Best Proxy Providers: Top Proxy Sites & Services Compared

We tested every major proxy servers with over 200,000 requests to identify the best proxy service providers. Our benchmark compares top residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxy services based on speed, reliability, pricing, and features.

Follow the links to learn more from these vendors:

Best proxy providers 2025: Pricing & free trial comparison

Table feature summary:

• Unblocker: Indicates whether the provider offers specialized tools or advanced features, beyond basic proxies, often necessary for specific scraping or data collection tasks.
• Price per GB (Residential): 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.

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 216,000 requests.

For consistency, all tests used identical configurations across all providers. We precisely measured and stored the response time and HTML content for each request, enabling us to analyze key performance indicators in depth.

Response time analysis of the best proxy servers

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 & cost efficiency of the best proxy servers

Our analysis goes beyond simple per-GB rates to compare true cost-effectiveness across various usage levels and package types.

This first 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).

To provide a comprehensive view, we also analyzed pricing for two common usage scenarios, defining specific “Enterprise” and “PoC” (Proof of Concept) packages. Their contents and our underlying assumptions are detailed below:

Enterprise package contains the following:

• 1K/GB Mobile Proxies
• 1K/GB Residential Proxies
• 5K/GB Datacenter Proxies

PoC package contains the following:

• 100/GB Mobile Proxies
• 100/GB Residential Proxies
• 500/GB Datacenter Proxies

Assumptions: For Apify, we needed to make assumptions about platform usage, which is a cost component that doesn’t exist in other providers:

• Datacenter proxies: Assumed that the user buys a $499/month package and pays $0.25/GB for platform usage.
• Mobile proxies: Used the pricing of Residential proxies since they do not offer a mobile proxy solution.

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.

For more, see the success rates from our proxy benchmark, especially over time.

Detailed reviews of the best proxy providers

Bright Data offers residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP, and mobile proxies. It is the largest proxy server provider by several metrics, including the number of employees. Bright Data’s response times are competitive with other providers.

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

It also provides real-time monitoring, enabling users to review their proxy bandwidth and logs by specific timeframes. Additionally, usage control is available, allowing users to set pre-defined request limits to manage and control their account balance effectively.

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 (40,000 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: $3.57
  • Datacenter: $0.51
  • ISP: $12.75
  • Mobile: $7.14
• Free trial: 7-day trial

Oxylabs is considered a premium proxy provider. They are generally more expensive than competitors like Decodo or IPRoyal. However, the quality and scalability of their service justify the price for mid-range and enterprise clients. 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. There are certain limits with their free proxy servers, such as all five IP addresses share a total of 5 GB of traffic per month. 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.
• Dedicated Datacenter IPs have a fair usage policy. Each Datacenter proxy IP supports up to 100 concurrent sessions and has a monthly data threshold of 100 GB per IP.
• All proxy solutions include location targeting at no additional cost.
• 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 (shared), $2.75 (private proxy)
  • ISP: $21
  • Mobile: $8.25
• Free trial: 7-day trial for companies, 3-day refund for individuals.

Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) provides very competitive pricing and premium features. The proxy service provider offers 115 million residential IP addresses with country, city, and ZIP code targeting. Mobile proxies offer 10 million IP addresses, city- and country-level targeting, 130+ locations, and support for over 700 mobile carriers globally.

ISP Pay/GB proxies provide rotating on-demand IP addresses with country-specific targeting. Static Residential (ISP) Pay/IP Proxies only support country-level targeting.

Datacenter proxies offer rotating and static IPs, targeting 8 locations worldwide, and have an exclusive IP pool, but provide restricted functionality. Datacenter proxies Pay/GB provides 100,000+ rotating and static shared IPs with country-specific targeting.

Features:

• Decodo residential proxy servers target countries, states, and cities. Targeting by ZIP code is only available in the United States. Residential proxies offer both rotating and static sessions (1, 10, 30, and 60 minutes), allowing you to define sticky sessions according to your specific requirements.
• The mobile proxy pool comprises 10 million IP addresses and over 700 ASNs; you can select from various operating systems (OS), including iOS and Android.
• Static proxy solutions offer shared and dedicated IP addresses, enabling country-level targeting. You must choose your destinations before purchasing, as they cannot be modified later.
• Datacenter proxies are 100k+ rotating and static shared IP addresses.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB)/mo:
  • Residential: $3
  • Datacenter: $0.6
  • Mobile: $7.5
• Free trial: 100MB residential trial for free, and a 14-day money-back guarantee is offered for ISP, mobile, and datacenter proxies.

Webshare offers datacenter (shared, dedicated, and rotating), residential, and ISP (shared, dedicated, and rotating) services to entry- and mid-level clients. Webshare, one of the best free proxy server providers, offers 10 free datacenter proxies to try out for free.

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. Residential proxies from 160 countries.

Pricing:

• Starting price (GB) /mo:
  • Residential: $7
  • Static residential: $6
  • Datacenter: $2.99
• Free trial: 10 shared datacenter proxies free

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 offers residential, datacenter, mobile, ISP, and unlimited proxies. Residential pool covers over 70 countries and supports targeting at the country, city, and ASN (ISP) levels.

The “unlimited” variant is also residential in nature, but it’s optimized for high-volume tasks, such as video scraping or bulk downloading. Unlike traffic-metered residential proxies (charged per GB), unlimited proxies are billed on a time-based usage period with no traffic cap.

