We tested every major proxy server with over 200,000 requests to identify the top providers in the proxy server market. Follow the links to learn more from these vendors:
| Vendor | Best for | |
|---|---|---|
1. | Enterprise users looking for compliance and advanced features | |
2. | Mobile proxy pricing & ease-of-use in proxy setup | |
3. | Residential proxy pricing | |
4. | Users seeking free and cost-effective proxy option | |
5. | Large-volume proxy pricing | |
| Show More (2) | ||
6. | Residential IPs with advanced features | |
7. |  IPRoyal |
Small to mid-size use and flexible IP rotation |
There are tens of proxy services. We vetted the top services and provided their pricing and types of proxies they offer:
The best proxy server providers of 2025
| Proxy providers | Rating | Unblocker | Price per GB/mo | Free trial | PAYG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | 4.8 out of 265 | ✅ | $3.6 | 7 days | For all proxy types |
| Oxylabs | 4.5 out of 120 | ✅ | $3.9 | 7 days | Residential |
| Decodo | 4.6 out of 189 | ✅ | $3.0 | 3 days | Residential |
| Webshare | 4.8 out of 2 | ❌ | $6.0 | Free 10 proxies | ❌ |
| NetNut | 4.9 out of 146 | ✅ | $3.5 | 7 days | ❌ |
| Nimbleway | 5.0 out of 11 | ✅ | $7.5 | 7 days | Residential |
| IPRoyal | 4.6 out of 109 | ❌ | $6.0 | ❌ | Residential |
Sorting: Providers are sorted according to their level of sponsorship.
Table feature summary:
- Rating: Collected from B2B review sites like Capterra and G2.
- Unblocker: Proxies alone may be insufficient to bypass the advanced anti-bot detection systems used by social media platforms. You can use proxies together with web unblockers.
- Starting plan/GB: Displays the starting monthly subscription price for residential proxies. All prices are rounded to 1 decimal place for clarity
Proxy server benchmark results
We analyzed 8 batches of requests made to 1,800 URLs using 3 different proxies from major e-commerce domains during Dec 2024 and Jan 2025 leading to 216,000 requests.
We used different configurations in these runs and applied them identically to all the providers. The response time was calculated and stored alongside the HTML content for each request.
Response time
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
We identified pricing for two packages. Their contents and our assumptions are explained 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
We have not seen a statistically significant difference between the success rates of different proxy providers when the requests were identically configured.
A successful response was determined by checking the content for a CSS selector matching the page type. Success rate of proxies varied significantly during our benchmark due to a few factors:
- Request: Proxy success rates rely on proxy configuration parameters such as the user agent and cookies (session_id) which your technical team needs to undertake. Average success rate from all providers’ residential proxies changed from 44% to 85% success rates between 2 consecutive runs thanks to simple changes in user agent.
- Time: The success rate of retrieving a website with a proxy varies over time. An approach that returned on average 85% success rates in residential proxies, returned 58% success rate the next day since some target websites had updated their anti-scrape 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 can not give 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 success rates from our proxy benchmark.
Bright Data
Bright Data offers residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP, and mobile proxies. It is the largest proxy server provider by a few metrics such as number of employees. Bright Data’s response times are competitive with other providers.
The proxy provider offers several useful 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 consists of both rotating shared ($8.4/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 provide shared and dedicated IP addresses, as well as targeting and rotating IP addresses based on city, ASN, and zip code.
- The ISP proxy solution gives users access to a pool of 10,000 rotating ISP proxies, as well as shared and dedicated unlimited ISP proxies, with 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
Oxylabs is 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 handle 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 common 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 include 195 countries and allow for continent, country, city, state, ZIP/postal code, coordinates, and ASN targeting.
- The Mobile Proxy network includes over 140 countries and continents, as well as country, city, state, 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
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) provides very competitive pricing and premium features. The proxy service provider provides 115 million residential IP addresses with country, city, and ZIP code targeting. Mobile proxies provide 10 million IP addresses, city and country-level targeting, 130+ locations, and 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 pay/IP rotating and static IPs, target 8 locations worldwide, and have an exclusive IP pool, but provide restricted functions. 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 have rotating and static sessions (1, 10, 30, and 60 minutes), and you can define sticky sessions based on your requirements.
- The mobile proxy pool has 10 million IP addresses and 700+ ASNs; you can select an operating system (OS), iOS, or Android.
