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    Hardware and operations

    Your own mobile proxy farm

    A mobile proxy farm is a set of Android phones with SIM cards, power, Wi-Fi and software that turns every phone into a proxy and gives you a dashboard to manage them. Mobihub takes care of the software. This page covers the rest: what a launch costs, when it pays back and how to watch over fifty phones.

    $30–150
    market rent for a proxy per month
    up to −32%
    volume discount
    −12%
    when paid for 180 days
    API
    and a Telegram bot for control
    Diagram: a rack of eight phones with SIM cards next to an income chart and a coin

    What the economics of a farm consist of

    On the open market a mobile proxy rents for $30–150 a month depending on the country and carrier. For first estimates $50–60 per device is a sensible figure. Costs consist of the phone, a SIM card with a large data allowance and the service subscription.

    The subscription is the smaller part of the costs, and it shrinks as the farm grows. At fifty devices the volume discount reaches 20%, paying for half a year takes another 12% off, and the two discounts add up. Phones and connectivity remain the main expenses.

    This page is about hardware and operations. How to split proxies between buyers, what to put in the terms and when the Mobihub marketplace opens is covered on the reselling page.

    Pricing

    Numbers for a fifty-phone farm

    The widget opens on Professional with fifty devices and a 180-day period. This is where the volume discount reaches 20% and stacks with the period discount. Move the slider to your scale, and work out the payback including phone costs in the calculator on the pricing page.

    Tariff plan
    Number of devices50
    Connect 50 more device(s) — and the price per device drops by 24%.
    The more devices and the longer the subscription, the cheaper a single device becomes.
    Payment period
    What's included
    HTTP, SOCKS5 and UDPIP change by linkLogin and IP authorizationAllowed address listTraffic and thread limitsAPI access
    Total
    $1478.40
    for 180 days · 50 devices
    Price per day$8.21
    Per device / month$5.60
    Volume discount−20%
    180 days−12%
    Pay from 1 day, no auto-renewal
    How-to

    How to build a farm step by step

    Start with two or three phones: mistakes in choosing a carrier or a model stay cheap that way.

    A farm rack: a powered USB hub, four phones, a fan, SIM cards and an availability chart at 99.2%
    1. Choose the phones

      You need Android 9+, at least 2 GB of RAM and sane background behaviour. TECNO Spark 30 5G, Realme Note 50 and Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S have proven themselves. Samsung S24 FE and Oppo A3s are a poor fit for this job.

    2. Pick the SIM cards

      Look for a plan with no tight data cap. Tethering is not involved, traffic goes through the app. Get cards from two or three carriers: buyers often ask for a specific network, and one carrier's outage will not stop the whole farm.

    3. Sort out power and network

      The phones charge around the clock, so you need quality powered USB hubs and ventilation. Wi-Fi is required for SmartRelay, which takes outgoing traffic off the SIM card.

    4. Install Mobihub on every phone

      Install the app, sign in, turn off battery saving and enable proxy autostart. Name the devices clearly, for example by carrier and slot number.

    5. Set up monitoring

      A phone can freeze, update itself or lose the network in the middle of the night. Schedule the script below so you learn about downtime from an alert.

    Working code

    Script: farm availability monitoring

    A frozen phone earns nothing, and without monitoring you are the last to find out. Every five minutes the script polls all proxies from farm.csv and calculates the availability percentage, median latency and number of distinct addresses per phone. It prints devices below the 95% threshold and exits with code 1, which plugs neatly into alerts.

