5 Best Web Unblockers (Proxy APIs) to Unblock Websites
Web unblockers can access pages that proxies fail to retrieve. We benchmarked the best web unblocker solutions with ~40,000 requests on real-world high-security websites (i.e., Amazon) and 6 lab tests:
Our best website unblocker recommendations are listed below, followed by a quick guide to unblocker websites (online proxy sites), VPNs, Smart DNS, and Tor. See the leading web unblocker providers with their effectiveness and pricing:
The providers in the table share common web unblocker features such as JavaScript rendering, proxy management, and IP rotation.
Web unblocker benchmark results
Success rates:
All tested web unblocker providers achieved consistently high success rates across multiple real-world benchmarks.
While performance levels vary slightly between vendors, all maintained strong reliability under identical testing conditions.
In general:
- The top performers showed stable results with minimal daily fluctuation.
- Mid-range performers remained within a close margin, typically trailing by only a few percentage points.
- Success rate trends can be viewed directly in the chart below, which updates automatically as new benchmark data is collected.
These figures reflect each provider’s ability to return valid, CAPTCHA-free responses across search, e-commerce, and social media targets.
Average response time:
Response time results highlight how efficiently each unblocker handles request routing and page retrieval.
- Providers with the lowest average response times tend to offer smoother large-scale scraping and automation.
- Variations over time may reflect network congestion, provider updates, or changes in the target websites.
- The chart below shows live, continuously updated latency results for all tested vendors.
Anti-bot tests
While the tests on websites like Amazon provide insights about unblocker robustness, scrapers sometimes face even more complex challenges. Publishers can enable anti-scraping features, such as “Interactive Challenge,” to make it harder for bots to access their websites.
Using Cloudflare’s services, we tested the success rates of different unblockers in overcoming different scraping challenges. This part of the benchmark was done by sending requests to target sites that we created. Therefore, these can be considered as lab tests:
Pricing
Below we compare web unblocker pricing by converting each plan to requests per dollar:
How we compare pricing: we normalize plans to an example usage of 25,000 successful requests to Amazon.com.
- Per-request billing: cost = (price per 1k requests × 25).
- Per-GB billing: we assume ~0.4 MB per request (≈ 10 GB total), so cost = (price per GB × 10). We choose the lowest plan/tier that covers 25k requests (or PAYG if cheaper). Actual costs vary by target pages, payload size, and success rate. See our full methodology for details.
Features
Unblockers have very few configuration options, and we didn’t use any configuration during our benchmark.
However, we noticed that Bright Data has an “x-unblock-expect” header instructing the unblocker to run until a specific CSS selector is retrieved. This is helpful to:
- Ensure all data on the page is collected. Users can ensure that the entire page is collected by providing a CSS selector at the bottom of the page.
- Increase crawl speed: If users need data in a specific part of the page, they can choose a CSS selector under the relevant section to accelerate crawl speed.
This is a differentiating feature we didn’t encounter in other providers.
The best web unblocker solutions
Bright Data Web Unblocker API allows users to target specific granular levels, including country, city, and ASN. The tool operates on a pay-as-you-go ($1.50/CPM ) and subscription plan, charging only for completed requests. In our benchmarks, it showed a slightly higher success rate than Zyte, Oxylabs, and Decodo on high-security, JS-heavy pages.
Pros:
- Premium domain list (add-on, $1/CPM) for more challenging targets that need extra Web Unblocker resources.
- By default, the Web Unlocker API solves CAPTCHA encountered during proxy requests when this function is enabled.
- Custom Web Unblocker mode to send headers/cookies and use an expect parameter to wait for specific page elements.
Cons:
- A feature-rich setup may require more configuration than simpler unblocker websites (online proxies).
Pricing
- Pay-As-You-Go: $1.5/ 1K results
- Starting price: $1.27/ 1K Results
- Free trial: 7-day free trial for companies
Oxylabs Web Unblocker allows users to make detailed requests, including targeting specific states, cities, or exact coordinates. JavaScript rendering can be activated by adding a particular header to the request, and there are no additional charges for this feature.
Pros:
- This service lets you target specific coordinates and provides JavaScript rendering at no extra cost.
Cons:
- Costs increase with the amount of data used. Large pages or repeated requests may result in higher fees than pricing based on each request.
Pricing
- Starting price: $9.4/GB
- Free trial: 7-day trial that includes 1 GB of traffic
Decodo provides user-friendly site-unblocking technology, making it ideal for beginners. It allows users to send custom cookies and request headers and target specific locations at the city, state, and country levels. The tool operates on a traffic-based pricing model. Site Unblocker provides results in HTML format with JavaScript.
Pros:
- If your team is new to website unblockers and wants a simple way to get rendered HTML output, this is a good place to start.
Cons:
- Keep in mind that traffic-based plans may cost more if you work with pages that use a lot of JavaScript or have large amounts of data.
Pricing
- Starting price: $28 includes 2 GB
- Free trial: 14-day money-back guarantee
Zyte offers an unblocker solution as part of its API. In our benchmark, Zyte has the lowest-priced and fastest unblocker, responding within ~2 seconds on average in real-world tests.
