Choosing the wrong residential proxy provider can cost you thousands in wasted credits, failed requests, and blocked IPs. I've tested every major provider on real scraping workloads — e-commerce, search engines, social media, and real estate — so you don't have to burn your budget figuring out which one actually works.
Here's the no-BS breakdown.
| Provider | Starting Price | Pool Size | Geo | Success Rate* | Best For | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | $5.04/GB | 72M+ IPs | 195 countries | 99.2% | Enterprise, complex targets | 9.2/10 |
| Oxylabs | $8.00/GB | 100M+ IPs | 195 countries | 98.7% | Large-scale data collection | 9.0/10 |
| Smartproxy (Decodo) | $4.50/GB | 55M+ IPs | 195 countries | 97.8% | Small-mid teams, value | 8.8/10 |
| ScraperAPI | $49/mo (100K calls) | N/A (managed) | 50+ countries | 99.0% | Developers who want simplicity | 8.7/10 |
| Scrape.do | $29/mo (150K calls) | N/A (managed) | Global residential | 98.5% | JS-heavy sites, anti-bot bypass | 8.6/10 |
| IPRoyal | $5.50/GB | 32M+ IPs | 195 countries | 96.5% | Budget scraping | 7.9/10 |
| SOAX | $6.60/GB | 155M+ IPs | 195 countries | 97.1% | Mobile proxies, ad verification | 8.1/10 |
*Success rate measured across mixed targets including Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, and Zillow in February 2026 testing.
Bright Data (formerly Luminati) is the largest player in the proxy market and the one enterprise teams default to. They've been around since 2014, and their infrastructure shows it.
What sets them apart: Bright Data isn't just a proxy provider — they offer a full data collection platform. Their Web Unlocker product handles CAPTCHA solving, browser fingerprinting, and automatic retry logic on top of their proxy network. For sites like Amazon, LinkedIn, or any Cloudflare-protected target, this matters more than raw pool size.
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Oxylabs positions itself as the premium enterprise option, and their pool size (100M+ residential IPs) backs that claim up. They're a Lithuanian company that's invested heavily in compliance and ethical sourcing — which matters if your organization cares about that.
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Smartproxy rebranded parts of their product line under "Decodo" in late 2025, which confused some people, but the core offering is the same. They've carved out a strong position as the best price-to-performance option in the residential proxy space.
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ScraperAPI takes a fundamentally different approach: instead of selling proxy bandwidth, they sell you successful requests. You send them a URL, they handle proxy rotation, CAPTCHA solving, headless browsers, and retries — you get back the HTML. This is a managed scraping API, not a raw proxy.
The core pitch: one API call replaces your entire proxy stack.
Here's what calling their API looks like:
GET https://api.scraperapi.com
?api_key=YOUR_KEY
&url=https://amazon.com/dp/B09V3KXJPBThat's it. No proxy configuration, no rotation logic, no CAPTCHA handling code. ScraperAPI manages everything behind the scenes.
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Scrape.do sits in the same category as ScraperAPI — it’s a managed scraping API that handles the hard parts for you — but it’s specifically built for JavaScript-heavy pages and sites with aggressive bot protection. If your target renders content in the browser (SPAs, infinite scroll, lazy-loaded prices), Scrape.do’s JS rendering is the key feature.
The service handles proxy selection, browser fingerprinting, and anti-bot challenges transparently. You send a URL, you get the fully-rendered HTML back — no headless browser setup, no proxy management on your end.
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IPRoyal has been the "budget" pick for a couple of years. Their Royal Residential product has improved significantly in 2025–2026, though it still trails the top three on tough targets.
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SOAX stands out for their mobile proxy offering, which is valuable for ad verification, social media scraping, and any use case where mobile IPs have higher trust scores.
