NetNut Review
NetNut controls large proxy networks that can be very fast and perform decently. But they work best for experienced users or those who want proxies at scale.
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NetNut is a premium provider of rotating proxy servers. It’s less popular than something like Smartproxy or Bright Data but still a well-known option among businesses. NetNut’s forte is ISP proxies, though nowadays it can offer all major IP types.
In this review, I’ll take a close look at NetNut’s ISP, residential, and mobile proxy services. We’ll see how it compares with other premium providers and whether NetNut really controls the fastest residential proxy network, as it likes to claim.
Here we go.
News about NetNut
- February 19, 2024
- By Adam Dubois
- Provider News
- October 12, 2023
- By Adam Dubois
- Provider News
- November 16, 2022
- By Adam Dubois
- Provider News
General Information
Country | Israel |
Founded | 2017 |
Proxy networks | Datacenter (rotating) ISP (rotating) Residential Mobile Proxy API (in beta) |
Web scrapers | SERP and social media scrapers (in beta) |
Other tools | – |
Price range | Premium |
Starting price | $100 |
Payment methods | PayPal, Credit Card |
Trial | 7 days for businesses |
NetNut is an Israeli proxy provider established in 2017. It belongs to Alarum, which provides cybersec and privacy services. NetNut’s products include all major types of proxy networks. There are also several beta-level web scraping APIs you can try.
NetNut can safely be considered a premium provider with an eye to businesses with big needs. This reflects throughout the whole service: from customer support to pricing. That doesn’t mean NetNut is completely inaccessible to entry-level clients: the plans start from $100. But you’ll get better experience – and much better rates – paying $500 and up.
Aside from businesses, resellers are another focus. NetNut tries to lure them in with dedicated pools, elaborate usage statistics, and, of course, functionality like proxy management API and sub-users, which are locked from regular customers. NetNut has been a popular choice among sneaker scalpers thanks to its large network of ISP proxies.
Speaking of, ISP proxies are (or at least were) NetNut’s highlight. NetNut sources them via DiviNetworks, where the company pays internet service providers for sharing their unused bandwidth. This carries extra benefits compared to other ISP proxy services, namely that the IPs have real browsing history, and you might even use them in parallel with residential users.
The other networks like residential and mobile proxies came later. The provider isn’t open about how it sources its end-user based addresses. In any case, they balance out the service and make NetNut a viable choice for most web scraping professionals.
NetNut Residential Proxies
Residential proxies are one of NetNut’s main products. The advertised pool includes 52 million IPs. However, not all of them come from real devices: due to a past legal conflict with Bright Data, NetNut only sells server-based residential proxies in the US (basically ISP proxies).
Features
A fully-featured but unexceptional service.
Format: Proxy pool with 52M IPs Locations: 150+ around the world Filtering: Country, state, city Rotation: Every request, as long as available | Threads: Unlimited Traffic: Plan based SOCKS5: ✅ Authentication: Credentials, IP whitelist |
NetNut’s proxies offer the baseline of features that we’ve come to expect from residential providers. You can target over 150 countries, with an option to specify states and cities. SOCKS5 is supported (though likely without UDP), and you won’t be burdened by connection limits.
Some things that could be improved are even more precise targeting (ASN or maybe even co-ordinates), as well as an ability to specify custom rotation intervals. Currently, you can only bind an IP to a sticky session, without much control over its rotation.
Pricing Plans
Expensive rates that require a subscription.
Model: Subscription Format: Traffic | Starting price: $100 for 5 GB Trial: 7 days for companies |
NetNut is an unapologetically premium provider. There is no pay as you go, and the pricing plans start from $100, which is pretty expensive these days. For some inexplicable reason, NetNut doesn’t even advertise its cheapest plan publicly – on the website, the pricing starts from $300.
NetNut’s direct premium competitors all slashed their rates in 2023. As a holdout, it remains one of the most expensive options in the market. The silver lining is that NetNut scales well past 500 GB of data, so this should be less relevant to its target enterprise market.
Performance Benchmarks
A large pool with mediocre infrastructure performance.
#1: Pool size & composition
We ran 1M requests over 21 days using the unfiltered pool, 500,000 requests over 14 days using the country pools, and 140,000 connection requests over 7 days using the Australian pool. We enriched IP data with the IP2Location database.
Gateway | Unique IPs | Residential % |
Random | 751,568 | 91.11% |
US | 387,399 | 95.51% |
UK | 232,938 | 89.87% |
Germany | 85,425 | 71.01% |
France | 35,915 | 86.97% |
India | 59,496 | 91.71% |
Australia | 17,861 | 83.39% |
#2: Infrastructure performance
This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.
Gateway | Avg. success rate | Avg. response time |
Random | 93.52% | 2.13 s |
US | 96.65% | 1.93 s |
UK | 79.10% | 2.07 s |
Germany | 79.50% | 1.73 s |
France | 77.87% | 2.48 s |
India | 58.36% | 2.15 s |
Australia | 97.51% | 3.12 s |
#3: Performance with popular targets
We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US-filtered proxies and a non-headless Python scraper. Our computer was located in Germany. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.
