DIY guide — phone + SIM + app
How to turn an Android phone into a mobile proxy
The complete walkthrough: from a spare handset with a SIM to a working SOCKS5 proxy with a real carrier IP, rotation, and per-tool credentials. New to mobile proxies entirely? Start there, then come back.
What you need before you start
An Android phone — 8.0+, 64-bit
Any stock handset or tablet. No root, no custom ROM — the phone gathering dust in your drawer almost certainly qualifies.
A SIM with mobile data
The proxy exits through this SIM's carrier IP — and its data plan is the only traffic cap you'll ever have.
A charger
A proxy works around the clock, so the phone should too. Any charger or powered USB hub does it.
Wi-Fi — optional but smart
With Wi-Fi in reach, the tunnel leg rides it while traffic still exits the SIM, roughly halving mobile-data use.
Not sure the handset qualifies? Check devices & requirements.
The walkthrough, step by step
Seven steps, one sitting. Each one links to the doc that goes deeper.
- 1
Create a free account
Head to signup — the free trial covers your first device with every core feature and asks for no credit card. The dashboard you land in is the control room for everything that follows: pairing PINs, credentials, rotation, usage. - 2
Install the app on the phone
On the phone, grab the APK from the download page and allow the install when Android asks. During the beta the app is sideloaded, not on Google Play — verify the published SHA-256 if you like. It asks for battery and background access to hold the tunnel, plus an optional SMS permission for OTP capture that you can decline — the proxy works fine without it. - 3
Pair with a PIN
In the dashboard, add a device to get a one-time PIN. In the app, tap Pair with PIN and type it — the phone shows up online within seconds. Grant the battery exemption the app walks you through, or Android will eventually kill the tunnel in the background. The quickstart covers every screen. - 4
Create a proxy credential
On the device's page, create your first proxy port — SOCKS5 or HTTP(S), one protocol per port — and you get a username, password, and a gateway port. Mint one credential per tool or customer; each is revocable without touching the rest. - 5
Connect via socks5h://
Paste the credential into any proxy field. Thehin socks5h matters — it makes DNS resolve through the phone's carrier network instead of your ISP:curl -x socks5h://user:[email protected]:30020 https://api.ipify.org - 6
Verify the exit IP
Ask an IP echo service who you are — once through the proxy, once without. Through it, you should see a carrier CGNAT address matching the exit IP and carrier the dashboard reports. Same IP both times? Your tool isn't actually using the proxy yet. - 7
Set up IP rotation
Decide how fresh IPs arrive: the Change IP button, a schedule the phone keeps itself, a no-auth rotation link you can paste into any tool, or the REST API. Every past exit IP lands in a deduplicated history. Details and honest caveats — carriers make rotation best-effort — in the rotation guide.
The condensed version lives in the quickstart.
Three ways to build a mobile proxy
You can make your own mobile proxy without us — here's the honest landscape.
| Aspect | Dongle / modem farm | An app on your own phone | Fully manual (Termux, adb) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront hardware | High — modems or dongles, a rig to power and rack them, a SIM per port | None — a phone you already own | None |
| Ongoing cost | SIM plans plus rack upkeep at fleet scale | Your SIM plan + a flat software fee per device | Your SIM plan and your evenings |
| Rotation & management | You assemble and wire the management stack yourself | Rotation, per-tool credentials, monitoring, and an API built in | None — no rotation API, no credential management, no monitoring |
| Best for | Large dedicated fleets with a rack to fill | One phone to a few hundred, live today | A weekend experiment |
The manual route genuinely works, and it costs nothing. What it never grows is the plumbing — scriptable rotation, revocable credentials, monitoring that tells you the phone dropped off at 3 a.m. That plumbing is the product here.
What it actually costs to run
Add it up: the handset is one you already own, a prepaid data SIM costs whatever your local carrier charges, electricity for a phone on a charger is pocket change — and the software is a flat $9–12 per device a month (−20% annual, Pro also bills weekly), with traffic capped only by the SIM's plan. Renting a dedicated mobile line instead typically costs several times that, with per-gigabyte billing waiting on top — on hardware someone else controls.
See pricingDIY questions
Do I need to root the phone?
No. Modern Android ships public APIs that let an app request the cellular network and bind its sockets to it even while Wi-Fi is up — which is all the routing a proxy needs. Stock Android 8 or newer works untouched; rooting adds nothing here.
Can I turn an iPhone into a proxy this way?
The exit node has to be Android — iOS won't let a third-party app hold the kind of long-lived background service a proxy requires. Put the SIM in an Android handset and drive everything else (dashboard, credentials, rotation) from whatever you like, iPhone included.
How many proxies can one phone serve?
Up to 10 independent proxy ports on Standard and 20 on Pro, each with its own protocol choice and its own revocable username/password. They share the phone's single carrier IP and rotate together.
Will this burn through my data plan?
Pick the SIM like an operator: prepaid unlimited or high-cap data plans are the workhorse choice for a proxy phone. Turn on Wi-Fi split to cut the SIM's share roughly in half, and set per-credential GB caps as a budget guard — a runaway scraper hits its cap before it drains the plan.
More in the full FAQ — or compare exit types in mobile vs residential proxies.
Your first proxy is one pairing PIN away
Free trial on your first device — every core feature, no credit card. Start the walkthrough at step one.