The Best Proxy Server Providers of 2023
Over the last few years, the proxy market has greatly expanded. Now, proxies aren’t only used for shady practices such as black hat SEO. Instead, they benefit many areas of expertise. For instance, individuals use proxy servers to access geo-restricted content, overcome website blocks, improve privacy, buy limited edition items or simply to change their IP address. Meanwhile, businesses take advantage of web scraping, data aggregation, market research, SEO monitoring, and many other use cases.
However, it’s quite hard to choose a trustworthy proxy service with so many companies on the market. Anything could lie beneath unrealistic marketing slogans, from unethically sourced IP addresses to false promises about how many IP addresses provider controls.
So, how do you know what you’re getting? Most people read the reviews to get an honest opinion of each providers’ products. However, this process is resource-intensive. To save you both time and money, we used our expertise in the market to test the most prominent proxy server providers. We test all types of proxies they offer. Here’s what we’ve found out.
The Best Proxy Server Providers of 2023 – Quick Summary:
- Smartproxy – the best value provider.
- Oxylabs – the best premium provider.
- Bright Data – the best proxy ecosystem.
- SOAX – stable proxies with granular location targeting.
- Webshare – intuitive service with customizable subscription.
- Infatica – affordable residential proxies with versatile targeting options.
- Rayobyte – robust datacenter proxies with non-expiring traffic.
- IPRoyal – cheap residential proxies with flexible filtering.
- NetNut – residential proxies for a wide range of customers.
- PacketStream – very affordable residential proxies.
How We Tested Proxies
Since there are no industry standards set on how you should test proxies, we used our technical knowledge and experience to create our own. The result is two main tests: a performance test and a manual analysis. The performance test looked into each provider’s proxy pool size, quality, success rate, and other aspects.
Meanwhile, the manual analysis dwelled into features, user experience, price, and customer service. We compiled all of the data to the only and most extensive Proxy Market Research.
Why We Tested Only Paid Proxy Providers
We won’t be looking at best free proxy servers. Why? Let’s face it: free proxy servers are terrible for anything beyond the most basic tasks. Are you interesting in hiding your IP address and browsing the web anonymously? Don’t use free proxy server that can track your every move. Unprotected web proxy server can steal your data or inject ads into websites you visit. On top of that, they’ll be slow and often already blocked or abused.
None of the proxy providers in our list are free. Heck, aside from Smartproxy, PacketStream and IPRoyal, the best anonymous proxy services aren’t even cheap! That’s because good service costs money, and we’re looking at the best the proxy server market has to offer.
The Best Proxy Providers of 2023
Smartproxy is definitely a smart choice. It has shared and private datacenter, residential, and mobile proxies. Let’s break down everything this provider has to offer.
First of all, the proxies come in huge proxy pools, covering many countries worldwide. All the products provide access to the full IP pool (except IP-based datacenter proxies).
We were pleasantly surprised by Smartproxy’s near-perfect connection success rate and fast response time with most products. For example, its residential proxies reached a response time of 0.57 s with a success rate of 99.43%. The provider managed to beat the market’s veterans like Bright Data.
Besides its premium performance, the provider stands out with user experience. It has extensive documentation, convenient proxy management tools like a browser extension, and award-winning customer service available 24/7. You also get free apps like an antidetect browser or a proxy address generator if you subscribe to any of the provider’s products.
The best part about the service is affordable pricing. Smartproxy has very competitive prices; it stands somewhere in the middle between cheap and premium providers. Let’s take the provider’s residential proxies; their starting price is $8.50/GB, while other providers charge $15/GB.
However, Smartproxy’s dedicated addresses have limited features and location coverage.
Features:
- Proxy types: shared and private datacenter, residential & mobile
- Extras: API, browser extension, extensive documentation
- Support: award-winning 24/7 support via chat or email
- Free trial: 3-day refund available.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $8.5 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: $30/50 GB ($0.7/GB) or $10 for 100IPs & 50 GBs ($0.1/IP).
- Mobile: $50 for 2GB ($25/GB)
Read the Smartproxy review for more information and performance tests.
Oxylabs is a premium provider focusing on mid-range and enterprise clients. It has a residential, ISP (rotating and static), datacenter (shared, private, rotating), and mobile proxies.
The company owns the largest proxy networks worldwide and covers any country you can think of.
But Oxylabs doesn’t only focus on quantity; performance is its most prominent feature. To illustrate this, most of the provider’s proxy types ended in the top three positions on our lists. Its residential proxies demonstrated the best overall success rate (99.61%), enviable stability, and fast response time (0.57 s).
