Choosing the best proxy for web scraping comes down to one constraint – target websites restrict web scrapers by IP address, so a scraping stack is only as good as the proxy services behind it.

This guide ranks ten proxy providers on pool size, pricing, targeting, and reliability, then shows you how to match a proxy type to a job. It is written for developers and data teams running anything from a small web scraping project to large scale data extraction.

Residential Proxies and Datacenter Proxies solve different problems, and picking the wrong web scraping proxies is the fastest way to spend a budget on failed requests and IP-level restrictions rather than on data.

Quick top web scraping proxy options compared

Here is the shortlist at a glance. Entry prices were checked in August 2026 and moved with promotions and volume tiers, so treat them as a starting point rather than a quote.

How we evaluated these proxy providers

A ranking is only worth reading if you know what produced it. Here is what we weighed.

•    Pool size and IP quality. A bigger, cleaner proxy pool means fewer failed requests. Raw size is a weak signal on its own, though – sourcing and fraud scores tell you more, and several providers count their pool in ways that are not comparable.

•    Success rate and response times. Measured against protected sites, not easy targets. Almost every figure here is vendor self-reported, and we say so. Treat published success rates as a claim to test.

•    Targeting granularity. Country, state, city, ASN, and ZIP. Geo targeting depth matters for geo restricted content, localised pricing, or search engines results that vary by market.

•    Pricing model and flexibility. Bandwidth based pricing against per-IP and per-thread models, minimum commitments, whether unused traffic expires, and whether a free trial or free plan exists. Flexible pricing is worth real money on spiky workloads.

•    Developer experience. API quality, documentation, proxy manager tooling, browser extensions, integration with headless browsers, and support for sticky sessions and proxy rotation.

•    Extras that remove work. JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA managing, and ready-made scraper APIs. They matter more as targets harden, because they replace middleware you would otherwise maintain.

•    Support and account management. Response times, channels, and whether dedicated account managers are available to enterprise clients.

•    Ethics and compliance of IP sourcing. Increasingly a procurement obstacle rather than a nice-to-have. If legal cannot trace where the Residential IP addresses came from, the deal stalls.

On method: pricing, pool sizes, and feature lists come from each provider's own pages, checked in August 2026. Performance figures are vendor-published unless stated otherwise. Nothing here is a lab benchmark.

Whatever you shortlist, the integration test is the same few lines – point your client at the endpoint and confirm the exit IP changes:

import requests
 
proxy = "http://USER:[email protected]:7777"
 
r = requests.get(
    "https://ip.oxylabs.io/location",
	proxies={"http": proxy, "https": proxy},
	timeout=30,
)
print(r.text)

Run that against your own target with two providers before committing. Ten minutes of testing beats ten reviews.

Best web scraping proxy providers reviewed

The ten reviews below run from enterprise-grade down to budget on a fixed template. Every one names at least one real limitation, because a list where all ten sound excellent is no use to anyone.

1. Oxylabs: high-quality proxy service to gather data at scale

Oxylabs is one of the most established names in the proxy market, built for enterprises and data teams running large-scale web scraping where reliability matters more than price. Its proxies are aimed at developers who need consistent success rates against well-protected targets, with compliance paperwork built for procurement review.

Main features:

•    Network: 175M+ ethically sourced Residential IPs across 195+ countries, a 2M+ Datacenter pool across 188 countries, and 20M+ Mobile IPs.

•    Proxy types: Residential Proxies, Datacenter Proxies, ISP Proxies, and Mobile Proxies, so you can match the proxy to the target instead of forcing one pool to do everything.

•    Targeting: country, state, city, ZIP, coordinates, and ASN, useful for geo restricted content and local web data.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, HTTP3, and SOCKS5, with proxy rotation per request or sticky sessions holding the same IP address for up to 24 hours.

•    Pricing: Residential Proxies from $6/GB on the 5GB Starter plan, falling to $2.50/GB at 1TB; shared Datacenter Proxies from $0.59/GB or $0.70/IP at volume; ISP Proxies from $1.20/IP.

•    Performance: 99.95% Residential success rate at roughly 0.6s average response; Datacenter 99.9% at 0.222s. Oxylabs' own figures, August 2026.

