10 Best Proxy Providers: We Tested 500k Requests for Speed & Cost

When you're hunting for reliable proxy servers, the last thing you want is to waste time on overhyped services that can't deliver. We rolled up our sleeves and put over 500,000 requests through the wringer across major platforms. The goal? Find out which proxy providers actually deserve your money.

Whether you're running enterprise-scale web scraping operations or just need a solid SOCKS5 setup, here's what we discovered about speed, pricing, and real-world performance.

Quick Picks: 6 Providers Worth Your Time Right Now

Before we dive into the full breakdown, here are our top recommendations for immediate value. These six stood out in our testing for different reasons—some crushed it on speed, others won on cost efficiency, and a few nailed the balance between both.

Keep reading for detailed benchmarks, pricing breakdowns, and specific use cases for each provider.

The 10 Best Proxy Providers (Ranked by Performance)

Here's how we're breaking down the data:

• Price per GB shows the starting monthly rate for residential proxies (rounded to one decimal)

• PAYG indicates which proxy types support pay-as-you-go pricing

• All speeds are based on median response times from our 500k request test

What Our Benchmark Actually Revealed

After crunching the numbers from half a million requests, some clear winners emerged in different categories.

Most Consistent Stability: Bright Data & Oxylabs

Both providers kept response times under 2.0 seconds with barely any fluctuation. If your scraping operation can't afford downtime or unpredictable performance spikes, these are your safest bets.

Best Value at Scale: Apify & Decodo

Pricing gets interesting when you're pushing serious volume. For operations using 10 million+ GB per month, Apify delivers the highest GB-per-dollar ratio. Decodo runs a close second and might edge ahead depending on your specific targeting needs.

Fastest Response Time: Decodo

Decodo blew past the competition in both residential (1.5s) and datacenter (1.5s) categories. That's nearly a full second faster than the industry average—a massive difference when you're processing thousands of requests.

Detailed Provider Reviews

1. Bright Data

Bright Data offers the full proxy spectrum: residential, datacenter (shared, rotating, dedicated), ISP, and mobile proxies. In our benchmark, they consistently delivered sub-3.0s response times with rock-solid stability.

One standout feature is their long-session peers, which let you chain multiple requests within the same session. This is clutch for workflows that need to maintain state across requests.

What You Get:

• Residential proxies include both rotating shared IPs ($8.40/GB) and dedicated options (add $15.60/GB). City, state, ASN, and zip code targeting available for an extra fee.

• Datacenter proxies come in three flavors: shared rotating, shared unlimited, and dedicated unlimited. Country-level targeting included.

• Mobile proxies offer shared and dedicated IPs with city, ASN, and zip code targeting.

• ISP proxies provide 10,000 rotating IPs plus shared and dedicated unlimited options, supporting both static and rotating modes.

Pricing: New users get a first deposit match up to $500, essentially doubling your initial budget.

2. Oxylabs

Oxylabs landed among the fastest in our tests, and their infrastructure screams "enterprise-grade." The pricing reflects that premium positioning, but if you're running serious scraping projects where success rate matters, they deliver.

What You Get:

• Free datacenter IPs: 5 free datacenter proxies supporting HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5—perfect for testing without commitment. All five are US-based.

• Datacenter proxies include a shared pool of 40,000 IPs and dedicated options. Dedicated proxies come in self-service (HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5) and enterprise (HTTP, SOCKS5) versions.

• Residential proxies cover 195 countries with targeting by continent, country, city, state, ZIP, coordinates, and ASN.

• Mobile proxies span 140+ countries with similar targeting granularity.

If you need consistent performance for high-stakes scraping operations, 👉 check out how enterprise proxy infrastructure compares to consumer-grade solutions before committing to premium pricing.

Pricing: Try the 5 free IPs or request a corporate trial to test enterprise features.

3. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)

Decodo claimed the speed crown in our benchmark with a 1.5s average response time. Combine that with 115 million IPs in their pool, and you've got the best price-to-performance ratio for both scraping and SOCKS5 usage.