And let’s not forget the benefits of having a dedicated account manager to help you with whatever query you have, flexible proxy management tools, and quality documentation. It only shows how the company values its customers.
However, you will need a large budget to reap the most benefits of the services Oxylabs offers. So, if you’re a proxy newbie or looking to use proxies for personal purposes, the provider’s pricing may not be ideal.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential, ISP (rotating, static), datacenter (shared, private, rotating) & mobile
- Extras: API, browser extension, extensive documentation
- Support: 24/7 via live chat, dedicated account manager
- Free trial: 7-day trial for businesses, 3-day refund.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $15 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: $50/77GB ($0.65/GB).
- ISP: 340/20GB ($17/GB).
- Mobile: $22 for 1 GB.
Bright Data is one of the largest premium proxy suppliers today. You can get residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP, and mobile proxies.
The provider controls the second-largest proxy network in the world that covers all countries. Its proxy servers are full of features like very versatile targeting and rotation.
When it comes to performance, Bright Data has it all figured out. Expect an almost perfect success rate, excellent response time and stability.
Bright Data puts its powerful infrastructure to good use, offering a variety of tools: a very extensive API, browser extension, and an open-source proxy manager. The latter allows you to manipulate the IPs to a great extent.
However, if you’re just a beginner, the service may be too powerful and intimidating for you, as it demands technical knowledge. We often point out the high price when we talk about premium providers, and Bright Data is not an exception – the service is expensive.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP & mobile proxies.
- Extras: API, browser extension, proxy manager, extensive documentation
- Support: 24/7 via live chat and tickets
- Free trial: 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $10.50 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: Very flexible and depends on the add-ons. You can pay as you go starting from $0.80/IP + $0.11/GB.
- ISP: $15/GB + $0.50/IP.
- Mobile: $24 for 1 GB.
SOAX is a relatively new provider, established in 2019. But it already has much to offer: residential, mobile, and ISP proxies.
The company owns a medium-sized proxy pool with over 100 countries for residential and mobile proxies. For now, you can get SOAX’s ISP proxies only in the US.
SOAX’s proxies perform well and demonstrate significant improvements every year. The provider’s residential network is now thrice faster compared to 2021 and fast enough to compete with market leaders.
But the most distinguishing thing about SOAX is how flexible its proxies are. You can choose from a wide range of rotation settings and target the IPs up to the city and ASN level without paying extra. To give you some context, Bright Data charges double for carrier targeting. Additionally, the provider has one of the better customer services we’ve seen.
SOAX primarily targets business clients, so don’t expect low prices. Its residential proxies scale pretty well, but we couldn’t say the same about mobile and ISP proxies – they’re pricier than Oxylabs and Bright Data services. Also, there are some technical drawbacks like obligatory IP whitelisting, a limited number of ports, and no pay as you go.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential, mobile & ISP
- Extras: limited API, node access (connect to an IP directly), customer success manager
- Support: 24/7 live chat and tickets
- Free trial: 3-day trial for $1.99 available
Prices start from:
$99 for 15 GB ($6.6/GB) and 300 ports.
Webshare is a newcomer in the industry, and it has a robust infrastructure of datacenter and ISP proxies. They come in multiple configurations and cover over 30 countries. Recently, Webshare improved its line-up with residential proxies.
This year, we tested Webshare for the first time and weren’t disappointed. Its shared and ISP proxies were fast and scaled well.
Webshare stands out with complete self-service and a customizable subscription model. You’re free to choose how many IPs you’d like to get in your preferred locations and then customize various aspects of the service: traffic, concurrency, and network priority. It also offers very flexible refresh options for its proxy networks, ranging from individual replacements to a full refresh of your proxy list as often as every five minutes. The service is easy to use, so you shouldn’t encounter any difficulties even if you’re a beginner.
Webshare can definitely be considered an affordable provider. The cost for basic configuration is below the market’s average.
Our main concern about the service is that Webshare has limited targeting options, so it isn’t ideal for location-sensitive use cases.
Features:
- Proxy types: shared, dedicated, semi-dedicated datacenter, ISP & residential
- Extras: API, basic documentation
- Support: Monday to Friday (6am-6pm PST) support via email
- Free trial: a free plan with 10 shared addresses.
Prices start from:
*depends on add-ons.
- Residential: $7 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: $1 for 1IP.
- ISP: $4.20 for 1 IP.
