Oxylabs Review
The sheer scale and performance of Oxylabs’ proxy networks has few equals. Coupled with advanced web scraping tools and professional customer service, it can meet the data collection needs of any business.
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Oxylabs is a major proxy provider that competes with services like Bright Data and NetNut for business clients. It’s currently the best-rated company on this website, and one that received our Best Proxies for Enterprise award in 2024. These two details indicate that we consider the provider to be a very strong pick – maybe even for smaller projects that require quality infrastructure.
In this review, we’ll go through Oxylabs’ main products to see how they fare against the alternatives. In addition to a general overview, you’ll find detailed performance benchmarks based on several weeks of testing. Let’s go!
News about Oxylabs
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By Adam Dubois
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General Information
Oxylabs is a Lithuanian proxy provider running since 2015. It’s one of the biggest companies in the field, offering all kinds of proxy services and several data collection APIs that can help you scrape just about any target.
Oxylabs primarily targets business clients. This reflects everywhere: from a prim and tidy website, to a list of certifications on the homepage and a dedicated account manager. Heck, its products even have insurance! – that’s a first for a proxy company. However, that also means you’ll be paying above-average prices.
This orientation toward enterprises means that Oxylabs would like to lock you into a long-term contract and foster the relationship through account managers. But lately, the provider has been opening up its platform, putting increasing emphasis on self-service and cheaper entry plans.
As a company, Oxylabs invests much effort into business ethics. The provider has made a framework for ethical proxy acquisition and that it’s a member of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative (you can read our interviews on proxy ethicality and KYC guidelines). In addition, Oxylabs partners with governmental and non-profit organizations through projects like 4beta.
Oxylabs Proxy Networks
Oxylabs offers all four kinds of proxy servers:
- Datacenter proxies, which you can get dedicated in lists from over 180 countries, or in shared pool covering around 10 locations.
- ISP (static residential) proxies, available in shared or dedicated lists in several locations.
- Residential proxies from any country around the world.
- Mobile proxies with global coverage that borrow the resources of real devices.
We cover individual proxy types in the expandable drop-downs below:
Datacenter
Oxylabs controls the largest network of datacenter proxies in the world – over 2 million IPs from nearly 8,000 subnets. You can get them in two formats:
- Dedicated proxy list for your exclusive use.
- Rotating proxy pool with thousands of shared IPs in multiple locations.
Features
Oxylabs’ dedicated datacenter proxies look impressive. They have nearly no limitations, support SOCKS5, and come from over 150 locations, with an ability to specify states and cities.
With a stock of 2 million IPs, you can scale as much as you need. What’s more, this ensures high IP diversity, which is always welcome for avoiding subnet and ASN-related bans.
Part of the functionality becomes unavailable if you choose the self-service approach. It covers only eight countries and foregoes more precise targeting; on the other hand, Oxylabs includes an optional rotation feature for those who need it.
The shared rotating proxies revolve around (no pun intended) the US: there are 10,000 IPs there. Western European countries like the UK and France include 2,000 each, while most Asian locations have 1,000. The service is intended for web scraping, so it can switch IP addresses with each connection request or create limited duration sessions. Compared to the dedicated proxies, there’s no SOCKS5 or city selection.
Pricing Plans
Both dedicated and rotating proxies use a subscription-based pricing model. It renews automatically after the billing period.
Oxylabs’ dedicated service bases its rates on the number of IPs you get. The rates range between $2.75/IP to $1.9/IP once you buy 1000 or more proxies.
Looking at the advertised rates, Oxylabs costs somewhat above the market average until you scale up. You’re allowed to replace 20% of the proxies per quarter without paying.
The rotating proxies charge only for traffic use. Starting at $.65/GB and reaching $.44/GB at scale, they cost in line with the competition.
Performance Benchmarks
We last tested Oxylabs’ rotating proxy pool in March 2024.
#1: Infrastructure performance
We ran 50,000 connection requests using Oxylabs’ US-filtered rotating proxies. Our computer was located in the US. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.
#2: Download speed
We tested 10 rotating IPs using Hetzner’s 100 MB Ashburn download speed benchmark.
#3: Performance with popular targets
We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US 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.
The proxies performed surprisingly well for datacenter and furthermore – shared IPs. They were able to open Google with very few failures, though this likely wouldn’t be sustainable at scale. Amazon proved a harder but still reasonable nut to crack.
Residential
Residential proxies are Oxylabs’ main proxy product, with one of the largest pools on the market. These IPs are sourced via Honeygain (a bandwidth-sharing app), direct partnerships with ISPs, and app developers.
Pool Size & Coverage
Oxylabs advertises to control over 100 million proxy servers. Of course, these being residential proxies, you shouldn’t expect all of the IPs to be available at the same time.
You can choose from any country in the world and then further narrow down the parameters. Oxylabs is very generous in the IP filtering department, letting you choose not only a city but also ZIP code and even coordinates.
Having said that, some filters can’t be combined together for now. For example, it’s either country or ASN, which may be limiting.
