If you have a geo-specific scraping or data collection mission involving websites or services located in the United Kingdom, you will be better off with a set of reliable residential or datacenter proxies with UK IP addresses.
In this post we will cover the most promising and reputable UK proxy providers in the industry, talk about the use cases for such servers and dive into the specifics of using such servers.
How do UK proxies work?
Just like with any geo-targeted proxy, a UK-based IP can be a residential or datacenter proxy that originates in the UK. As for a residential proxy, we are talking about using an IP of an individual British citizen (via a local ISP), and with a datacenter proxy – through the use of servers hosted by UK-based datacenters.
Other than the location, the modus operandi of such servers is similar to a regular proxy: your traffic will get rerouted through a server, located in the UK for hiding behind a UK IP. This will help you in carrying out various geo-sensitive missions, including but not limited to the following:
- Protecting your brand. If you care about how your ad campaigns appear and run in the UK, you are most likely to buy UK proxies for verifying your brand activities in the country;
- Scraping e-commerce websites. You can use proxies inside bots and scripts to parse e-commerce websites and pages of your competitors to get a clear picture about your current market standings.
- Perform data extraction. If a website imposes some geo-restrictions on the country of your presence, with a set of UK proxies you can successfully override such hurdles and gain access to such data.
6 Best UK Proxy Providers of 2023
And now, it’s time to present you with our list of the most reputable and affordable UK proxy providers in the market as of the Fall of 2023.
1. PrivateProxy
The main reason to choose UK proxies from PrivateProxy is the quality and the performance of the company’s UK-based IPs. First of all, PrivateProxy boasts a long-lasting partnership with UK Internet Service Providers and data centers. This secured a vast network of UK addresses for the provider. So, if you are looking to buy residential proxies for UK missions, or want to try out datacenter rotating proxies for scraping UK social platforms, make sure to seek advice from seasoned professionals of PrivateProxy before committing with someone new to the market.
With PrivateProxy you get total exclusivity with your proxy accounts. This means you will be able to use the IPs without sharing them with other customers of the provider. If you start your search for UK proxies by typing “free UK proxies” or “best cheap UK proxies” in Google or Bing, you should know that it is a sure-fire way of getting your mission jeopardized by using publicly exposed IPs. Only premium (dedicated and private) proxies should be used for mission-critical operations to ensure stable results.
Another great feature of PrivateProxy is its dashboard and API collection. All the proxies that you will become available to you can be managed and monitored from a single profile. All the stats and graphs will be at your fingertips to give you enough data on the traffic consumption (on plans with limited and unlimited bandwidth) and swapping needs for IPs. Also, if you need to integrate the proxies into scripts or bots written in a number of languages, you will be able to select from a whole variety of APIs right on the site’s library.
The overall size of IPs and the guaranteed uptime of the proxies make PrivateProxy a one-stop shop for the whole spectrum of one of the best UK proxies. On top of that, you get an outstanding tech support team to address all your proxy issues in a prompt and easy fashion.
Pricing info: $9 per month for Datacenter IPs, $5 per month for static residential proxies.
2. Smartproxy
Smartproxy is a very reputable and well-established name in proxies. When it comes to providing geo-specific IPs for the UK market, Smartproxy has a lot to offer. With over 2 million unique proxies for the United Kingdom with great performance, the company is a great solution provider for those individuals and businesses looking for UK-based IPs.
The offerings of Smartproxy encompass not only residential IPs, but datacenter and mobile proxies as well. The level of targeting is also impressive. You will be able to select from almost 50 thousand IPs for London areas alone. The claimed response rate of less than 0.6 seconds is truly remarkable and adds to the overall performance figures.
As far as payment, you can choose between a pay-as-you-go plan and a monthly subscription for good yet cheap UK proxies. So, pay by GB or by IP depending on your use case and traffic requirements. And you also get a 14-day money back guarantee, just in case you need to swap or replace your proxies.
Pricing info: $12.5 per GB (pay as you go plan), Micro plan $8 per GB.
3. Oxylabs
Oxylabs features a massive collection of UK-based proxies for all sorts of online operations. Here you can choose from a total of over 3 million IPs in DC and static residential proxies for all your British-related scraping.
Like with all the offerings from Oxylabs, you can proceed with the automated proxy checkout and choose your preferred country of servers to get a set of high-quality IPs.
One thing for sure, you will not have any problem with project scalability since you will not be limited by traffic or the number of concurrent sessions via your robust and somewhat cheap UK private proxies. All sorts of UK-based missions are made possible with proxies from Oxylabs, including but not limited by market research, brand protection and more.
The UK market of e-commerce is developing at a very fast pace, so the demand for good UK proxies will not subside in any foreseeable future. With proxies supporting all protocols (HTTP(S), SOCKS) from Oxylabs your UK-based mission will be both hassle-free and effective.
