Proxy Service Awards 2026
AI has taken over the world (so far, just figuratively), but we’re still here. In fact, the proxy server industry is the better for it, with more clients and more growth all around. Of course, this has also made the competition even more cutthroat than in 2025 when the market was already near its boiling point.
While some providers struggle to survive and others thrive, there are companies which do certain things a little better than the rest. The goal of our Proxy Service Awards is to notice such standouts and celebrate their excellence. This has been our tradition since 2019, and we’re not going to break it today.
Without further ado, here are the nominees for 2026:
These awards are based on our annual proxy server market report.
Best All-Rounder:
Decodo
Best All-Rounder: Decodo
There are over 200 active proxy server brands. If you’re new to the market, how do you actually choose one? In such cases, there’s usually one or two options that you can safely recommend for most users. We believe that Decodo perfectly exemplifies this safe default.
Decodo’s proxy networks keep placing in top echelons every year. They include more than the necessary baseline of features and are priced just below the market average among major providers. The company continues investing in user experience and providing live round-the-clock support. It has also adopted the best practices from other providers like Webshare, allowing entry-level users to get customizable proxy plans without spending much at all.
Altogether, Decodo is able to offer Oxylabs-level products on more approachable terms and without expecting serious commitment. To our minds, that is a lot, especially when competition has never been fiercer.
Best Value Provider:
Evomi
Best Value Provider: Evomi
Since 2023, the rates of residential proxies have shrunk by up to 70%. Some providers start at under $0.50 per gigabyte, scaling further as you buy more. Unlimited residential proxy plans further distort the market for those who afford to shell out several thousand dollars. Under these circumstances, is it still possible to stand out in value without just reselling a botnet?
Turns out, it is, and Evomi has done it. The provider’s Core residential proxies are a masterclass in pricing. Starting at just $0.49/GB, they offer a perfectly functioning service for those who need the basics. More demanding customers can enable one of the many toggles – they bring unique features like latency cutoffs, QUIC support, or simply a larger pool. You should be careful, though: each option multiplies the price, sometimes up to 15X the base amount.
Evomi’s pricing model breaks down once your traffic use grows into terabytes, if you need multiple upsells at once or, in the worst case, both. But for the many customers who just need their proxies to work well, Evomi offers value that’s hard to beat. Therefore, we’re happy to name it our Best Value Provider of 2026.
Most Scalable Provider: Oxylabs
Most Scalable Provider: Oxylabs
Some say that proxy pool numbers are a vanity metric. To them, IP quality is the new north star, the be-all and end-all. This sounds right, feels right, and may even be right – but only on the surface.
Quality shines against networks which worship at the altar of scale: they refuse to exclude any proxy servers, no matter how slow, unstable, or sourced from mediocre hosting providers they may be. But quality without scale can’t satiate the hunger of power users – such as the ravenous AI labs.
Oxylabs manages to bridge both. In our benchmarks, its residential and mobile proxy networks overshadowed all competitors in size. While this may have been the result of clever routing techniques, the provider sacrificed little in doing so. It retained the best success rate and completed requests faster than all but a few. The session stability remained high, and even the third-party IP quality tools couldn’t fault these proxies.
All in all, it seems that no matter what you throw at Oxylabs, the provider will shrug it off and continue to happily serve data. This deserves a new award which we named Most Scalable Provider. Congrats!
Most Flexible Provider:
DataImpulse
Most Flexible Provider: DataImpulse
From our previous description, you’d think that Evomi was the peak of customization. That is absolutely the case – but primarily when talking about its proxy network. Add the platform to the equation, and DataImpulse suddenly appears as the dark horse, taking the win.
DataImpulse’s first obvious virtue is that it lacks monthly subscriptions – every product lets you use purchased traffic indefinitely. What’s more, you’re not restricted to one package per product: the platform allows buying (and naming for your convenience) two, three, or five. When it comes to using proxies, you can always check how many IPs are online at a given moment, then select or exclude multiple locations at once. To save traffic, DataImpulse lets you blacklist hosts without contacting customer service.
And that’s just scratching the surface. DataImpulse is open to building custom solutions for your project if such a need arises. Granted, the experience can still be improved when it comes to the UX, observability, or just getting proper sub-users without enrolling into a reseller program. But overall, DataImpulse is ready to accommodate even tricky scenarios, and that’s why it gets our Most Flexible Provider of 2026 award.
Newcomer of the Year:
Byteful
Newcomer of the Year: Byteful
Every year our market report surfaces at least one exceptional rookie. This time, it was doubtlessly Byteful – a sneakerhead-turned-general-purpose vendor.
There’s much to say about Byteful, and even more to like. While still leaner than more established peers, its team knows proxies deeply and is able to turn this knowledge into some impressive things. Byteful’s platform is a work of art, borrowing the best features from its competitors. The proxy infrastructure is built on Rust, leading to frontrunner latency in several of our benchmarks. What’s more, the provider innovates with features like its traffic-conserving Smartpath technology.
Byteful already has a lot of bite. Now it needs to get the bark and the mass to really shake things up in our industry. From what we know, the first is already in motion, and the second should come as Byteful grows. Godspeed to our Newcomer of the Year!
