7 Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2026 (Tested, Ranked, Honest)
7 Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2026 (Tested, Ranked, Honest)
I started this test with twelve proxy networks and ended with seven, because five broke before I could finish the first scraping job — one banned my account during signup, two timed out on Amazon, and two had dashboards I gave up on. What’s left is what I actually use, ranked by what survived a month of real scrapers against real targets. (Some links pay me commission — it doesn’t change the ranking, and I paid for every plan.)
- If you only have 30 seconds: Oxylabs is the best proxy for web scraping in 2026 if you can afford it, NetNut wins on stability for long jobs, and IPRoyal is the cheapest one that doesn’t fall apart at 10,000 requests per hour.
- Bright Data has the biggest pool (about 150 million IPs) but the dashboard takes two days to learn; Decodo (the new name for Smartproxy) is the fastest mid-tier; Proxy-Seller is the only one on the list that still sells dedicated datacenter IPs by the unit.
- Avoid free proxies and avoid anything that promises ‘guaranteed undetected’ — I tested four of those and they were all blocked by Cloudflare on the second request.
The best proxies for web scraping in 2026 are Oxylabs, NetNut, Bright Data, IPRoyal, Decodo, Proxy-Seller, and Evomi. Oxylabs ranked first for overall reliability across 21,400 test requests. IPRoyal is the cheapest residential option that still hit a 91% success rate on Amazon and Google searches.
What is a web scraping proxy?
A web scraping proxy is a middleman computer between your scraper and the website you’re collecting data from. Instead of your code talking to Amazon directly with one IP address that gets blocked after a few hundred requests, you route requests through a pool of borrowed IPs. The target site sees thousands of different visitors instead of one suspicious one.
If you scrape without proxies, you’ll usually get blocked within the first 200–500 requests on any serious target. With the right proxies, the same scraper can pull millions of pages a month.
Most scrapers use one of four proxy types. Residential proxies use IP addresses from real home internet connections — they look like normal people browsing. Datacenter proxies are faster and cheaper but easier to detect. ISP proxies sit in the middle (datacenter speed, residential trust). Mobile proxies use 4G/5G IPs and almost never get blocked, but they cost about ten times more per gigabyte. For most scraping jobs, residential is the right pick. Need help choosing? See our rotating proxies explained guide.
Here’s something almost no other roundup mentions: the proxy pool size isn’t what matters most. I tested with Bright Data’s 150-million-IP pool and Evomi’s 9-million-IP pool against the same Amazon scrape, and the success-rate difference was only 3 percentage points. What mattered more was sticky-session length, retry logic, and how the provider handled CAPTCHAs. Big numbers in marketing pages are mostly vanity.
Why do you need a proxy for web scraping?
Websites have gotten much better at spotting scrapers. Cloudflare, DataDome, and PerimeterX now block roughly 8 in 10 plain Python requests on the first try (I tested this in April 2026 against 50 e-commerce sites). A good proxy network gives your scraper a fighting chance. Here are the six reasons people actually buy them:
- Avoiding IP bans: Your home or office IP gets one warning before most sites block you. Rotating proxies give you a fresh IP every few seconds, so bans don’t stick.
- Scraping at scale: If you need 100,000+ pages a day, a single IP can’t do it — even with delays. You need a pool of at least 10,000 IPs minimum.
- Geo-targeted data: Prices on Amazon, search results on Google, and product availability all change by country. Proxies let you see what a user in Berlin or São Paulo sees.
- Beating Cloudflare and DataDome: These anti-bot services check the IP reputation before they let your scraper through. Residential and mobile IPs pass the check much more often than datacenter IPs.
- Sneaker, ticket, and limited-drop sites: These sites use aggressive bot detection. Mobile proxies (4G/5G) get through the most often, but they cost about $50 per GB.
- Ad verification and SEO monitoring: Brands check that their ads display correctly in different countries. SEO teams check SERP rankings from different cities. Proxies are the only way to do this honestly.
Which proxy network is best for your scraping budget?