Features
These proxies can rotate without every connection requests, or you can establish sticky sessions. It’s possible to specify any duration between one and 30 minutes.
Like most residential proxy networks, this one meters traffic use. However, the number of connection requests you can make is effectively unlimited.
Integration & Use
Oxylabs’ residential proxies use the format of endpoint:port which distributes requests through geographically close load balancers before reaching the proxy device. Customers in China get two separate endpoints for better connectivity.
You actually get two ways to access the service. The first, called Country entry, modifies the gateway address based on your chosen country and generates different port numbers for sticky sessions. It’s simple to implement but also limited: you can’t specify anything beyond a country or create sessions with a custom duration.
Another way, called Backconnect entry, uses one gateway address that never changes. Instead, you can modify the username with various parameters. Though more complex, it enables all functionality, such as filtering by a ZIP code.
As of mid-2023, the residential proxies support the SOCKS5 protocol. However, it’s limited to TCP and website traffic for now.
Pricing Plans
Oxylabs charges for traffic only. You can pay as you go at a fixed rate of $8/GB – this method lets you buy up to 50 GB of traffic per month. Otherwise, the cheapest plan starts at $99 ($7.75/GB). If you reach the cap of any plan, there’s an option to top up without getting a new plan.
Compared to the market prices, Oxylabs charges a premium. But the provider’s rates aren’t that bad in this category: it costs less than Bright Data, especially if you need precise location targeting, and significantly less compared to NetNut.
Performance Benchmarks
We last tested Oxylabs’ residential proxies in March 2024, for the annual Proxy Market Research.
#1: Pool size & composition
* IP2Location database, Usage type data point, ISP, ISP/MOB, MOB IPs.
** Combines Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands.
Oxylabs can evidently back up its marketing claims. 3 out of 4 requests gave us a unique IP address in the Global gateway, and we found over 250k American IPs. Even in Australia, where proxies are to come by, Oxylabs was able to produce over 30,000 IP addresses.
And while this isn’t the very best result looking at our comparisons, Oxylabs came in very close. Its pool should be enough even for the largest customers.
#2: IP quality
We checked 20,000 proxies in the Global pool and 10,000 proxies in the US using the IPQualityScore database.
For a large and popular provider, Oxylabs’ proxies had seen surprisingly little abuse. IPQualityScore also identified very few frequent abusers, which shows that the pool is being kept clean. All in all, these are great results.
#3: Infrastructure performance
This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our scraper was located in Germany for the Global pool, and we also had scrapers in the US and Singapore for individual country pools. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.
These residential proxies were incredibly performant. Oxylabs’ infrastructure let us down very few times, and its latency was simply amazing for residential addresses. The provider was faster than all competitors in our tests, sometimes by as many as five times!
#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.
* Google is disabled by default and becomes available after a client review.
The residential proxies were able to access all tested websites smoothly. Unfortunately, we didn’t test them with Google – but that’s a managerial rather than technical limitation.
Mobile
Pool Size & Coverage
The mobile proxy network supports the majority of features customers could look for. You can select any country and further filter proxies by state or ASN (carrier), and even co-ordinates.
Features
Being peer-to-peer proxies, they meter traffic and need to rotate. You can select to do that every connection request or create sessions. There’s no limit for parallel connections, so you can use as many IPs at once as you like.
Integration & Use
Just like the residential proxy service, Oxylabs’ mobile network gives you two ways to access it.
The first method changes the gateway address for country selection and uses different port numbers to establish sticky sessions. It’s easier to use but also fails to include the more advanced targeting options (city, ASN, etc.).
The second method uses a single backconnect entry gateway and adds parameters to the username. It’s more flexible, allowing you to make use of Oxylabs’ full functionality.
As of recently, the provider enabled the SOCKS5 protocol. However, it only supports web traffic over TCP.
Pricing Plans
You can get Oxylabs’ mobile proxies by subscribing to a plan, which start from $99 ($8.25/GB). Or, you can buy up to 50 GB of traffic without a subscription at a fixed rate of $9/GB. In any case, any unused traffic expires after a month.
If your needs are large, it naturally makes sense to get a plan. The largest option on display ($3,000) brings the price down to $5/GB. This is only a little more compared to residential proxies. In a broader context, Oxylabs costs less than its enterprise-grade peers.
Performance Benchmarks
We last tested Oxylabs’ mobile proxies in March 2024.
#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.
* IP2Location database, Usage type data point, ISP/MOB, MOB IPs.
** Combines Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands.
#2: Infrastructure performance
This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany for the Global pool, and we also had computers in the US and Singapore for individual country pools. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.
The mobile proxy network had a high connection success rate that was up to par with the industry. Some individual country pools, however, failed more than we’d have liked.
The proxy network was also faster than all but one competitor, often significantly so. There were exceptions: NetNut and Infatica performed very well in the US, but their pools weren’t exactly mobile.
#3: Performance with popular targets
We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US-filtered proxies. Our computer was located in the US. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.