Their mobile proxies support city and country targeting. ISP pay-per-GB proxies offer rotating on-demand IPs with country-specific options. Datacenter proxies include both rotating and static IPs across 8 locations, with an exclusive IP pool.

What You Get:

• Fastest residential proxies: That 1.5s response time with city-level targeting makes high-volume scraping without blocks actually achievable.

• Flexible sessions: Choose between rotating and sticky sessions (up to 60 minutes)—great for maintaining login states or SOCKS5 connections.

• Datacenter: 100k+ IPs with unlimited bandwidth options.

Pricing: 50% off residential proxies with code RESI50 for new users.

4. Webshare

Webshare stands out as one of the few legitimate free proxy options. Instead of sketchy public proxy lists, they offer a real free tier with 10 datacenter IPs you can use indefinitely. Paid plans start at just $2.99/month, which is one of the lowest entry points in the market.

What You Get:

• Customize packages by number of IPs, bandwidth, and location

• Datacenter and static residential proxies in three premium levels: shared (2+ users), private (1-2 users), and dedicated (exclusive)

• Datacenter proxies from roughly 40 countries across six continents; ISP proxies mostly US-based

Pricing: Free tier available; paid plans from $2.99/month.

5. DataImpulse

DataImpulse sells both standard residential and premium residential proxies built for enterprise workflows where speed and stability can't be compromised. Their premium tier supports advanced targeting—country, city, ZIP code, or ASN selection.

What You Get:

• Unlimited concurrent sessions across all proxy types

• Rotating (new IP every request) and sticky (same IP up to 30 minutes) modes

• Country, city, ZIP, and ASN targeting at no extra cost

When you're scaling up your data collection and need 👉 reliable proxy infrastructure that won't throttle your requests, targeting flexibility without hidden fees becomes crucial.

6. Thordata

Thordata's standout feature is unlimited bandwidth on residential proxies. Their residential pool covers 70+ countries with country, city, and ASN (ISP) level targeting.

What You Get:

• Choose between automatic IP rotation per request or sticky sessions (1-90 minutes)

• All proxy types support both HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols

• Two ISP proxy types: General ISP IPs (standard) and Native ISP IPs (higher reputation for sensitive tasks), sourced from about 35 countries

7. NodeMaven

NodeMaven is a residential and mobile proxy provider with large-scale IP pools, flexible session controls, and straightforward proxy generation.

What You Get:

• Customize proxy creation by IP version (mixed IPv4/IPv6 or IPv4 only) and session type (sticky or rotating)

• Sticky sessions offer "Super sticky" (keep IP as long as possible) or custom duration settings

Pricing: Starting at €30/month for 5GB (€6 per GB); paid trial available for €3.99 with 1GB bandwidth.

8. NetNut

NetNut provides shared US-only datacenter proxies, rotating residential IPs in nearly every country, and 1 million static residential proxies from 30 countries. This is premium proxy territory with a large pool, high per-GB costs, and advanced features.

What You Get:

• Residential network uses shared IPs only—no dedicated proxies currently available

• State and city-level targeting on rotating IPs only

• Unlimited concurrent sessions on rotating proxies

Pricing: Rotating residential from $3.53/GB; static residential $14.4/GB; datacenter $1/GB; mobile $7.6/GB. 7-day trial for companies.

9. Nimble

Nimble focuses solely on residential proxies, plus they offer an Unblocker Proxy service. Their rotating residential proxies support country and city targeting.

What You Get:

• Select optimization type based on your specific use case

• Sticky session options: replace IP when unavailable, select another IP within same ASN, or don't replace

• Set spending limits for proxy usage within specified periods (daily, etc.)

Pricing: Rotating residential from $7.8/GB; 7-day trial available.

10. IPRoyal

IPRoyal is one of the more affordable residential proxy providers, though their IP pool is smaller than premium options like Oxylabs.

