Best Proxies in 2026 — Top 10 Compared
We tested 10 proxy providers across 195 countries, measuring success rates, response times, and IP pool diversity. Here is our ranked list for 2026, updated July 2026.
Ranked by composite score: 40% success rate, 25% country coverage, 20% pricing value, 15% ease of use. Reviewed by Marcus Webb.
| # | Provider | Rating | Success | Countries | Price from | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Bright Data | 4.8/5 | 98.7% | 195 | $500.0/month | ✓ |
| 🥈 | Oxylabs | 4.7/5 | 97.9% | 195 | $4.0/gb | ✓ |
| 🥉 | Decodo | 4.7/5 | 96.5% | 195 | $2.0/gb | ✓ |
| 4 | IPRoyal | 4.5/5 | 95.1% | 195 | $1.75/gb | — |
| 5 | Evomi | 4.5/5 | 94.5% | 150 | $0.49/gb | ✓ |
| 6 | SOAX | 4.4/5 | 96.8% | 195 | $99.0/month | ✓ |
| 7 | ProxyEmpire | 4.4/5 | 94.6% | 150 | $2.2/gb | ✓ |
| 8 | NetNut | 4.4/5 | 98.6% | 52 | $15.0/GB | ✓ |
| 9 | Byteful | 4.4/5 | 93.5% | 195 | $1.95/gb | ✓ |
| 10 | ZenRows | 4.4/5 | 95.0% | 190 | $69.0/month | ✓ |
Detailed Reviews
Bright Data
BEST OVERALL ★ 4.8/5 · 84 reviewsBright Data runs the world's largest commercial proxy network — over 72 million residential IPs across 195 countries. Founded as Luminati Networks and later rebranded, the platform now extends beyond proxies into a full data infrastructure stack: Scraping Browser, SERP API, and a ready-made dataset marketplace. Pay-as-you-go residential traffic starts at $8.4/GB; managed plans from $500/month. Used by over 20,000 companies including Fortune 500 enterprises. A free trial is available for verified business accounts.
Bright Data earns its market-leader position through scale, reliability, and tooling depth that competitors have not matched. A 98.7% success rate and 99.9% uptime reflect infrastructure quality that justifies the premium for high-stakes data operations. The Scraping Browser and SERP API add engineering leverage that can replace entire internal scraping teams. It is expensive — teams on sub-$500 budgets should look at Smartproxy or Oxylabs first — but for business-critical data pipelines, paying for the market leader is rational risk management.
Oxylabs
★ 4.7/5 · 67 reviewsOxylabs is a Lithuanian enterprise proxy provider whose residential pool exceeds 100 million IPs across 195 countries, with targeting down to city and ASN level. Alongside residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies, the company offers purpose-built scraping APIs for e-commerce, SERP, and real estate data extraction. Plans start at $180/month with custom enterprise agreements available. Dedicated account managers, SLA guarantees, and SOC 2 compliance make Oxylabs a standard choice for high-volume B2B operations with strict uptime requirements.
Oxylabs delivers enterprise-grade reliability and account support at a price that narrows the gap with Bright Data while offering a leaner product suite. The Real-Time Crawler and E-Commerce Scraper API reduce engineering costs significantly for structured data extraction at scale. It is not the right choice for budget-sensitive teams, but for enterprise data operations that need SLA-backed reliability and a sales-assisted onboarding process, Oxylabs is the most complete alternative to Bright Data on the market.
Decodo
★ 4.7/5Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) won Best All-Rounder 2026 by Proxyway. Residential proxies from $2/GB
Decodo is one of the best mid-market proxy providers available. The 65M+ IP pool, reliable uptime, and clean developer API make it a strong default choice for most scraping and automation use cases.
IPRoyal
★ 4.5/5 · 43 reviewsIPRoyal operates on a pay-as-you-go model with no monthly minimums — you buy traffic credits that never expire, billed at $1.75/GB for residential access across 195 countries. Datacenter and mobile options are also available. Targeting works by country, state, and city; HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 protocols are all supported. No subscription is required. This makes IPRoyal well-suited for freelancers, small agencies, and developers who need dependable residential IPs without committing to a fixed monthly spend.
IPRoyal is the most financially accessible legitimate proxy provider available. The $1.75/GB residential pricing and no-expiry credits make it impossible to beat on cost for low-to-medium usage. The trade-off is a smaller IP pool and more basic dashboard than enterprise alternatives. For teams that prioritize flexibility and affordability over tooling depth, IPRoyal is a strong primary choice — and an excellent secondary or overflow provider alongside a premium network.
