10 questions to ask before you pay for a mobile proxy.

Every mobile proxy provider says the same things. Dedicated, real, fast, unlimited, undetectable. The words have stopped meaning anything, which is why people hoard the name of a good provider like a trade secret and why so many operators find out a provider was bad three months and several banned accounts too late.

The fix isn't finding better marketing to believe. It's asking questions that are hard to answer well unless the infrastructure behind the answer is real. Here are the ten we'd ask any provider, including us. None of them are trick questions, and a few have more than one good answer depending on what you're running.

1. Is my device shared with anyone else?

The single most important question. On a dedicated setup, one physical device with one SIM serves one client: you. On a shared setup, many customers route traffic through the same devices and the same IPs, so their behavior lands on your reputation. Neither model is automatically wrong, but the provider should say plainly which one you're buying. Red flag: the word dedicated with no explanation of what exactly is dedicated to you.

2. What happens when you get popular and demand spikes?

This is where most providers quietly fail. When infrastructure is shared, adding one more customer costs the provider nothing, so the temptation is to keep selling until quality collapses for everyone on it. Ask if there's a hard limit per location and what happens when it's reached. A good answer sounds like a cap and a waitlist. A red flag sounds like we always have capacity.

3. Who owns the hardware and the SIM cards?

Many proxy brands are resellers running on someone else's infrastructure. That's not always bad, but it means that when something breaks, they can't fix it and often can't even explain it. Ask directly: do you own and operate the devices and SIMs, or do you rent access from another network?

4. Where do the IPs actually come from?

Mobile IP has three common sources: real phones with carrier SIMs, modem racks with multiple SIMs, and peer-to-peer networks built from SDKs inside consumer apps. They behave very differently under platform detection. Whatever the answer, you can verify part of it yourself: the IP should resolve to a real consumer carrier ASN, not a datacenter.

5. How many of your clients sit on the same carrier's local IP pool?

A mobile IP is only as clean as the tower pool behind it. If hundreds of proxy clients hammer one carrier's local IP pool from one building, that pool stops looking like normal subscriber traffic and platforms adjust. Ask how clients are spread across locations and carriers. Vague answers here usually mean concentration.

6. How does rotation actually work?

On a real device, rotation means dropping the tower connection and pulling a fresh IP from the carrier, the same thing any phone does when it reconnects. On a shared network, rotation means being handed a different IP from the same shared range. Ask whether rotation is on demand or on a timer, how long it takes, and whether you control it.

7. What happens when my device or line goes down?

Hardware fails and SIMs get flagged by carriers. That's normal. What matters is the process: who notices, who fixes it, and how long you wait. A provider that owns its hardware can swap a device or SIM the same day. A reseller waits on their upstream, and so do you.

8. Can I test it the way I actually work?

A speed test proves almost nothing. Ask for a trial you can run inside your real setup, your antidetect browser, your automation, your platforms. If a provider won't let you test before paying, ask yourself why. Note what the trial requires too: a short free window with no card is a different signal than a trial behind a deposit.

9. What exactly does the price include?

Per-GB pricing looks cheap at low volume and gets expensive fast. Flat pricing looks expensive at low volume and gets cheap fast. Neither is a scam, they fit different workloads, but do the math at your real monthly usage. And read the word unlimited carefully: ask directly whether there's throttling, a fair use cap, or overage charges.

10. Who answers when something breaks at 2am?

Ask one technical question before you pay and watch what comes back. A real operator answers specifically because they run the hardware. A reseller or a big-brand ticket queue sends you a copy-paste template that doesn't really touch your question. Support quality before the sale is the best preview of support quality after it.

When shared proxies are honestly the right call

To be fair to the other side of the market: if you're doing high-volume scraping across many countries, or your usage is small and sporadic, a rotating shared network with per-GB pricing can genuinely be the better fit. Dedicated devices earn their price when accounts, trust signals, and consistency matter, agency work, antidetect browser stacks, anything where one burned IP costs you real money. Match the tool to the workload, not to the loudest ad.

How we answer these

We published our own answers so you don't have to DM us to get them: one client per device, hard device ceilings at every location, hardware and SIMs owned in-house, and a structure built so quality doesn't drop as we grow. It's all on our capacity policy page, along with how to verify it yourself instead of taking our word. Or just message us on Telegram and ask. You'll be talking to the person who actually runs the devices.