What You Get:

• Residential proxies in both static and rotating flavors

• Datacenter proxies across 50+ locations with dedicated IPs

• ISP proxies with dedicated IPs in 30+ countries

• Mobile proxies available in 7+ countries

How We Benchmarked Proxy Performance

We ran eight batches of requests targeting 1,800 URLs on major e-commerce platforms using three different proxy types: Residential, Datacenter, and ISP. Total requests: 504,000.

Response Time Results

We measured median response times with 95% confidence intervals. Important finding: when comparing similarly ranked providers, there's no statistically significant difference in response times. The real differences show up between top-tier and mid-tier providers.

Cost Efficiency Analysis

We charted Gigabytes per Dollar across different monthly bandwidth usage levels. Higher values = better cost efficiency (more data for your money).

Here's the thing about price per GB: it matters, but total cost of ownership depends on your scale. We've done deep-dive analysis comparing enterprise and proof-of-concept packages at different price points.

Success Rate Findings

When requests were identically configured, we found no statistically significant difference in success rates between providers. This means provider choice alone isn't the sole factor determining success.

We determined successful responses by checking content for CSS selectors matching the page type. Success rates varied significantly due to:

• Request configuration: Your technical setup matters. We saw success rates jump from 44% to 85% between consecutive runs just by tweaking the user agent.

• Time: Website anti-scraping measures change. An approach yielding 85% success one day dropped to 58% the next as target sites updated their defenses.

• Target website tactics: Different sites use different anti-scraping approaches, even within the same industry.

• Country and device requirements: Proxies serve diverse use cases. This benchmark can't assess every niche scenario.

What to Check Before Subscribing

Geo-Targeting Capabilities

Many websites restrict content based on geographic location due to legal requirements, censorship, or personalization. If you need to collect location-specific data (localized pricing, regional content verification, ad display checking), choose a provider offering IPs from your target locations.

Speed and Response Time

Speed is the data transfer rate between client, proxy server, and target website. High-speed proxies are essential for large-scale scraping. Response time (latency) measures how long requests take to travel from client to server—critical for time-sensitive tasks like live event streaming.

IP Pool Size

When you're pulling significant data from large websites or scraping numerous smaller sites simultaneously, you need to rotate IPs frequently. A large pool enhances anonymity and helps bypass rate limits and anti-scraping measures. Consider both the total number of IPs and their diversity (residential, datacenter, mobile).

Cost Considerations

Cost isn't about finding the cheapest option—it's about value per request. Consider:

• Proxy types: Datacenter proxies are fast and cheap but easier to block. Residential or mobile proxies cost more but offer higher trust and anonymity.

• Pricing models: Compare pay-as-you-go versus subscriptions. Check data caps, overage fees, and geo-targeting costs.

• Extra features: City-level targeting, dedicated IPs, and API integration often justify premium pricing.

Understanding Proxy Types

Static vs Rotating Proxies

Static proxies (sticky proxies) maintain the same IP address for a fixed duration or entire session. Best for social media management, account logins, or ad verification.

Rotating proxies assign a new IP automatically after each request or session. Ideal for large-scale scraping or price monitoring.

If you're looking for a VIP72 alternative, make sure the provider supports SOCKS5. While HTTP works fine for standard browsing, SOCKS5 is essential for traffic-intensive tasks like video streaming or gaming.

Shared vs Dedicated Proxies

Shared proxies are used by multiple users simultaneously—affordable but with variable speeds and occasional blacklisting risks from other users' activity.

Dedicated proxies (private proxies) are assigned exclusively to one user. They deliver faster speeds, better reliability, and stronger anonymity, making them the go-to choice for high-volume web scraping.

Final Thoughts

The proxy provider you choose depends entirely on your specific needs. If you're prioritizing absolute stability for mission-critical operations, Bright Data and Oxylabs justify their premium pricing. For speed demons who need the fastest response times possible, Decodo delivers. Budget-conscious users should look at Webshare's free tier or Apify's value at scale.

The key takeaway from our 500k request benchmark? There's no single "best" provider—just the best provider for your use case. Consider your scale, budget, targeting requirements, and whether you need specialized protocols like SOCKS5 before making your decision.