Apple’s iCloud Private Relay and browser VPNs against a bought proxy: what each one changes

iCloud Private Relay and a browser’s built-in VPN both send your browsing through someone else’s server, so sites see a different address. They are built to keep you private, not to let you choose: Private Relay keeps you in your own region and gives you an address many others share, which sites can recognise, and beyond Safari it carries only DNS lookups and unencrypted app traffic. A bought proxy is built for the opposite job: you choose the country, the kind of address and how long you keep it, and any program can use it. If you need a particular place or a steady address, a relay cannot give you one.

Answer · The live comparison uses prices checked up to Oct 24, 2026; every figure in the text keeps the date it was checked.

How a relay works

Apple describes Private Relay in two hops: “Your IP address is visible to your network provider and to the first relay, which is operated by Apple”, and “the second relay, which is operated by a third-party content provider, generates a temporary IP address, decrypts the name of the website you requested, and connects you to the site” (Apple). It is part of an iCloud+ subscription and “helps protect your privacy when you browse the web in Safari”.

Opera’s browser has a free VPN of the same kind for its own traffic: “you connect to websites via a VPN (virtual private network) server. As a result, your apparent location changes to the location of the server”, and you can “select a region from the list” (Opera). Opera says it “is a free service, and the amount of data you are allowed to transfer is unlimited.”

What the site sees

• Private Relay keeps your region. Apple tells website owners that relay addresses map “to the region a user is in”, and that the address “accurately represents the client’s coarse city-level location by default” (Apple). You cannot pick another country.
• The address is shared and labelled. “The assigned relay IP address may be shared among more than one Private Relay user in the same area”, and Apple publishes the list of relay addresses so servers can recognise them; most location databases mark them “iCloud Private Relay”. A site that limits sign-ups or treats shared addresses with suspicion sees that label.
• It stays put while you browse. “The relay IP address will remain stable during a browsing session while a user is interacting with your website.”
• Opera picks a region, not a city. You choose from its list of regions, and the address the site sees is that of Opera’s VPN server.

A bought proxy answers differently on each point. You choose the country, and with many providers the city or network (proxy location accuracy); you choose shared or dedicated, datacenter, ISP, residential or mobile (shared vs dedicated proxies); a static address stays yours for as long as you rent it (static vs rotating proxies).

Which one fits your job

What a bought proxy costs

The box at the top of this page prices the smallest purchases that give you a country of your choice: a few gigabytes of residential traffic and a handful of datacenter addresses, from today’s prices. Most of the plans we track list country targeting; country targeting costs shows which charge extra for it.