Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2026 — 8 Tested Providers

TL;DR

Web scraping needs proxies that beat anti-bot systems without breaking your budget. We compare 8 providers: from Bright Data's 400M residential pool to GProxy's $0.85/GB PAYG entry. Pick by data size and target site difficulty.

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Why they are looking for an alternative

Web scraping is the #1 use case for paid proxies. Choice depends on three things: (1) target site's anti-bot strength, (2) data volume, (3) budget. Residential proxies for hard targets (Amazon, Google SERP); datacenter for unprotected APIs; ISP static for account-based scraping.

Best alternatives

Bright Data

Our choice

From $4/GB PAYG · $499+/mo volume

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Suitable: Enterprise data teams, LLM labs (14 of top 20).

Pros

✓400M+ residential IPs
✓195 countries
✓Won Meta/X cases 2024
✓14 of top 20 LLM labs

Cons

–$4/GB PAYG
–Volume $499-$2,500/mo commitments
–No IPv6
–Enterprise onboarding

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Oxylabs

From $6/GB Starter (5GB $30/mo)

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Suitable: Enterprise data teams, premium ASN ISP (Lumen, Comcast, BT, Orange, Cox).

Pros

✓175M+ residential
✓Proxyway/PCMag 2025 awards
✓HTTP3
✓EU HQ

Cons

–$30/month minimum Starter
–ISP 22 countries
–No IPv6

Smartproxy (Decodo)

From $3.75/GB (3GB $11.25/mo) · $0.035/IP datacenter

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Suitable: Mid-market: cheap datacenter shared, 14-day money-back.

Pros

✓115M+ residential
✓Datacenter $0.035/IP at 100 IPs
✓14-day money-back
✓Rebranded to Decodo 2024

Cons

–Brand rebrand confusion
–No IPv6
–ISP 15 countries

GProxy

From $0.85/GB residential PAYG · $0.03/IPv6 proxy / 3 days

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Suitable: SMB and developers: budget residential, IPv6, per-day billing, virgin ISP.

Pros

✓Residential 2-7x cheaper at entry ($0.85/GB PAYG)
✓Standalone IPv6 proxies — only provider that sells them
✓Pay-per-day billing on most products
✓Virgin ISP tier ($6.50/IP) with 0 fraud score
✓Flat unlimited bandwidth from $3/day

Cons

–Mid-size residential pool (10M+ IPs) (10M+ IPs)
–Country coverage 150+ vs
–No Fortune-500 references

IPRoyal

From $1.75/GB · $1.39/IP DC · $117/mo mobile

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Suitable: Multi-product mid-budget: 'traffic never expires', 5G mobile, Web Unblocker API.

Pros

✓32M+ residential, 4.5M+ mobile 5G
✓60+ datacenter locations
✓Traffic never expires
✓Web Unblocker $1/1000 req

Cons

–$1.75/GB entry
–Mobile $117/month
–No IPv6

NetNut

From $2.92/GB (72GB $210/mo)

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Suitable: Direct ISP partnerships, one-hop low-latency architecture.

Pros

✓85M+ residential
✓Direct ISP partnerships
✓1M+ ISP IPs
✓5G mobile network
✓3/6/12 month plans

Cons

–$210/month minimum
–No PAYG below $2.92/GB
–No IPv6

SOAX

From $3.60/GB (25GB $90/mo) · $1.99 trial

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Suitable: Mobile-heavy: 33M+ mobile IPs, unified credit system.

Pros

✓33M+ mobile IPs in 195+ countries
✓Unified credits
✓UDP/QUIC
✓24h sticky sessions

Cons

–$90/month Starter
–No IPv6
–No proxies in Texas (stated policy)

Webshare

From $3.50/GB · 10 datacenter free forever

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Suitable: Free-tier seekers, cheap datacenter at scale. Acquired by Oxylabs 2022.

Pros

✓10 datacenter free forever
✓Datacenter $0.0299/IP at 100 IPs
✓ISP $0.30/IP (AT&T/Sprint/Cox)
✓30-47% annual discount

Cons

–$3.50/GB residential entry
–No IPv6
–US-focused ISPs
–No daily billing

Comparison table

Query Parameters:	Value
Bright Data, Oxylabs, NetNut (ISP partnerships)	Best for hardest targets (Amazon, Google)
Webshare or Smartproxy datacenter ($0.0179-$0.035/IP)	Best for unprotected APIs / large volume
GProxy virgin ISP, Webshare ISP, Oxylabs ISP	Best for account-based scraping
GProxy residential ($0.85/GB PAYG)	Best for budget scraping

Pick by target difficulty

Easy targets (unprotected APIs, news sites) → datacenter from Webshare/Smartproxy ($0.02-0.03/IP)
Medium targets (e-commerce, classifieds) → residential rotating from GProxy or IPRoyal
Hard targets (Amazon, Google, Cloudflare-protected) → premium residential from Bright Data, Oxylabs or NetNut
Account scraping (Instagram, LinkedIn) → ISP static (virgin from GProxy, premium ASN from Oxylabs/Webshare)

Methodology

For each provider we visited their public product/pricing page on 2026-05-16, recorded the lowest published price, the disclosed network size (with the caveat that "number of IPs" claims are vendor-self-reported), and noted unique product offerings. We did NOT include affiliate codes, kickbacks, or per-conversion sponsorship in this ranking. GProxy is the publisher; we rank ourselves where the data supports it and concede other providers' wins where the data supports them.

FAQ

Do I need residential or datacenter proxies for scraping? +

Depends on target. Datacenter for unprotected sites (cheaper). Residential for sites with anti-bot (Cloudflare, DataDome, etc.). Test with datacenter first — if blocked, upgrade to residential.

What's the best proxy for scraping Amazon? +

Residential or mobile (Amazon's anti-bot is strict). Top picks: Bright Data, Oxylabs, NetNut for premium results; GProxy or IPRoyal for budget.

Can I scrape with free proxies? +

Not reliably. Free proxies are typically dead or blocked. For real scraping work, budget $50-$500/month.

Total

For hard scraping targets: Bright Data or Oxylabs residential. For budget scraping: GProxy residential or IPRoyal. For datacenter-acceptable targets at scale: Webshare or Smartproxy. For account scraping: ISP static (virgin from GProxy or premium ASN from Oxylabs).

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