The target benchmarks mimicked Oxylabs’ infrastructure results, which is to say they were solid. Requests took twice longer to complete compared to the residential network, but this is completely normal for this proxy type.
How to Use Oxylabs
Registration
You can start using Oxylabs in three ways. First, there’s the usual route: fill in a registration form, confirm your email, and you’re done. The second option is to use your Google account to sign up.
The third method is aimed at businesses: instead of simply creating an account, you can choose to contact sales. This will require entering your full name, business email, phone number, and industry. Afterwards, a salesman will get in touch and discuss the options with you.
In any case, you’ll have to go through a KYC procedure before you can start using the services. It’s a standard practice with premium proxy providers.
Dashboard
When you log in, you’ll find yourself in the Oxylabs dashboard. It has a main window with information about product use and links to resources, separate sections for each product, a section for subscription management, and a tab for setting usage limits.
The sections expand into smaller sub-sections with more options. For instance, Residential Proxies lets you track proxy usage, manage authorization settings, access the public API and relevant documentation. My Account shows your active products and invoices.
If you need help, there’s a button to contact an account manager. The button leads to an email, so it’s not very useful in emergencies. For that, there’s another button on the right that connects you to a support agent over live chat.
Oxylabs also allows multi-user access to the platform by setting up team roles. For example, you can give a colleague the permission to access proxy settings but not financial information – and vice versa.
The dashboard is available in English and Chinese.
Subscription Management
Oxylabs supports self-service for some but not all of its products. You can buy the other products by contacting sales.
There’s no wallet functionality, so you’ll have to make a transaction every time a plan renews. This isn’t ideal but also not a huge problem, as you’ll likely be making payments monthly.
The dashboard shows how much time remains until the subscription renews. It also contains a list of downloadable invoices.
Proxy Management
Oxylabs offers handy widgets to aid with proxy setup. They let you select the main parameters (location, rotation, etc.) one by one and then generate any number of endpoints you specify.
Some products, like the rotating datacenter proxies, don’t have a widget. The same applies to more advanced features like ZIP code filtering. In those cases, you’ll have to head to Oxylabs’ documentation page and follow the instructions there. Thankfully, it’s rich with information and provides useful examples.
Usage Tracking
You’ll find usage graphs in the dashboard. Their functionality differs by product type.
The rotating proxy networks focus on traffic use, though they also show the number of requests you’ve made. You can filter them by sub-user, country, and domain.
Surprisingly, the static proxy networks have the most detailed usage statistics. They track not only traffic use and the number of requests made but also HTML codes. You can select to filter data by country, target, subnet, IP, and more.
All usage graphs allow selecting custom data ranges. This is convenient considering that some providers limit them to a few pre-sets.
Public API
If you want to access the IPs programmatically, Oxylabs has several public APIs. The residential API focuses on managing access and tracking use. The datacenter API allows retrieving proxy lists, whitelisting IP addresses, and monitoring offline proxies.
Documentation
For non-technical questions, Oxylabs provides an FAQ called Learning Hub. It answers the most frequently encountered queries and is aimed at prospective or new users. Newbies can also read multiple quick-start guides which provide the main information about a particular product in one place.
The technical documentation includes comprehensive usage instructions for each of Oxylabs’ products. The instructions have examples in multiple programming languages, and you can find integration guides with third party software.
Hands-On Support
Oxylabs gives each enterprise client a dedicated account manager who answers all of your questions via email or chat. Outside of working hours, or if you need technical help, you can request instant help from the customer support team. The support speaks English, Russian, Chinese, and Lithuanian.
In any case, communication is smooth and professional. Even when we asked technical questions, we got fast and well-explained answers.
We also tested how fast the customer support is and asked a question via live chat. The reply came in about 2 minutes, which is hard to beat.
Conclusion
For a long time, our position was as follows: if you fall into Oxylabs’ target audience (read: you’re an enterprise customer that needs quality products and prefers human interaction), you won’t be disappointed.
This stand true. Oxylabs remains performant, highly scalable, and sporting an excellent team of account managers to help you thrive.
At the same time, the provider has begun opening up to a broader audience. It’s now possible to buy most products without going through sales, and the plans start from two or even one figure. You’ll still be paying a premium, but the price is well justified.
In the end, it all boils down to two questions: do you need the best proxy service available and will you make full use of it? If yes, then you might have just found yourself a proxy provider.
Oxylabs Alternatives
Smartproxy is the first place to go if Oxylabs is out of your budget range. It offers similar performance, great user experience, and proxy-based tools. However, there are fewer features.
Bright Data is another strong option with more features and powerful proxy management tools. It also sells proxy-based web scraping APIs and even complete data sets.
SOAX is another alternative for SMBs eyeing a reliable service. It has a smaller but stable pool of residential & mobile IPs with very flexible filtering options out of the box.
Want more? View the full list of the Oxylabs alternatives.
Recommended for:
Anyone considering a premium provider for serious proxy use.
