IPv4 and IPv6 proxies: what the address is, and why IPv6 costs less

An IP address is the number a site sees for every request that reaches it; a proxy sends your requests from its address instead of yours. IPv4 addresses are 32 bits long, and the central pool of them ran out in 2011, so each one is scarce and a proxy built on one is sold by the address. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and plentiful, and the same provider often sells an IPv6 proxy for a fraction of its IPv4 price. The catch is reach: an IPv6 proxy only opens sites that have an IPv6 address, so check your target sites before you buy.

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

What an IP address is

Every request a site receives carries the address it came from, and that address is how the site counts visitors, applies limits and guesses a location (proxy location accuracy). Through a proxy, the site sees the proxy’s address, not yours (what is a proxy server). A proxy plan is, at bottom, rented use of addresses: which addresses, how many and for how long is what the price buys.

IPv4: 32 bits, and none left to hand out

The original Internet Protocol fixes the size: “Addresses are fixed length of four octets (32 bits)” (RFC 791). That allows 4,294,967,296 addresses in all. On 3 February 2011 the Number Resource Organization, which speaks for the five regional internet registries, announced “that the free pool of available IPv4 addresses is now fully depleted” (NRO): the central pool had no IPv4 addresses left to hand out.

Those scarce addresses are what an IPv4 proxy plan rents: it is sold by the address, usually by the month, and an address of your own costs more than one you share (shared vs dedicated proxies).

IPv6: 128 bits, and the price follows

The successor protocol “increases the IP address size from 32 bits to 128 bits” (RFC 8200), about 3.4 × 10³⁸ addresses, so addresses are not what is scarce. The prices above show what that does to the bill at the same provider.

The catch: the site must have an IPv6 address

An IPv6 proxy cannot reach a site that has only an IPv4 address. Proxy-Seller’s IPv6 page says so plainly: “The destination site must support IPv6 (or run dual-stack). It won’t reach an IPv4-only site by translating the address” (Proxy-Seller). Scrapeless: “IPv6 proxies only work on targets that support IPv6”, adding its own estimate that “Roughly 40% of the top sites are IPv6-enabled” (Scrapeless).

To check a site before you buy, ask the DNS for its IPv6 address. That is the AAAA record, “a record specific to the Internet class that stores a single IPv6 address” (RFC 3596):

• dig AAAA example.com +short on macOS or Linux
• nslookup -type=AAAA example.com on Windows

An address in the answer means the site can be reached over IPv6. No answer means an IPv6 proxy will fail there, whatever its price, and an IPv4 plan is the one to price (datacenter proxies).

Which to buy

• Your sites all answer over IPv6: an IPv6 plan is usually the cheapest way to get many addresses.
• Some do, some do not: buy for the sites that do not; a mixed list needs IPv4, or both.
• You do not know: run the check above on each site first. A refund window is no substitute: check how many days it gives before you rely on it (proxies with a refund window).