The best proxy servers route your traffic through a deep pool of IP addresses across the globe, allowing your web scraping software to proceed undetected. We gave more weight in our analysis to residential proxy servers because they come from real devices and are the least likely to be flagged as suspicious but we also considered a company’s mobile, datacenter and ISP proxies. Two proxy servers, Oxylabs and Decodo, stood out above the rest. If you’re looking for the very lowest price, Webshare offers a boatload of residential and datacenter IPs for low prices, but they’re more likely to be detected by anti-bot systems.
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What is the best proxy server in 2026?
Two proxy servers scored far above the rest in our analysis: Oxylabs and Decodo. With its advanced features and affordable high-data packages, Oxylabs is the best proxy server for larger businesses. It has the largest proxy pool of any company, with more than 175 million IPs available in its residential proxy pool alone. They’re some of the highest quality, too — Oxylabs’ fraud and performance scores ranked only behind Decodo. If you expect to need at least 100GB of proxy server data each month, Oxylabs should be your first stop.
Decodo is our pick for the best proxy server for smaller businesses who need less than 100GB of data monthly. It lacks some of the more advanced features that come with Oxylabs but it’s more accessible for those new to proxy servers and its pay-as-you-go pricing is lower on residential proxies.
If you’re looking to pay the lowest price possible, Webshare offers the cheapest all-around proxy servers — especially if you choose one of its datacenter proxies, which start at $0.03 per IP for 100 IPs. These are more likely to be flagged by anti-bot detectors but you’ll be able to afford a much higher volume for the same money you’d spend with Decodo and Oxylabs.
Proxy server feature comparison: See how our top picks stack up
| Proxy server | Oxylabs | Decodo | Webshare |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best | For larger businesses | For smaller businesses | Price |
| Residential price (per GB) | $4.00 | $3.50 | $3.50 |
| Mobile price (per GB) | $5.40 | $3.50 | N/A |
| Datacenter monthly price (1,000 IPs, unlimited bandwidth) | $750 | $120 | $81 |
| ISP monthly price (100 IPs, unlimited bandwidth) | $130 | $105 | $90 |
| Residential proxy pool | 175 million | 115 million | 80 million |
| Countries | 195+ | 195+ | 195 |
| Annual pricing discount | No | No | 30% off |
| Free trial | 3 days for individuals, 7 days for companies | 3 days | 10 free datacenter IPs |
| Browser extension | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile proxies | Yes | Yes | No |
| City targeting | Yes | Yes | No |
| ASN targeting | Yes | Yes | No |
| Restricted targets | Netflix, Spotify, Twitch, Disney, PayPal, Bank of America, Binance, usa.gov, canada.ca, Playstation, Steam, Ticketmaster, Eventbrite, Outlook, Yahoo mail, Google Tag Manager, Doubleclick, ipinfo.info, iplocation.net | Banking and other financial activities, government sites, entertainment (Netflix and major streaming platforms), Apple/Google stores, ticketing, gaming, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, Uber, Grammarly, Adobe |
Entertainment (Netflix, Playstation), banking and financial institutions, government websites, streaming platforms, ticketing services, mailing services |
Pros
- Largest residential pool of any proxy server
- Cheap data when purchased in bulk
- Proxies available in more than 195 countries
- Customer support with real humans
- Third-party software integrations for developers
Cons
- Setup can be daunting for new proxy users
- Documentation isn’t as thorough for beginners as other proxies
Why I like it
The numbers alone are eye-popping with Oxylabs: 175 million residential proxies in 195 countries and more than 10,400 cities. You can target specific locations with an unmatched level of detail — including by ASN (Autonomous System Number) or ZIP code — or you can set it to a rotating pool that changes IPs with each new request. Oxylabs also received one of our best fraud scores of any residential proxy server, which means your requests are less likely to trigger anti-bot detections.