    farm_uptime.pyPython
    import csv
    import statistics
    import time
    
    import requests
    
    FARM_FILE = "farm.csv"
    REPORT_FILE = "farm_uptime.csv"
    IP_ECHO = "https://api.ipify.org"
    ROUNDS = 12
    INTERVAL = 300
    SLA = 95.0
    
    
    def probe(proxy):
        started = time.time()
        try:
            response = requests.get(IP_ECHO, proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy}, timeout=15)
            response.raise_for_status()
        except requests.RequestException:
            return None, None
        return response.text.strip(), (time.time() - started) * 1000
    
    
    def main():
        with open(FARM_FILE, newline="") as f:
            phones = list(csv.DictReader(f))
    
        history = {phone["name"]: {"ok": 0, "timings": [], "ips": set()} for phone in phones}
        for number in range(ROUNDS):
            for phone in phones:
                ip, elapsed = probe(phone["proxy"])
                if ip:
                    record = history[phone["name"]]
                    record["ok"] += 1
                    record["timings"].append(elapsed)
                    record["ips"].add(ip)
            if number < ROUNDS - 1:
                time.sleep(INTERVAL)
    
        failing = []
        with open(REPORT_FILE, "w", newline="") as f:
            writer = csv.writer(f)
            writer.writerow(["phone", "uptime_percent", "median_ms", "distinct_ips"])
            for name, record in history.items():
                uptime = round(record["ok"] / ROUNDS * 100, 1)
                median = round(statistics.median(record["timings"])) if record["timings"] else ""
                writer.writerow([name, uptime, median, len(record["ips"])])
                if uptime < SLA:
                    failing.append(f"{name} ({uptime}%)")
    
        print(f"phones below {SLA}% uptime: {', '.join(failing) or 'none'}")
        raise SystemExit(1 if failing else 0)
    
    
    if __name__ == "__main__":
        main()

    farm.csv has two columns: name and proxy. One run with default settings takes an hour. Schedule it on a server that does not share a network with the farm.

    Plans

    Which plan a farm needs

    As the rack grows, the difference between the plans becomes fundamental.

    Beginner

    Testing the waters on one or two phones

    Good for checking a carrier, a phone model and the demand for your location. There are no per-connection limits, so splitting one proxy between buyers is risky.

    • $4 per device for 30 days
    • Up to 15 connections with separate logins
    • IP change by link and by timer
    • Connection logs kept for a year
    Choose Beginner
    Full plan comparison
    Tips

    Mistakes people make at the start

    Buying twenty phones at once

    First check on two devices how your carrier hands out addresses and how the phone model handles background work. Scale what already works.

    Saving on power

    A cheap hub without its own power supply cannot feed ten phones. Devices reboot and batteries swell from overheating.

    One carrier for the whole farm

    An outage or a change in plan rules at the carrier stops all income. Two or three networks cost slightly more and save you on such days.

    Phones without ventilation

    Ten handsets charging in a closed box heat each other up. Leave gaps between the phones and add an ordinary fan.

    Automatic system updates

    An overnight Android update reboots the phone and sometimes resets the app's permissions. Turn auto-updates off and update devices one at a time when it suits you.

    FAQ

    Questions and answers

    How much can a mobile proxy farm earn?

    It all comes down to the country and carrier. On the market proxies rent for $30–150 a month per device, and $50–60 is realistic for a start. One or two phones usually net $40–100 a month after connectivity and the subscription.

    Why is the widget calculation set to fifty devices and half a year?

    At fifty devices the volume discount reaches 20%, and paying for 180 days adds another 12%. It shows what the subscription costs for a mature farm. For a start set two or three phones and 30 days.

    How many phones should a farm start with?

    Two or three. They show how the carrier hands out addresses, how the phone model copes with background work and how much traffic goes in a month. A wrong choice costs little on three phones and eats the budget on thirty.

    Does charging around the clock harm the phones?

    A battery that is constantly charged and warm ages faster and can swell. Ventilation, quality power supplies and a monthly inspection help. Take a swollen phone off the rack straight away.

    How much traffic does one phone use?

    It depends on the task: social media work takes 1–5 GB a day, scraping and video several times more. A per-connection traffic limit protects the SIM's plan from overuse, and SmartRelay moves the outgoing stream to Wi-Fi.

    Can I manage the farm without opening the dashboard?

    Yes. There is a Telegram bot for everyday actions and an API for automation. An IP change is triggered by a plain link that is easy to build into your own scripts.

    Start with two phones

    Check the carrier, the model and the demand for your location before big purchases. Support gives new customers 24 free hours, and the payback calculator is waiting on the pricing page.