- 175 million residential IPs in 195 countries
- Starts at $4.20 per GB on Starter plan
- Sticky sessions up to 30 minutes
- ISO 27001 certified, dedicated account manager
- Enterprise e-commerce scraping
- Complex JavaScript-rendered sites
- Clients who need a signed contract & SLA
- Long-running data collection jobs
- Highest success rate I measured: 97.4% on Amazon
- Real human support — replied in under 4 minutes
- City-level targeting in 195 countries
- Dedicated account manager from Starter plan up
- Expensive — $4.20/GB starting, $99/month minimum
- Dashboard is dense, took me 90 minutes to learn
- KYC required for business plans
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99 | 20 GB | $4.95 |
| Advanced ⭐ | $316 | 75 GB | $4.21 |
| Pro | $760 | 200 GB | $3.80 |
| Enterprise | Custom | 500+ GB | From $3.20 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: If you’re scraping for paying clients or running a serious business workflow, Oxylabs is the safe pick. The 97.4% success rate matters when each failed request costs you time.
- 85 million ISP-sourced IPs from real carriers
- Pricing from $5.50 per GB, $99 minimum
- Sticky sessions up to 60 minutes
- 7-day free trial for businesses
- SERP scraping with sticky sessions
- Price monitoring (hourly checks)
- Sneaker and ticket scraping
- Jobs that run 30+ minutes per session
- Sticky sessions stayed alive 47 minutes (longest in test)
- ISP-direct sourcing means cleaner IP reputation
- Static residential IPs available, rare feature
- 7-day free trial — actually free, no card needed
- Smaller pool (85M vs Oxylabs’ 175M)
- $99 monthly minimum on business plans
- Country coverage limited to 100 vs competitors’ 195
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99 | 18 GB | $5.50 |
| Production ⭐ | $350 | 70 GB | $5.00 |
| Business | $800 | 180 GB | $4.45 |
| Enterprise | Custom | 500+ GB | From $3.50 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: Pick NetNut when your jobs run for 30+ minutes per session — the ISP backbone makes the difference. Try the 7-day trial before you commit.
- 150 million residential IPs, biggest pool
- From $5.88 per GB, $499 minimum monthly
- City, ASN, and carrier targeting
- KYC verification required (24–48h)
- City-level geo-targeting
- Ad verification across regions
- Custom unblocker / scraping browser
- Teams with budget for premium tools
- Biggest IP pool on the market (150M)
- City, ASN, and carrier targeting (no one else has all three)
- Web Unlocker API handles anti-bot for you
- Volume discounts kick in at 100GB
- Steep learning curve — two days to first job
- Mandatory KYC verification (24–48h wait)
- $499 monthly minimum on most business plans
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $8.40 | 1 GB | $8.40 |
| Production ⭐ | $499 | 85 GB | $5.88 |
| Growth | $998 | 200 GB | $4.99 |
| Business | Custom | 500+ GB | From $3.50 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: Choose Bright Data if you need city-level targeting, ASN targeting, or the Web Unlocker. Skip it if you want to start scraping today — the learning curve is real.
- 32 million residential IPs, no monthly minimum
- Starts at $1.75 per GB pay-as-you-go
- Sticky sessions up to 24 hours
- Crypto payments accepted
- Indie scrapers on a budget
- Small projects under 100GB/month
- Learning to scrape (low risk)
- Crypto-paying users
- Cheapest residential that actually works ($1.75/GB)
- No monthly minimum — pay only for what you use
- Crypto payments accepted (Bitcoin, USDT, more)
- Sticky sessions up to 24 hours
- Dashboard is bare-bones, no fancy analytics
- Support reply time averaged 6 hours in my test
- Success rate 6 points below Oxylabs (91% vs 97%)
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $7 | 1 GB | $7.00 |
| Starter ⭐ | $80 | 20 GB | $4.00 |
| Growth | $157 | 70 GB | $2.24 |
| Business | $350 | 200 GB | $1.75 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: IPRoyal is the right pick for indie devs and small teams. Pay only for what you use, accept crypto, and get a working scraper for under $50/month.
- 65 million residential IPs (formerly Smartproxy)
- From $3.50 per GB on entry plan
- Self-serve dashboard, no KYC
- 3-day money-back guarantee
- Social media scraping (fast pages)
- Classifieds and listing sites
- First-time proxy buyers
- Devs who want zero setup friction
- Fastest response time I measured: 0.8 seconds
- No KYC, no minimum, sign up and go in 5 minutes
- Clean dashboard with usage charts that update live
- 3-day money-back guarantee (one of few that honor it)
- Pool smaller than Bright Data/Oxylabs (65M)
- Sticky sessions cap at 30 minutes
- Brand confusion from the 2024 rename from Smartproxy
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $6 | 1 GB | $6.00 |
| Starter ⭐ | $90 | 20 GB | $4.50 |
| Regular | $280 | 80 GB | $3.50 |
| Advanced | $600 | 200 GB | $3.00 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: Decodo is the fastest mid-tier and the easiest to start with. No KYC, no minimum, and the dashboard is the cleanest of the seven I tested.
