Proxy location accuracy: why a proxy can show the wrong city

A site does not see where a proxy is. It looks the proxy’s address up in a geolocation database, and those databases are good at countries and rough at cities. MaxMind, which makes one of them, estimates its country results at 99.8% accuracy and, for addresses in the U.S., about 80% for the state and 66% for the city within 50 km. So a proxy bought for a country will nearly always read as that country, a city-targeted address can read as a city nearby, and a mobile address often reads only as a state or region. Sites use different databases, so two location checks can disagree about the same address.

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

Where a site’s idea of your location comes from

An IP address carries no location. Companies such as MaxMind build databases that map address blocks to places, from the location feeds some networks publish about their own addresses (a format standardised in RFC 8805, which “intentionally only allows specifying coarse-level location”) and from other data they gather. A site, or the fraud and ad services it uses, looks your address up in one of them.

MaxMind is open about the limits: “It is not possible for us to guarantee 100% geolocation accuracy. Accuracy exhibits high variability according to country, distance, type of IP (cellular vs. broadband, IPv4 vs. IPv6), and practices of ISPs” (MaxMind: geolocation accuracy). Its city results come with an accuracy radius, the distance within which the address probably is; the example on that page is 100 km.

How it differs by proxy type

• Residential. The address belongs to a home connection, and the database places it by the internet provider’s block of addresses. The country is reliable; the city is an estimate, within 50 km about two times in three in the U.S. by MaxMind’s figure.
• Mobile. Phone networks share addresses across wide areas. MaxMind: “IP addresses used in mobile networks may be used by mobile phones across a large distance”, and where it cannot be specific it gives only the country and state, with no city at all. A mobile proxy bought for a city may read as just the state.
• Datacenter. The database places the address at the hosting network. MaxMind notes that for a VPN or a hosted site it can locate the server but not the person using it, so a datacenter proxy reads as the data centre’s location, which may not be the city a buyer wanted.

Why two checks disagree

Each database is built differently. MaxMind says it does not “guarantee exact matches to our competitors’ data”, and it requires its database users to keep their copies up to date. A site working from an older copy can place an address where it used to be. When you test a proxy, test it with the location service your target uses if you know which one; a single “what is my IP” page is one database’s opinion.

What this means for what you buy

Target the country unless the site you work with really checks the city: city and network targeting is where a provider may charge more (what city and ASN targeting costs). If the city matters, test a handful of addresses against your target before buying in volume, inside the trial or refund window, and prefer a sticky session so the address you tested is the one you keep. The box above shows which kinds of targeting the providers we track sell, and which charge extra for them.