TL;DRThe cost floor is arithmetic: a line costs a fixed amount per month and yields only a few usable addresses, so an honestly allocated one cannot cost less than the line divided by that handful. Prices far below that come from one of four places — pooling, relabelled datacenter space, sticky sold as static, or resold aged addresses.
The arithmetic that sets the floor
A consumer access line is a fixed monthly cost. It yields a small block of usable addresses — a /29, for instance, gives five. Divide the line cost by that number and you have the raw floor per address, before hardware, bandwidth, support or the cost of replacing an address that gets flagged.
There is a second constraint stacked on top. Consumer lines are asymmetric: on our own lines we measure roughly 400 Mbps down against about 20 Mbps up, and upstream is what a customer experiences, shared across everyone on that line. So you cannot fix the economics by putting more customers on a line — density and usability trade against each other directly.
Where prices below the floor come from
| Source | What you actually get | How it shows up later |
|---|---|---|
| Pooling | One address shared among many customers, sold to each as theirs | You inherit everyone else's behaviour, and nothing you do fixes it |
| Relabelled datacenter space | An address from a block the seller bought and announced | Consistent hosting classification across databases |
| Sticky sold as static | An address that is stable until it isn't | A reinstall or a carrier event returns a different address |
| Resold aged addresses | An address a previous customer already wore out | Reputation problems on day one that you did not cause |
All four are cheaper than an honestly allocated address because all four avoid the fixed cost of the line. That is the entire mechanism.
How to tell which one you bought
- Reinstall the operating system and re-check the address. This separates static from sticky and takes minutes.
- Run a multi-database report and look at classification consistency. Agreement on hosting across vendors points at relabelled space.
- Ask for exclusivity in writing. Pooling is the one cause that no lookup will reveal — only the contract can.
- Check blocklists on day one. Problems you did not cause are evidence of an address with a previous life.
These four tests cost you an afternoon and cover all four sources. Running them before the money is spent is the difference between a diagnosis and a regret.
Expensive does not mean genuine either
Price is a weak signal in both directions. A high price can reflect a real line, or it can reflect a good margin on the same pooled address someone else sells cheaply.
The tests above are the signal. Price only tells you whether an honest answer is arithmetically possible — it does not tell you whether you got one.
What our own cost structure looks like
We hold multiple carrier access lines, each carrying its own small static block, and we assign one address per customer. That means our floor is exactly the arithmetic above, and we do not have a way around it.
The consequences we state plainly rather than hide: upstream is around 20 Mbps per line and shared, our address inventory is small and finite, and replacing a flagged address consumes that inventory. Anyone selling far below the floor has found a way to avoid one of those constraints, and it is worth knowing which one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are some static residential IPs so cheap?
Because they avoid the fixed cost of a line. The usual routes are pooling one address among many customers, relabelling datacenter space, selling sticky addresses as static, or reselling addresses a previous customer already wore out.
Is a cheap dedicated IP always shared?
Not always, but sharing is the most common way to get below the arithmetic floor, and it is the one cause no database lookup will reveal. Exclusivity is a contractual fact — get it in writing.
Does a higher price mean the IP is genuine?
No. Price only tells you whether an honest answer is arithmetically possible. A reinstall test, a multi-database report, written exclusivity and a day-one blocklist check are what actually tell you what you bought.
Why can't providers just put more customers on one line?
Because consumer lines are asymmetric and upstream is shared. On our lines roughly 400 Mbps down comes with about 20 Mbps up, and that upstream is what customers experience — so density and usability trade against each other directly.
Updated 2026-08-25 · Back to Guides · View plans →