Compare free public proxies with paid residential: accountability, session and geo control, retry cost, and traffic risk. ZTProxy sells rotating (per GB) and static (per IP·month) residential. Confirm in the console. Not for mainland China.
“Try a free exit first” is a common instinct. For business traffic, the comparison is rarely the sticker price of zero. It is who operates the node, whether you can verify the exit, whether the session drops mid-flow, how much retry time you burn, and whether requests may be inspected or altered. This page is an educational contrast. It is not a free proxy list and it does not publish copy-paste public endpoints.
ZTProxy sells rotating residential (per GB) and static residential (per IP·month). Confirm pricing in the console. Not for mainland China. Lawful, authorized targets only.
What “free” usually means
Public “free proxies” are often unattributed nodes, addresses that rot on aggregate pages, or a short trial somewhere else. They rarely come with verifiable terms, a ticket path, or a billing contract. That is a different category from paid residential, which is delivered as an extract entry in a vendor console and billed per traffic or per IP·month.
This site does not publish a free public-node list, and it does not recommend random nodes for logins, payments, or backends that hold personal data.
| Practice | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Hand account or payment credentials to an unattributed host | Don’t |
| Treat a “free list” as verified residential product | Don’t |
| Use an official, time-boxed vendor trial in a console (if offered) | Yes, follow those terms |
| Test with a small paid allowance against authorized targets | Yes |
Comparison
| Dimension | Free public proxies (typical) | Paid residential (this site’s scope) |
|---|---|---|
| Operator and accountability | Often unclear who runs the node | You can reach the vendor via console and docs |
| Exit type | Unknown; may be datacenter, shared, or already abused | Rotating or static residential, per the order |
| Session and geo | Rarely stable against a target market | Region is chosen in the console; sticky follows docs |
| Availability | Lists expire; retry cost is high | You use purchased traffic or a term |
| Traffic risk | You cannot guarantee the path is not inspected or altered | Still use HTTPS; the path is the entry you ordered |
| Billing | Sticker price is zero; time and failure cost may not be | Rotating per GB; static per IP·month |
The table describes typical differences. It is not a promise about this site’s uptime or security, and it invents no success rates.
What actually costs a business
Even if the node is free, a failed extract, a wrong-region preview, or a rewritten login page burns engineering time. Handing credentials to an unknown host can also expose a session or cookie. Those costs are usually harder to budget than a small per-GB or per-IP·month fee. Background: what is a residential proxy and business use cases.
If the job is “see how this page looks in a target market,” a paid rotating exit that you can test from the docs is usually more predictable than maintaining a decaying public list. If you need the same exit for a term, buy static—do not keep retrying public nodes.
When a trial is fine, and when public nodes are not
- Do not send account logins, payments, customer-data backends, or any session you cannot afford to leak through an unattributed public node.
- Do not treat a “free residential list” as a verified residential product. This page will not provide one.
- If a vendor offers an official, time-boxed trial or sample allowance, follow that console’s terms—that is not a public list.
- When you evaluate a vendor, check whether you can confirm protocol, host, port, and region in a console—not whether a “list” appears in search. Contracts and payment: how to choose a provider.
After you choose paid: rotating or static
Once you have decided on paid residential, pick the exit cadence: rotating when exits may change per request or batch; static when you need a relatively fixed exit for the term. Sticky is not a monthly static lease; see sticky vs static. Help-center usage notes: how to use proxies.
Price and scope
Published list: about $0.40/GB rotating, about $0.20/GB for the 100 TB bundle; shared static about $1.50 and dedicated about $5 per IP·month. Confirm in the console. USDT/USDC available; Visa/Mastercard applying. Not for mainland China. No anonymity claims and no promise to bypass detection.
FAQ
Do you publish a free proxy list?
No. This site does not publish copy-paste public endpoints, and this page is not that kind of page.
Are free nodes residential IPs?
Usually you cannot verify that. Many public nodes have an unknown origin and should not be treated as verified residential product.
Why can free proxies cost a business more?
Expired lists, wrong regions, retries, and unknown intermediaries create time and risk that often exceed a small paid-traffic bill. That is a cost-structure point, not a slogan.
Does paid automatically mean safer?
Paid does not replace HTTPS or least privilege. It mainly gives an accountable entry and a configurable exit—not an absolute security promise.
Can I test on a free node, then buy paid?
Do not hand business credentials to an unattributed host. Use an official trial if one exists, or a small paid allowance, against authorized targets.
Which paid product is less like a public node?
Both rotating and static are paid residential. The difference is billing and whether the exit stays relatively fixed for a term. See rotating vs static.
Can prices change?
Yes. Confirm in the console and on Pricing.
Can this be used from mainland China?
No. Not for mainland China.
Next steps
- If you are still comparing vendors, open how to choose a provider.
- If you have chosen paid residential, compare rotating and static.
- Integration steps: Docs EN quickstart.