•    Support: 24/7 live chat, with a dedicated account manager on higher plans.

•    Other features: Web Scraper API from $0.25 per 1,000 results, a headless browser product, free Chrome and Android proxy manager tools, ISO 27001 certification, and Lloyd's cover.

Our take: Oxylabs is the call when you are scraping protected sites at scale and need success rates you can count on, backed by support that responds. Pool size and geo targeting depth are hard to beat for enterprise data collection. The trade-off: entry pricing sits above the budget providers here, and the Residential free trial runs through a contact form rather than self-serve signup.

2. Decodo: best value for mid-market teams

Decodo is the rebranded Smartproxy, and it kept the position it built there: close to premium performance at mid-market prices. It suits small teams and agencies that want city-level targeting without an enterprise contract or a sales call.

Main features:

•    Network: 115M+ ethically sourced Residential IPs across 195+ locations.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile Proxies.

•    Targeting: continent, country, state, city, ZIP, and ASN or ISP, included rather than sold as an add-on.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, rotating per request or sticky from minutes to days.

•    Pricing: bandwidth based pricing advertised from $2/GB, though that reflects high-volume tiers; published entry tiers sit closer to $3–$3.50/GB. Pay-as-you-go available alongside monthly plans.

•    Performance: 99.92% success rate and sub-0.7s average response time, both self-reported.

•    Support: 24/7, with drop-in code samples for Python, Node.js, Go, PHP, Java, and cURL.

•    Other features: scraping APIs, Chrome and Firefox browser extensions, sub-user management, and a 3-day free trial.

Our take: Decodo is the sensible default for teams that have outgrown free proxies but are not buying enterprise. Onboarding is the fastest here, and the API survived the rebrand intact. The honest limitation: the headline $2/GB is a volume rate, so budget nearer $3/GB at realistic starting volumes.

3. Bright Data: the largest network and the deepest toolset

Bright Data sells the widest product surface of these web scraping proxy providers: proxies, a scraping browser, SERP tooling, and ready-made datasets. It is built for large data teams and regulated industries where compliance documentation is part of the buying decision.

Main features:

•    Network: 150M+ Residential IPs across 195 countries.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile Proxies.

•    Targeting: country, state, city, ZIP, ASN, and carrier. Fine-grained targeting can carry a price multiplier that is easy to miss when modelling costs.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, with product-specific port restrictions worth reading first.

•    Pricing: pay-as-you-go Residential is quoted between roughly $5 and $8.40/GB depending on source and active promotion; committed plans fall toward $2.50–$3.50/GB. Datacenter from around $0.60/IP.

•    Performance: third-party tests report 97–99%+ success rates with response times from about 0.35s upward.

•    Support: 24/7, dedicated account managers for enterprise clients, plus SSO and OAuth.

•    Other features: proxy manager, scraping browser, SERP API, dataset marketplace, ISO 27001 certification.

Our take: Buy Bright Data when you need the platform rather than the proxies alone – the dataset and scraping browser products genuinely reduce the infrastructure you own. Two limitations are real: pricing is the least legible on this list, and KYC onboarding is slow enough to stall a sprint.

4. SOAX: granular targeting on a curated pool

SOAX has optimized one thing: a clean, well-targeted Residential pool rather than the largest raw IP count. It fits ad verification, localized SEO monitoring, and market research where hitting the right city or carrier matters more than scale.

Main features:

•    Network: 155M+ Residential IPs plus 33M+ mobile, around 191M+ in total, across 195+ countries.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Mobile, and ISP Proxies, plus a Datacenter pool that is US-only.

•    Targeting: country, region, city, and ISP or ASN on every plan, not gated behind enterprise.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, rotating per request or sticky up to 60 minutes.

•    Pricing: from $90/month for 25GB, about $3.60/GB, falling toward $2/GB at higher tiers. A $1.99 three-day trial covers 400MB; there is no pay-as-you-go option.

•    Performance: 99.9% uptime claimed by SOAX; independent benchmarks put response times behind the fastest providers here.

•    Support: 24/7, with real-time proxy health monitoring in the dashboard.

