10 Best Proxy Providers: Tested 500k Requests (Speed & Cost)

We tested over 500,000 requests across major servers to identify the best proxy providers. Whether you need enterprise residential IPs or a reliable SOCKS5 alternative to VIP72, here are our top picks based on speed and pricing:

Note: These 6 providers are our top choice for immediate value. For detailed benchmarks and reviews of all providers, scroll down.

10 best proxy server providers

• Price per GB: Displays the starting monthly subscription price for residential proxies. All prices are rounded to 1 decimal digit.
• PAYG (Pay-As-You-Go): Specific proxy types supporting PAYG are often noted in this column.

Key findings from proxy benchmark

Based on our test of 500,000 requests, here are the category winners.

Most consistent stability: Bright Data & Oxylabs

• Both providers maintained sub-2.0s response times with minimal fluctuation, making them the safest choices for mission-critical scraping. See response time charts.

Best enterprise cost efficiency: Apify & Decodo

• While pricing is close at lower tiers, Apify offers the highest GB/$ ratio for massive scale (10M+ GB/month), followed closely by Decodo. See full cost snalysis.

Fastest response time: Decodo

• Decodo outperformed all competitors in both residential (1.5s) and datacenter (1.5s) tests, nearly 1 second faster than the industry average.

Detailed reviews of the best proxy providers

Bright Data offers residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP, and mobile proxies. In our benchmark, Bright Data proved to be a top performer with sub-3.0s response times and exceptional stability for scraping tasks.

The proxy provider offers several valuable features, such as long-session peers that allow performing a sequence of multiple requests within the same session.

Features:

• The residential proxy pool comprises both rotating shared ($ 8.40/GB) and dedicated IPs (+$15.60/GB). You can target cities, states, ASNs, and zip codes, but this comes at an additional fee.
• Datacenter proxies provide shared rotating proxies, shared unlimited, and dedicated unlimited pools. Allows for country-level targeting.
• Mobile proxies offer shared and dedicated IP addresses, as well as the ability to target and rotate IP addresses based on city, ASN, and zip code.
• ISP proxy solution provides users with access to a pool of 10,000 rotating ISP proxies, as well as shared and dedicated, unlimited ISP proxies, offering both static and rotating options.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB)/m0:
  • Residential: $3.50
  • Datacenter: $0.51
  • ISP: $12.75
  • Mobile: $7.00
• Free trial: 7-day trial

Oxylabs is a premium proxy provider that ranked among the fastest in our benchmark tests. Its infrastructure is designed for enterprise scalability and high success rates, justifying the investment for serious scraping projects. They offer residential, ISP (rotating and static), datacenter (shared, private, rotating), and mobile proxies. 

Features:

• Oxylabs provides 5 free datacenter proxy IPs that support HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 protocols. This makes it an risk-free option for testing VIP72 alternatives. All five IP addresses are situated in the United States of America.
• Datacenter proxies consist of both a shared proxy pool of 40,000 IP addresses and dedicated proxies. There are two types of dedicated datacenter proxies: self-service, which supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, and enterprise, which supports both HTTP and SOCKS5.
• Residential proxies cover 195 countries and enable targeting by continent, country, city, state, ZIP/postal code, coordinates, and ASN.
• Mobile proxy network includes over 140 countries and continents, as well as countries, cities, states, coordinates, and ASN targeting.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB)/mo:
  • Residential: $3.87
  • Datacenter: $0.65 /IP
  • ISP: $16
  • Mobile: $4.92
• Free trial: 7-day trial for companies, 3-day refund for individuals.

Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) claimed the #1 spot for speed in our benchmark with 1.5s average response time. Combining this market-leading speed with a massive pool of 115 million IPs, Decodo offers the best price-to-performance ratio for both scraping and SOCKS5 usage.

Mobile proxies offer city- and country-level targeting. ISP Pay/GB proxies provide rotating on-demand IP addresses with country-specific targeting. Datacenter proxies offer rotating and static IPs, targeting 8 locations, and have an exclusive IP pool.

Features:

• Fastest residential proxies: With 1.5s speeds and city-level targeting, it is ideal for high-volume scraping without blocking.
• Flexible sessions: Supports rotating and sticky sessions (up to 60 mins), perfect for maintaining login states or SOCKS5 connections.
• Datacenter: 100k+ IPs with unlimited bandwidth options.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB)/mo:
  • Residential: $3.0
  • Datacenter: $0.6
  • Mobile: $3.75
• Free trial: 100MB residential trial, and a 14-day money-back guarantee is offered for ISP, mobile, and datacenter proxies.

