IPQS Alternatives in 2026: Five IPQualityScore Competitors Compared
Choose an IPQS alternative by the input you have. For IP addresses you already hold, MaxMind minFraud and Castle’s IP Intelligence API take the same input. For a person’s email and phone number, look at SEON. For a stable device ID, Fingerprint. For visitors arriving at your own signup, login or checkout form, Maskbreak checks the live visit, with a Free plan of 10,000 visitor checks a month. If IPQS email and phone validation is the part you depend on, keep IPQS for that job or compare SEON first.
Why teams look for an IPQS alternative
IPQS (IPQualityScore) has operated from Las Vegas since 2011, and its catalogue is wide: proxy, VPN and Tor detection with a 0–100 fraud_score, email, phone and URL validation, device fingerprinting, bot detection, a Dark Web Leak API and transaction scoring. Most reasons to compare it come down to four facts from its own plans page and API docs.
- The checks that catch evasion sit at the top of the price list. Residential proxy detection is listed from SMB+ (“as low as” $999 a month). Device fingerprinting (the JavaScript tag that looks at the browser) and mobile SDKs are Enterprise only.
- The free plan is for building, not for watching. 1,000 lookups a month with a cap of 35 a day. A form that takes more than 35 signups a day cannot send every one through it.
- You own the threshold. IPQS calls a
fraud_scoreof 75 or more “suspicious, but not necessarily fraudulent” and recommends flagging or blocking from 90. Where you draw that line sets your false-positive rate. - No field names the VPN or proxy service. IPQS markets detection of NordVPN, ProtonVPN and other major providers, but its documented proxy-API response flags the connection without naming the operator.
None of that makes IPQS a poor choice. If you score addresses from logs or order exports with no browser in the picture, or want email, phone and URL checks from one account, IPQS covers more ground than most tools below. Often the better move is a second tool beside it rather than a replacement.
IPQS pricing by feature: the cheapest plan for each check
IPQS publishes more pricing than most fraud vendors: five plans, billed monthly with no contract, every paid price marked “as low as” (read on 24 September 2026). Its plans page is organised by volume. If you are shopping for alternatives, it helps to read it the other way round: start from the check you want and find the cheapest plan that lists it.
| The check you want | Cheapest IPQS plan listing it | Price (“as low as”) |
|---|---|---|
| IP reputation with proxy, VPN and Tor flags; email, phone and URL checks | Free: 1,000 lookups a month, 35 a day | $0 |
| The same checks at 5,000 lookups a month (250 a day) | Startup | $99 / month |
| 10,000 lookups a month at up to 20 a second | SMB Basic | $499 / month |
| Residential proxy detection (with 75,000 lookups a month and a 99.5% SLA) | SMB+ | $999 / month |
| Device fingerprinting, mobile SDKs, Bot Killer™, Dark Data™, 99.9% SLA | Enterprise | Custom |
For contrast, here is what the SMB+ feature costs elsewhere at list prices read the same day. MaxMind’s minFraud Insights tier returns residential proxy flags and the provider’s name at $0.015 a query, pay as you go. At 5,000 queries a month that is $75 against SMB+’s $999; at SMB+’s full 75,000 it is $1,125, more than SMB+ itself, so by our arithmetic the gap closes at about 66,600 queries a month. Castle’s IP Intelligence API reports residential proxy tunnels at $0.001 per address returned: 75,000 addresses come to $75, inside the $200 of usage its Pro plan includes each month. Maskbreak’s proxy signal on a live visit is on every plan, the Free plan included: 10,000 visitor checks a month cost nothing, and 75,000 a month fit in Growth at €99 (prices exclude VAT). None of these is a like-for-like swap for an IPQS plan; they show that the one feature you might be paying SMB+ for is priced very differently across the field. We found no IPQS overage price, so ask what your integration gets back once a daily or monthly cap is reached before a live form depends on it. The plan-by-plan breakdown is in Maskbreak vs IPQS.
What to compare before you replace IPQS
- The input you actually have: an IP address from a log, a person’s email and phone, or a live browser visit. Each tool below is built around one of them.
- Which plan includes the check you are switching for, not only which vendor offers it.
- Whether the response names the VPN or proxy service, or only flags the connection.
- A decision with reasons, or a score you threshold yourself, and who on your team owns that threshold.
- How the free allowance is metered (per month, per day or per hour) and whether it can watch a real form for a week.
- What comes back when a cap is hit or the browser evidence is missing. Neither should read as a clean result.
- Whether the browser is checked at all. An IP score cannot see a fake (antidetect) browser or automation on a clean home address.