Who it’s best for
With its suite of APIs and third-party software integrations, Oxylabs is clearly targeted toward developers and enterprise customers engaging in large-scale data collection. Within minutes of setting up my account, a representative from Oxylabs emailed me offering to set up a meeting to explore my options. If you just want to use a proxy server to cop limited edition sneakers, Oxylabs’ feature-rich platform is probably overkill. But for businesses looking to maximize their web scraping capabilities, it’s a dream.
Pricing
You can see Oxylabs’ focus on enterprise customers in its pricing structure. Its residential proxies are relatively expensive when you pay by the Gigabyte ($4), but the per-GB cost is cut in half when you get up to 1,000GB a month. (For anything larger than that, you’ll have to contact the sales department.) Starting at $5.40 per GB, its mobile proxy servers are on the expensive side — even if you’re buying in bulk. If you’re looking to use mobile proxies for something like social media automation, I’d give the edge to Decodo.
Usability
Oxylabs was fairly intimidating to me when I first started using it but I could easily see how that could be a positive for someone with developing expertise. If you’re already using software for market analysis or web scraping, there’s a good chance Oxylabs has an integration for it. When I did run into issues, Oxylabs’ web chat was incredibly helpful. It includes an option to chat with a human upfront, so you never have to get stuck in AI chatbot purgatory.
Pros
- Best-in-class success rate and response time
- Useful browser extension
- Low pay-as-you-go prices
- High-quality IP pool
- Cheap mobile proxy plans
Cons
- Expensive high-data residential plans
- No city-level targeting with ISP and datacenter proxies
Why I like it
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) checked all the boxes I looked for in a proxy server: a deep and high-quality pool of residential and mobile IPs, best-in-class performance and an accessible user interface. Along with Rayobyte and Webshare, it also has the lowest pay-as-you-go price of any residential proxy server at $3.50 per GB. Decodo’s infrastructure success rate and response time were also elite, ensuring that the vast majority of your requests will go through without a hitch.
Who it’s best for
I’d recommend Decodo to anyone but it’s especially attractive for users who are new to proxy servers. It was one of the easiest proxies to set up and begin using, with thorough documentation that walks you through every step. For businesses that want to use proxies with software they already use, Oxylabs will integrate better with your existing workflow. That doesn’t mean Decodo is lacking in tools — it has a free web scraping API and a handful of integrations — it’s just not quite as advanced as Oxylabs.
Pricing
Decodo’s prices are very competitive for low-data plans, but not so much if you need more than 100GB a month. The pay-as-you-go price for both its residential and mobile proxies is just $3.50 per GB, but the price increases to $6 per GB on residential plans as soon as you buy 2GB at a time. You’ll end up paying $3 per GB for packages of 1,000GB each month, which was higher than all but one proxy server I tested. Decodo’s mobile proxy servers are a steal, though: just $2.25 per GB for blocks of 500GB.
Usability
Decodo received our highest score for usability because of its beginner-friendly setup and exhaustive documentation. Its browser extension was also more built out than other proxies’, allowing you to track your use at a glance, add websites to a bypass list or turn the proxy on or off. And when I did hit a roadblock during setup, Decodo’s web chat was actually pretty helpful in guiding me toward the right answer.
Pros
- Low prices at every proxy type and data level
- High level of plan customization options
- Ethically sourced residential proxies
- Easy setup for beginners
- 30% discount for annual payments on all plans
Cons
- No HTTPS or SOCKS5 (with UDP) protocols
- Doesn’t offer mobile proxies
- Slow response times, especially with popular targets
- No city-level targeting
Why I like it
The value proposition is pretty simple with Webshare: It’s incredibly cheap. While I would normally be wary about paying such a low price for proxy servers, Webshare’s actually stacked up pretty well in our analysis. Its success rate and uptime are both around the industry average, and it has a residential proxy pool of 80 million. Those IPs weren’t as high-quality as Decodo’s or Oxylabs’, but with the lower prices, you can afford to have some of your requests flagged as suspicious.