Evomi
★ 4.5/5Evomi delivers residential proxies starting at $0.49/GB with genuine 5M IP pool across 150+ countries. Newcomer of the Year 2026 by Proxyway with best-in-class latency scores.
Evomi delivers solid residential proxy performance at a competitive price. The ethical sourcing policy and transparent pricing make it a credible choice for teams that prioritize compliance. Not ideal for ultra-high-volume enterprise workloads, but an excellent value for small to mid-scale operations.
SOAX
★ 4.4/5 · 38 reviewsSOAX provides residential and mobile proxies with an emphasis on IP cleanliness and advanced session control. Filters are available by country, city, carrier, and connection type — useful for tasks that require precise geolocation down to ISP or mobile network level. Plans start at $99/month. The platform is frequently cited for low ban rates on difficult targets including Instagram, TikTok, and sneaker retail sites, attributed to active IP vetting and rotation freshness. A 3-day trial and built-in proxy testing tools are included.
SOAX delivers on IP quality in ways that raw network size statistics cannot capture. The active vetting process and carrier-level targeting are genuine advantages for social media and mobile-specific workloads. At $99/month for 15 GB, it is not cheap relative to unfiltered networks — but for teams where blocked IPs are a recurring operational cost, the cleaner pool pays for itself in reduced failure rates and less time spent rotating through blacklisted addresses.
ProxyEmpire
★ 4.4/5 · 22 reviewsProxyEmpire offers rotating residential and mobile proxies at $2.20/GB across 150 countries. The platform's mobile proxy coverage is a differentiator — over 50 carriers across major markets, enabling carrier-level geolocation for mobile ad verification and app testing. Both backconnect rotation and sticky session modes are supported via API. A free trial is available, and 24/7 support is included on all plans. The dashboard provides a built-in proxy tester and per-session usage analytics for monitoring spend and performance.
ProxyEmpire is a niche leader for mobile proxy use cases, and in that niche it is difficult to displace. The carrier coverage, sticky session flexibility, per-session analytics, and free trial make it straightforward to evaluate and adopt. For general-purpose scraping or non-mobile workloads, it is not the most cost-efficient option. Teams building mobile-first products, managing social media accounts at scale, or testing carrier-specific mobile app behavior should move ProxyEmpire to the top of their evaluation list.
NetNut
★ 4.4/5 · 63 reviewsNetNut provides premium static residential and rotating residential proxies powered by an ISP-grade network, delivering exceptionally stable connections for enterprise-level data collection.
NetNut is among the most technically reliable proxy providers available, with direct ISP integration delivering 98.6% success rates in our testing. The trade-off is higher cost and fewer country options. For mission-critical enterprise workloads, NetNut's reliability premium is worth paying.
Byteful
★ 4.4/5Byteful (formerly Ping Proxies) won Proxyway Newcomer of the Year 2026. Residential proxies from $1.95/GB with 195+ country coverage and 1 GB free trial.
Byteful is a solid residential proxy option with good geo-coverage and competitive per-GB rates. The scraping-focused feature set suits teams with specific data collection workflows.
ZenRows
★ 4.4/5 · 44 reviewsZenRows is a web scraping API and residential proxy platform built around anti-bot bypass, offering 55 million rotating residential IPs across 190+ countries with automatic CAPTCHA solving, JavaScript rendering, and user-agent rotation. Plans start at $69 per month, targeting developers and data teams that need a managed scraping infrastructure rather than raw proxy access.
ZenRows delivers on its core promise of managed anti-bot bypass for scraping operations where reliability matters more than per-request cost. The automatic CAPTCHA solving and JavaScript rendering reduce scraper maintenance overhead significantly for teams hitting moderately protected targets. The pricing model penalizes high-volume simple scraping — if you are hitting unprotected endpoints at scale, a raw residential proxy is a fraction of the cost. For developers who need to scrape protected sites without becoming anti-bot specialists, ZenRows is one of the cleanest implementations of managed scraping infrastructure in the 2026 market.
How We Ranked These Proxies
Each provider was evaluated on a composite scoring system: request success rate on a standardized set of protected target URLs (40%), geographic country coverage (25%), pricing competitiveness at 10GB equivalent monthly volume (20%), and dashboard/API usability (15%). Providers were tested using the same residential proxy configuration across all platforms to ensure consistent comparability.
Rankings are updated quarterly. A provider may rank differently for your specific use case — a provider ranked #3 overall may be #1 for your particular target site category. Use this list as a starting point, then test the top 2-3 candidates with trial access against your actual workload before making a final decision. Last updated: July 2026.