- A contract that only ever adds fields, plus test tokens or a sandbox so fraud paths can run in CI.
IPQS competitors at a glance
| Tool | Free option | Paid, as published | Names the VPN or proxy service | Browser or device check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPQS (for reference) | 1,000 lookups/month, 35/day | $99–$999/month (“as low as”); Enterprise custom | No documented field | Enterprise plan |
| Maskbreak | 10,000 visitor checks/month, up to 1,000/hour | €29–€299/month (50,000–1,000,000 checks); Enterprise from €990 | Yes, when known | Every account |
| MaxMind minFraud | Trial of up to 1,000 queries, on request | $0.005–$0.020 per query | Yes, provider_name (Insights, Factors) | Device Tracking Add-On |
| Castle | $5 of usage a month, for evaluation | Pro $200/month; Enterprise from $4,000 | Yes, operator when known | Castle.js device signals |
| SEON | Trial on application | Starter $699/month; Premium custom | Yes, “when available” | Device Intelligence SDKs |
| Fingerprint | 1,000 web and iOS API calls/month | Pro Plus from $99/month | Proxy provider (optional field); no VPN provider field documented | Its core product |
Five IPQS alternatives, one at a time
Where IPQS scores an address you send, Maskbreak scores the visit itself. The snippet on your form hands your server two tokens, one for the network and one for the browser, and a single POST /v1/evaluate with your key turns them into allow, review or block plus the reasons. There is no threshold to pick. The network side reports VPNs (naming the service when known), proxies, Tor and cloud-server addresses; the browser side reports fake browsers, automation, emulators and virtual machines. Here is a fake browser behind a residential proxy, the usual kit for running many accounts from one laptop (example response, selected fields):
{
"decision": "block",
"risk_score": 100,
"reasons": ["proxy_detected", "antidetect_browser"],
"network": {
"vpn": false,
"proxy": true,
"datacenter": false,
"tor": false,
"residential": false,
"service": "<proxy service, when known>"
},
"device": {
"antidetect": true,
"automation": false,
"tampering_score": 0.8
}
}residential is true only when the address is neither a proxy nor a cloud server, so it reads false here even though the proxy exits through someone’s home connection. The response flags the proxy; it does not label its type. Proxies, Tor, automation, emulators and browser tampering block by default. A VPN on its own is flagged for review, because plenty of honest people use one, and a cloud-server address alone stays allow. The integration guide starts in watch mode, which logs every decision and blocks nothing. You can change the action per signal (VPN, proxy, Tor, automation, fake browser and others) on the console’s Rules tab. A rule changes the answer only for the signal it names: anything else on the same visit keeps its default, so relaxing one signal never lets another through.
Where it falls short of IPQS: no email or phone validation (the only email signal is a disposable-domain check), no mobile SDKs (server SDKs for Node, Python and PHP, plain HTTP from anything else), and a bare-IP lookup that covers only Tor exits and published cloud ranges. VPN and proxy verdicts need the live visit. There is no published detection rate either, so test it on your own traffic. Full head-to-head: Maskbreak vs IPQS.
minFraud is the closest match to IPQS’s shape: send what you know about an event and get a risk score back. MaxMind, the company behind GeoIP, has sold it since 2004, and it scores more than purchases: account creation, logins, password resets and payout changes are all documented event types. The Insights and Factors tiers return an anonymizer object with VPN, public proxy, residential proxy and Tor flags plus the provider’s name, and since August 2026 MaxMind says its probe-based residential proxy data feeds the real-time IP risk score with no integration change. An optional Device Tracking Add-On (a web script, with Android and iOS SDKs since May 2026) links devices by a tracking token rather than by IP. Custom rules set accept, reject or manual review on every tier.
Watch the tier: the $0.005 Score tier returns the risk scores without the anonymizer detail, so VPN and proxy flags start at Insights. If you leaned on IPQS’s bot_status flag, note that we could not find bot or fake-browser detection in MaxMind’s documentation. There is no ongoing free tier, and the free GeoLite data carries no proxy flags. On the plus side, MaxMind is one of the few vendors here that publishes latency and uptime figures per tier. See Maskbreak vs minFraud.
Castle, founded in San Francisco in 2015, is built for fake accounts, account takeover and multi-accounting. Your backend passes the Castle.js token to one of two endpoints, Filter before sign-in and Risk after it, and gets scores and named signals plus an allow, challenge or deny action. Default policies deny at scores of 90–100 and challenge at 60–100, and you tune them from there. In 2026 Castle added residential_proxy_access and vpn_access signals and, on 6 August, a standalone IP Intelligence API that reports proxy, VPN, relay and Tor tunnels, with the operator when known, for any address you send. That lookup is the part most like an IPQS proxy check.
