5 Best UK Proxy Providers of 2024
1. Smartproxy
Smartproxy is an excellent beginner option with easy-to-use proxy gateways coupled with impressive speeds. They use the best IPv4 protocol to provide secure HTTPS connections.
- Four proxy types
- Easy to use
- Good price
- Browser extension
- No SOCKS5
2. Oxylabs
Oxylabs provides 100 million residential proxy IPs with global coverage down to individual cities for precise geo-location targeting. It sells quality proxies for any use.
- Four proxy types
- Many cities in the UK
- Best proxy performance
- Your own account manager
- Pricey
3. Bright Data
Bright Data operates a peer-to-peer network of more than 72 million residential proxies. However, it might be hard to use for inexperienced customers.
- All proxy types
- Advanced geo-targeting
- Chrome extension
- 24/7 customer service
- High cost
- Difficult to set up
- Unclear pricing structure
Add up to $500 to your account and get double the amount.
4. SOAX
SOAX performs nearly as well as the first three options. Though it offers fewer IPs, the provider compensates by including advanced features like ASN targeting out of the box.
- Four proxy types
- Automatic IP rotation
- City & ASN targeting
- 24/7 customer support
- Starts from $99
- No browser extension
- Trial costs money
5. Webshare
Webshare gives you a lot of freedom to customize the service however you wish. Its signature datacenter & ISP proxies can be very cheap if you opt out of the bells and whistles.
- Datacenter, ISP & residential IPs
- Optional rotation for all proxies
- Complete self-service
- Free plan with 10 IPs
- Limited locations for some products
- One active plan per account
- Fewer features
Other Proxy Locations You Might Be Interested in:
How We Picked the Best UK Proxy Servers
First, we looked at the provider’s location coverage. All of our tested UK proxy providers had to successfully deliver local IP addresses to their network.
Our performance tests included running as many as 500 parallel connections to test the robustness of each proxy network in real-world conditions. If you want to buy UK proxypackages, it’s important to know that the provider’s network will hold up under heavy loads. Anything less is unacceptable, especially for business users performing local-based research or web scraping at volume.
We also looked at the providers’ features, ease of use, and customer service to make the final decision.
Buy a UK Proxy
UK proxies work across virtually any computing device, web browser or scraping software. Each provider has a different setup process, but documentation is available showing how it’s done.
The routing through the UK ensures that whichever way the proxy is being accessed, the network will show that you are connecting from the UK. Buying a UK proxy is a simple process with any of the providers we recommend.
All of the providers on our list feature residential proxy IP addresses. They are much harder to detect than datacenter proxies and work even with websites that prohibit proxy or VPN use.
Why You Should NOT Use a Free UK IP Address
Using a free UK proxy address might seem like a great idea, but it has many downsides. The main disadvantage is that they are insecure. Free proxy providers make money by snooping on your traffic and selling the data. They tend to be much slower due to overuse and can’t always reliably provide access to UK-specific content and websites. Getting past firewalls might be an issue as well.
Why You Might Need An IP In the UK
Local proxies are useful if you want to appear to be from a different town or city in the UK. Or it could be that you’re abroad and need UK-specific information without giving information away about your present location. Even shopping for UK goods from e-commerce stores (such as sneakers) is sometimes restricted when they spot you’re connecting from abroad.
If you want to create and manage multiple social media accounts, a proxy service offering UK IP addresses provides ways to achieve that.
You might want to see local price information, view local search results for a specific area, or scrape UK-targeted content. That’s a real pain unless you can connect to a paid UK proxy.
This is why UK proxies are commonly used by businesses wishing to target the UK market or analyze UK competitors.
Frequently Asked Questions About UK Proxies
Definitely. It’s legal to use UK proxies but always consult an attorney if you have any real concerns. Also, remember that proxies can to change where you appear to be connecting from, but they don’t make you untraceable. Therefore, it’s a good idea to stay on the right side of the law to avoid legal complications.
Yes. By using a UK proxy, you appear to be using the web locally. This provides access to UK-based online information that wouldn’t normally be viewable from elsewhere. This helps not only with anonymous browsing, but also UK market research and online web scraping.