12 Best Proxy Server Services & Providers

Tired of getting blocked by the sites while gathering data online?

Don’t blame your proxy. Blame your choices. That’s why we’re here to give you an overview of the best proxy server services.

Data is a new oil. And web scraping is one of the key activities to use data for business intelligence, competitor analysis, and digital marketing.

There are no problems in web scraping. However, the problem lies in large-scale web scraping using your limited set of IPs repeatedly.

Geoblocking has been a major concern for data companies.

Due to rising issues of DDOS attacks and other malicious cyber activities, target companies are adding security layers to fence off data from general or repeated requests.

This poses an immense challenge for data companies to extract useful customer-centric data.

With traditional scraping methods, they either face IP bans or are provided with misleading information.

This is where proxy servers bring competitive advantage to your business.

When you’re on a proxy network, each request is made using a different IP address. Therefore, no particular IP gets the attention of target sites which makes each request immune to bans.

So go ahead and see for yourself which proxy server can lead your business towards online freedom.

1. Bright Data (Overall market-leading proxy server)

Bright Data is a rebranded name for Luminati. They’re probably one of the top proxy providers with a complete web scraping and flexible IP solution.

Under Luminati, they offered scalable web data tools for getting massive amounts of public data without having you invest in separate marketing tools.

And now with Bright Data, you can access 4 different types of proxy services with complete control over your IPs and geo-targeting abilities.

They offer:

• Over 72 million residential proxies
• 770k dedicated datacenter proxies
• 7 million mobile proxies
• Over 600k ISPs

Probably the largest pool of IP addresses in all four segments. They also offer a first-of-its-kind web-transparency solution called data collection automation (DCA) – that redefines digital marketing practices.

However, considering the wealth of features and capabilities, Bright Data is strictly for large and medium-scale businesses.

Bright Data Key Features

• Flexible usage of different types of proxies and web scraping tools.
• All proxies support HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 protocol for seamless performance.
• Ability to create up to 50 sub-users with secured log-in and authentication process.
• Excellent customer support and dedicated account managers for all the plans except pay-per-use plan.
• The platform gets frequently updated with new web data and proxy features.

Bright Data Pros and Cons

What do we like about Bright Data?

• Global coverage of IPs
• Fast response time with 99% uptime
• Dedicated account managers and 24/7 support
• Pay per use on all proxies

Drawbacks:

• Steep learning curve
• KYC and account activation process are strict
• Expensive plans for monthly user

Pricing

Dedicated account manager under each plan except Pay per use plan.

2. IP Royal Proxy (Proxy server with great earning opportunity)

IP Royal has been in the business for over 10 years. Basically, they were a domain name registration portal. Proxies were not really their forte.

However, they decided to turn the tables when they launched a range of proxy products in 2020.

Well, technically a new company in the proxy market. But don’t take them lightly!

The proxy services, pricing, and customer service go hand in hand with their domain registration solution.

They are now offering four standard proxy solutions: dedicated datacenter, residential, ISP, and mobile proxies. In addition, they provide Google scraping API, which is currently in beta stage.

The pricing is relatively lower than the leading proxy providers. And so is their global coverage. However, considering the age of proxy services, 3 million IPs across the world is a pretty decent number.

IP Royal Key Features

• IP Royal lets you choose between sticky and rotating proxies. Sticky proxy lets you use the IP for 24 hours. In the case of rotation proxy, you can set the time frame that suits you best between 1 sec and 24 hours.
• They feature pawns.app which lets you share the amount of traffic (in GB) from your network in exchange for money. The earnings also depend on how long you keep the app running, as well as the number of surveys you took.
• There is no KYC process during registration. However, you may need to do so if you’re found visiting suspicious or non-compliant sites.
• It supports both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocol, as well as multiple authentication processes for secure access.

IP Royal Pros and cons

What do we like about IP Royal?

