Best Proxy Providers for 2026: Tested & Ranked

We tested over 500,000 requests across major servers to rank the providers below on speed, success rate, and price. Our top picks based on speed and pricing, full results and per-provider detail follow:

Quick comparison of the best proxy services

• Price per GB: starting monthly residential price.
• PAYG: proxy types that support pay-as-you-go.

Proxy performance benchmark results

Response time analysis

Differences between adjacent providers were not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. See the methodology.

How much does a proxy cost?

A higher value on the Y-axis indicates better cost-efficiency (more GBs for your money).

For proxy package comparisons costing $ 10k or more, read our guide.

Best proxy sites & providers

Bright Data provides residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies, with support for both rotating and sticky sessions depending on the product and configuration.

Its proxy offering also stands out for two differentiators: an opt-in sourcing model for residential/mobile traffic and an open-source Proxy Manager for proxy control, monitoring, and customization.

The provider offers advanced IP rotation and session controls for long-running scraping tasks, along with granular geo-targeting options across multiple proxy types. Bright Data also emphasizes compliance controls around residential network access, including policy enforcement and KYC for certain access levels.

Features:

• Residential proxies: Available as shared IPv4, shared IPv6 proxy IPs, a combined IPv4+IPv6, or a dedicated pool (domain-locked gIPs, KYC required). Shared pools are available with no KYC needed. Geo-targeting by country, city, state, ZIP code, and ASN is free. Supports rotating and sticky sessions, HTTP/S and SOCKS5.

• Datacenter proxies: Shared and dedicated pools, both on a pay-per-IP model with unlimited bandwidth (100 GB fair use/IP/month).

• Mobile proxies route traffic through real 3G/4G/5G mobile IPs and support geo-targeting options suited to mobile-specific workflows.

• ISP proxies are Bright Data’s static residential offering, combining residential-class trust with server-hosted performance.

Oxylabs is a premium proxy provider that ranked among the fastest in our benchmark tests. Its infrastructure is designed for enterprise-scale performance and high success rates, suitable for large-scale scraping projects.

They offer residential, ISP (rotating and static), datacenter (shared, private, rotating), and mobile proxies. 

Features:

• Datacenter proxies: There are two types of dedicated datacenter proxies: self-service, which supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, and enterprise, which supports both HTTP and SOCKS5.
• Residential proxies cover 195 countries and enable targeting by continent, country, city, state, ZIP/postal code, coordinates, and ASN.
• The mobile proxy network spans over 140 countries and continents, and supports targeting by country, city, state, coordinates, and ASN.

Decodo ranked first in our speed benchmark, with an average response time of 1.5 seconds. Its high speed and pool of 115 million IPs offer a strong price-to-performance ratio for scraping and SOCKS5 applications.

Mobile proxies offer city- and country-level targeting. ISP Pay/GB proxies provide rotating on-demand IP addresses with country-specific targeting. Datacenter proxies offer rotating and static IPs, targeting 8 locations, and have an exclusive IP pool.

Features:

• Residential proxies: City-level targeting, it is ideal for high-volume scraping without blocking.
• Flexible sessions: Supports rotating and sticky sessions (up to 60 mins), perfect for maintaining login states or SOCKS5 connections.
• Datacenter: 100k+ IPs with unlimited bandwidth options.

Webshare is one of the top choices for users seeking free proxy servers. Unlike unreliable public lists, it offers a free tier with 10 datacenter IPs that you can keep indefinitely. Paid plans start at $2.99/mo, offering one of the lowest barriers to entry in the market

Features:

• Each package allows you to specify the number of IPs, bandwidth, and proxy location.
• Datacenter and static residential proxies provide varying levels of premium: shared (with more than two users), private (with 1-2 users), and dedicated (owned by you).
• Datacenter proxies from about 40 countries across six continents. ISP proxies are primarily located in the United States.

DataImpulse offers several types of proxy servers that support both rotating and sticky sessions. They sell residential and premium residential proxies designed for enterprise-level workflows where speed and stability are critical.

Premium proxies also support advanced targeting, allowing users to choose IPs by country, city, ZIP code, or ASN.

Features:

• Pay-as-you-go residential at a low entry cost with unlimited concurrency.
• Rotating (new IP every request), and sticky (same IP for up to 30 minutes).
• Country, city, ZIP, and ASN targeting at no additional cost.

NodeMaven is a residential and mobile proxy provider offering large-scale IP pools, flexible session controls, and user-friendly proxy generation.

Features:

• You can customize how your proxies are created:
  • IP version (Mixed IPv4 & IPv6 or IPv4)
  • Session type: sticky or rotating
• Under sticky, you can:
  • Keep IP as long as possible (Super sticky sessions)
  • Custom, sec (lets you specify the duration)
    

NetNut provides shared datacenter proxies from the United States, rotating residential IPs available in practically every country, and 1 million static residential proxies from 30 countries.

The proxy service can be considered a premium offering due to its large proxy pool, high per-GB pricing, and advanced proxy functionality.

Features:

• A residential proxy network consists of shared IPs. They do not currently offer dedicated proxies as an option among their proxy server choices.
• Rotating IP addresses enables state and city-level targeting. The rotating proxy supports an unlimited number of concurrent sessions.

Nimbleway offers residential proxies and also provides an Unblocker Proxy. Nimble’s rotating residential proxies support targeting by country and city.

