OSRS botting proxies in 2026: what I actually use
My proxy setup for OSRS bots: when a home IP is enough, how I split accounts across datacenter and ISP proxies, and which mistakes cost accounts.
You do not need a proxy for every bot. If you are running two or three accounts from home, adding cheap random IPs can cause more problems than it solves. I start splitting accounts onto proxies when the number running from one address becomes something I would not want tied together.
My usual cap is five accounts per IP. That is my own operating rule, not a number Jagex has published. I arrived at it after running enough batches to see that squeezing another 20 accounts onto the same IP was false economy.
Do you need a proxy for OSRS botting?
For one to five bots, your home IP is normally enough unless you have a specific reason to isolate them. Keep the bots away from your main: no direct trades, no shared mule and no interaction between them.
Past that point I would begin splitting the farm. The rough setup I use is:
| Accounts running | IP setup I would start with | What matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1-5 | Home IP | Keep the bots separate from accounts you care about |
| 6-25 | Several tested datacenter or ISP proxies | Cap the number placed on each IP |
| 25+ | A mix matched to account value | Cheap IPs for disposable F2P, better IPs for mules and P2P |
Do not treat that table as a ban-rate formula. The script, account history, activity and trade graph all matter as well. A clean IP does not rescue an account that clicks the same broken tile for six hours.
Why bot clients ask for SOCKS5
OSRS clients need SOCKS5 because the game connection is not ordinary browser traffic. An HTTP proxy can handle websites while doing nothing for the game socket. SOCKS5 carries the client connection itself, which is why DreamBot, OSBot and similar clients ask for it.
Check the format before buying anything. You need the host, port and, in most cases, a username and password. Test one IP in the client before buying a large batch. I have seen people buy 500 proxies first and only then discover that the provider's authentication or country mix does not work with their account format.
Datacenter, ISP and residential proxies
I match the IP cost to what the account is worth. Spending several dollars a month on an F2P account making 200k an hour does not make sense. Using the cheapest shared datacenter IP for a mule holding 500m does not make sense either.
Datacenter proxies come from hosting ranges. They are cheap and fast, so I use them for F2P, disposable accounts and tests where I expect losses. I split them into cheap shared stock and better dedicated stock rather than pretending every datacenter proxy has the same history.
ISP proxies are hosted IPs registered through consumer ISPs. These are my pick for P2P farms, mules and accounts I have put real time or money into. They cost more, but the extra cost is small next to replacing a developed account.
Residential proxies use consumer connections and are often sold by bandwidth. Static residential keeps the same address. Rotating residential changes it on a timer or request. I have used 30-minute rotations for account creation, but I do not want a playing session jumping between countries every few minutes.
The split I use
After testing thousands of proxies, my basic allocation is boring:
- Cheap datacenter IPs for F2P and accounts I am willing to lose.
- Better datacenter stock for ordinary P2P farmers.
- ISP proxies for mules and higher-value accounts.
- Residential only where I have a reason for it, normally creation rather than day-to-day play.
Account value decides the category. I also avoid moving an account between unrelated countries. If it has spent a month logging in through London, I am not swapping it to Singapore because one proxy expired.
The five-per-IP cap still applies inside each category. It gives me a simple failure boundary. If one IP turns out to be bad, I know the maximum number of accounts attached to it.
A provider from my old setup
I used WebShare for budget datacenter stock. That is a referral link. Providers, prices and IP quality change, so buy a small sample before committing.
One warning from my WebShare testing: roughly 30% of a broad batch would not work with Jagex Account logins. The failure rate varied by country. That is an old test result rather than a promise about today's pool, but it is why I test login compatibility before scaling an order.
Bandwidth plans are another place people overspend. Work out how much each client actually transfers and buy for that. Concurrency add-ons only matter if the plan would otherwise stop you opening the number of connections you need.
Proxy mistakes I keep seeing
The obvious one is overloading a single IP. Fifty accounts on one address saves money right up until all fifty become the same incident.
Free proxies are worse. They are slow, reused by everyone and may be operated by somebody you should not trust with account traffic. I would rather use my home IP for a small test than put credentials through a public proxy list.
The less obvious mistake is upgrading every IP to residential before testing another country or provider. If one US datacenter range is giving bad results, test a small UK or German batch. Do not multiply the farm's monthly cost based on one bad subnet.
Finally, keep a record of which account uses which IP. A spreadsheet is enough for a few dozen. Once that becomes annoying, a manager such as EternalFarm can hold the account, task and proxy assignment together. The important part is being able to answer "what else used this IP?" after a lock or ban.
If you are still choosing the accounts to place behind those proxies, the TTL guide explains why I value a developed account differently from a fresh tut. The accounts currently in stock page lists the format and build for each one.