Who it’s best for
Webshare is best for users who’ll be targeting websites that don’t care about IP reputation as much. Webshare’s residential proxies still had a relatively high success rate with Amazon, Google and Instagram, but its datacenter proxies were another story. If you go with these cheaper proxies, it’s more than likely that your requests will be blocked by popular targets. Webshare also has a relatively slow response time across all proxy types, so it’s not a good fit for projects that require data in near real-time.
Pricing
Webshare’s pay-per-GB price starts at $3.50 for residential proxy servers, but quickly goes down from there — all the way to $1.50 per GB for a chunk of 1,000GB. Its datacenter proxies are astoundingly cheap. You’ll get your first 10 shared IPs free — a nice perk if you want to see whether Webshare’s proxies can handle your tasks — and pay about $0.03 per IP for greater quantities. Webshare’s datacenter and ISP proxies come in three variations: shared (shared with multiple users), private (shared with a maximum of two users) and dedicated (assigned only to you).
Usability
Webshare’s interface is pretty bare bones, but it made for one of the easier setups of any proxy server I tested. You won’t find many third-party integrations or developer tools with Webshare — just a basic dashboard that shows you how much data you’re using. For such an affordable proxy server, I was impressed with Webshare’s customer support. When I asked to speak with a real human in the chat, someone hopped on within a few minutes and capably answered my questions.
Oxylabs offers a comprehensive suite of proxy solutions designed for high-performance web scraping and data gathering. Users can access a vast network of over 100 million residential proxies across the globe, ensuring high success rates and reliability for complex tasks. Whether for market research, ad verification or brand protection, these tools provide the scale and speed necessary for enterprise-level operations. For a limited time, CNET readers can take 60% off their purchase by using the exclusive promo code CNET60 at checkout.
Factors to consider in a proxy server
There’s a lot of information to take in when shopping for a proxy server. Here’s what you should look for when comparing your options.
Proxy type
There are four main types of proxy servers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Confusingly, many companies list them under different names, and you sometimes have the option to purchase dedicated or shared proxies as a subset of proxy types.
Residential
Residential proxy servers are the most popular proxy types available because of their high-quality IPs and large proxy pools. These come from real devices around the world with IP addresses assigned by internet service providers (ISPs), which makes them less likely to be blocked than datacenter and ISP proxies. That makes them a great choice for popular targets like Amazon, Instagram and Google.
Common use cases:
- Web scraping
- Ad verification
- SEO monitoring
- Limited-edition purchases
Mobile
Mobile proxies are generally considered to have the highest-quality IPs and therefore the most difficult to block. Your connection requests are routed to devices connected to wireless carriers and are often used for sophisticated targets like social media sites. You’ll typically pay almost double for mobile proxies compared to residential.
Common use cases:
- Social media automation
- Website and app testing
ISP
Also called “static residential” proxies, ISP proxies sit somewhere between datacenter and residential servers. Like residential proxy servers, they’re owned by internet providers but they’re hosted at datacenters, not the devices of end users themselves. These are generally faster than residential and mobile proxies, and with a higher uptime, but they’re more likely to be blocked.
Common use cases:
- Web scraping
- Managing multiple e-commerce accounts
- Sneaker copping
Datacenter
The cheapest proxy type, and the most likely to be flagged as suspicious by target sites. These live on servers owned by web hosting companies like AWS and Google Cloud. These proxy types have speedy performance but they’re the easiest for websites to detect. Most datacenter proxy servers charge by the number of IPs rather than data usage, but some companies offer both options.
Common use cases:
- Large-scale web scraping
- Price aggregation
- Market research
Dedicated vs. shared
Shared proxies are IP addresses that are controlled by multiple users at the same time, while dedicated IPs are used exclusively by one user at a time. Shared proxies are typically much cheaper than dedicated proxies, but speeds are much slower and you might be sharing IPs with some bad neighbors, which could cause the proxy to be banned on specific websites.