Features:

• You can select the optimization type that best meets your specific needs, depending on the use case.
• Sticky sessions include the following options: replace the IP when it becomes unavailable, select another IP within the same ASN, or do not replace the IP.
• You can set a spending limit for your proxy usage within a specified period, such as a day.

IPRoyal is one of the more affordable residential proxy providers, but its IP pool size is smaller than that of more expensive providers like Oxylabs.

Features:

• Rotating residential, static residential, shared datacenter. Residential is shared IPs; no dedicated option. Unlimited concurrent sessions.
• Pricing: Positioned as lower-cost, with a pool smaller than Oxylabs.
• Datacenter proxies are available across more than 50 locations and come with dedicated IPs. ISP proxies provide dedicated IP addresses across over 30 countries. Their residential proxies offer global coverage. Additionally, IPRoyal offers mobile proxies in more than 7 countries.

Proxy server benchmark methodology

We run benchmark cycles for each vendor every 5 minutes, producing 216,000+ verified requests per month. The rankings on this page are based on 500,000 requests collected across eight batches, targeting 1,800 e-commerce URLs using residential, datacenter, and ISP proxies.

1. Test scale & frequency

We run benchmark cycles every 5 minutes for each vendor to capture real-time changes in pool stability and IP quality. This generates over 216,000 verified requests per month across our infrastructure.

2. Double validation system

We do not rely solely on HTTP status codes to ensure data integrity. A request is marked as a Success (1) if it passes two verification layers:

1. Network check: The response must return a status code between 200 and 399.
2. Content scan: CSS selectors verify the rendering of specific platform elements, such as product titles. Empty pages, soft blocks, and CAPTCHA pages are classified as failures.

3. Calculation

Success rate:

The percentage of total requests that pass both network and content validations. A successful response was determined by checking the content for a CSS selector matching the page type. The success rate of proxies varied significantly during our benchmark due to a few factors:

• Request configuration: Proxy success rates depend on proxy configuration parameters, such as the user agent and cookies (session_id), which your technical team needs to configure.

• Target website’s anti-scraping approach: Different websites, even in the same field, use various anti-scraping tactics.

• Country and device requirements of your use case: Proxies have diverse use cases. This benchmark cannot provide an accurate assessment of vendors for niche use cases.

Response time:

The average time from request initiation to receipt of the final byte, calculated for successful requests to avoid skew from timeouts.

See more of our benchmarks and data-driven insights in Google Search.

Add as preferred source

What is a proxy provider?

A proxy provider operates a network of IP addresses that route your requests through an intermediary, so target sites see the proxy’s IP instead of yours. Providers differ in IP type (residential, datacenter, ISP, mobile), pool size, geographic coverage, and rotation control.

Proxy vs VPN

Both tools hide your IP address, but they work in different ways. A VPN protects your whole internet connection, which is good for general privacy.

Proxies let you control specific apps and rotate IP addresses, making them faster and more flexible for automated work.

As anti-bot systems become more sophisticated, the focus has shifted from raw IP volume to IP reputation. This is why we see a massive surge in residential proxy providers; they provide the ‘human’ signal required to bypass strict scoring systems.

Proxy buying guide

Geo-targeting:

Many websites restrict access to their content based on the user’s geographic location due to legal requirements, local censorship, or content personalization.

You may need to collect location-specific data, such as localized pricing, serve localized content, or verify your ads are displayed correctly in different regions. Geo-targeted proxies allow users to access localized content or bypass geographic restrictions.

Speed and response time:

Speed refers to the data transfer rate between the client, the proxy server, and the target website. High-speed proxies provide faster data transfers, which are essential for large-scale web scraping.

Response time, also known as latency, is the time it takes for a request to travel from a client to a server. Low response times are crucial for time-sensitive web scraping tasks, such as live event streaming.

Number of available IP addresses:

When you collect a significant amount of data from a large website or collect data from numerous smaller websites simultaneously, you need to change your IP addresses more frequently.

A large pool of IP addresses enhances anonymity by allowing users to switch between different IP addresses when accessing target servers. This enables clients to bypass rate limits and anti-scraping measures imposed by websites.

When choosing an IP pool operator, consider the number of available IP addresses in the proxy pool and the diversity of those IP addresses (e.g., residential and datacenter).

Cost:

When evaluating proxy pricing, consider:

• Types of proxies: Datacenter proxies are fast and inexpensive, but they are also easier to block. In contrast, residential or mobile proxies are more expensive but offer higher trust and anonymity.
• Pricing plans: Compare pay-as-you-go vs subscription models; assess data caps, overage fees, and additional geo-targeting costs.
• Extra features and support, Such as city-level targeting, dedicated IPs, and API integration, often justify higher plans.

FAQs

Cite this benchmark

Pick the format that matches where you're publishing. Pasting the link version into your CMS preserves the backlink.

@misc{karatas2026,
  author = {Karatas, Gulbahar},
  title  = {{Best Proxy Providers for 2026: Tested & Ranked}},
  year   = {2026},
  month  = jun,
  howpublished    = {\url{https://aimultiple.com/proxy-providers}},
  note   = {AIMultiple. Retrieved June 8, 2026}
}

Gulbahar Karatas

Industry Analyst

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Gülbahar is an AIMultiple industry analyst focused on web data collection, applications of web data and application security.

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