- Static proxy solutions provide shared and dedicated IP addresses that facilitate 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
Webshare provides datacenter (shared, dedicated, rotating), residential, and ISP (shared, dedicated, 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
NetNut
NetNut provides 150K shared datacenter proxies from only the United States, 85M 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 because to its big proxy pool, high costs per GB, and proxy functionalities.
Features
- Residential proxy network consists of shared IPs. They do not currently offer dedicated proxies among their proxy server options.
- 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
Nimble’s only proxy network is residential proxies, and they also provide Unblocker Proxy. Nimble’s rotating residential proxies supports country and city targeting.
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 like a day.
Pricing
- Starting price (GB) / mo:
- Rotating residential: $7.8
- Free trial: 7-day trial
IPRoyal
IPRoyal is one of the affordable residential proxy providers, but the IP pool size is not as large as those 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 proxiesare available across more than 50 locations and come with dedicated IPs. ISP proxies offers dedicated IPs 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
Choosing the right proxy provider
- 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 enable users to access localized content or bypass geo-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 between 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, or latency, is the time it takes for a request to travel from a client to a server. Low response times are essential for time-sensitive web scraping tasks like live event streaming. It is important 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 increases the level of anonymity by switching between different IPs 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: When selecting a proxy provider, cost is an important factor to consider. However, note that the cheapest option may not always be the best fit for your specific requirements. When choosing a proxy provider, it’s crucial to consider your particular scraping requirements and needs.When evaluating the cost of proxy services, consider the following factors:
- Type of proxies: Different proxy types incur different costs. For instance, datacenter proxies are often a cost-effective choice but can be easier to detect and block, whereas residential and mobile proxies provide higher anonymity at a higher cost.
- Pricing plans: Proxy service providers offer various pricing plans based on variables such as geo-targeting options, the number of IP addresses, etc. Compare plans based on your data collection requirements to ensure you select the most cost-effective plan for your scraping project.
- Extra features and support: Some advanced options, such as city-level targeting and dedicated IP addresses, may be available at an additional cost.
- Pay-as-you-go: Some proxy providers offer pay-as-you-go plans that charge based on proxy usage rather than a fixed monthly or annual fee. This model enables users to adjust their proxy usage in response to fluctuating needs without committing to a long-term contract. Pay-as-you-go plans may not be the most cost-effective option if your scraping project requires high-volume proxy usage. Consider your project requirements and budget constraints to determine which pricing model best suits your needs.
- IP rotation: Websites employ anti-scraping measures and tracking techniques to differentiate between human users and automated bots like a web scraper. Automated bots send requests at a much faster rate than a human user, making them easily detected and blocked by websites. IP rotation allows scrapers to simulate human-like behavior while scraping or crawling a website. It distributes requests across multiple sources to reduce the likelihood of an IP being flagged as a bot.
- Legal and ethical considerations: Choose a proxy provider that sources IP addresses ethically and transparently to ensure compliance with the law and regulations governing data privacy and protection.
5 reasons why your business needs a proxy server
You may require more anonymity, speed, or data privacy, in which case open proxy services would not meet your need. Open proxies are terrible in terms of data security, quality, and speed. Here are 5 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 the user’s geographical location for a variety of reasons such as licensing agreements and internet censorship.
Users’ IP address is identified through using 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 user’s IP address, user agent, time zone, preferred language, etc. 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 like firewalls to prevent malicious bot traffic and manage incoming traffic.
Load balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server is getting 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, use server-side web caching to relieve backend resource load and serve data faster. Users can use reverse proxies to reuse previously retrieved data such as images, HTML documents, video, etc.
Proxy server stores a copy of previously retrieved data in a data storage for future requests (Figure 2). If a client requests for the data that is available on web cache, the proxy server will retrieve 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 between two or more entities to transmit data from the source host to the 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 incoming and outgoing network traffic while masking the IP addresses of clients.
If security is your main concern, you can also use residential and ISP proxies. Residential proxies provide clients with real IP addresses provided by their ISP (Internet Service Providers).
5 reasons why you shouldn’t use free/open proxies
Public proxy services are free to use, with only some features costing 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 a open proxy server:
1. Free proxies are not able to handle web tracking technologies
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. And 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
Heatmap is one of the methods for monitoring and tracking users’ activities on a website. The following image shows the user behavior on specific web pages, such as where users have clicked on a page.
2. The IP source of free proxies is unknown
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. Some free proxies may not support HTTPS
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. The uptime of free proxies is poor & unstable
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. It is easy for free proxies to be blocked
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 in order to restrict and prevent 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.
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