• Quick registration and secured authentication
• HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocol compatibility
• Cheaper proxy subscriptions and bulk discounts
• Excellent customer services

Drawbacks:

• Not built for large-scale web scrapping
• Residential pool size is comparatively smaller

Pricing

3. Smartproxy (Proxy for enterprises at a competitive price)

Smartproxy is one of the staple names in the proxy world. Not only does it provide a high quality proxy network, but evenly provides access to over 195 countries.

Smartproxy’s key highlight is the residential proxy. They have over 40 million residential IPs globally and 100k datacenter IPs across the US and Europe. However, they fall short when it comes to targeting cities.

Besides that, you can have access to both rotating and sticky IPs. You can rotate the IP address upon each connection request, or choose to stick with the same IP for 30 minutes.

They provide you with a complete API documentation and a rich set of tutorials. Pretty useful for newbies. On top of that, you’ll have control over country targeting, traffic usage, and sub-users.

Smartproxy lacks mobile and ISP proxies. Yet, a great choice for medium and large-scale scrapers.

Smartproxy Key Features

• Residential IP features autorotation and sticky IPs for up to 30 minutes.
• Datacenter proxy gives you full control over IPs with predictable usage history.
• Over 40 million residential IPs and 100k dedicated datacenter IPs.
• Support for HTTP and HTTPS protocols for seamless data transfer.

Smartproxy Pros and cons

What do we like about Smartproxy?

• Massive residential IP coverage
• Pay as you go option
• Excellent customer support
• Competitive monthly pricing

Drawbacks:

• Fewer locations available for datacenter proxies
• Limited city targeting
• SOCKS5 only for dedicated datacenter proxy

Pricing

4. Rayobyte Proxy (Proxy server with excellent connectivity)

Even if you’ve the faintest idea about the proxy marketplace, you might have come across the name Blazing SEO. The company is now rebranded as Rayobyte.

They started off with dedicated datacenter proxies with over 330k IPs. Probably the most number of IPs under dedicated datacenter network. And now, they’re also known for residential proxy services, with over 10 million IPs across the world.

They even introduced mobile and ISP proxies last year, but are yet to make a cut like the residential proxy.

No matter what you choose, Rayobyte ensures you enjoy unlimited bandwidth with up to 1 Gbps connection speed.

Talking about success rates?

It’s not amazing, it’s blazing. Rayobyte has great end-to-end control over its networks. On top of that, they’ve an excellent support team who are ready to help you when things go down.

Rayobyte Key Features

• Features over 10 million residential proxies and 330k datacenter proxies across 150 countries.
• Rayobyte works on a trial-and-error approach. The system randomly allocates you the IPs. However, in the case of issues, they readily replace them with different IPs.
• Compatible with HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols, which lets you send all types of requests.
• Access to the entire API documentation in case you want to buy, replace or cancel your proxies. You can even get the entire list of working IPs.

Rayobyte Pros and cons

What do we like about Rayobyte?

• HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocol
• Responsive support services
• Custom pricing packages
• One free proxy replacement monthly

Drawbacks:

• Lacks city targeting
• Lengthy registration and authentication process
• Rotating, semi-dedicated and ISP proxies limited to few countries

Pricing

5. Oxylabs  (Proxy server with a huge pool of global IPs)

A proxy provider can single-handedly impress you when it has a network of 100 million IPs worldwide. That’s a staggering number for any proxy provider out there.

Oxylabs barely misses out on geographical coverage. They offer both static and rotating residential proxies. A static residential proxy is a great way to keep your identity consistent for a long time.

Moreover, with rotational proxy, you can choose to set the IP rotation request within the span of 30 minutes.

But the key highlight of Oxylabs is the Next-Gen Residential Proxy. Powered with AI and ML models, you can run complex web scraping and gather tons of data with a 100% success rate.

Now, ever heard of cyber insurance?

This is a new kind of proxy solution that can help companies from technology errors and omissions. Oxylabs key clients are some of the Fortune 500 brands that specifically use the services for business intelligence, digital marketing, and brand protection.