Website | Avg. success rate | Avg. response time |
Amazon | 92.74% | 4.37 s |
70.37% | 2.68 s | |
Social Media | 97.71% | 2.28 s |
Walmart | 97.37% | 3.29 s |
Total | 89.57% | 3.16 s |
NetNut Mobile Proxies
Mobile addresses are NetNut’s newest addition to its proxy line-up launched in late 2022. Their network consists of around 250,000 IPs around the world.
Features
No carrier targeting.
Format: Proxy pool with 250,000 IPs Locations: 100+ countries Filtering: Country, state, city Rotation: Every request, as long as available | Threads: Unlimited Traffic: Plan based SOCKS5: ✅ Authentication: Credentials, IP whitelist |
Pricing Plans
Hard to justify until large scale.
Model: Subscription Format: Traffic | Starting price: $300 for 10 GB Trial: 7 days for companies |
NetNut’s mobile proxies follow a subscription-based pricing model and start from $400, which is a lot. There’s no paying as you go; but given that NetNut tries to attract enterprise clients, they can use the free trial.
Compared to the broader market, NetNut faces tough competition: Bright Data and Oxylabs have very strong products and cost the same amount. SOAX and Infatica offer more features at lower price points. It makes financial sense to choose the provider only if you’re going big – or if you need a new IP pool.
Performance Benchmarks
#1: Pool size & composition
We ran 280,000 requests over 14 days using the unfiltered pool and country pools, and 140,000 connection requests over 7 days using the Australian pool. We enriched IP data with the IP2Location database.
Gateway | Unique IPs | Usage type – mobile |
Random | 230,125 | 26.87% |
US | – | – |
UK | 153,005 | 62.52% |
Germany | 8,867 | 50.45% |
France | 5,379 | 66.54% |
India | 59,769 | 91.93% |
Australia | 16,067 | 34.11% |
#2: Infrastructure performance
This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.
Gateway | Avg. success rate | Avg. response time |
Random | 95.68% | 2.27s |
US | – | – |
UK | 81.44% | 1.80 s |
Germany | 80.88% | 1.68 s |
France | 80.43% | 1.89 s |
India | 95.69% | 2.48 s |
Australia | 98.10% | 3.39 s |
#3: Performance with popular targets
We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US-filtered proxies and a non-headless Python scraper. Our computer was located in Germany. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.
Website | Avg. success rate | Avg. response time |
Amazon | 90.68% | 4.38 s |
72.65% | 2.72 s | |
Social Media | 98.25% | 2.29 s |
Walmart | 97.58% | 3.57 s |
Total | 89.87% | 3.24 s |
The mobile proxies managed to open popular websites without bigger problems, and we can’t really fault them here.
NetNut ISP Proxies
Features
Market leading functionality.
Format: Proxy pool with 1M IPs Locations: 30+ countries Filtering: Country, state, city Rotation: Every request, sticky sessions | Threads: Unlimited Traffic: Plan based SOCKS5: ✅ Authentication: Credentials, IP whitelist |
Pricing Plans
In-between residential and mobile proxies.
Model: Subscription Format: Traffic | Starting price: $200 for 10 GB Trial: 7 days for companies |
NetNut uses a subscription-based pricing model for its ISP proxies. The cheapest plan starts from $200 and can only be found in the dashboard. Even then, the entry point is steep compared to most competition.
The ISP proxies cost around 10-20% more than the provider’s residential network. In the broader context, NetNut’s rates hover above the market average and start picking up the pace from 100 GB onwards. Still, they find it hard to compete with value providers like SOAX and Webshare.
Performance Benchmarks
Many fast proxies plagued by timeouts.
#1: Pool size & composition
We ran ~780,000 connection requests over 7 days using the US pool.
Unique IPs | ASNs | C-class subnets | IPs/subnet |
143,968 | 3 | 567 | 254 |
We further enriched IP data using two databases. IPinfo provided information about the ASN name and type (whether it’s a residential network). IP2Location gave us data about the business purpose of the company that owns the IP (usage type). ISP proxies often have mismatching ASN and IP owner, and this data point is relevant with some detection tools like Scamalytics.
IPs under a residential ASN | IPs under a top 10 US ASN | Usage type – ISP or MOB |
100% | 0% | 59% (the rest – educational) |
#2: Infrastructure performance
This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it chose a server closest to the IP and had a response size of several kilobytes. To benchmark download speed, we used Hetzner’s 100 MB speed test.
Avg. success rate | Avg. response time | Avg. download speed (10 IPs) |
93.63% | 0.46 s | 9.71 MB/s |
How to Use NetNut
Registration
To create an account with NetNut, you’ll have to complete a 3-step procedure. It requires entering your full name, username, email address, password, and use case.
NetNut requires undergoing a KYC check for its residential and static residential networks. It comes in the form of an online form.
Dashboard
NetNut’s dashboard is a mixed bag. Some parts are very fleshed out, while others are lacking or missing altogether.
In the dashboard, you’ll be able to see active plans, buy new ones, track your usage stats, and download invoices. You’ll also be able to set up proxies using a provided widget, even if the process is somewhat unintuitive. Finally, there’s a live chat button to talk with customer support when they’re available.