Infatica sells two proxy types: residential and shared datacenter.
The provider owns a 10 million residential IP network with locations worldwide and 5 thousand shared datacenter proxies in the US. The residential service has versatile targeting options – you can target locations by country, city, or ASN. There’s no limit on the number of threads you can run, and they inevitably rotate – with every request or between 5 and 60 minutes.
Although we didn’t test Infatica’s datacenter proxies, its residential IPs were performant. We did experience a slightly higher error rate than other services on the list, but the proxies were fast.
The provider mainly focuses on businesses, offering cheaper residential rates for enterprise plans compared to other premium options. The price for shared addresses may seem steep at first, but once you scale, it drops significantly.
Even though the top competitors already offer pay as you go, Infatica still lacks this model, so your only option is to stick with a subscription. In terms of user experience, things could be improved. For example, the main page fails to show traffic use, and you have to navigate multiple layers deep to find it.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential & dedicated datacenter
- Extras: extensive documentation
- Support: 24/7 via tickets, chat or email
- Free trial: 3-day trial for $1.99 available.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $96 for 8 GB ($12/GB).
- Datacenter: $15 for 5 IPs ($3/IP)
Read the Infatica review for more information and performance tests.
Rayobyte’s is well known for its private datacenter proxies, but it also sells shared datacenter, residential, and ISP (static, rotating). It’s a strong choice for customers of all sizes.
The provider’s network of private datacenter proxies is impressive – 300,000 IPs throughout nine ASNs, hosted in self-owned data centers. Its peer-to-peer residential addresses cover over 150 countries. And the shared proxies come in three different formats: 1) a list of IPs shared in 11 countries, 2) ports with rotating IPs assigned to each port, and 3) pool-based proxies in the US.
Rayobyte’s strongest suit is its datacenter and ISP proxies. Both types reached an almost perfect success rate in our tests and were fast enough to compete with other premium providers. Residential proxies, on the other hand, were a bit slow.
Rayobyte’s dashboard includes everything needed to work with proxies, and there’s full self-service for datacenter and ISP plans. The latter are relatively inexpensive compared to the alternatives.
You can either pay as you go or subscribe to a residential plan of your choice. While the cost of fewer GBs may seem high, the provider’s pricing becomes more favorable once you scale. For example, Rayobyte’s residential proxies will cost you half the unit price – from $15/GB to $7/GB – once you buy over 50 GBs. And the best part is that the traffic never expires. You can buy 1TB of data for as low as $3/GB and use it whenever you need.
Rayobyte’s main downsides come from the lack of features for residential and pool-based shared addresses. The latter are still in beta.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential, datacenter (shared, dedicated, rotating), & ISP (static, rotating)
- Extras: extensive documentation
- Support: 24/7 via email, ticketing system, or live chat
- Free trial: 2-day free trial available.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $15 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: from $4/5 IPs ($0.8/IP) or $0.65/GB.
- ISP: $25 for 5 IPs ($5/IP).
IPRoyal is one of the cheaper residential proxy providers, but it also offers affordable private datacenter, ISP, and mobile addresses. The provider has a very small proxy pool but good location coverage.
The residential product has flexible filtering and rotation options, but the datacenter and ISP proxies have none of these features. The latter two come with unlimited threads, domains, and a free monthly refresh.
IPRoyal has pretty good customer service, extensive documentation, and a browser extension for easier proxy management.
The low price and ability to resell the proxies impact IPRoyal’s performance. Residential proxies had a success rate below 90% and were significantly slower, up to seven times slower compared to Smartproxy. But they should be enough for less demanding tasks.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential, datacenter, ISP, & mobile
- Extras: proxy tester, extensive documentation, browser extension
- Support: 24/7 customer support via live chat
- Free trial: None
Prices start from:
- Residential: $7 for 1 GB.
- Datacenter: $9 for 5 IPs ($1.80/IP).
- ISP: $4 for IP
Read the IPRoyal review for more information and performance tests.
NetNut has an eye for businesses with big needs. It offers shared datacenter, residential, ISP, and mobile proxies.
The provider’s proxies come from very large IP pools. The residential proxies cover 150 locations, ISP – 30, and shared IPs come from only the US.
Over the years, we’ve seen a gradual improvement of NetNut’s infrastructure – today, most of its proxies reach a success rate of over 90% (except the datacenter IPs with only 49.30%). But there are some concerns about the speed. Its residential proxies were twice slower than the year before, with an average response time of 2.13 s.
