The Best Proxy Server Providers of 2023

How We Tested Proxies

Since there are no industry standards set on how you should test residential 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 services. 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 Storm Proxies, 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

1. Smartproxy The best value provider.

Smartproxy is definitely a smart choice. Let’s break down everything this provider has to offer.

First of all, Smartproxy has one of the larger proxy pools in the market, which consists of 40M IPs from real devices. In our tests, over 63% of 2 million requests returned unique IPs, which is the highest number of all providers we tested. Not to mention that almost all of them are ISP and mobile IP addresses.

Also, we were pleasantly surprised by Smartproxy’s near-perfect connection success rate and a response rate of less than 1 second. Undeniably, that’s premium quality performance.

However, Smartproxy doesn’t fall into the premium provider category, and that has a lot to do with its pricing model. To provide bang for your buck, Smartproxy had to cut on on some features, so don’t be surprised by the lack of SOCKS5 support and slightly fewer targeting options. The company has its focus elsewhere, which is providing great customer support and excellent user experience.

Features:

• 40 million rotating residential IPs
• 195 locations with country and city targeting
• Rotation every request, 10, 30 mins
• Unlimited concurrent connections
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API & browser extension
• Extensive documentation
• Award-winning 24/7 support

Pricing:

Starts from $12.5 for 1 GB. 3-day refund available.

2. Oxylabs The best premium provider.

Oxylabs is a premium residential proxy provider. The company was founded in 2015 and now owns the largest – 100M – residential IP network.

But Oxylabs doesn’t only focus on quantity. Both quality and performance are its most prominent features. Our tests showed that its proxy pool consists of mostly landline and mobile IP addresses, delivering over 62% of unique IPs during our tests. These IPs demonstrated a nearly perfect success rate, enviable stability, and a fast response rate as well.

But what makes Oxylabs a truly premium provider is the wide arsenal of tools, like its Web Unblocker, which functions as a remote web scraper that integrates as a proxy server. And, let’s not forget the benefits of having a dedicated account manager to help you with whatever query you have. It only shows how the company values its customers.

However, to reap the most benefits of the services Oxylabs offers, you will need a large budget. So, if you’re a proxy newbie or looking to use proxies for personal purposes, Oxylabs’ pricing may not be ideal.

Features:

• 100M peer-to-peer & static residential IPs
• HTTP & HTTPS protocols
• Every country, thousands of cities, ASN targeting
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions up to 30 mins
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• Public API
• Extensive documentation
• 24/7 live support, dedicated account manager

Pricing:

Starts from $15 for 1 GB. 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.

3. Bright Data The best proxy ecosystem.

Bright Data, formerly known as Luminati, is one of the largest premium proxy suppliers today. When it comes to performance, this provider has it all figured out. Expect an almost perfect success rate, excellent response time, and stability. Its large, 72 million pool consists mostly of landline and mobile IPs, many of which are online at any given time.

Bright Data puts its powerful infrastructure to good use, offering a variety of tools that either build upon of help make better use of it. It offers a very extensive API, browser extension, and an open source proxy manager. If managing proxies isn’t your thing, you can get Web Unlocker, which returns results with a 100% success rate. The best thing is that you can spend however much you want, without committing to monthly plans.

However, if you’re just a beginner, Bright Data’s services may be too powerful and intimidating for you, as they demand technical knowledge. We often point out the high price when we talk about premium providers, and Bright Data is not an exception. Its services are expensive, and the pricing model may be a bit confusing to some.

Features:

• 72M peer-to-peer & static residential IPs
• HTTP, HTTPS & SOCKS protocols
• Every country, thousands of cities, ASN and carrier targeting
• Rotation every request, sticky sessions available
• Unlimited concurrent requests
• Whitelisted IP & user:pass authentication
• API, browser extension & proxy manager
• Extensive documentation
• 24/7 customer support

Pricing:

Starts from $15 for 1 GB. 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.

4. SOAX Stable proxies with granular filtering options.

SOAX is a relatively new provider, established in 2019. However, it already has a lot to offer. The company owns a residential proxy pool with 8.5M IPs. In our tests, over 36% of the IPs from nearly 2 million requests were unique, and 83% came from either landline or mobile devices.

Though the proxies were pretty slow, we were otherwise pleasantly surprised by SOAX’s performance. Its success rate (98%) rivaled the market leaders, and the server proved very stable. 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 a city and ASN level ouf of the box.

Features:

• 5M rotating residential IPs
• HTTP(S) over SOCKS5
• Global locations with country, city, ASN targeting
• Rotation from 90s to as long as available (with custom options)
• Concurrent requests limited by plan
• Whitelisted IP authentication
• API
• 24/7 live chat support

Pricing:

From $99 for 8GB ($12.38/GB) and 300 ports. 3-day trial for $1.99 available.

5. NetNut Well-performing proxies for a wide range of customers.

6. GeoSurf A small but premium quality IP network.

7. PacketStream Very affordable residential proxies.

8. Storm Proxies Rotating IPs with unlimited bandwidth.

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.