Best Proxies for Video Data Extraction: Performance Tests & Top Providers
High latency, bandwidth bottlenecks, and aggressive IP blocking make video data extraction one of the most challenging tasks. A standard proxy setup often can’t keep up with the advanced anti-bot measures used to protect streaming content.
This article analyzes data on response time and success rate, showing how top video proxies performed under real-world load.
Key findings from video proxy benchmark
Based on our benchmark, performance varies by category. Here are the top performers for each use case:
1. For “mission critical” access (speed + success)
The winner: Bright Data (Web Unlocker)
Bright Data delivered the unique combination of the lowest latency and a 99.9% success rate. While most providers hover around 2-3 seconds when bypassing complex anti-bots, Bright Data’s web unlocker consistently clocked in at ~1 second.
2. For mobile-specific extraction
The Winner: Decodo
In our mobile tests, Decodo significantly outperformed larger competitors in latency if your script relies on mobile headers to bypass desktop-specific CAPTCHA.
3. For enterprise reliability
The winner: Oxylabs
Oxylabs is the”safe bet.” In our charts, they didn’t always win on raw speed (latency), but their success rate was rock-solid across both residential and unblocker infrastructures.
4. For developers on a budget
The winner: Webshare
Webshare’s performance ranges from 75% to 85%, and its response time is notably fast. Implementing a retry logic, such as automatically retrying failed requests, makes Webshare the most cost-effective option.
5. For high-volume metadata scraping
The winner: Nimbleway (residential)
In our residential success rate tests, many providers showed volatility, dipping to 70% success during peak hours. Nimbleway drew a near-perfect straight line between 95% and 100%.
Video proxy benchmark results
Response time
Success rate
6 best proxy servers for video websites
Bright Data Web Unlocker proved to be the decisive factor in our video website tests. If speed is your primary metric, Bright Data consistently clocked in around 1.1 seconds. Bright Data managed to handle CAPTCHA or render JS without the latency penalty. Their success rate on major streaming sites rarely dipped below 99.5%.
Pros:
- Speed: The fastest “Unblocker” solution in our benchmark (~1s latency).
- Compliance: A thoroughly vetted peer-to-peer network that ensures your scraping activities stay within legal boundaries.
Cons:
- Price: It is a premium tool. Startups with tight budgets might find the entry cost high.
- Strict KYC: Access requires rigorous identity verification (Know Your Customer).
For large enterprises scraping millions of video metadata pages every day, “uptime” is often more critical than “milliseconds,” and this is where Oxylabs excels. Oxylabs’ performance in our tests can be summarized in one word: consistency.
In our unblocker response time benchmark, their average response time ranged from 1.5 to 2.0 seconds. Although this is slower than Bright Data’s roughly 1.1 seconds, it remains acceptable for backend batch processing, where data integrity outweighs speed.
Pros:
- High compliance: Similar to Bright Data, they uphold strict ethical standards and have insurance, ensuring safety for public companies.
- Success rate stability: In both the residential and unblocker categories, Oxylabs showed a consistently high success rate. While other providers experienced dips during weekend peak hours, Oxylabs maintained a success rate of approximately 99.2% throughout the test period.
Cons:
- Slightly increased latency: Our charts indicate that the additional AI processing layer adds a fraction of a second to response times, making it somewhat slower than the fastest competitors.
Decodo is a versatile player in the market. While they don’t have the huge infrastructure of the “Big Two,” our benchmarks reveal they’re outstanding in a particular area: Mobile proxies.
If you’re looking to extract video data that mimics mobile devices (iOS/Android) to get past desktop CAPTCHA, Decodo proxy videos could be just what you need.
Pros:
- Mobile latency: If speed on 4G/LTE is your priority, the data points to Decodo.
- Cost-effective: Offers an affordable middle-ground pricing, less expensive than enterprise solutions.
Cons:
- Unblocker performance: Data indicate that their unblocker solution performs less effectively against the toughest anti-bot protections on video sites than Bright Data or Oxylabs.
In our benchmarks, Webshare frequently responds to requests more quickly than premium providers, which incur additional overhead from their “unblocking” logic. The success rate chart indicates that premium providers maintain success rates above 99%, whereas Webshare’s pools range from 70% to 85% on popular websites.
Pros:
- Price: This is the most economical choice on the list, offering a much lower cost per GB than Bright Data or Oxylabs.
- Low latency: Offers high raw connection speeds, making it suitable for tasks where the target website does not aggressively block simple requests.
Cons:
- Lower success rate: You’ll get data quickly, but face more “429 Too Many Requests” errors. If your code can’t handle retries, this isn’t the right tool.
Apify differs from other providers. While offering proxies and known for their ‘Actors’ scripts, our tests revealed a surprising strength: the quality of their datacenter proxies. While standard datacenter proxies usually drop to almost 0% success on protected video sites, Apify kept a success rate above 95%.
Pros:
- Cost efficiency: If you can reach 95% success with their Datacenter proxies instead of costly residential proxies, your cost per GB decreases significantly.
Cons:
- Platform lock-in: Proxies work best within the Apify ecosystem. You can use them as standalone proxies externally, but this is less seamless than dedicated providers like Webshare.
Our benchmarks showed that Nimble provides stability in residential IP scraping on video platforms that surpasses even the industry leaders during peak hours. They consistently achieved a success rate of 95% to 100% throughout the entire testing period.
Pros:
- Highest residential success: According to our data, they are the most dependable choice for residential scraping without blocks.
Cons:
- Premium pricing: They position themselves as a premium solution, not a budget one.
How we tested video proxy servers
We conducted a thorough extraction simulation on the world’s biggest video-sharing platform.
- Target scope: Tests were performed on a sample of 100 URLs, including key page types such as Video Watch Pages, Channel Profiles, and Search Results.
- Frequency: Our benchmarking engine ran nonstop, sending requests every 5 minutes for each web proxy provider during the entire testing period. This approach enables us to record performance changes during both global peak and off-peak hours.
Defining success
- Beyond HTTP 200: A request isn’t considered “successful” just because it receives an HTTP 200 status code. Video platforms frequently send “200 OK” responses that may include CAPTCHA, “Soft Bans,” or empty pages (such as login walls).
- Content validation: To qualify as success, response bodies had to pass a validation check, like parsing the video title or metadata JSON. Requests that required CAPTCHA, blocked pages, or timed out were failures.
Measuring speed (latency)
- Our response time charts show the average duration (in milliseconds) for successful requests only.
- We omit failed requests or timeouts from the speed calculation to avoid distorting the data. This ensures that the “Avg Response Time” reflects the actual wait time for valid data, rather than the time spent blocked.
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