Webshare one of the top choice for users seeking free proxy servers. Unlike unreliable public lists, it offers a legitimate free tier with 10 datacenter IPs that you can keep indefinitely. Paid plans start at just $2.99/mo, offering one of the lowest barriers to entry in the market

Features:

• Each package allows you to specify the number of IPs, bandwidth, and proxy location.
• Datacenter and static residential proxies provide varying levels of premium: shared (with more than two users), private (with 1-2 users), and dedicated (owned by you).
• Datacenter proxies from about 40 countries across six continents. ISP proxies that are mainly located in the United States.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) /mo:
  • Residential: $7
  • Static residential: $6
  • Datacenter: $2.99
• Free trial: 10 shared datacenter proxies with no expiration date

DataImpulse offers several types of proxy servers that support both rotating and sticky sessions. They sell residential and premium residential proxies designed for enterprise-level workflows where speed and stability are critical. Premium proxies also support advanced targeting, allowing users to choose IPs by country, city, ZIP code, or ASN.

Features:

• All proxy types support an unlimited number of concurrent sessions.
• Rotating (new IP every request), and sticky (same IP for up to 30 minutes).
• Country, city, ZIP, and ASN targeting at no additional cost.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) / mo:
  • Rotating residential: $1
  • Datacenter: $0.5
  • Mobile: $2
• Free trial: A 7-day refund policy is available.

Thordata stands out with its unlimited bandwidth residential proxies. Residential pool covers over 70 countries and supports targeting at the country, city, and ASN (ISP) levels.

Features:

• You can choose whether the IP rotates automatically on every request, or keep the same IP for a “sticky” session lasting 1 to 90 minutes. All proxy server types support both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols.
• Thordata offers two types of ISP proxies: General ISP IPs (standard ISP-based), Native ISP IPs ( Higher reputation IPs designed for sensitive tasks). They are sourced from about 35 countries/regions.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) / mo:
  • Residential: $3.50
  • Datacenter: $4.50 /IP
  • Mobile: $5.00

NodeMaven is a residential and mobile proxy provider offering large-scale IP pools, flexible session controls, and user-friendly proxy generation.

Features:

• You can customize how your proxies are created:
  • IP version (Mixed IPv4 & IPv6 or IPv4 only)
  • Session type: sticky or rotating
• Under sticky, you can:
  • Keep IP as long as possible (Super sticky sessions)
  • Custom, sec (lets you specify the duration)
    

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) / mo: 5GB monthly plan, priced at €30/month with €6 per GB
• Free trial: Paid Trial plan for €3.99 including 1GB of bandwidth

NetNut provides shared datacenter proxies from only the United States, rotating residential IPs available in practically every country, and 1 million static residential proxies from 30 countries.

The proxy provider can be described as a premium proxy service due to its large proxy pool, high costs per GB, and advanced proxy functionalities.

Features:

• Residential proxy network consists of shared IPs. They do not currently offer dedicated proxies as an option among their proxy server choices.
• Only rotating IP addresses enable state and city-level targeting. The rotating proxy supports an unlimited number of concurrent sessions.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) / mo:
  • Rotating residential: $3.53
  • Static residential: $14.4
  • Datacenter: $1
  • Mobile: $7.6
• Free trial: 7-day trial for companies

Nimble’s only proxy network is residential proxies, and they also provide Unblocker Proxy. Nimble’s rotating residential proxies support targeting by country and city.

Features:

• You can select the type of optimization to meet specific needs depending on the use case.

• Sticky sessions include the following options: replace the IP when it becomes unavailable, select another IP within the same ASN, or do not replace the IP.
• You can set a spending limit for your proxy usage within a specified period, such as a day.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) / mo:
  • Rotating residential: $7.8
• Free trial: 7-day trial

IPRoyal is one of the more affordable residential proxy providers, but its IP pool size is smaller than that of more expensive providers like Oxylabs.

Features:

• Residential proxy server comes with options for static and rotating proxies.
• Datacenter proxies are available across more than 50 locations and come with dedicated IPs. ISP proxies provide dedicated IP addresses across over 30 countries. Their residential proxies offer global coverage. Additionally, IPRoyal provides mobile proxies available in more than seven countries.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) /mo:
  • Residential proxies: $7
  • Datacenter proxies: $1.75
  • Mobile proxies: $10
• Free trial: 1-day for mobile proxies

Proxy performance benchmark results

We conducted our benchmark analysis across eight batches of requests, targeting 1,800 URLs on major e-commerce domains using three different proxy types (Residential, Datacenter, and ISP), resulting in a total of 500,000 requests.

Response time analysis

See the range of median response times with 95% confidence. When we compare similarly ranked players, there is no statistically significant response time difference between their results:

Pricing and cost efficiency

This chart illustrates the cost efficiency (Gigabytes per Dollar) of various proxy providers across different levels of monthly bandwidth usage. A higher value on the Y-axis indicates better cost-efficiency (more GBs for your money).