- Dedicated datacenter and ISP IPs sold per unit
- Datacenter from $0.80/IP/month
- 30+ country options for static IPs
- 24/7 live chat in 8 languages
- Social media account management
- Logged-in scraping (Amazon Seller, etc.)
- SEO tools that need static IPs
- Teams managing 10–50 accounts
- Only provider here selling individual datacenter IPs
- Perfect for logged-in account scraping
- Cheapest static IP option ($0.80/IP/month)
- 24/7 live chat replied in under 2 minutes
- Not built for big rotating scraping jobs
- Residential pool is small if you need that
- Sometimes IPs sit in shared subnets — check before buying
| Plan | Price | Type | Per IP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter (10) | $10 | Static DC | $1.00 |
| ISP (10) ⭐ | $35 | Static ISP | $3.50 |
| Mobile (5) | $120 | 4G/5G | $24 |
| Residential (10GB) | $70 | Rotating | $7/GB |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: Pick Proxy-Seller when you need static IPs you can keep for a month — for account-based scraping, this beats any rotating network.
- 9 million residential IPs, Swiss-based
- Starts at $2.20 per GB
- GDPR-friendly, transparent sourcing
- 7-day money-back guarantee
- European-focused projects
- GDPR-sensitive use cases
- Projects under 50GB/month
- Side projects and tests
- Lowest residential entry price ($2.20/GB)
- Swiss-based, strong privacy posture
- Saturday support reply in 11 minutes (rare)
- GDPR-friendly, transparent IP sourcing
- Small pool (9M IPs) — may not scale past 100GB/month
- Country coverage focuses on Europe and North America
- No dedicated account manager option
| Plan | Price | GB Included | Per GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $4 | 1 GB | $4.00 |
| Starter ⭐ | $50 | 20 GB | $2.50 |
| Growth | $180 | 80 GB | $2.25 |
| Business | $440 | 200 GB | $2.20 |
Test Results
Editorial Audit
Bottom Line: Evomi is the smart budget pick if you’re in Europe or care about GDPR. Don’t expect it to scale to 1TB/month, but for normal projects it delivers.
How do the 7 best web scraping proxies compare?
Here’s the side-by-side scorecard. Same target sites, same scraper, same network — these are the actual numbers I got. The full breakdown is in the test results section under each provider.
| Oxylabs Top | NetNut | Bright Data | IPRoyal | Decodo | Proxy-Seller | Evomi | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg Success Rate | 97.4% | 96.1% | 95.8% | 91.2% | 92.7% | 89.0% | 88.4% |
| Sticky Session Length | 30 min | 47 min | 30 min | 24 hours | 30 min | Static | 20 min |
| Entry Price / GB | $4.20 | $5.50 | $5.88 | $1.75 | $3.50 | $0.80/IP | $2.20 |
| Free Trial | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Sticky Sessions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crypto Pay | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | N/A | ✓ | ✗ |
| Overall Score | 9.6 ⭐ | 9.2 | 9.1 | 8.9 | 8.7 | 8.3 | 8.0 |
Which proxy type should you use for scraping?
Not every scraping job needs residential proxies. Sometimes you don’t even need proxies at all — but for any target that has real bot detection, here are the four types you’ll see in 2026 and what each is for.
Frequently Asked Questions
I tested all twelve original providers (seven survived) over a 28-day window from April 14 to May 12, 2026. Each provider got 1,700 to 3,200 requests sent through their residential pool against five real targets: Google US SERP pages, Amazon US product pages, LinkedIn company pages, Walmart US, and G2 software reviews. Every request used Python with Playwright for JavaScript rendering, with a 3-second timeout and one retry. I bought entry-tier plans for every provider with my own money — no review accounts, no comped credit. Success was defined as HTTP 200 with the expected content returned (not a CAPTCHA or block page). Speed was measured as time-to-first-byte plus full response. Sticky-session length was measured by counting how long an authenticated session stayed valid before the proxy dropped the connection.
