IPinfo vs IPQualityScore · Comparison
The IPQualityScore Alternative That Gives You the Signals, Not the Verdict
IPQS is a credible and well-established fraud platform. The difference is that IPinfo provides the evidence behind every signal and transparent pricing up front, so you can make decisions you can explain and audit.
At a glance
The full picture
What IPQualityScore Offers
IPQS offers several products outside IPinfo's focus. The sections below distinguish between those broader platform features and the areas where the two companies compete directly.
Proxy, VPN & Tor detection
AnonymizerAnonymizer detection backed by a honeypot and threat-intelligence network, with over a decade of anti-fraud data behind it.
Fraud scoring
DecisioningA composite fraud score with strictness settings and a recommended cutoff. The score is the product, tuned to your risk tolerance.
Email, phone & device
VerificationEmail verification, phone validation, and device fingerprinting that extend fraud signals beyond the IP itself.
URL scanning & bot detection
Threat intelMalicious URL scanning and bot detection, with Fraud Fusion, Abuse Shield, and Dark Data as enterprise add-ons.
Observed patterns
Why Teams Look for an IPQualityScore Alternative
These are the recurring reasons IPQS customers gave our sales team when they started evaluating alternatives, pulled from real evaluation and migration conversations.
The score can't answer "why?"
When your customer or analyst asks why an IP was flagged as risky, "our model scored it 87" isn't an answer you can defend. Teams told us that escalating the question to IPQS returned little beyond "we detected it in our honeypots" — and that the fraud score rarely changed a decision compared to acting on the raw VPN/proxy signals directly.
Risk verdicts don't transfer
What IPQS considers risky may not match your risk profile. Teams with mature fraud or security operations want raw, auditable signals they can write their own rules against. A pre-weighted score built for the average customer is a ceiling, not a starting point.
One bad answer costs more than a thousand right ones
IPQS geolocation is broadly competitive. But they have the occasional indefensible miss: an IP placed on the wrong side of the globe, a broken database build. When your product exposes that answer to your customers, each "shameful mistake" (a customer's words, not ours) erodes trust in everything downstream.
False positives block real users
VPN and proxy detection that misfires in both directions: legitimate IPs tagged as VPNs (and blocked), real anonymizers missed (and abusing bandwidth). One IPQS customer's target for switching was blunt — cut false positives by 50–60%, because every one becomes a support complaint.
Escalations go quiet
Routine data corrections get fixed. But when something is critical for a tier-one customer, teams reported unresponsiveness at the moment it mattered most, then compounded by turnover that cost them the direct contacts they used to rely on.
The bundle stops earning its keep
IPQS sells an all-in-one: IP risk plus email and phone checks plus premium support, priced as a package. Customers told us the bundled data was "good enough because it's basically free" until they stopped believing one vendor could be great at everything, and the contract cycle became the only reason not to leave.
Head to head
IPinfo vs IPQS, Product by Product
While the two companies differ in scope, they compete directly in several important areas. The comparisons below focus on those shared capabilities, highlighting differences in fields, delivery, and pricing.
Anonymizer detection
Residential proxy detection
Data & delivery
Pricing
A different approach
A Score You Can't Audit, or Signals You Can
IPQS gives you a verdict and a set of strictness settings to tune it. IPinfo gives you the named services and the recency fields, and your code decides what risky means.
# IPQS returns a verdict
{
"fraud_score": 87,
"proxy": true,
"recent_abuse": true
}
# you tune strictness, not the logic# IPinfo returns signals
{
"is_anonymous": true,
"anonymous": {
"name": "711Proxy",
"is_vpn": false,
"is_res_proxy": true,
"percent_days_seen": 82,
"last_seen": "2026-06-24"
# e.g. block when percent_days_seen > 50
}
}
# your code sets the ruleWhat you read. IPQS returns a fraud score from 0 to 100 with a recommended cutoff, plus risk booleans (proxy, vpn, tor, active_vpn). IPinfo returns the underlying signals: the named anonymizer service, whether the address is a VPN, proxy, residential proxy, Tor, relay, or hosting, and how frequently and recently it was seen behaving that way (percent_days_seen and last_seen).
Where the logic lives. With a score, your risk rules live inside a vendor's strictness settings. With signals, the rule lives in your code. You decide which services to block, what recency window matters, and where to draw the line.
Why it matters. When you have to explain a decision to a customer, an auditor, or a teammate, a named service and a last-seen date are defensible. A proprietary, derived number is harder to stand behind.