While price per GB is important, the total cost of ownership depends on your scale. We have conducted a deep-dive analysis of enterprise and PoC packages comparing total monthly costs. For $10k+ package comparisons, read our full guide.

Requests used in our analysis

The number of requests that we sent in proxy benchmarks can be calculated in this way:

504,000 requests = [1,800 URLs * 8 batches * ( 2 ISP proxy proxiders * 3 years of observation + 5 data center proxy proxiders * 2 years of observation + 3 data center proxy providers in Q3/2024 + 6 residential proxy providers in Q3/2024 + 5 residential proxy providers * 2 years of observation)] = 1,800 URLs * 8 batches * 35 providers

Success rate evaluation

When requests were identically configured, we found no statistically significant difference in the success rates between various proxy providers. This suggests that provider choice alone might not be the sole determinant of success.

A successful response was determined by checking the content for a CSS selector matching the page type. The success rate of proxies varied significantly during our benchmark due to a few factors:

• Request configuration: Proxy success rates rely on proxy configuration parameters such as the user agent and cookies (session_id), which your technical team needs to undertake. The average success rate from all providers’ residential proxies increased from 44% to 85% success rates between two consecutive runs, thanks to simple changes in the user agent.
• Time: The success rate of retrieving a website with a proxy varies over time. An approach that achieved an average success rate of 85% in residential proxies yielded a 58% success rate the next day, as some target websites had updated their anti-scraping measures.
• Target website’s anti-scraping approach: Different websites, even in the same field, use various anti-scraping tactics.
• Country and device requirements of your use case: Proxies have diverse use cases. This benchmark cannot provide an accurate assessment of vendors for niche use cases.

Due to these factors, the results from all providers varied significantly, especially over time. Therefore, we have not seen a statistically significant difference between the results of different proxy providers when the requests were identically configured.

Proxy provider buying guide: What to check before subscribing

Geo-targeting:

Many websites restrict access to their content based on the user’s geographic location due to legal requirements, local censorship, or content personalization.

You may need to collect location-specific data, such as localized pricing, serve localized content, or verify your ads are displayed correctly in different regions.

Geo-targeted proxies allow users to access localized content or bypass geographic restrictions. It is crucial to choose a proxy provider that offers IP addresses from the desired locations. 

Speed and response time:

Speed refers to the data transfer rate between the client, the proxy server, and the target website. High-speed proxies provide faster data transfers, which is essential for large-scale web scraping.

Response time, also known as latency, is the time it takes for a request to travel from a client to a server. Low response times are crucial for time-sensitive web scraping tasks, such as live event streaming.

Number of available IP addresses:

When you collect a significant amount of data from a large website or collect data from numerous smaller websites simultaneously, you need to change your IP addresses more frequently.

A large pool of IP addresses enhances anonymity by allowing users to switch between different IP addresses when accessing target servers. This enables clients to bypass rate limits and anti-scraping measures imposed by websites.

When choosing a proxy provider, consider the number of available IP addresses in a proxy pool and the diversity of the available IP addresses (e.g., residential and datacenter).

Cost:

Cost isn’t just about the lowest price; it’s about value per request. When evaluating proxy pricing, consider:

• Types of proxies: Datacenter proxies are fast and inexpensive, but they are also easier to block. In contrast, residential or mobile proxies are more expensive but offer higher trust and anonymity.
• Pricing plans: Compare pay-as-you-go vs subscription models; assess data caps, overage fees, and additional geo-targeting costs.
• Extra features and support: Such as city-level targeting, dedicated IPs, and API integration, often justify higher plans.

Types of proxies explained

Static vs rotating proxies:

Static proxies (also known as sticky proxies) keep the same IP address for a fixed duration or entire session. They’re best for use cases such as social media management, account logins, or ad verification.

Rotating proxies assign a new IP address automatically after each request or session. They’re ideal for large-scale scraping, or price monitoring.

 If you are looking for a VIP72 alternative, ensure the provider supports SOCKS5. While HTTP is great for standard browsing, SOCKS5 is essential for traffic-intensive tasks like video streaming or gaming.

Shared vs dedicated proxies:

Shared proxies are used by multiple users simultaneously, making them an affordable option; however, speeds may vary, and IPs can occasionally be blacklisted due to the activity of others.

Dedicated proxies (or private proxies) are assigned exclusively to one user. They deliver faster speeds, better reliability, and stronger anonymity, making them suitable for high-volume web scraping.

FAQs about the proxy services

Industry Analyst

Gulbahar Karatas

Industry Analyst

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Gülbahar is an AIMultiple industry analyst focused on web data collection, applications of web data and application security.

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