Oxylabs Key Features

• Oxylabs has the most number of global IPs and covers almost all regions of the 6 continents.
• Oxylabs features Next-Gen Residential Proxy that uses AI/ML technology to encounter the most challenging publicly available data without any risks.
• Next-gen AI comes with  an auto-retry feature that minimizes effort and errors that may otherwise cost you time and money.
• Each plan and proxy products are covered by technology error and omission and ensure complete cyber insurance. Thanks to the partnership with Lloyds.

Oxylabs Pros and cons

What do we like about Oxylabs?

• Large number of global IP locations
• Premium level customer service
• AI/ML-based residential proxy
• Robust web scrapping performance and speed
• Cyber insurance partnership with Lloyds

Drawbacks:

• Pricing and features suitable for enterprises only
• Quite a high entry threshold
• No pay-per-use option

Pricing

6. Infatica Proxy (New proxy server with enterprise use-cases)

Infatica is barely a three-year-old proxy provider. But the way it gained recognition is surreal.

Their services are specifically geared towards enterprise clients. Basically, they started off with residential proxy services. And now they offer over 10 million IPs across the world.

Later, they also added dedicated datacenters and mobile proxies as well.

Infatica’s rotating residential proxy delivers excellent response and success rates. However, by default, they have a one-hour-long rotation time, which you can’t customize anyway.

You can manually rotate the IP addresses when required. But it’s not recommended to rotate quite often.

Talking about the price, Infatica seems to cost around 20% less than the big players. Yet, it’s not quite a favorable deal for small businesses. Good thing is that, you’ll get the refund for unused portion of the traffic within 24 hours.

Infatica Key Features

• Most of the Infatica’s IPs are from mobile or landline devices. The connection is stable and can withstand multiple requests, even in demanding situations.
• Besides residential IPs, Infatica features a powerful dedicated mobile proxy with a broader country and city targeting.
• They feature a one-hour rotation time by default. However, it’s not advisable to manually rotate the IPs frequently.
• Infatica features SDK, which is a software library that offers earning opportunities for developers.

Infatica Pros and cons

What do we like about Infatica?

• Manual IP rotation feature
• Huge IP pool size
• Pricing plans are flexible
• Excellent customer services

Drawbacks:

• Success rates are fine, but speed is often inconsistent
• City level targeting is available, but only for custom plans
• Lacks ISP proxy

Pricing

7. Geosurf Proxy (Best Proxy server for city-targeting)

Geosurf is one of the old players in the proxy marketplace. Performance wise, Geosurf is on par with Bright Data. However, the range of proxy servers is significantly less.

The arch-rivalry with Bright Data even led to patent disputes quite recently. But soon they mutually resolved the legal disputes and opened the doors for partnerships.

Keeping competition aside, they offer a decent 3.7 million IPs in more than 130 countries. Not a large number, but the addresses have been tested to provide good success and response rates.

They offer residential, datacenter and ISP proxies. And quite recently they introduced a mobile VPN with over 120 cellular locations.

But unlike Bright Data, they don’t offer a pay-per-use option.

Moreover, the service is specifically geared towards premium customers, both in subscription and business use cases.

Geosurf Proxy Key Features

• Geosurf features both sticky and rotating sessions. In sticky sessions, you can set to reconnect every 1, 10, or 30 minutes. In rotating sessions, you’ll get virgin IPs upon every new request.
• It features a search function and competitor analysis that gives you a 360-degree view of marketing strategies used by others.
• It comes with a browser extension, which is something like a localized VPN that you can run on your browser. Particularly for Chrome and Firefox browsers.
• It comes with an intuitive interface that makes onboarding and authentication easy for new users.

Geosurf Pros and Cons

What do we like about Geosurf?

• Excellent geo-targeting capability
• Over 1700 city-targeting IPs
• Quality IP addresses
• Decent connectivity and response time

 Drawbacks:

• No socks5 protocol
• No pay per use option
• Customer support needs to be improved

Pricing

8. Zyte (Proxy server with per-request pricing model)

Zyte is a rebranded name for Crawlera. If you’re looking for unparalleled proxy management features with an excellent success rate, Zyte is one of the proxies to consider.