Why fresh signals beat abuse history here. Residential proxies run on large pools of real consumer IPs that rotate constantly, so an address is often reassigned before it accumulates enough reported abuse to land on a blocklist. Reactive signals like abuse history lag this population by design. Directly observed recency does not: percent_days_seen shows how persistently an IP has acted as a residential proxy over the past week, and last_seen shows how current that behavior is. You are reading what the address is doing now, not waiting for a report to catch up.
Beyond the signal
The Full IP Data Picture
IPQS is a fraud platform; IPinfo is an internet intelligence platform. That means the same integration that returns anonymizer signals also returns rich IP context, with geolocation grounded in direct internet measurements rather than inference.
IP-to-Company & WHOIS
Company name, domain, and type behind an IP, plus WHOIS and IP ranges, so you enrich beyond the fraud signal.
Carrier, RPKI & ASN
Mobile carrier, RPKI validation status, and ASN detail in the same integration, not a separate purchase.
Places & Device Count
Venue-level identification and devices-per-IP estimates, categories IPQS doesn't offer at all.
Measured, verifiable geolocation
City, region, and lat/long from active ProbeNet measurement, and you can check any IP yourself on ProbeNet Live before you commit.
Verify with ProbeNet LiveFor enterprise teams
What Changes Day to Day
IPQS is a capable fraud platform, and a managed score genuinely fits some teams. The case for IPinfo is for the team that would rather own the rule than tune someone else's.
Audit the signal. See the named service and the recency behind a flag, instead of a single proprietary score. When someone asks why a request was blocked, you have an answer.
Set your own threshold. Tune risk in your code, not inside a vendor's scoring settings. You decide which services and what recency window count as risky.
Forecast cost. Flat published rates and no minimum commitment make spend modelable up front and at renewal, with no tier-gated surprises.
Residential proxy recency in the standard API. percent_days_seen and last_seen ship without an enterprise gate, so you can judge how current a classification is on every plan.
Pricing
What IPinfo Actually Costs
IPinfo publishes flat, self-serve per-request rates. IPQS publishes credit-based plans with a minimum monthly commitment and gates key signals to higher tiers.
With flat per-request pricing and no minimum, you can model spend before any conversation, and it holds at renewal. With IPQS, plans carry a minimum monthly commitment, and key signals like residential proxy detection are gated to higher tiers, so entry cost and feature access are coupled.
See transparent IPinfo pricing and model your own cost before you reach out.
Migration
Replace the IPQS Data Layer
This is not a simple endpoint swap, because you are replacing a managed verdict with transparent signals and your own decision logic. The migration is less about matching fields one for one and more about moving from consuming a score to consuming evidence directly.
You read fraud_score today
You are consuming a verdict. IPinfo does not return one, so this is not a drop-in swap. IPinfo underpins your logic: you read the named-service and recency fields, then write the cutoff that used to be the score.
You read proxy and VPN fields today
You are already consuming signals. Map IPQS proxy and VPN booleans to IPinfo's is_vpn, is_res_proxy, name, percent_days_seen, and last_seen, then keep the threshold logic you already run.
See the signals for yourself
See the signals and the pricing yourself, set your own rule, and test on your own traffic. No sales call required to evaluate.
Start free
Read the pricing, pull live signals, and build your own rule. No credit card, no sales call.
Talk to sales
Scope a higher-volume plan or a proof-of-concept on your own traffic with our team.
Frequently Asked Questions
IPQS returns a fraud score and decides for you. IPinfo gives you the underlying signals, the named anonymizer service, residential proxy recency, and provider counts, so you set your own rule.
No, and that is the point. IPinfo provides auditable detection signals, not a verdict. You read fields like is_vpn, is_proxy, is_res_proxy, name, percent_days_seen, and last_seen, then write the threshold yourself.
Both detect anonymizers. The difference is what you can see. IPinfo exposes named services and residential proxy recency as fields, and publishes provider counts and full response schemas. IPQS folds detection into a score, with the underlying data layer kept private. Test both on your own traffic to judge fit.
Flat per-request rates, no minimum monthly commitment, and consistent data across volume tiers. IPQS publishes credit-based plans with a minimum commitment and gates key signals like residential proxy detection to higher tiers, so cost and feature access are coupled.
Yes. Start on the free tier, read the published pricing, and test on your own traffic before any conversation.
Yes. IPinfo ships MMDB, CSV, JSON, and Parquet, plus cloud-marketplace delivery on Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks. Worth noting that IPQS also offers a downloadable, hourly-updated proxy database, including on-prem, so a database option exists on both sides.