Proxy pool
A proxy pool refers to the number of IP addresses that a company has available for customers to use. When you buy data from Oxylabs’ residential plans, for example, you’ll automatically be connected to a rotating collection of 175 million IP addresses. A larger proxy pool can share traffic and lower the chances that a single IP will be blocked.
Fewer IPs in a pool also means fewer locations that you can target. Even though most proxy companies have over a million IPs at their disposal, a smaller proxy pool might not give you the ability to target the specific country or city that your project requires.
IP quality
A large proxy pool doesn’t necessarily guarantee better results. Not all IPs are created equal, and some pools have a higher percentage of proxies that are more likely to be flagged as fraudulent. To see how each proxy company compares in this metric, I’d recommend taking a look at Proxyway’s 2025 Market Research Report. The company analyzed pools from the top proxy servers and applied an industry standard called IPQualityScore (IPQS), which is commonly used in fraud prevention, risk analysis and threat detection.
Generally, any IP addresses with an IPQS score above 90 face a higher likelihood of being blocked by a website. Even the best proxy servers consist of a majority of IPs with IPQS scores over 90. The less of these IPs a proxy server has — and the more IPs in total — the more likely your requests will be successful.
Proxy sourcing
Many proxy servers list their IP addresses as “ethically sourced,” and while that might sound like empty marketing fluff, it actually has some practical implications for your projects. Ethically sourced essentially means that people or businesses are aware that their IP addresses are being used, they give their explicit consent and they’re being compensated for it. All three of our top picks provide a commitment to abiding by these tenets when sourcing their proxies.
In addition to being the right thing to do, proxies sourced without consent can expose a user to liability or grind a business’s operations to a halt through mass blocklisting of a proxy’s IP pool. Any reputable proxy server should have a clear policy on its website for how it sources IP addresses; if it doesn’t, you should pass it over.
Cost and discounts
Proxy server pricing can be incredibly complicated. Some companies charge by the IP for certain proxy types, others by data use and some give you both options. In general, the per-GB price goes down the more you spend. Some providers also offer discounted prices if you commit to annual payments instead of monthly.
If you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend purchasing one GB and running a few tests to gauge how much data you’ll require. Most proxy servers, including all of our top picks, also offer some sort of free trial, but you may have to contact a sales representative to access it.
Developer tools and third-party integrations
If you’re already using software for activities like web scraping or market research, there’s a decent chance that a proxy server out there has an integration with it. Oxylabs had the largest collection of tools for developers of any proxy server I tested, but it’s worth poking around for specific integrations before you commit to purchasing a large amount of data.
How we tested proxy servers
We scored proxy servers in five categories for this review, assigning a different weight to each one. Here’s what we considered for each one.
Proxy pool
This one is relatively straightforward: How many IP addresses does each proxy company have at its disposal? Size isn’t everything in proxy pools, but it is worth something. A deeper roster of IPs means your requests are more likely to go through successfully, and they give you greater control over your target locations. Some proxy servers let you choose IPs by specific ZIP codes, while others are missing entire countries. We gave more weight to residential and mobile proxies than datacenter and ISPs in this category, as those are harder to come by.
Weight: 15%
Fraud scores
The raw numbers are important with proxy pools, but how many of those IPs are likely to get past bot detection measures? For this metric, we relied heavily on Proxyway’s 2025 Market Research Report, which analyzed the residential pools from top proxy servers and applied an industry standard called IPQualityScore (IPQS). The higher the percentage of proxies with scores below 75 — these are less likely to be considered suspicious — the higher the score we gave it.
Weight: 15%
Performance
For this section, we focused on two metrics. Infrastructure success rate measures how often requests reach their end destination through the proxy, while response time measures how long it takes each proxy to do it. We also used Proxyway’s 2025 Market Research Report for this data, which sent out more than 1.5 million requests to top proxy servers this year. Both success rate and response time were combined for our performance score.
We also considered success rates with popular targets like Amazon, Google and Instagram, which are usually better at blocking IPs that they identify as proxies. All three of our top picks had success rates at 92% or above for these websites.
