NetNut is not an operating proxy service as of this writing: on July 2, 2026, the FBI seized NetNut's domains after tying the network to the "Popa" botnet, which converted roughly 2 million consumer devices into proxy nodes without their owners' consent.
Any pricing, IP-pool, or feature figures for NetNut in this article are historical β sourced from pre-seizure product pages and independent reviews β because NetNut's own site now serves an FBI seizure notice instead of a product.
IPRoyal remains a live, purchasable residential proxy service with pay-as-you-go and subscription plans starting near $7/GB at low volume and dropping to $1.75/GB only at 10TB+ commitments, backed by a stated 64M+ IP pool across 195+ countries.
NetNut previously advertised an 85M+ residential IP pool across 195 countries with plans starting around $15/GB at low volume, per third-party reviews published while the service was live β figures that can no longer be verified against NetNut's own site.
If you were comparing these two to decide where to buy proxies, the practical decision today is between IPRoyal and a currently-operating alternative, not between IPRoyal and NetNut.
Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies are one such alternative: a live, prepaid residential proxy product priced at $1.00/GB standard (as low as $0.50/GB under the current promotion), covering 200+ countries and regions with a stated 99.5% success rate.
What IPRoyal and NetNut Actually Are
IPRoyal is a Lithuania-based proxy provider selling residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies through a self-service dashboard, and it is currently online and taking new customers. NetNut was a residential proxy provider owned by the Nasdaq-listed company Alarum Technologies that marketed itself the same way β until July 2, 2026, when the FBI, working with IRS Criminal Investigation, Google's Threat Intelligence Group, Lumen's Black Lotus Labs, and the Shadowserver Foundation, seized the domains behind NetNut's network. Investigators had linked the service to a botnet researchers named "Popa": at least 2 million devices, mostly smart TVs, streaming boxes, and Android devices, that had been converted into always-on proxy nodes with little or no consent from their owners. Google's Threat Intelligence Group reported that 316 distinct threat clusters used suspected NetNut-linked nodes in a single week, for activity including password spraying, ad fraud, scraping, and account takeover. Alarum Technologies confirmed the enforcement action publicly, and its stock dropped roughly 67% within a week of the seizure.
Visiting netnut.io today returns an FBI seizure page, not a product. That means the rest of this article's NetNut figures are historical: sourced from NetNut's own pre-seizure pages where available and cross-checked against independent reviews published while the service was operating, not from a live source you can check yourself. Treat them as context for what NetNut used to offer, not as a live comparison point.
Take a Quick Look
If you landed here trying to decide between IPRoyal and NetNut, the real question now is which currently-operating provider to use instead β Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies give you a prepaid, pay-as-you-go pool of real residential IPs without signing up for a service that turned out to run on hijacked devices.
IPRoyal's residential proxy page states HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, rotating sessions configurable from every request up to 7 days, sticky/dedicated IPs with unlimited concurrent sessions, a claimed 99.4% success rate, and roughly 0.5s response time. NetNut's pre-seizure marketing, per independent review coverage published while the service was live, described residential, static ISP, datacenter, and mobile proxy types plus dedicated "Unblocker" products for sites, SERPs, and social platforms, across a stated 85M+ residential IP pool in 195 countries.
Criterion
IPRoyal (live)
NetNut (historical, pre-seizure)
Nstproxy Residential Lite (live)
Operating status
Live, purchasable
Seized by the FBI, July 2026 β not operating
Live, purchasable
Stated IP pool
64M+
85M+ (unverifiable today)
50M+
Country coverage
195+
195
200+ countries/regions
Protocols
HTTP(S), SOCKS5
HTTP(S) (per third-party reviews)
HTTPS, SOCKS5
Session control
Per-request rotation up to 7-day sticky
Rotating and static plans (per third-party reviews)
Prepaid packages scale down per tier; no long-term contract required
Billing model
Subscription or pay-as-you-go, non-expiring traffic
Subscription (historical)
Prepaid packages, balance-based
Cost and Operational Tradeoffs
IPRoyal's cost structure rewards volume: the per-GB rate only reaches its lowest published tier, $1.75/GB on subscription or $1.84/GB pay-as-you-go, once a buyer commits to 10TB or more, while smaller buyers pay $5.25β7.35/GB depending on plan type. IPRoyal advertises "never-expiring traffic" and no monthly minimum, which matters for buyers with irregular usage who don't want purchased data to lapse.
NetNut's historical pricing, as reported by third-party review coverage, started near $15/GB at its lowest advertised volume tier and stepped down to roughly $6/GB at 50GB and above β a steeper entry cost than IPRoyal at comparable volumes, though this can no longer be verified against a live pricing page. Whatever NetNut's actual value proposition was on cost, it's moot now: there is no checkout page left to buy from.
For a currently operating comparison point, Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies list at $1.00/GB standard, with a stated promotional rate of $0.50/GB at the time of writing, sold in prepaid packages from 10GB up to 10TB with no long-term contract. That undercuts IPRoyal's lowest published per-GB rate even before the promotion, and it does so at any package size rather than only above a 10TB commitment.