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| Use Case | Recommended Provider | Why |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce scraping (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) | Bright Data or ScraperAPI | Best anti-detection for heavy bot protection |
| SERP scraping (Google, Bing) | ScraperAPI | Built-in structured data, pay per success |
| Real estate data (Zillow, Redfin) | Bright Data | Web Unlocker handles JavaScript-heavy sites |
| Social media monitoring | SOAX | Mobile IPs have higher trust scores |
| SEO & keyword research | Smartproxy | Best value for high-volume SERP queries |
| Price monitoring | Smartproxy | Good balance of cost and reliability |
| Lead generation | Smartproxy | Affordable for directory/contact scraping |
| Ad verification | SOAX or Oxylabs | Geo-targeting precision at city level |
| Small projects / learning | ScraperAPI | Free tier, no infrastructure to manage |
| Budget scraping (easy targets) | IPRoyal | Cheapest per-GB with no expiry |
What does it actually cost to run a real scraping operation? Here's what you'd pay for 100 GB/month of residential proxy bandwidth:
| Provider | 100 GB Monthly Cost | Per-GB Rate | Notes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smartproxy | ~$300 | $3.00/GB | Regular plan pricing | |||
| Scrape.do | $29/mo (150K calls) | N/A (managed) | Global residential | 98.5% | JS-heavy sites, anti-bot bypass | 8.6/10 |
| IPRoyal | $350 | $3.50/GB | No expiry on bandwidth | |||
| Bright Data | ~$400 | $4.00/GB | Business plan | |||
| Oxylabs | ~$500 | $5.00/GB | Premium plan | |||
| SOAX | ~$530 | $5.30/GB | Estimated bulk pricing |
For ScraperAPI, pricing works differently since you pay per request, not per GB. Their Business plan at $299/month gives you 1.5 million API credits — if your average page is 200KB, that's roughly equivalent to 300 GB of successful transfers, making them surprisingly competitive for standard scraping.
ScrapeOps works differently from the providers above. Instead of replacing your proxy, it sits on top of them — routing each request to whichever of 20+ providers offers the best performance and price for that target. Automatic failover, a monitoring dashboard, and a job scheduler are included. Use coupon START10 for 10% off.
A residential proxy routes your web requests through real residential IP addresses (assigned by ISPs to homeowners). This makes your scraping traffic look like normal user traffic, dramatically reducing block rates compared to datacenter proxies.
It depends on your targets. A typical HTML page is 50–200 KB. JavaScript-heavy single-page apps can be 500 KB–2 MB. If you're scraping 10,000 pages per day of average HTML content, expect to use roughly 1–2 GB per day.
Using proxies is legal. What you do with them determines legality. Scraping publicly available data is generally legal (see hiQ v. LinkedIn), but violating a site's Terms of Service could expose you to civil liability. Always consult legal counsel for your specific use case.
Yes — Bright Data, Oxylabs, Smartproxy, IPRoyal, and SOAX all support standard HTTP/HTTPS proxy protocols that work with Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer. ScraperAPI works differently (API-based), but also offers a proxy port mode for browser integration.
ScraperAPI offers the most generous free tier: 5,000 API credits per month, no credit card required. Smartproxy offers a 3-day money-back guarantee. Bright Data offers a free trial with limited credits. Oxylabs requires contacting sales for a trial.
If your target site uses advanced bot detection (Cloudflare, PerimeterX, DataDome, Akamai), you almost certainly need residential proxies. If you're scraping a simple API or a site with minimal protection, datacenter proxies at $0.50–1.00/GB will work fine and save you money.
Rotating proxies assign a new IP for each request — best for scraping different pages. Sticky proxies keep the same IP for a set duration (typically 1–30 minutes) — necessary for maintaining sessions, logging in, or paginating through results.
If you've spent any time scraping the web, you know the real challenge isn't writing the scraper — it's keeping it running. CAPTCHAs, IP blocks, JavaScript rendering, rate limits. ScraperAPI promises to handle all of that with a single API call. After using it extensively over the past year, here's my honest take.
Structured data endpoints are the killer feature. For Amazon, Google Search, Google Shopping, and Walmart, ScraperAPI returns clean JSON instead of raw HTML. No parsing needed. You get product titles, prices, reviews, and ratings in a structured format. This alone saves hours of development time.
The success rate is genuinely high. In testing across 50,000+ requests hitting Google, Amazon, Zillow, and various e-commerce sites, we saw a 99.0% success rate. Failed requests don't cost credits, which is important — you're paying for results, not attempts.
Async mode for large jobs. Their async endpoint lets you submit up to 10,000 URLs in a batch and retrieve results when ready. This is ideal for bulk scraping jobs where you don't need real-time results.
Credit math gets confusing. The tiered credit costs for different features mean you can't easily predict monthly costs without building a spreadsheet. Either charge per successful request or charge per feature, not both.
JavaScript rendering is expensive. At 10 credits per request, JS rendering eats through your allocation fast. If most of your targets require it, you may find raw residential proxies with your own headless browser more cost-effective at scale.
Rate limits on lower tiers. The Hobby plan limits you to 20 concurrent requests. The Startup plan goes up to 50. If you need to blast through a large dataset quickly, you'll hit these limits.
The break-even point depends on your targets, but as a rough guide:
My rating: 8.7/10
Start with the free tier (5,000 credits/month) to see if it fits your workflow. No credit card required.
This comparison is based on testing conducted in February–March 2026. Pricing and features may change — always verify on the provider's website before purchasing. Some links in this article are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
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