PacketStream Review: Pros & Cons, Features, Ratings, Pricing and more

PacketStream, founded in 2018 by entrepreneurs Arthur Aivazian and Ronald Bell, is a California-based company that offers a peer-to-peer (P2P) residential proxy network. Residential proxies are IP addresses sourced from real devices (PCs, smartphones, and tablets) across the globe. They let users bypass geo-restrictions and access needed data.

Most residential proxy providers are centralized, obtaining and selling residential proxies directly to customers. PacketStream differentiates itself by being a peer-to-peer provider where users buy or sell residential IPs to each other. This arrangement lets users obtain residential IPs more affordably than other networks, but the tradeoff is less reliability and speed than centralized proxy providers.

PacketStream offers secure proxies but doesn’t completely control the proxy IPs sold via its network. This arrangement increases the risk of unreliable IP addresses being added to the proxy network.

We extensively tested PacketStream, weighing its features, ease of use, pricing, and customer support system to give an honest review. This review would help you decide whether PacketStream is a good choice for personal or business use.

PacketStream: Plans and Pricing

PacketStream has a simple pricing strategy, unlike many proxy providers with complex pricing plans. It charges according to bandwidth, with a flat fee of $1 per GB. You pay for bandwidth and get access to the whole network of residential proxies, unlike some providers that charge for individual proxies. PacketStream offers rotating proxies, so if one IP address malfunctions, you can quickly switch to another.

However, this pricing strategy has a significant drawback. The minimum bandwidth you can purchase is 50 GB for $50. You can't buy $1 of bandwidth to test the features before deciding. 50 GB is the minimum; you can buy as many GB as possible and pay more if you use up your current allocation.

PacketStream’s $1 price per bandwidth is one of the most affordable you can get. Most competitors charge higher prices, ranging from $7 per GB on IPRoyal to $8.40 per GB on Bright Data and $4.5 per GB on Webshare.

PacketStream offers a free trial but without a standardized process. You need to contact the sales team to request this trial, which is futile for most individual users. The free trial is only suitable for people who plan to spend significant sums on proxies. After all, why contact a sales team if you just need to test a few Gigabytes worth of proxies?

PacketStream: Features

As a P2P proxy network, PacketStream doesn’t just let you buy proxies. You can also sell your unused device bandwidth for money, with prices starting at $0.10 per GB. Payments are made via PayPal, with the minimum payout being $5.

PacketStream lets users acquire affordable proxy IPs and sell them to offset costs. Let’s explore its features more thoroughly.

Residential Proxies

PacketStream offers a P2P residential proxy network spanning 190 countries. These proxies are sourced from real devices whose owners sell their bandwidth on the PacketStream network. You don’t have to worry about illegally sourced IP addresses, a major problem plaguing proxy providers. Every IP address on PacketStream was consensually added by its owner to earn money.

PacketStream’s proxy IP addresses were reliable during our test and offered reasonable speeds. We chose IP addresses from different countries, and they provided fast connections, although speed varied depending on the country. PacketStream lets you choose proxies from roughly 190 countries, but you can’t select by city, which we consider a disadvantage. Many rival proxy providers let you choose proxies from specific cities to increase your chances of evading geographical restrictions.

Another disadvantage is that you can’t connect to your proxies via the SOCKS5 protocol. PacketStream only supports the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. SOCKS5 reduces network delays and provides better speed than HTTP/HTTPS, but this proxy provider does not support it.

Residential proxies can be used for many things. A good example is data scraping, wherein people use proxies to bypass website geo-restrictions and scrape relevant information.

Suppose you run a website that tracks the prices of commodities and delivers this data to users. Running a price monitoring site requires extracting data frequently and quickly from many websites. The websites (primary data sources) are privy to external data scraping and block it by implementing geographical and IP restrictions. They can identify specific IPs from data scraping bots and block them from further access. They can also ban IP addresses of an entire country from accessing their information.

PacketStream gives you access to a large network of residential IP addresses to bypass restrictions and scrape commodity price data. If one IP address gets discovered and blocked, just switch to another and try your luck. With over 7 million IP addresses available on PacketStream’s P2P network, you won’t run out of new proxies to bypass website geo-restrictions.

Online retail is another common use case for residential proxies. Many people use automated bots to snap up fast-selling products, placing orders before they run out of stock. However, e-commerce sites don’t like this and often blocklist bot IP addresses. PacketStream’s residential proxies let users circumvent this block and get their desired product.

As far as an e-commerce site is concerned, residential proxies belong to legitimate devices. It’s challenging for them to detect and block these proxies. Even when they do, you can switch to another proxy and visit the e-commerce site. PacketStream’s large network of residential proxies allow people to utilize automated scripts to bid for products.

It’s worth noting that PacketStream’s proxy network pales compared to many rival platforms. 7 million IPs might seem large, but Oxylabs offers 100 million, and Bright Data offers 72 million IPs.

Being P2P constrains PacketStream’s ability to add millions more IPs. It needs to convince real users to join the network, which is noticeably difficult. PacketStream outshines competitors in affordability, but the tradeoff is less network reach.