Subscription Management
NetNut’s supports self-service for all its products, so you can get a plan via the dashboard. This will require entering your billing info with a lengthy form for company customers. You can opt to automatically renew plans if they expire or the traffic gets depleted, and the system allows having multiple plans active at once.
Once you’ve bought a plan, you can track its expiration and status on the dashboard’s main screen. There are separate pages in the Settings for downloading invoices and viewing your purchase history, along with traffic use during the billing period.
There’s no advanced functionality like setting usage limits, topping-up a plan, or getting estimations for the remaining billing period.
Proxy Management
NetNut’s proxy servers all use the same entry gateway, adding parameters to the username to specify proxy type, location, and sticky sessions.
First, you’ll have to configure your credentials or whitelist an IP address. NetNut hides this functionality under the Settings sections. For some reason, the tab for whitelisting is called Unauthenticated IPs.
To facilitate proxy setup, NetNut provides an interactive widget called Proxy Generator. It lets you choose a programming language, proxy type, country, and target URL. It then generates a code snippet for pre-defined HTTP libraries.
In my opinion, the widget’s current implementation is severely lacking:
- It shows more locations than NetNut’s static residential proxies support, so you’ll have to guess. In addition, it provides no way to specify a city, even though this functionality is supported.
- You can’t use it to generate a list of endpoints or specify sticky sessions.
- The widget is unable to fetch your credentials and requires entering the password.
- Generating a code snippet for Bash (cURL) also includes an ancient user-agent header with Chrome 55 and Windows 8. The other programming languages don’t do this.
- I’m not sure why NetNut allows specifying a target and doesn’t simply use an in-house or external proxy checker like every other provider.
To locate the missing instructions, you’ll have to browser around NetNut’s lengthy FAQ. All in all, the experience is messy and begs for improvement.
Usage Tracking
NetNut is generally very good with usage statistics. You can get granular reports filtered by a date range (preset or custom). The basic version includes request count, success and response time metrics, and data use. You can further filter use by countries, domains, and even connection errors. Overall, you get much more than most competitors can offer out of the box.
While all this sounds great in theory, the actual implementation is once again very imperfect. For one, there are no visualizations whatsoever. Second, filtering by date didn’t work for me.
And third, I actually got conflicting data after turning on different toggles. The basic report showed that we had made over 600k requests with a success rate of 93%. With domain filtering on, the number of total requests now neared a million, and they had an average success rate close to 100%! Think of that what you will.
Documentation
NetNut has historically had issues with presenting information. Despite the provider’s best efforts, many of them remain unsolved.
That’s not to say that NetNut has no documentation: there is a rather lengthy FAQ and integration guidelines with major tools. However, if you want to find out if non-resellers can create sub-users, how to target cities, the rotation options of the residential IPs, or even which countries are available for the static residential IPs, you’ll have to dig deep or give up and write to NetNut directly. At times this can be frustrating.
That said, NetNut seems to have finally started prioritizing user experience, so hopefully things will change soon.
Hands-On Support
NetNut offers life chat support during Israeli working hours, as well as email support. Customers further get their own dedicated account manager. This way, most communication is done on Skype.
When I registered for a free trial, one of NetNut’s managers messaged me after 15 minutes or so. He immediately enabled my test account and provided me with instructions. They usually create a separate chat for active users and respond quite quickly.
However, NetNut’s customer service isn’t always as fast. On average, it took them more than an hour to respond to our emails, and the estimated time for a live chat reply is around two hours. This isn’t ideal for emergencies.
Conclusion
So, what can I say about NetNut? Quite a few positive things, actually.
The little squirrel packs a punch. The proxy networks we tried are large and perform well, aside from some timeout issues. And if you require ISP proxies, it’s one of the best developed options in the market in terms of features.
Proxies aside, improvements are needed. This applies especially to the user experience side of things: documentation is lacking, setup instructions unfriendly, and customer support has limited working hours. There’s also the matter of pricing plans that start from hundreds of dollars and are no longer competitive in the entry range.
That said, NetNut’s parent company has been shedding away its other properties to focus on the proxy business. This means more marketing budget, more products, and an overall push to grow. We’re already start to see new scraping APIs emerge from the workshop.
Even now, NetNut is a terrific choice for scraping, market research, even social media automation – especially if you use thousands of gigabytes of data. Scale and flexibility are the company’s strong points, and they’re not to be underestimated.
All in all, NetNut is not quite the highest tier provider just yet, but it’s surely getting there.
NetNut Alternatives
A strong NetNut alternative for web scraping. You get a larger IP pool, better performance, and optional web scraping APIs that take care of proxy management from you.
Smartproxy offers cheaper rotating proxy pools, several scraping APIs, and a great user experience. It’s a strong performer and an overall value choice.
Bright Data has one of the best infrastructure and tooling on the market. It offers not only proxies, but also proxy APIs, powerful proxy manager, and complete data sets.
Want more? View the full list of the NetNut alternatives.
Recommended for:
Data-hungry enterprises with strict compliance needs.