Scenario Analysis
A team already running production scraping or verification jobs against IPRoyal, with volume high enough to reach its $1.75β1.84/GB tier, has a working, live setup and no urgent reason to switch on cost alone. A team that was actively signing up with NetNut, or that has legacy code pointed at a NetNut endpoint, needs to move immediately β the account and API access no longer function, regardless of price or features, because the underlying service is offline.
A team evaluating proxy providers for the first time and comparing this exact pair should treat NetNut as removed from consideration entirely rather than as a lower-cost or higher-pool alternative to weigh against IPRoyal. The real evaluation is between IPRoyal and whichever currently-operating provider best fits the required volume, protocol support, and budget β which is where a lower-cost, still-live option like Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies fits for buyers who haven't already standardized on IPRoyal.
Why Nstproxy Is a Practical Alternative Right NowοΌ
Nstproxy runs seven live proxy product lines β Residential Lite, Residential Prime, IPv6, Datacenter, Static ISP, Unlimited Residential, and Mobile β accessed through an HTTP/SOCKS5 gateway with a REST API and SDKs, and unlike NetNut, none of its stated infrastructure is described in enforcement filings or security research as running on non-consensual device access. For a reader comparing IPRoyal and NetNut on residential proxies specifically, the closest matching Nstproxy product is Residential Lite: a prepaid pool of 50M+ residential IPs across 200+ countries and regions, sold in fixed traffic packages rather than a subscription. It fits the same use cases IPRoyal and NetNut targeted β web scraping, price monitoring, ad verification, and geo-restricted access testing β without requiring a minimum monthly spend.
Verifiable pricing today β Residential Lite lists at $1.00/GB standard ($0.50/GB under the current promotion) on Nstproxy's own Residential Lite pricing page, a page you can check right now, unlike NetNut's former pricing.
200+ country coverage with a 99.5% stated success rate β per Nstproxy's Residential Lite product page, matching or exceeding the geographic breadth both IPRoyal and NetNut advertised.
Prepaid packages instead of a subscription commitment β traffic is purchased in fixed blocks from 10GB up to 10TB and deducted from a balance, closer to IPRoyal's pay-as-you-go model than to a recurring subscription.
HTTPS/SOCKS5 support with per-request or custom-duration sessions β covering both the rotating-IP and longer-session patterns that IPRoyal and NetNut both supported.
Take a Quick Look
Need a residential proxy pool you can actually check the pricing and status of today: Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies are live now at $1.00/GB standard, with 200+ countries of coverage.
Stop β the service is offline. Migrate to a live provider immediately; check your code and dashboards for any hardcoded NetNut endpoints.
Already on IPRoyal at high volume (10TB+/month)
Stay put; your per-GB rate is already at IPRoyal's lowest published tier.
Comparing IPRoyal against options below 10TB/month volume
Compare IPRoyal's $5.25β7.35/GB entry tiers against Nstproxy's $1.00/GB (or current $0.50/GB promotion) Residential Lite pricing for the same volume.
Choosing a first residential proxy provider with no existing commitment
Evaluate live providers only β IPRoyal and Nstproxy both currently qualify; NetNut does not.
Prioritizing traffic that never expires over lowest per-GB cost
IPRoyal's non-expiring traffic model may suit irregular, bursty usage better than a fixed prepaid package.
Choosing between IPRoyal and a comparable live alternative comes down to volume and billing preference rather than a universal winner: IPRoyal's non-expiring traffic suits irregular usage, while a prepaid, lower-per-GB option suits buyers who can plan around fixed packages. What no longer factors into that decision is NetNut, since there's nothing left to sign up for.
No. The FBI seized NetNut's domains on July 2, 2026, after linking the service to the "Popa" botnet, which used roughly 2 million compromised consumer devices as proxy nodes without owner consent; visiting netnut.io now shows an FBI seizure notice instead of a product, and there is no way to sign up or log in.
Q: What happens to an existing NetNut account or API integration?
It stops working, because NetNut's backend infrastructure was taken offline as part of the seizure; any code, dashboard, or automation pointed at a NetNut endpoint needs to be migrated to a currently-operating provider.
Q: Is IPRoyal cheaper than NetNut was?
At comparable low-volume tiers, IPRoyal's published pay-as-you-go rate (around $7.35/GB) was lower than NetNut's previously advertised entry tier (around $15/GB per third-party reviews), though NetNut's pricing can no longer be confirmed on a live page.
Q: Why did NetNut's proxy network get shut down?
Security researchers and Google's Threat Intelligence Group linked NetNut to a botnet called "Popa" that converted about 2 million devices β largely smart TVs, streaming boxes, and Android devices β into proxy nodes with little or no consent from their owners, and the FBI seized the network's domains as part of a joint action with Google, Lumen, and the Shadowserver Foundation.
Q: What should I use instead of NetNut for residential proxies?
Any currently-operating, verifiably-priced residential proxy provider works as a replacement; IPRoyal and Nstproxy's Residential Lite proxies are two live options with published pricing you can check today, and the right pick depends on whether your usage fits a subscription/pay-as-you-go model or a prepaid package.
Marcus Chen
Aug. 4th 2026
110M+ real IPs with 99.9% access success
Blazing-fast average response ~0.5s for high-concurrency tasks
From only $0.1/GB
Get immediate access to premium residential, datacenter, IPv6 and ISP proxy pools.