The tool offers a headless browser and browser automation capabilities that enable high success rates (i.e., 95%+) for automated testing. If you don’t already have an automation built with a tool like Selenium or Puppeteer, you can use Zyte’s API instead.
Pros:
- This tool is suitable for high-throughput workflows that rely on integrated browser automation.
Cons:
- The advanced automation features offer substantial functionality; however, users with limited experience may require additional time to understand scripted workflow processes.
Pricing
- Free trial: 7-day
- Starting price: $100
Crawlbase is recognized for its web scraping solutions, providing scraping APIs and proxies. Their offerings include the Crawling API, a web-scraping API with proxy mode, and the Smart Proxy API, which combines datacenter and residential proxies.
However, Crawlbase’s geographic coverage is limited to 46 countries and lacks the capability for city-specific targeting. For advanced features like JavaScript Rendering and custom geolocation options, Crawlbase offers a premium package priced at $289.
Pros:
- This option is ideal for teams focused on web scraping who need a single API and basic tools to bypass blocks.
Cons:
- Base plans include general geographic targeting, but not city-level options. Advanced features like JavaScript rendering and custom locations are available with premium plans.
Pricing
- Starting price: $99
- Free trial: 30-day trial with 5,000 credits
Web unblocker benchmark methodology
Real-world tests
In our benchmark, we ran three tests across 3,600 URLs from major e-commerce websites. Half of the URLs had random query strings added to the end to get non-cached results. The total number of URLs was 43,200 across three runs with four participants, for a total of 3,600 URLs. A curl command is used to call the unblocker without any parameters.
- Categories: Search engines, e-commerce, and social media
- Targets: CAPTCHA-prone and geo-restricted pages (e.g., Google SERP, Instagram, Amazon product pages)
- Cycle: Every 15 minutes, identical HTTP/2 requests are sent through all unblocker vendors.
Performance evaluation criteria:
- Success Rate (%): Measures how often the unblocker returns a valid, fully loaded page without CAPTCHAs, redirect loops, or access errors.
- Response Time (s): Average time to receive a complete, validated page response.
- Error Classification: Categorizes failed requests by cause (e.g., CAPTCHA challenge, HTTP 403/429 rate limits, or connection failure).
Validation rules:
- HTTP status 200–399 required
- Content verified with CSS selectors unique to each platform
- Responses containing block pages, challenge pages, or empty content are marked as failed.
We calculated each request’s response time and saved the HTML content to analyze how effective and fast each unblocker product is. For more, see the methodology of the web scraping API benchmark.
Lab tests
This test measures the vendors’ capabilities to handle anti-bot techniques on various websites.
However, there are many different anti-bot techniques. To understand how vendors handle specific anti-scraper technologies, we set up a series of URLs on aimultiple.com that used Cloudflare’s anti-scraper technologies, the market leader in DDoS and bot protection. Techniques are sorted from the easiest to the hardest to overcome
- Challenges (i.e., managed challenge, JS challenge, and interactive challenge
- UA Mode
- High Security Level
- Browser Integrity Check
Participants
We focused on the largest web data brands by employee count and product scope. We tested all brands that had more than 100 employees and offered web unblockers as well as datacenter and residential proxies:
- Bright Data Web Unlocker
- Decodo Site Unblocker
- Oxylabs Web Unblocker
- Zyte API in proxy mode
What is a web unblocker?
A web unblocker, also called a website unblocker or site unblocker, is an advanced proxy tool that routes your connection through another server.
These solutions can autonomously determine the appropriate proxy service for a given task, providing advanced features such as browser fingerprinting, JavaScript execution, and enhanced scraping functionalities that are not usually available in standard proxy servers.
What is the difference between a web unblocker and proxy servers?
Success rates
Website unblockers have high success rates because they, by default, leverage advanced features such as browser fingerprinting, JS rendering, and scraping. This enables users to access blocked websites.
These capabilities are not found in regular proxy services. Therefore, proxy users must implement such capabilities to evade anti-bot features.
Ease of use
Proxies need to be configured to bypass anti-bot measures on websites. It is also not sufficient to configure them once. Websites improve their detection mechanisms over time, so proxy users need to evolve their tactics to scrape websites successfully.
Web unblockers do not require any configuration.
Other
Web Unblocker can use different methods, such as a virtual private network, a proxy server, or a browser extension. A proxy server routes internet traffic through a different server, masking a user’s real IP address, but it does not encrypt data.
How to choose an unblocker: speed, success, price
When selecting a web unblocker for complex, JavaScript-intensive pages, prioritize providers with higher success rates. For applications needing rapid response, such as frequent automated checks, prefer lower response times. Next, review the pricing section to ensure an optimal balance between performance and cost.
- Prioritize reliability by selecting the option with the highest success rate within your budget.
- If speed is critical, choose the option with the fastest median response time for your expected volume.
- For budgeting, compare the number of requests per dollar based on your projected monthly volume.
- Ensure required features such as JavaScript rendering, proxy management, and rotation are included.
FAQs about web unblockers
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