Proxies give you access to over 32 million IPs across 195 countries. Location targeting works down to the city level, and you can set sticky sessions up to 7 days or rotate IPs with each request. Pricing starts at $7.99 for one gigabyte and drops to $5.15 per GB at 50GB, though discounts frequently appear. Monthly subscriptions can save you additional money.

The Sourcing Question: Where Do These IPs Come From?

Here's something important: proxy services can see what you're doing online while using them. That's why understanding their data practices matters, and why you should care about how they source their IP addresses.

Some companies quietly use third-party botnets, meaning you might unknowingly share a residential proxy with someone who never consented. Not great.

IPRoyal is more transparent here. According to their sourcing documentation, they obtain IPs from Pawns, an app they own where people earn money by completing surveys, playing games, and sharing bandwidth. The Pawns website explicitly tells users multiple times that they'll share bandwidth in exchange for payment. That's the ethical approach.

When handling sensitive web scraping or data collection tasks, 👉 working with ethically sourced proxy networks protects both your business reputation and ensures compliance with data sourcing standards.

Privacy and Data Handling: The Fine Print

IPRoyal collects user data—name, email, usage patterns, IP addresses, browser types, device information. Their privacy policy is reasonably clear, though dense in places.

The company stores log data (including your IP, location, and device details) for six months before deletion or anonymization. They're incorporated in the United Arab Emirates with headquarters in Ajman, which has specific data retention regulations worth knowing about. Financial institution data must be kept for 5 years minimum, and employee records for 7 years after departure.

If you want to opt out of personal data processing, email your request to their support team.

The Weird Stuff That Made Me Hesitate

Refund Policies That Raise Eyebrows

Here's where things get uncomfortable. IPRoyal's Terms of Service state you may not get unused funds back from your account. That's already not generous. Worse, if you encounter a service defect, you have exactly 24 hours to request a refund. After that? You're out of luck.

Compare that to competitors with more reasonable refund windows, and IPRoyal looks notably stingy.

Twenty Cents to Rename a Proxy

Yes, you read that right. IPRoyal charges $0.20 each time you want to change a proxy name. Other proxy services let you rename proxies freely. It's not a huge amount, but the principle feels petty—especially when you're already paying for the service.

Phone Number Requirements

During signup, IPRoyal requested my phone number, which is unusual for proxy services. They explained it's for security and potential two-factor authentication in the future. Testing revealed they've whitelisted certain email domains (like Proton) that don't require phone verification, but most others do—including Gmail and Yahoo, contrary to what they told me initially.

Actually Using IPRoyal: The Experience

After verifying my email (which had a brief certificate mismatch issue that was quickly resolved), I purchased 1GB of residential proxy access for $7.35. One thing I appreciated: IPRoyal shows upfront monthly costs, which helps with budget planning for business clients.

Important tip: Make sure Auto-Top Up is disabled at checkout. This feature automatically charges you when traffic falls below a threshold. It's opt-in only, thankfully, but double-check it's off to avoid surprise charges.

The dashboard prompted me to enable multi-factor authentication, which I appreciated as a security-conscious user. Setting it up was straightforward—just scan the QR code with an authenticator app.

Testing Location Spoofing

I set up a residential proxy targeting San Jose, Costa Rica. The browser extension (available for Chrome and Firefox) has limited features. You can favorite servers, but there's no automatic syncing with your dashboard settings—you manually re-enter proxy information in the extension window. Not the smoothest experience.

I connected to my Costa Rica server and verified the IP change using BrowserLeaks. Success: my browser traffic appeared to originate from San Jose exactly as intended. The location spoofing worked perfectly.

The Bottom Line

IPRoyal delivers functional proxies at reasonable prices with ethical sourcing practices. The service works as advertised for location spoofing, data collection, and market research.

But those refund policies, the proxy renaming upcharge, and the limited browser extension features add friction that shouldn't exist. The phone verification requirements and similarities in privacy policy language to other services also raised questions during testing.

If you need basic proxy functionality and don't mind working around some quirks, IPRoyal gets the job done. But if you want a smoother experience with more customer-friendly policies, exploring alternatives makes sense. Services targeting similar audiences often offer comparable pricing without the red flags.

For businesses scaling up their proxy needs, consider testing multiple services with small purchases before committing to larger plans. Pay attention to refund windows, read the Terms of Service payment sections carefully, and decide whether the cost savings justify the trade-offs.