Residential Proxies Quick Start Guide

Oxylabs’ Residential Proxies comprise real IP addresses belonging to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). With these IP addresses,  you can bypass geo-restrictions and collect public data without disruptions. 

In this guide, you’ll find all the essential information needed for a smooth start with Oxylabs Residential Proxies.

Setting up Residential Proxies

To start with Residential Proxies, head to the Oxylabs dashboard and register an account.

Then, select a plan that fits your needs, or claim free trial proxies by contacting our Support Team. You'll be directed to the setup screen once you purchase Residential Proxies or sign up for a free trial.

Creating a proxy user 

When creating a proxy user, give it a name and a password.

Here's the same query in the code format for your convenience:

curl 'https://ip.oxylabs.io/location' -U 'customer-USERNAME:PASSWORD' -x 'pr.oxylabs.io:7777' 

Paste the given cURL in your terminal or other setup, replace USERNAME:PASSWORD with your credentials, click Enter, and then you’ll get your Residential IP address. See how to make a basic cURL request in the video below.

Here's the same query in the code format for your convenience:

curl -x pr.oxylabs.io:7777 -U "customer-USERNAME-cc-GB-city-london:PASSWORD" https://ip.oxylabs.io/location

Session control

You can also use session control to keep the same proxy for multiple requests. You can do so by adding sessid-abc12345 to your username string.

Here's the same query in the code format for your convenience:

curl -x pr.oxylabs.io:7777 -U "customer-USERNAME-sessid-randomString123:PASSWORD" https://ip.oxylabs.io/location

The default session time is 10 minutes. However, you can prolong it up to 30 minutes with the help of the sesstime parameter. See the list of all the supported parameters and how to use them in our documentation here.

Note: You’ll need to replace USERNAME and PASSWORD in the cURL example with your proxy user credentials. Keep in mind that each request returns a new IP address as Oxylabs Residential Proxies rotate automatically.

For examples in other programming languages, visit our documentation. 

Response codes

See the most common response codes in the table below:

Requests with errors originating from our infrastructure will additionally include an X-Error-Description response header, which will contain details about the error and what you should do next to resolve it. If you encounter any other response code, contact our 24/7 Customer Support for help.

Using Endpoint Generator

We suggest using our Endpoint generator to easily retrieve a list of endpoints by selecting the necessary parameters. With this tool, you can retrieve a list of endpoints that include:

• Region - a region based on your location

• Output format -  choose the format for your endpoints (port, HTTP, HTTPS, or SOCKS5)

• Authentication method - you can choose either username:password authentication or use whitelisted IPs

• Endpoint type - you can choose between backconnect or country entry

• Location settings - select a specific proxy location or leave Any to get a random proxy location

• Session type - you can select either a sticky session to keep your IP address for up to 30 minutes or a rotating session to get a new IP address with each new request

Once you have the parameters set up - choose the number of endpoints and export it in your preferred format, such as  .csv, JSON, or .txt.

Overall, the Endpoint generator is a more convenient way to set up your endpoints and export them. You can learn more about the Endpoint generator in the video below.

You can find more detailed information in our documentation.

Note: The purpose of the Endpoint generator is to create endpoints only. You need your own terminal or other setup to put the endpoints to use. 

Usage statistics

The Statistics section lets you see detailed information on how much traffic you use daily, daily breakdown, time range, and track the amount of requests. You can see usage graphs for any selected period and filter by users or export this data to a .csv file.