Proxy Service Awards 2025
Halfway through 2025, we find ourselves in a vibrant and thriving proxy server market. The landscape is shaped by AI companies with their insatiable appetite for data, commoditization of proxies as a product, and intense competition, both direct and through white labels.
We recently launched our annual proxy market report, where we observed and documented these trends. And now, it’s time to recognize the providers whose tireless efforts have made proxy servers more performant, accessible, and otherwise better – for us and the market at large.
These are the nominees for 2025’s awards:
Best Enterprise Provider: Oxylabs
Best Enterprise Provider: Oxylabs
The past year brought the proxy server market to a simmering point, with 250 companies fighting for your business. All the while, the lucrative enterprise segment remained relatively untouched. It’s no wonder, then, that providers like Infatica, SOAX, DataImpulse, and even Rayobyte, which was all about the everyday Joe a moment ago, have been moving up.
However, that’s not exactly easy to achieve. As one of the companies exclaimed, enterprise competitors are well-funded, have strong brand recognition, and long-standing relationships. They make it easy to ensure compliance and work on projects as a team. And, of course, they are able to support the scale needed for large operations.
In our eyes, Oxylabs is the prime example of an enterprise-minded proxy provider. Not only is its proxy network huge and market-leading in performance, but you also get team access, detailed observability and budgeting tools, various assurances, and great human care. Some aspects of the user experience could be improved, but they do little to detract from the overwhelming positives.
And so, with Bright Data dropping out this year, and NetNut’s platform once again failing to support its impressive proxy infrastructure, we unashamedly nominate Oxylabs as the Best Enterprise Provider of 2025. Congratulations!
Contender of the Year:
SOAX
Contender of the Year: SOAX
For a while, it seemed like SOAX had fallen into a lull. It fumbled our 2024 benchmarks and invested a lot into building a no-code AI scraper, whose public interface could hardly even be called a proof of concept and is no longer available. Meanwhile, its edge in features vanished while competitors like NetNut raced full speed ahead. We’re painting a pretty grim picture, aren’t we?
Well, the SOAX of today seems to be in a much better – or at least livelier – place than where we left it. The provider has once again claimed its role as a leading technologist, being one of the first to introduce features like UDP and QUIC support. During our tests, it launched more gateway servers, which markedly improved network performance. And, of course, in recent months, SOAX joined the ranks of the few providers that offer unified platform-based pricing.
If that wasn’t enough, SOAX recently announced the acquisition of not one but two proxy server vendors to further strengthen its infrastructure. All things considered, we can’t imagine any other provider more deserving of our 2025 Contender of the Year award. Well done!
Value Choice:
Decodo
Value Choice: Decodo
Giving our Best Value award each year is like reliving Groundhog day – the nominee always ends up being Smartproxy (now Decodo). But unlike the hero in Groundhog day, who resets the clock every time he does something wrong, Decodo continues doing things right. And frankly, we’re fine with that.
What exactly about Decodo generates so much value? First, as a mid-market provider, it simply punches above its weight. Decodo’s proxy networks rival and often beat even more expensive alternatives in key metrics. For example, its residential proxy pool was top three both in size and infrastructure performance. Then, there’s the matter of price. Decodo remains highly competitive, especially with its shared server-based proxies, whose rates are downright unfair.
But this wouldn’t work so well if it weren’t for Decodo’s user experience. The provider relentlessly iterates to make its dashboard and interactions friction-free. The documentation is well-written and maintained. Decodo’s excellent customer service ties it all together, with competent live chat help at any hour of the week.
Of course, the competition doesn’t sleep. IPRoyal is breathing down Decodo’s neck with its still oh-so-compelling forever packages. And there are the less scrupulous but very efficient providers from the East. But do they have enough to break the spell? Our answer is clear for now.
Newcomers of the Year:
Evomi & Massive
Newcomers of the Year: Evomi & Massive
Last year, we came to an impasse. There were two providers – both very different but absolutely deserving of our Newcomer of the Year award. After long deliberation, we chose one from a market segment that was represented less.
This year, we found ourselves in the same boat. Evomi and Massive, just one year in the making, started off strong and managed to hold their own against the very best. What went around came around, so we decided to take a different approach and recognize both newcomers for their efforts.
What made them stand out? For Evomi, there were several factors. For one, the provider has already built a solid base to stand on, with competitive proxy pools and infrastructure performance. It also invests in branding, highlighting trust and Swiss origins. That said, Evomi’s differentiating quality comes in the way it packages the residential proxy network, with amazingly cheap base rates and unique filters like proxy latency and fraud score.
Massive has fewer fancy features to flaunt (other than device filtering, which is really neat), but that’s not what this provider is about. Its core functionality is simply good, to say the least, no matter how you cut it. While not the largest, Massive’s proxy network is home-sourced, fast, and effective. It topped our benchmarks multiple times and handled everything we threw at it. The platform and variety lag behind; but with only one year in, there’s plenty of time to build them out.
Looking beyond their strong first impressions, do Evomi and Massive have enough to entrench themselves among the greats? Evomi’s challenge will be to ensure the pool’s quality at the price it charges – we already saw it stumble in our real-world tests. Massive needs to get its name out there – and, being an American VC-backed company – follow through with the path it’s taking.
But hey – let’s carpe diem and leave future worries for the future. Congratulations to both providers – you deserve it!
Greatest Progress:
DataImpulse
Greatest Progress: DataImpulse
DataImpulse is our previous Newcomer of the Year, chosen after a long deliberation and with high hopes for the future. A year later, it looks like the provider didn’t disappoint.
DataImpulse retains the qualities that made it so appealing. Its proxy networks are still extremely affordable, outfitted with advanced features and non-expiring plans. You’re still greeted by a human, and this is even touted as a proud selling point. The platform is also surprisingly robust, with useful capabilities like visibility into online IPs.
All the while, DataImpulse’s proxy networks have grown faster and been better maintained. The provider has launched an SDK alongside its bandwidth sharing app to increase the pool size. There’s even a Premium plan now that cherry-picks the best performing proxies and promises particular attention to custom needs.
It’s hard to call DataImpulse’s changes a revolution. Rather, the provider has been steadily building upon its strengths. And frankly, this is all that’s needed, at least to receive our 2025 Greatest Progress award. Keep it up!