As per countless customer reviews, datacenter proxies are capable of handling heavy web scraping and crawling tasks. However, we are also skeptical about its product offerings and not sure how many IPs they actually host across the world.

Location coverage is quite limited. However, you can access other locations on demand. Zyte is also said to rent IP addresses from other providers.

But the good thing about it is its per-request pricing model instead of bandwidth. It gives you control over IPs, the ability to auto-rotate, control cookies, throttle requests, and detect bans.

Zyte Proxy Key Features

• Smart proxy manager is capable of detecting banned IPs, estimates website load, and uses a throttling algorithm for excellent success rates.
• Zyte’s proxy manager also keeps an account of types of IP bans and automates the IP switching in case it detects the ban.
• You can configure the proxy to store cookies instead of discarding them. However, the feature is available only on expensive plans.
• Residential proxy isn’t a standalone feature in Zyte. Instead, you can use it as an add-on to your standard subscription.

Zyte Proxy Pros and cons

What do we like about Zyte?

• Smart proxy management
• Excellent success rate and response time
• You can create sub users
• No costs for failed requests

 Drawbacks:

• Significantly low IP coverage globally
• Residential proxy only available on-demand
• Lacks SOCKS5 protocol
• Customer support favorable for enterprise clients only

Pricing

9. NetNut Proxy (Good for stable dedicated and residential connectivity)

Netnut is relatively a new proxy provider. But its range of services are seemingly catching up with Bright Data or Oxylabs.

Many standard proxy providers utilize P2P networks of other computer users for residential IPs. However, this is not the way Netnut functions. Instead, they make use of internet service providers with the help of Divi Networks.

Because of the partnership with Divi Networks, you no longer have to depend on the online status of IPs. They operate with over 100 ISPs worldwide that can give you more stable residential proxies. That means, no more IP outages or unstable connections.

On paper, Netnut also claims to have zero fail rates with much less latency than other providers.

Overall, it may not be as popular as standard proxies, but definitely a good contender if you’re looking for heavy web scraping tasks.

NetNut Proxy Key Features

• Netnut lets you authenticate up to 10 unique IP addresses, which is the highest among proxy providers.
• Packs in all three important proxy types: Datacenter, Rotating residential, and ISP proxies. About 20 million Residential IPs, 110k Datacenter IPs and 1 million+ ISP proxy.
• They make use of backconnect servers, where you can access the provider’s IP address while it gets rotated in the back end.
• NetNut’s reseller program lets you create sub-users and manage use cases seamlessly.

NetNut Pros and cons

What do we like about NetNut?

• Excellent connectivity and stability
• Partnership with DiviNetworks
• Impressive number of residential proxies
• Responsive customer

Drawbacks:

• Quite expensive for new users
• No mobile proxy available
• Not compatible with SOCKS5 protocol

Pricing

10. SOAX Proxy (New proxy with a competitive residential proxy service )

There are some proxy providers that don’t over-promise you with so-so one-liner. SOAX is one of the new entrants in the proxy pool that brings you a limited yet fair deal of its products.

They aren’t the fastest ones. But with over 8.5 million IPs worldwide, their residential and mobile proxies are capable of making the cut.

One of the key highlights is its control over IP rotation. You can enable autorotation or set the duration from 90 sec to 600 sec. You’ll also have the advantage of node access, where you can keep the same IP address even when your system is offline.

On top of that, you can even keep the same IP for as long as possible. They’re also planning to offer a private datacenter proxy. However, there is no clear details about that.

SOAX Proxy Key Features

• SOAX offers over 5 million residential proxies and over 3.5 million mobile proxies worldwide, along with city targeting.
• By default, their IP rotation is 1 hour but you can also set a custom duration from 90 to 600 seconds. You may even keep the IP address as long as it is usable.
• With node access, you can select a specific IP address. Even though the IP address is offline, you can keep it and use it when it’s available online.
• SOAX interface is quite attentive to new users as they walk you through each step in the onboarding and authentication process.

