# Residential proxy false positives: 3% of ISP space, 38% of /24s

Our 90-day residential proxy list covers 3.28% of ISP address space, and 0.24% for the last day, but touches 38.4% of ISP /24s. Match exact addresses.

Every address on a residential proxy list also belongs to someone's home connection. When a Show HN in September offered [a lookup for whether your IP had been in a proxy network](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49713037), the replies said so: "This would probably false positive every CGNAT IP, or am I misunderstanding something?", and "I have a dynamic IP from my ISP and it could very well be someone else's device 3 days or 3 months ago."

So how much real subscriber space does a residential proxy list cover? We measured our [Residential Proxy IP](https://internetdata.io/databases/residential-proxy-ip) database against all the IPv4 space announced on 2026-10-09, by the type of network and by how recently each address was seen.

## How much of each network type it covers

| Network type | Announced IPv4 | 90 days | 30 days | 7 days | 1 day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ISP | 1,861.6M | 3.28% | 1.71% | 0.74% | 0.24% |
| Business | 320.6M | 2.03% | 0.98% | 0.41% | 0.15% |
| Hosting | 460.1M | 0.17% | 0.09% | 0.04% | 0.01% |
| All announced | 3,127.8M | 2.19% | 1.14% | 0.49% | 0.16% |

ISP networks hold 89.0% of the 90-day list.

## The /24 trap

38.4% of the /24s in ISP space, 2,796,259 of 7,273,878, held at least one address from the 90-day list. In business networks it's 19.7%, and in hosting 3.3%.

So a rule that widens a residential proxy hit to its /24 blocks more than a third of the world's broadband /24s, where the exact addresses are 3.28% of ISP space.

## Where it's higher

Most ISP networks have little of their space on the list. Of the 1,382 that announce a /16 or more, the median has 1.05% of its addresses in the 90-day list, and 0.58% in 30 days. 211 have 10% or more over 90 days, and 43 have 30% or more. IPinfo has [observed ASNs](https://ipinfo.io/blog/why-so-many-residential-proxies-flagged) where the share over 30 days "can reach 15-20%", and that's the tail: 58 of the 1,382 are at 15% or more over 30 days, and 30 at 20% or more.

It also depends on where the network is. By the ISP networks' registry country:

| Country | 90 days | 1 day | ISP /24s with an address on the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pakistan | 23.0% | 1.38% | 62.9% |
| Morocco | 21.3% | 0.66% | 37.7% |
| Saudi Arabia | 18.8% | 0.84% | 55.1% |
| Thailand | 17.8% | 0.67% | 44.2% |
| Philippines | 15.3% | 1.72% | 51.0% |
| India | 14.1% | 0.81% | 47.7% |
| Brazil | 7.9% | 0.97% | 45.0% |
| Germany | 2.3% | 0.07% | 53.0% |
| United Kingdom | 2.2% | 0.27% | 58.6% |
| United States | 0.63% | 0.10% | 28.7% |
| Japan | 0.59% | 0.03% | 27.5% |
| South Korea | 0.27% | 0.02% | 28.6% |

Even where the addresses are under 1% of ISP space, as in the US, Japan and South Korea, more than a quarter of the ISP /24s hold one.

## A rule that holds up

Match the exact address, never its /24 or its network. Act on the addresses seen in the last day or week, which touch 0.24% to 0.74% of ISP space, and treat the rest of the 90-day list as a score that adds to other signals rather than a block. Take more care with traffic from the countries at the top of the table, and from mobile ranges, where one address can serve many people at once. How fast a list goes stale is in [How fast does a residential proxy IP blocklist go stale?](https://internetdata.io/blog/residential-proxy-ip-blocklist-staleness)

## How we measured

We took every distinct IPv4 address in the 90-day Residential Proxy IP list on 2026-10-09 and matched it to the network announcing it with [IP ASN](https://docs.internetdata.io/database/ip-asn). Each network's type and country come from the [ASN](https://docs.internetdata.io/database/asn) database, the country being the one the network is registered in. The shorter windows count the addresses whose last sighting in the 90-day list falls inside them, and each share's denominator is the IPv4 space the networks of that type or country announce.

To license Residential Proxy IP, see [pricing](https://internetdata.io/pricing) or [talk to us](https://internetdata.io/contact).