One major drawback is that PacketStream offers only residential IPs. It doesn’t provide datacenter IPs, which are faster and more reliable. Datacenter IPs are sourced from dedicated servers with more speed, making them ideal for massive data scraping tasks. Large enterprises are the main users of datacenter proxies, but PacketStream doesn’t serve this cohort well. This proxy provider best suits individuals and small businesses seeking affordable residential proxies.

PacketStream doesn’t offer mobile-specific IPs. Mobile device IP addresses are present on this P2P network, but you can’t specifically choose that option. Many businesses use mobile IPs for app testing and ad verification, but performing these tasks with PacketStream is difficult.

Likewise, PacketStream doesn’t offer proxies sourced directly from Internet Service Providers (ISPs). ISP proxies provide higher data throughput and reduced delay than residential proxies, but you can’t get them on PacketStream.

Selling Bandwidth

PacketStream lets users sell their unused bandwidth and make money. You can add your IP address to the network and earn money when people use your device as a proxy. Pricing is $0.10 per GB, which can help you offset the cost of buying bandwidth on PacketStream.

Sharing your bandwidth requires downloading the PacketStream client on your PC. This client is available on Windows and macOS and can run on low-end PCs. The primary requirement is a stable internet connection.

After installing the PacketStream PC app, you can open it anytime and activate a shared connection. Your payout is automatically calculated based on the amount of data your shared connection transmits. Closing the PacketStream app immediately terminates the shared connection, giving you complete control over the process. PacketStream can’t use your connection without your consent, which you give by opening the app.

There’s no limit to the amount of bandwidth you can share. The minimum payout is $5 for 50 GB of bandwidth, which makes sense because 50 GB is the minimum PacketStream users can buy. A 3% fee applies to every payout.

Reseller API

PacketStream offers reselling/white-label services. This feature is for people interested in starting their own proxy providers. In that case, you can sell PacketStream’s proxies under your own branding and earn money. PacketStream provides a bare-bones version of its platform, which you can customize to build a brand atop the company’s infrastructure.

Resellers provide access to the same network of proxies available on PacketStream. Any device added to PacketStream’s network will become available on your proxy provider. This feature isn’t for individual users, but we consider it worth discussing to give a complete PacketStream review.

PacketStream: Ease of Use

PacketStream outshines many competitors in the user-friendliness criterion. It arguably has the simplest interface we’ve encountered in a proxy provider, thanks partly to its limited features (there’s not much to navigate).

All features are neatly arranged on the left menu, and the main dashboard lies on the right side. With a white background and a few contrasting colors, PacketStream’s interface feels visually appealing and easy to navigate. The average person won’t have any issues understanding this interface: this can’t be said for some proxy providers.

There’s a drawback, though. PacketStream doesn’t offer a browser extension to manage proxies. You need the desktop interface to manage and deploy new proxies, unlike other proxies with browser extensions for seamless proxy management. An extension lets you switch proxies at the click of a single button, but PacketStream doesn’t provide this benefit.

PacketStream: Customer Support

Customer support is an area where PacketStream lags competitors. It offers direct support only via email, with no live chat or telephone option. You can send a support email and expect a response within 48 hours, but there’s no option to hold a real-time conversation with support staff.

Also, PacketStream doesn’t provide as much self-help support resources as most competitors. There’s a FAQ section and user guides on the website, but they aren’t as detailed as what we’ve seen in other proxy providers.

PacketStream: The Competition

PacketStream has many competitors, and the ones we’d like to highlight are Bright Data, Oxylabs, and Smartproxy. Let’s explore how they compare to PacketStream.

Bright Data offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies. It also offers advanced web scraping APIs are pre-built datasets. In contrast, PacketStream offers none of these except residential IPs. If you need PacketStream’s proxies for automated data scraping, you’ll need an external platform for the APIs. However, at $1 per GB, PacketStream’s residential proxy service is much more affordable than Bright Data’s, which costs around $8 per GB.

Oxylabs provides residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies, with a massive pool of over 100 million IP addresses. It also provides a Web Unblocker and web scraping APIs for enterprises. Oxylabs is undoubtedly the more sophisticated platform. It offers more reliable and speedy proxy IPs, with complete control over its proxy network, unlike peer-to-peer PacketStream. However, Oxylabs’ residential IPs cost $8 per GB, compared to PacketStream’s $1.

Webshare offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies but not web scraping APIs. Its pool of 30 million+ IP addresses across 50 countries is significantly smaller than Oxylabs and Bright Data yet larger than PacketStream. With pricing as low as $4.5 per GB, Webshare is one of the most affordable proxy providers for enterprises. Yet, PacketStream’s $1 per GB beats it in pricing.

In summary, PacketStream lags most competitors in IP pool size, features, and speed. However, it outperforms them in affordability, helped by the lower costs of running a P2P network.

PacketStream: Final words

PacketStream is an affordable residential IP provider. It’s ideal for individuals or small businesses needing residential proxies for mundane online activities. However, it’s not suitable for enterprises with large-scale data scraping needs. It lacks the more reliable datacenter and ISP proxies and has limited customer support.

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