Proxy Types
Different types of proxies enable varying levels of anonymity, speed, and scalability depending on the use case. We benchmarked residential, datacenter, mobile, and rotating proxies to help users select the best fit for their data operations.
Best Rotating Proxies in 2026: Residential & Mobile
We benchmarked major rotating proxies (residential, datacenter, and mobile) using over 200,000 requests, including 100,000 parallel requests, for major e-commerce and social media sites. See the top solutions based on our tests and follow the links to learn more from these vendors: To avoid detection, use IP signatures that resemble those of genuine mobile users.…
Best Static Residential Proxies in 2026
We benchmarked the leading ISP proxy services against 1,800 URLs from major e-commerce domains, resulting in 28,800 requests. See the top ISP proxies based on our benchmark results: Compare the top ISP proxy providers’ response times in our benchmark: The graph below shows the pricing shift for different ISP proxies. For further details, see our…
IPv6 Proxy Providers Compared by Pricing & Performance
The term IPv6 proxy does not describe a single product type. Vendors may provide IPv6 support for residential, datacenter, ISP proxies, or combinations. For example, some proxy vendors support IPv6-only residential routing but do not offer IPv6 for datacenter or ISP proxies. We measured providers’ performance across residential and datacenter proxies to evaluate the network…
Best Free Proxy Services in 2026
If you need a proxy without paying, we cover two free routes: We rank options by how often IPs refresh, protocol support (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5), and access limits: If free proxies aren’t reliable enough, the cheapest paid options start at $6 for 10 GB of datacenter traffic. If you’re willing to create an account, several…
12 Best Cheap Residential Proxies in 2026
As AIMultiple’s CTO, I lead data collection from thousands of websites. To identify reliable residential proxy providers, we benchmark across 10 vendors and process 2,880 requests per day, or 86,400 over a 30-day period. While we analyze the main providers (both rotating residential proxies and static residential proxies) in detail further down, the table below…
Proxy Server Types: Explained & Compared
Proxy servers are grouped by six criteria: traffic flow, IP source, anonymity level, protocol, rotation, and cost. The choice that matters most for web scraping and privacy is the IP source, with residential, datacenter, mobile, and ISP proxies differing in speed and price. The origin of the IP address determines how easily a website can…
Best Search Engine Proxies: 2026 Benchmark
Search engines are among the toughest targets our team scrapes at AIMultiple. Google, Bing, and Yandex flag and throttle automated queries within a handful of requests from the same address, so a proxy that sails through an ordinary website can still stall on a results page. We benchmarked top providers through residential IPs to all…
Shared Proxies: Benchmark Results & Providers
Shared proxies are the entry point for most scraping operations; they’re cheap enough to test with and abundant enough to scale. That trade-off plays out differently depending on which proxy type you’re buying. In our benchmark across residential, datacenter, and mobile shared proxy networks, the performance spread between providers was wide in some categories and…
We Tested the Best SOCKS5 Proxies in 2026
SOCKS5 providers differ in which proxy types carry it, which ports they allow, and whether UDP works. We benchmarked the top SOCKS5 provider against Amazon, Bing, eBay, and YouTube on residential IPs. We compare port rules, UDP behavior, authentication, and cost per GB across a wider set of providers. * Residential SOCKS5 proxies monthly plan…
Static Proxies: What They Are & the Best Providers
Static proxies use an IP address that remains the same rather than changing with each request or session. In practice, the term usually refers to datacenter proxies and ISP proxies (static residential proxies), because both are designed for long-lived identity and stable sessions. A static proxy is a proxy server that assigns you a single…