Weight: 30%
Value
This score captures how much data — or how many IPs, for datacenter and ISP proxies — you get for your money. Some proxy servers offer slightly different data packages, which we normalized using a per-GB price for three tiers: one GB, 500GB and 1,000GB. We gave more weight to residential and mobile proxies here, as these are the most sought-after proxy types in the industry these days.
Weight: 25%
User experience
While our other metrics were informed entirely by hard data, this section was a little more subjective. I spent at least a day setting up and using each proxy server I tested, taking note of how easy the setup process was, whether the proxy server came with helpful features like a browser extension and how useful the data dashboards were.
I also contacted each company’s customer support with some basic questions. These were almost always web chats that started off with AI agents — I couldn’t find a single proxy server that had a phone number listed — but some were better than others. The best proxy servers allowed you to connect with an actual human in the chat without having to wait hours or days for a response.
Weight: 15%
Other proxy servers we tested
In total, I tested 16 proxy servers for this review. Some, like Storm Proxies and Packet Stream, were eliminated right off the bat because they didn’t disclose a clear policy on how their proxies were sourced. The rest of these proxy servers didn’t quite beat out our top picks, but they’re still worth a look.
Soax
This was the hardest cut of the bunch. Soax came in third in most of our important metrics, but it was hard to find a reason to recommend it over Oxylabs or Decodo. Soax has an impressive 155 million IPs in its residential proxy pool — behind only Oxylabs — and it ranked third in Proxyway’s fraud score analysis. I also found its web interface and documentation to be some of the best of the bunch, but those didn’t quite tip the scales enough to break into our top picks.
Score: 8.8/10
DataImpulse
While DataImpulse has the cheapest mobile proxies I saw, that wasn’t quite compelling enough to look past its flaws. Its fraud score from Proxyway was close to the bottom, and it doesn’t have a particularly large residential pool to begin with. Confusingly, DataImpulse’s more expensive “premium” plans actually had a worse fraud score than its basic option. That said, if you’re looking exclusively for mobile proxies, it is worth considering. These plans had solid success rates, especially with popular targets, but response times were a glacial 1.42 seconds.
Score: 7.6/10
Massive
While I enjoyed using Massive’s proxy servers overall, it has one fatal flaw: the smallest residential proxy pool I saw at just 1 million. These are extremely high-quality proxies, to be sure — Massive received our best ranking for fraud score — but with so many fewer IPs than the competition, it’s hard to recommend. And while Massive touts its ethical sourcing all over its website, it doesn’t list compensation as one of its tenets in its sourcing policy, which all three of our top picks do.
Score: 7.1/10
IPRoyal
IPRoyal was serviceable in almost every category, but it didn’t necessarily stand out to me, either. Its residential pool is modest at 32 million and it consists of an above-average percentage of IPs that are likely to be blocked. That said, its prices are very competitive, and you also have the option to pay by the length of time with its mobile, datacenter and ISP proxies — a nice feature if you have a short-term project you’re working on.
Score: 6.7/10
Bright Data
Bright Data has the third-largest residential proxy pool of any company at 150 million, with IPs in every country in the world and precise location filtering options. Its IPs ranked in the middle of the pack for fraud score, with an average global IPQS score of 44.52 and 71.76 in the US. (Remember, anything below 75 is unlikely to be considered suspicious.) Ultimately, it wasn’t quite as high-performing as Decodo and Oxylabs or as cheap as Webshare, so it didn’t make our top picks during this round of testing.
Score: 6.6/10
NetNut
NetNut is clearly targeted toward businesses with a high appetite for data. It’s one of the few proxy companies that doesn’t offer a pay-as-you-go option; the cheapest rotating residential plan available is $84 per month for 28GB. That $3-per-GB price point is attractive, but you’re not getting the highest quality IPs for that price. The only company that fared worse in Proxyway’s fraud score analysis was DataImpulse’s Premium tier.
Score: 5.3/10
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