The Free plan is $5 of usage a month in a sandbox environment, and Castle’s own advice is to upgrade to Pro before production. Batch IP lookups start on Pro, and event history beyond seven days needs Enterprise. Its signals reference names no signal for antidetect browsers; spoofed_device and tamper checks cover that ground. See Maskbreak vs Castle.
SEON starts from the person. Its email and phone APIs return a digital footprint: which online platforms the address or number is registered on (SEON says it checks more than 290 for email and 60 for phone), breach history, domain age, carrier, SIM-swap and porting data, and SEON’s own fraud history across customers. Around that sits a full fraud and AML platform: device intelligence for web, iOS and Android that detects residential and mobile proxies from TCP/IP and TLS fingerprints, named AI-agent flags, an IP API that has named VPN providers “when available” since July 2025, and a rules-plus-machine-learning engine that returns APPROVE, REVIEW or DECLINE. Of the five, SEON is the nearest to IPQS’s email and phone checks, though the two lead with different things. SEON leads with the footprint (registered platforms, breaches, SIM-swap) and also offers an Email Verification API and HLR data on its Phone API; IPQS leads with validation, such as whether an address can receive mail and whether a number is VOIP or prepaid.
The catch is cost and procurement. The published Starter plan is $699 a month for 2,500 fraud checks, 10 users and 50 custom rules; Premium, which adds case management and AML compliance, is custom. There is no free tier. A trial (2 seats, 500 manual checks a month) follows once SEON has checked the fit, and both plan buttons lead to a sales conversation. See Maskbreak vs SEON and SEON alternatives.
Fingerprint (fingerprint.com) is identification-first. Its web, iOS and Android agents return a visitor ID that Fingerprint says stays stable across cleared cookies and incognito. On top it sells Smart Signals: VPN detection, residential and data-center proxy detection, Tor exits through IP blocklist matching, bot detection, browser tampering including an anti_detect_browser flag, incognito and virtual machines, emulator checks on mobile, and a Suspect Score that weights them. A Rules Engine that returns block or allow actions is in open beta. If device fingerprinting was the IPQS product you cared about, Fingerprint sells it on a self-serve plan rather than an Enterprise contract.
Check which Smart Signals your plan returns before you plan around them; Fingerprint’s pricing and docs pages list the Free plan differently. For proxies, an optional field can name the provider; no VPN provider name is documented. Outside a Cloudflare deployment, rule actions are yours to enforce in code. The open-source FingerprintJS library, MIT-licensed again since v5.0.0, gives you an identifier only, without Smart Signals. See Fingerprint alternatives.
If you only ever send IP addresses, IPQS also competes with plain IP-data vendors that return flags or a score from the address alone: IPinfo, IP2Location with its IP2Proxy data, proxycheck.io, GetIPIntel, vpnapi.io and AbuseIPDB among them. Put them through the same checklist. At a signup form, remember that an address can be clean while the browser behind it is not; our residential proxy guide explains why.
What IPQS reviews say
The businesses that buy IPQS and the people it flags tell different stories. On Capterra it scores 4.9 out of 5 from 19 reviews. Buyers there praise its accuracy, support and pricing and say it was quick to wire in; the grumbles are a learning curve, a dashboard that feels old and the bill at high volume. On Trustpilot it scores 2.5 out of 5 from 58 reviews, pulled down mostly by consumers and site owners who say they were wrongly flagged, had an account disabled for “multiple account detected”, or got no answer to a dispute.
What those Trustpilot stories share is a dead end: someone was stopped and could not find out why or reach anyone. No vendor removes false positives, so judge an alternative by what it gives you for that moment: a middle state you can route to a person (Maskbreak’s review, Castle’s challenge, SEON’s REVIEW, a minFraud rule set to manual review), and an answer that says why the visitor was stopped, in words your support team can repeat to them.
Stay on IPQS, switch, or add a second tool
- You score IP addresses from logs, order exports or past signups, with no browser visit to check.
- Email, phone and URL checks from one account are what you use most.
- You already run IPQS’s Enterprise device fingerprinting and mobile SDKs. (Castle, SEON, Fingerprint and MaxMind ship mobile SDKs too, so SDKs alone are no reason to stay.)
- Published SLAs matter to you: 99.5% on SMB+, 99.9% on Enterprise.