•    Other features: a scraping API handling JavaScript rendering and CAPTCHA solving.

Our take: SOAX is the precision instrument of this group, and carrier-level targeting at this price is rare. It suits quality-sensitive collection in awkward geographies. The limitations: a hard $90 entry with no pay-as-you-go, traffic that does not roll over, and a datacenter pool that is US-only.

5. Proxyrack: unmetered bandwidth on a thread-priced model

Proxyrack is one of the longer-running names in the proxy market and prices differently from everyone else here. Instead of paying per gigabyte, you buy concurrent threads and run unmetered traffic across them, which changes the economics of bandwidth-hungry jobs.

Main features:

•    Network: Proxyrack states 5M+ rotating Residential IPs across 140+ countries, a 20,000+ Datacenter pool, and Mobile endpoints in 70+ countries. Third-party sources cite anything from 2M to 85M, so treat the pool figure as soft.

•    Proxy types: Residential (premium, private, unlimited), Datacenter (USA rotating, global rotating, static USA), and Mobile Proxies. Static USA covers the persistent-IP case others sell as ISP Proxies.

•    Targeting: country, city, and ISP.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP, SOCKS, and UDP – broader than most of this list – with rotating and sticky ports and custom rotation timers.

•    Pricing: plans start at $49.95/month, with unmetered tiers priced per concurrent thread rather than per GB. A 3-day trial of the full product suite costs $13.95.

•    Performance: not publicly disclosed. Independent testers report figures, but Proxyrack publishes none of its own.

•    Support: email and a public forum. No live chat, and no dedicated account management.

•    Other features: web scraper API, Android SDK, sub-users, and a 3-day money-back guarantee.

Our take: Proxyrack earns its place when bandwidth, not requests, is your cost driver – heavy media or full-page collection where per-GB billing gets punishing. The limitations are significant: pricing is hard to compare against per-GB competitors, support is email-only, and the inconsistent pool figures mean you should trial first.

6. Webshare: the cheapest way in

Webshare is a self-serve platform built around a genuinely usable free plan and low entry pricing. It suits individual developers and small teams who want proxies working in ten minutes without a sales conversation.

Main features:

•    Network: 80M+ Residential IPs across 195 countries.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, and ISP Proxies. No Mobile Proxies in the lineup.

•    Targeting: country, state, and city. No ASN or carrier targeting.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, with rotating and static options.

•    Pricing: Datacenter Proxy servers from $2.99/month for 100 proxies, ISP from $0.30 per proxy, rotating Residential around $3.50/GB. Bandwidth is consumed within the billing month.

•    Performance: no headline success rate published, which is a gap given how central reliability is to the decision.

•    Support: self-serve, with no SLA or dedicated account manager even on paid plans.

•    Other features: a permanent free plan of 10 proxies and 1GB per month with no card required, Chrome and Firefox browser extensions, and an API for pulling a proxy list.

Our take: Webshare is the right first purchase for a solo developer or a proof of concept, and the free plan is real rather than decorative. The limitations follow from the price: no mobile proxies, no ASN targeting, no published performance figures, and support that assumes you can solve your own problems.

7. IPRoyal: affordable coverage with traffic that never expires

IPRoyal's defining feature is billing rather than pool size: bandwidth you buy stays available until you use it. That matters more than it sounds for teams running scraping projects in bursts rather than continuously.

Main features:

•    Network: 32M+ Residential IPs across 195 countries.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile proxies.

•    Targeting: country, state, and city. No ASN or carrier filtering.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, with sticky sessions up to seven days – the longest window here.

•    Pricing: pay-as-you-go Residential starts around $7/GB and drops toward $1.75/GB at volume. Traffic does not expire and there is no minimum subscription.

•    Performance: no verified success rate is published; third-party tests place it mid-table.

•    Support: 24/7 chat, well reviewed for a provider at this price point.

•    Other features: browser extensions, unlimited concurrent sessions with no per-session fee, and a higher-grade pool for harder targets.

Our take: IPRoyal is the pick for intermittent work where a monthly allowance would go to waste, and seven-day sticky sessions are genuinely useful for multi-step flows. The limitations: a 32M pool is small once you push concurrency, there is no free trial, and the entry per-GB rate is steep until you commit to volume.

