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Open a session on a residential or mobile proxy network and you might land on an IPv4 address one time, an IPv6 address the next. That's not a bug — it's how real devices connect to the internet today, and it's exactly what a proxy pool built from real devices should reflect. The question worth asking isn't "how do I pick IPv4 over IPv6," it's whether the difference actually changes anything for what you're doing.
Does IPv4 vs IPv6 matter for scraping and automation?
For most scraping, automation, and account management work, no — the target site sees a residential or mobile IP either way, and that's what determines whether a request looks legitimate. What matters more is whether the site you're hitting fully supports IPv6 traffic, since a small but real slice of the web still doesn't. On a mixed pool, you don't choose the protocol version; the network assigns whichever IP is available and appropriate for the session, the same way it would if you picked up a real phone.
The technical difference, in short
IPv4 addresses are 32-bit, written as four numbers separated by dots (192.0.2.1), and the pool of possible addresses — about 4.3 billion — ran out years ago. IPv6 addresses are 128-bit, written in hexadecimal blocks separated by colons (2001:0db8::1), with a functionally unlimited address space. That's the whole difference that matters day to day. For the fuller history of how each protocol developed and where the internet is headed, SimplyNode's IPv4 vs IPv6 explainer covers that in depth — this article is about what the difference means specifically when you're running proxy traffic through it.
Why proxy pools mix both types
Residential and mobile proxy networks are built from real user devices, and real devices don't run one protocol exclusively. Most home routers and phones today run dual-stack, meaning they hold both an IPv4 and an IPv6 address and use whichever the destination site supports. Mobile carriers have pushed IPv6 especially hard — mobile networks were squeezed by IPv4 scarcity years before home broadband was, so a large share of phone traffic today already runs on IPv6.
That's why a residential or mobile proxy pool sourced from real devices comes back mixed by default. Filtering the pool to one protocol version would mean throwing out a real slice of it — and would make the traffic look less like an ordinary user, not more.
Does the target site even support IPv6?
This is the part that actually affects your setup. Global IPv6 adoption crossed the 50% mark on Google's own traffic in early 2026, according to Google's IPv6 statistics — meaning roughly half the connections Google sees now arrive over IPv6, up from a slow, steady climb over the past decade. Most major platforms, CDNs, and marketplaces support IPv6 today. But "most" isn't "all," and adoption varies a lot by industry and by region: some enterprise sites, older government portals, and smaller regional platforms still run IPv4-only infrastructure.
In practice, this rarely needs manual handling. If a target site doesn't support IPv6, a dual-stack connection falls back to IPv4 automatically, the same way your own laptop does when you visit an IPv4-only site at home. Where it's worth checking manually is high-volume automation against a single target: if you're seeing an unusual amount of connection failures against one specific site, verifying that site's IPv6 support before assuming it's a proxy-side problem is a five-minute check that rules out a whole category of false alarms.
Does IP version affect blocking or detection?
Not directly. Anti-bot and fraud-detection systems score IP reputation, request patterns, and behavioral signals — not protocol version. An IPv6 residential IP with clean history behaves the same, from a detection standpoint, as an IPv4 residential IP with clean history. What actually gets flagged is the same for both: a datacenter IP, a reused IP with a bad reputation, or a request pattern that doesn't look human.
Can you choose IPv4 or IPv6 on SimplyNode?
No — SimplyNode's residential and mobile pools mix both, and the network assigns whichever is available for that session rather than letting you pick. That's a deliberate reflection of how real devices connect, not a missing feature: a pool that's artificially IPv4-only, or IPv6-only, would need to filter out real devices from the network to enforce it, which cuts into pool size and diversity for no real benefit on the sites that matter.
FAQ
Should I request IPv4 or IPv6 for my scraper? For most use cases, it doesn't matter — pick a proxy network for residential/mobile quality and country targeting, not IP version. The exception is high-volume automation against a single site with an old or IPv4-only infrastructure, where confirming IPv6 support first can save debugging time.
Why did my proxy session return an IPv6 address instead of IPv4? Residential and mobile pools are built from real devices, most of which run dual-stack. A session returning an IPv6 address just reflects the mix of real device traffic in the pool at that moment.
Do all websites support IPv6 proxies? No. Most major platforms and CDNs do, but some older or region-specific infrastructure remains IPv4-only. Dual-stack connections fall back to IPv4 automatically when a site doesn't support IPv6.
Are IPv6 proxies less likely to get blocked than IPv4? Not inherently. Blocking decisions come down to IP reputation and request behavior, not protocol version. A clean residential IP on either protocol behaves the same to most detection systems.