NetNut’s cheapest plans don’t have many features, but at an extra price, you can get dedicated support, IP whitelisting, and request-based pricing. So, large enterprises will find the service fitting. Additionally, you’ll get very detailed usage statistics on the dashboard.
NetNut can definitely be called a premium provider – it has one of the highest prices per GB. And even though the cost is more favorable once you go over 100GB with residential plans, it still can’t compare to alternatives like Smartproxy. And there’s no pay as you go.
Features:
- Proxy types: shared datacenter, residential, ISP, and mobile
- Extras: API (for resellers), mediocre documentation
- Support: 24/7 customer support via email, Skype (larger plans)
- Free trial: 7-day free trial available.
Prices start from:
- Residential: $100 for 5 GBs ($20/GB).
- Datacenter: $100/100 GBs ($1/GB).
- ISP: $350 for 20GBs ($17.50/GB).
- Mobile: $300 for 10 GBs ($30/GB).
Read the NetNut review for more information and performance tests.
PacketStream has been on the market for several years following its very promising start with the residential proxy service. But over the years, the service remains pretty basic, though very affordable.
The provider has a small pool of 7 million residential IPs. The only thing worth noting is that we found much fewer unique IPs than could be expected from the 7 million IP network. This means you can quickly start getting duplicate proxies. For example, PacketStream brought roughly around 6 thousand proxies in the US.
On the other hand, PacketStream has quite good infrastructure performance – its residential proxies managed to beat some competition like NetNut or IPRoyal. You’ll get unlimited threads, and the proxies will rotate with every request.
What distinguishes PacketStream is its unbelievably low price on paper. A gigabyte costs as little as $1 with a pay-as-you-go model, making the provider a very strong budget option. But there’s a catch – PacketStream overcounts traffic use by eight to ten times. So, in the end, you’ll pay a similar price to premium providers.
Features:
- Proxy types: residential
- Extras: API for resellers
- Support: 24/7 via email
- Free trial: none
Pricing:
Starts from $1 for 1 GB.
Read the PacketStream review for more information and performance tests.
Most Popular Proxy Types and Use Cases
- The most common proxy types are datacenter and residential proxies. The former come from cloud hosting companies, while the latter are sourced from real users.
- Proxies can be private, which means that the IP belongs to one user or a particular domain. On the contrary, shared proxies are available to a handful of different users. There are also rotating proxies that automatically fetch you IPs from a pool of addresses. For those who need diversity, SOCKS5 proxies can handle almost any protocol, program, or type of traffic.
- Ad verification proxies can help track misplaced ads, check their redirection paths, and check whether they appear in the right location.
- SEO proxies are commonly used to track ranks, research keywords, analyze competitors, and perform site audits. Since search engines are tough to scrape, there are specialized proxies to tackle the task, such as Google scraping proxies.
- Web scraping proxies make sure you won’t get blocked when you scrape various targets. They are fast, anonymous, and hard to detect. If you’re using a bot, make sure to get ScrapeBox proxies to go with it. These proxies are used to increase your scraping success rates.
- Sneaker proxies help to overcome strict anti-botting measures imposed by various popular sneaker stores.
- Social media proxies differ according to each popular platform. Twitter proxies are used to either unblock Twitter in countries where the government blocks it or to manage multiple accounts. Instagram proxies are usually mobile or at least residential, and they will protect you from getting banned when you’re working with multiple accounts. Facebook proxies provide you with an opportunity to unblock, manage multiple accounts, and scrape Facebook. Pinterest proxies are verified to work with Pinterest platform, so you will scrape or pin without getting blocked. Youtube proxies allow you to access geo-restricted content, automate and scrape YouTube.
- Another popular use case is e-commerce. Amazon proxies offer a fast and reliable way to scrape reviews and product listings, perform market research and boost your e-commerce business. Craigslist proxies let you scrape its postings or post multiple ads yourself to various locations and without blocks.
Hey! What is the cheapest proxy provider that offers decent quality? I want to try scraping couple of websites, and since I’m not a tech guy, I don’t want to spend a fortune on a thing that might not even work out (the scraping part) .
It depends on the website and how much data you’re going to scrape. If the website doesn’t have sophisticated bot protection, and you need a moderate amount of data, you can try Smartproxy’s datacenter proxies. Alternatively, you can try Storm Proxies.
thanks for the article! smartproxy might offer the best cheap proxies in terms of quality, speed and IP pool size but they are not the cheapest… i still don’t get how packetstream is able to offer $1/GB
Thank you