8. Rayobyte: datacenter-first and developer-friendly

Rayobyte, formerly Blazing SEO, is a US-based provider that grew out of a datacenter specialism and added Residential later. It suits SEO tooling, rank tracking, and high-volume collection against targets that do not require Residential IP addresses.

Main features:

•    Network: 300K+ Datacenter IPs across roughly 27 countries. The Residential pool size is not consistently disclosed – third-party estimates run from 30M to over 100M, which is itself a reason to test rather than trust the figure.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile proxies.

•    Targeting: country and city, with city-level coverage strongest inside the US and thinner elsewhere.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 on Datacenter and ISP; SOCKS5 on Residential is limited. Sticky sessions run from 1 to 120 minutes.

•    Pricing: Datacenter from around $1/IP with unlimited bandwidth, ISP per IP, and Residential entry around $1/GB – though rotating tiers price considerably higher. Some Residential packages are one-time purchases that do not expire.

•    Performance: no headline success rate published by the provider.

•    Support: US-based and well reviewed for handling integration questions.

•    Other features: automatic dead-proxy replacement, a published sourcing policy, and a scraping API.

Our take: Rayobyte is a strong datacenter shop with an unusually transparent ethics stance, which helps when procurement asks where the IPs came from. Two limitations: Residential is the weaker half of the portfolio, and the gap between the advertised entry rate and the realistic rotating rate is wide enough to catch buyers out.

9. DataImpulse: the lowest cost per GB

DataImpulse owns its IPs directly rather than reselling another network, and prices accordingly. It is built for teams whose main selection criterion is cost per successful request at volume, with a deliberately lean feature set.

Main features:

•    Network: 90M+ Residential IPs across 195 countries, first-party owned.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, and Mobile proxies. No ISP Proxies in the lineup.

•    Targeting: country, city, ASN, and ZIP, with no add-on fee – unusual at this price.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, with UDP on request. Rotation is per request by default, with sticky sessions up to 120 minutes.

•    Pricing: $1/GB Residential, falling to roughly $0.70–$0.80/GB in bulk; Datacenter from $0.50/GB; Mobile from $2/GB. Entry is $5 for 5GB, with no subscription and no traffic expiry.

•    Performance: 99.9% uptime claimed by the provider; independent verification is thin.

•    Support: 24/7 human support, rare at the bottom of the price range.

•    Other features: real-time usage dashboard and pay-as-you-go billing, no minimum commitment.

Our take: DataImpulse is the cheapest credible per-GB rate here, and ZIP-level targeting at $1/GB is a genuine outlier. It suits large batch jobs where you control the scheduler and can absorb a retry. The limitation is breadth: no ISP Proxies, no advanced tooling, and a community small enough that you will be reading docs rather than forums.

10. Infatica: a balanced budget-to-mid option

Infatica sells all four proxy types plus scraper tooling and leans on compliance positioning, including a business-use-only acceptable use policy. It fits brand protection, ad verification, and agencies reselling under their own name.

Main features:

•    Network: Infatica's Residential page headlines 35M+ IPs, but other pages and third-party reviews cite anything from 10M to 60M. Coverage spans 150+ countries.

•    Proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile Proxies.

•    Targeting: country and city on Residential, country on mobile. City depth is uneven outside major markets, so verify availability first.

•    Supported protocols: HTTP(S) and SOCKS5, with some protocol limits on mobile plans.

•    Pricing: Residential entry sits around $8/GB on the smallest plan, falling toward roughly $1/GB at very high volume. Datacenter starts near $1/IP. Paid trial only, no free plan.

•    Performance: not publicly disclosed.

•    Support: responsive on configuration and scaling questions, with sub-user management and usage reporting.

•    Other features: white-label reselling for agencies, a scraper API, and ISO certification.

Our take: Infatica is a reasonable all-rounder if you want every proxy type from one vendor and value the compliance framing during procurement. Two limitations stand out: the pool figure is the least consistent here, and the entry price is high for a provider positioned as budget-friendly – the attractive rates appear only at volumes most buyers will not reach.