SOAX Proxy Pros and cons

What do we like about SOAX proxy?

• Solid control over IP rotation
• Supports both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols
• Targeting options are pretty accurate
• Fair onboarding and support services

Drawbacks:

• Response time not often on par with big providers
• Limited proxy products
• Low cost but limitations on cheaper plans

Pricing

11. Lime Proxy (Specific for ticketing, gaming or classified)

Lime Proxy is one of the few proxy providers with affordable plans.

They have been in the marketplace for quite a long time. However, they’re not known for large-scale data scraping or accessing ecommerce sites.

Their main goal is to provide datacenter IPs to small businesses. Unlike Bright Data, you’ll have access to its dedicated datacenter, mobile and rotational IPs at an affordable price.

However, they’re specifically confined to US and European proxies with significantly less number of IPs.

Even though IPs are limited, you won’t find a performance difference as long as you’re not performing heavy data scraping tasks. So what kind of tasks can you perform with Lime proxy?

Well, if you’ve specific use cases like ticketing, social media scraping, classified ads or gaming, Lime proxy is your go-to choice.

But don’t expect the demanding scraping purposes like ecommerce sites or marketing.

Lime Proxy Key Features

• Lime Proxy claims to provide 1 million IPs including dedicated, residential, mobile, and private SOCKS5 proxies.
• More than 40 locations across the US and European nations where you can perform city targeting across 23 European countries.
• Private proxy plans offer recycled datacenter IPs or used IPs with no blocking issues at a cheaper price point.
• In the advanced plans, they offer virgin IPs that are significantly faster than recycled IPs but at a relatively higher price point.

Lime Proxy Pros and Cons

What do we like about Lime Proxy?

• Responsive customer support
• City-level target across US and Europe
• Easy set up and authentication
• Cheaper plans than most of the proxy providers

Drawbacks:

• Limited global coverage
• Limited use-cases
• No SOCKS5 support on cheaper plans

Pricing

12. Storm Proxies (Proxy server with the cheapest plan)

Looking for a proxy solution that doesn’t cost you a fortune but does the job?

If you’re a small-scale web scraper or social media manager, Storm proxies can be a bang for your buck. Well, not that, good enough to take the proxy world into storm.

They don’t have back connected gateways. Instead, they’re simply in-house hosted dedicated proxy servers, mainly based in US locations. However, you won’t find the actual number of IPs in use.

But as far as rotating proxies are concerned, there are reportedly 200k of them. And about residential proxies, there are about 70k of them. Way too few IP addresses for a company that has been here for 5-6 years.

You’ll also have to compromise with the lack of the ability to get localized Google data or any country or city-specific tasks.

But for hustlers or startups, Storm proxies offer a decent experience of rotational, dedicated/ shared datacenter, and residential proxies. With unlimited bandwidth, their cheapest plan starts from $14.

Storm Proxies Key Features

• Combination of dedicated and shared datacenter, rotational residential, and only-residential proxies in a budget price. There is no actual disclosure of IPs in control, though.
• Ability to choose from three back connect gateway servers: Main gateway (rotation upon each connection request), 3 minute gateway, and 15 minute gateway.
• Storm proxies claim to provide virgin IPs as well as automatically replace a pool of used IPs every week.
• IP address replacement for dedicated and shared datacenter proxy occurs twice a month.

Storm Proxies Pros and cons

What do we like about Storm Proxies?

• Decent scraping performance for moderate use cases
• Supports both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols
• Cheaper proxy plans
• Responsive customer support

Drawbacks:

• Speed and response time not on par with industry standard
• Geo targeting mostly confined to US and Europe
• Lacks password authentication process

Pricing

Final Verdict

Still skeptical about the proxies?

Why not dip your toe in the water and see what works best for your business use cases.

Overall, we see Bright Data as one of the leading proxy providers. It not only offers different proxy services, but has a pay-as-you-go plan for new users.

There is no better time to go invincible on the internet. So see for yourself which proxy server is ideal for you!