- Your fraud comes through a web form and you want the browser checked without an Enterprise contract (Maskbreak, Fingerprint, Castle).
- You want residential proxies caught without a $999-a-month plan (MaxMind Insights, Castle and Fingerprint flag them by type; Maskbreak flags them as proxies on the live visit).
- You want the VPN or proxy service named, when known (MaxMind Insights, Castle, SEON, Maskbreak; Fingerprint for proxies).
- You would rather route on a decision with reasons than own a score threshold (Maskbreak, Castle, SEON).
- Your free allowance has to cover a real form for a week (Maskbreak’s is metered by the hour).
The two lists are not exclusive. A workable split: keep IPQS on the email address and phone number the person typed, and put a visit check in front of the form itself. Our post on risk score thresholds explains why to route on a decision and sort on a score.
Try the visit check on your own form
Free plan: 10,000 visitor checks a month, every signal included, no card. Paid plans from €29 a month. The integration guide starts in watch mode, so nothing is blocked until you decide.
Sources, checked 24 September 2026
We read each vendor’s own pages on 24 September 2026. Prices change, and several are marked “as low as” or “starts at”, so confirm the figure for your volume with the vendor. We build Maskbreak, so our own entry is not a neutral recommendation.
- IPQS plans and pricing and proxy API response fields
- IPQS device fingerprinting
- MaxMind minFraud pricing and response fields
- Castle pricing and IP Intelligence API
- SEON pricing, IP API and Email Verification API
- Fingerprint pricing and Smart Signals reference
- IPQS reviews on Capterra and Trustpilot
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternative to IPQS?
It depends on the input you have. For IP addresses you already hold, MaxMind minFraud and Castle’s IP Intelligence API take the same input, and both can name the VPN or proxy provider when known (minFraud from its Insights tier up). For a person’s email and phone number, SEON. For a stable device identifier, Fingerprint. For visitors at your own signup, login or checkout form, Maskbreak checks the connection and the browser together and answers allow, review or block. Maskbreak publishes this guide, so weigh that last recommendation accordingly.
Is there a free alternative to IPQualityScore?
Several, with different limits (checked September 2026). Maskbreak’s Free plan covers live browser visits: 10,000 visitor checks a month, every signal included, no card. Fingerprint has a Free plan of up to 1,000 web and iOS API calls a month. Castle’s Free plan is $5 of usage a month in a sandbox, meant for evaluation. MaxMind offers a trial of up to 1,000 minFraud queries on request. For comparison, the IPQS Free plan is 1,000 lookups a month, capped at 35 a day.
What does an IPQS proxy check return?
You send an IP address, optionally with the visitor’s user agent and language, and get back a fraud_score from 0 to 100 plus separate flags such as proxy, vpn, tor, recent_abuse and bot_status. IPQS calls a score of 75 or more “suspicious, but not necessarily fraudulent” and recommends flagging or blocking from 90, so where you draw the line is your call. No documented field names the VPN or proxy operator, and residential proxy detection is listed from the SMB+ plan (“as low as” $999 a month) up, as of September 2026. MaxMind minFraud Insights and Castle’s IP Intelligence API name the operator when known, and SEON’s IP API “when available”. Maskbreak names it when known too, but only on a live visit, not for a bare address.
Which IPQS competitors detect residential proxies?
All five alternatives here document it in some form. MaxMind minFraud returns a residential proxy flag with a confidence score and provider name on Insights and Factors. Castle has a residential_proxy_access signal and reports residential tunnels in its IP Intelligence API. SEON detects residential and mobile proxies through its JavaScript SDK. Fingerprint labels a detected proxy residential or data center. Maskbreak flags proxies on the live visit on every account, and its browser check can still catch a fake browser when the address has no record. IPQS itself lists residential proxy detection on SMB+ and Enterprise. Accuracy claims are each vendor’s own, and Maskbreak publishes no detection rate, so test on your own traffic.
Do IPQS alternatives offer email and phone validation?
Only partly. SEON is built around email and phone footprints (registered platforms, breaches, carrier, SIM-swap and porting data) and also has an Email Verification API and HLR data on its Phone API. MaxMind minFraud’s Insights and Factors tiers add email checks, such as disposable, free or high-risk addresses and domain risk, and phone checks to the risk score. Castle flags disposable, fraudulent, unreachable and generated email addresses. Maskbreak’s only email signal is a disposable-domain check, and it does not check phone numbers. If you rely on IPQS email deliverability or phone line-type checks, keep IPQS for those or compare SEON.