Features:

• You can choose whether the IP rotates automatically on every request, or you can keep the same IP for a “sticky” session lasting anywhere from 1 to 90 minutes. All proxy server types support both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols.
• Thordata offers two types 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

NetNut provides 150,000 shared datacenter proxies from only the United States, 85 million 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. The minimum residential package price is $5.95 for 2 GB.

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 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 tasks.

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.

It is essential to select a proxy provider that offers high-speed proxies with low response times.

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.
• Pay-as-you-go flexibility: Ideal for smaller teams testing data collection without long-term commitments.

Legal and ethical considerations:

Select a provider that sources IP addresses ethically and transparently, complies with data protection laws, and provides clear usage policies. Responsible proxy use helps ensure compliance with privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA.

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 web scraping, data collection, or price monitoring.

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.

Why should you use a proxy server?

You may require more anonymity, speed, or data privacy, in which case open proxy services would not meet your needs. Open proxies are terrible in terms of data security, quality, and speed. Here are five reasons why your business should use paid proxies:

1. Bypass geo-blocking

Geo-blocking is the act of blocking or restricting access to specific content on the Internet based on a user’s geographical location for various reasons, such as licensing agreements and internet censorship.

Users’ IP address is identified through the use of tracking technologies. For example, when a client requests a web server, the proxy service forwards the client’s connection request to the target server.

The HTTP header provides the server with additional context regarding the client’s request, such as the client’s IP address, user agent, time zone, preferred language, and other relevant details.

This information is only accessible to the client and server in the network and is, therefore, invisible to third-party users. The proxy service allows users to bypass geo-blocking by masking clients’ IP addresses.

2. Load balancing

When a web server receives a large number of connection requests from clients, it becomes overloaded and unable to respond to incoming requests (Figure 1).

This is referred to as a server overload. Websites employ backup servers, load balancing, and network security systems, such as firewalls, to prevent malicious bot traffic and manage incoming traffic.

Load balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to prevent any single server from becoming overloaded. Proxy servers can be used for load balancing. Reverse proxies, for instance, can act as load balancers between web servers and incoming traffic.

Figure 1: Representation of the process of a reverse proxy server

3. Caching

Paid proxies, such as reverse proxies, utilize server-side web caching to alleviate backend resource load and serve data more efficiently. Users can use reverse proxies to reuse previously retrieved data, such as images, HTML documents, and videos.

A proxy server stores a copy of previously retrieved data in a data storage for future requests (Figure 2). If a client requests data that is available in the web cache, the proxy server retrieves it from its own storage instead of forwarding the request to the target web server.

Figure 2: HTTP caching

4. Improved response time

Paid proxy services offer faster speeds than free proxy services. For example, private/dedicated proxy servers are the best option if you need to complete a task quickly. Since multiple clients share your IP address and bandwidth, public proxies would not suffice for your needs (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Proxy service comparison based on the number of users who share an IP address

5. Security

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol that defines the rules for transmitting data from a source host to a destination. Proxies by internet protocols include:

• HTTP proxy servers
• HTTPS proxy servers
• SOCKS proxy servers
  • SOCKS4
  • SOCKS5

Most proxy services only mask your real IP address and prevent your identity from being exposed on the Internet. HTTPS and SOCKS5 proxies encrypt both incoming and outgoing network traffic, masking the IP addresses of clients.

If security is your primary concern, you can also use residential and ISP proxies. Residential proxies offer clients genuine IP addresses supplied by their Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

Is it safe to use free proxy servers?

Public proxy services are generally free to use, with only a few features requiring a fee. Open proxies suffice if your aim is anonymously browsing the web. 

You may wonder why I should pay for a proxy service when so many open proxy servers are available. We compiled a list of five reasons why you should avoid using an open proxy server:

1. Free proxies can’t handle tracking tools

Websites use various web tracking techniques to collect user behavior data, such as:

• Pageviews
• URL visits
• Where users click
• Session duration

The collected data is used in marketing and sales strategies. Web servers can easily identify and monitor open proxies. User behavior data can be collected through:

• Browser fingerprinting
• First- and third-party cookies
• HTTP cookie
• IP address
• Web beacons

A heatmap is one method for monitoring and tracking users’ activities on a website. The following image illustrates user behavior on specific web pages, specifically where users have clicked on a page.

2. Unknown IP sources in free proxies

Public proxies can be operated and offered by anyone, including cybercriminals. Even if a public proxy service masks your IP address, the IP service provider can easily track your activities.

3. Lack of HTTPS support

HTTPS proxies add an extra layer of security between the user and the web server. It employs cryptography to ensure secure communication and encrypts data in transit (Figure 5).

Open proxies that do not use HTTPS can monitor your activities and steal or sell your information.

Figure 5:  HTTPS proxy server encrypts incoming/outgoing data

4. Unstable uptime and performance

When a client makes a connection request to a web server to access and display the target site’s content, a proxy server forwards the request on the client’s behalf to conceal the client’s identity. The target server responds to the proxy’s request and provides the information requested (Figure 6).

Public proxy services are slow to receive a response from the target website. Multiple users may share the same IP address simultaneously. Data transfer and browsing speed will be slowed when requesting a connection to a website using shared open IP addresses.

Figure 6: Simplified representation of a proxy server process

5. High risk of IP blocks

Free proxy services do not rotate IP addresses for each request to the target website. Websites employ anti-scraping techniques to detect scraping bots and block them, thereby restricting and preventing scraping activities.

For example, if you frequently make multiple requests with the same IP address, the website from which you scrape data will identify your activity as “non-human activity” and ban your IP address.

FAQs about the best proxy server providers

Reference Links

1.

HTTP caching - HTTP | MDN

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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