Choosing the right proxy for web scraping

Ten options is more than anyone needs. What you need is a rule for picking, so work through these four questions in order.

Match the proxy type to the target first. This decision does more for your success rate than the choice of vendor.

Rotating against static. Use rotating proxies to distribute requests across many IPs for general web scraping. Use static Residential Proxies or sticky sessions whenever a session must keep the same IP address – logins, carts, and multi-step flows fall apart if the exit IP changes mid-journey. Most providers let you set the rotation interval, so this is a per-endpoint choice, not a per-account one.

Size the buy properly. Request volume, concurrency, and average page weight decide whether bandwidth based pricing or per-IP pricing is cheaper. Back of an envelope: a browser-rendered page pulls roughly 1–3MB, so 1GB buys 300–1,000 pages. A raw HTTP request against a JSON endpoint might be 50KB, so the same gigabyte buys 20,000. If you run headless browsers, model 2× your first estimate. Above a few hundred gigabytes a month, per-IP or per-thread plans usually win.

Do the budget reality check. Free proxies and cheap shared proxies look like savings until you price a failed request. A pool at $1/GB with a 90% success rate costs more per usable page than one at $3/GB and 99.5%, once you count retries, CAPTCHA managing, and engineering time. Dedicated proxies earn their keep when a single flagged IP would interrupt a business process rather than just a job.

Do not blame the proxy for everything. User agents, request headers, TLS fingerprints, and rate limits matter as much as proxy rotation. A good proxy service will not rescue a scraper pulling 40 pages a second from one session with a default Python user agent. Fix the client first, then buy the pool.

Conclusion

Three shortlists. Enterprise teams scraping protected sites at volume should start with Oxylabs, with Bright Data as the alternative if you need datasets and a scraping browser in the same contract. Mid-market teams get the best price-to-quality from Decodo, with SOAX close behind when targeting precision beats speed. Budget buyers should look at Webshare's free plan for a first project, DataImpulse for the lowest cost per GB, and IPRoyal when non-expiring traffic is worth more than a lower headline rate.

Whichever way you lean, run a trial against your own target before committing. The best proxy for web scraping is the one that clears your site at your volume – and that is a ten-minute test, not a purchasing decision.

Frequently asked questions

What type of proxy is best for web scraping?

There is no single answer – it depends on the target. Choose Datacenter Proxies for high-volume collection against sites with light defenses, where speed and cost win. Choose Residential Proxies when you need Residential IP addresses that look like ordinary users on most websites. Choose ISP Proxies for Residential trust at Datacenter speed with a static IP. Choose mobile proxies for mobile-first platforms, the hardest and most expensive targets. Many teams run two pools and route requests by target.

Are free proxies safe for web scraping?

Not for anything that matters. Free proxies are shared among multiple users, frequently already flagged by the sites you want to reach, and often unencrypted. Whoever runs the server can log or modify traffic passing through it, so anything touching credentials is a real risk. They are fine for a one-off connectivity test and unsuitable for production or anything where the data has value. Most paid providers offer a free plan or cheap trial that removes the reason to use them.

How many proxies do you need for web scraping?

It depends on request volume, the target's rate limits, and how aggressively that particular site restricts repeat visitors. A rough rule for a static proxy list is one IP per one to two requests per minute you intend to sustain, then adjust on your error rate. With rotating Residential proxies the maths changes entirely: you buy bandwidth rather than a proxy list, the provider handles proxy rotation, and the planning question becomes gigabytes per month.

Can you still be turned away when using proxies?

Yes. Proxies solve the IP address problem and nothing else. Browser fingerprinting, mismatched headers and user agents, predictable timing, and Residential IPs other customers have already burned on your target will all get requests refused. The usual next fixes are JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA handling, realistic header sets, and slower pacing. If your success rate collapses on one particular site but holds everywhere else, the proxy pool is rarely the cause.

Disclaimer: This article is paid content. HackerNoon’s editorial team has reviewed it for clarity and quality standards, but the views, claims, benchmarks, and comparisons expressed are solely those of the sponsor, and HackerNoon assumes no responsibility for third-party assertions contained in sponsored content.