Pricing info: $10 per GB (pay as you go plan), Micro plan $9 per GB.
4. Bright Data
With Bright Data it is possible to get a very wide selection of UK IPs on the city, county and zip-code level. Here, you have a whole spectrum of IPs of all types: residential, datacenter, mobile, and ISP. The provider also has its own rotation mechanism for IPs for flawless and unhindered access to geo-restricted sites.
Bright Data concentrates its business around enterprise clients and its customers normally use the IPs from the provider for such use cases as stock market info scraping, brand and reputation protection, e-commerce data parsing and more.
The company has won a myriad of awards on the performance and stability of its UK proxies. All proxy related use cases are very well documented and the provider has a range of tools and APIs for proxy integrations into scraping browsers (like Selenium and Puppeteer), SERP scraping scripts and more.
Pricing info: $10.5 per GB (pay as you go plan), Micro plan $6.30 per GB.
5. GeoSurf
GeoSurf may not have a million IPs available for the UK geography, but those that are featured by the provider are rather competitive and up for the task.
With residential proxies of GeoSurf you will be able to engage in the list of similar proxy-related operations as with other providers (like content verification, price monitoring and more), and all of that can be controlled from one convenient dashboard available for all countries of IP origin.
Here, you will be able to specify the IPs for each of the cities in the UK (London, Manchester, or Liverpool) to carry out your online operation.
The provider also promotes its rotation mechanism with easy-to-setup locations and rotation sessions for performing your tasks. You can assign sticky sessions for maximizing the use of your IPs or for filling out online forms.
Pricing info: $300 per month (subscription plan) – 25GB on residential IP.
6. NetNut
NetNut has a great pool of fast and highly secure proxies for British applications. You can get proxies with high anonymity parameters and robust customer support available to you 24/7. All of the proxy functionality becomes available to you via the NetNut’s user friendly dashboard. It serves you well for real-time proxy management, getting analytics and fine-tuning your proxy settings.
You can buy UK residential proxies from NetNut with its proprietary rotating mechanism. So, you can start your geo-specific scraping by selecting the packages of IPs that you deem necessary and swapping them on as-needed basis using this rotating tool.
The stability and quality of UK proxies from NetNut is guaranteed by the company’s own exclusive network of IPs. This fact alone makes it possible to minimize the level of disconnections and interruptions inside such a network.
Pricing info: $300 per month (subscription plan) – 20GB on residential IP.
Other Proxy Locations You Might Be Interested In
It can be rather obvious, but it is still worth mentioning that all of the proxy providers mentioned in the top list also deliver IPs related to other territories and countries around the Globe.
If you have a need for a particular geo location for your online operation, you can easily find a respective chapter on the website of a provider, or approach the proxy company directly via an account manager. This way you can get advice about what proxy pool would be available for you for a particular location or country.
A good and fair provider will always be able to tell you which proxies will be right for you and in what quantities for a particular location. For instance, for scraping an e-commerce website in the EU you will need a set of 50 IPs for Germany with a rotating mechanism, and so on.
How We Picked the Best UK Proxy Servers
We have compiled the top list of UK-based servers based on the impressions of the UK proxy users over the last several months, and on the data from the open sources, revealing the technical and performance characteristics of such proxies.
The pricing information inside this top list was sourced from the websites of the respective proxy providers as of the date of publication and is subject to change due to the pricing policy decisions of each of the companies without prior notice.
Why You Might Need An IP In the UK
And, in conclusion, let’s recap the most popular use cases for UK-based private proxies that we have spotted in the industry.
- Accessing Regionally Restricted Content. If you happen to face a geo-restriction accessing a website or a platform hosted in the UK from your region, you can use a UK-based proxy server to make the content available to you. This can include any streaming services, news portals, or e-commerce sites.
- Localized Marketing and SEO. Should you be working on a localized UK campaign for a British brand, you will likely need a set of UK IPs. Same thing goes for SEO efforts for revealing the best country or even city relevant keywords and combinations.
- Market Research. Gathering data for gaining good insights about positioning in the UK market can be extremely challenging until and unless you get a good picture about the current trends that really matter to the British community. Tapping into this knowledge also needs reliable unhindered proxy-based access.
- Local Access to Services. In some cases you will need secure access to a UK-based service that may require a proxy. This can be a case with accessing your bank profile or a government web site.
- Educational and Scientific Research. If you are busy doing a research project requiring some data from UK-based online depositories, resources or educational platforms, a UK proxy will help you overcome any pertinent restrictions.
These are just a few use cases that have become topical for our UK proxy users over the past few years of operation. If you care to find out more about our geo-targeted proxies, do not hesitate to contact our account manager via the chat box below.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
-
What is a UK proxy?
A UK-based proxy is a server located in the United Kingdom that you can use as your intermediary between your computer and the Internet. With such a proxy you will be able to gain access to UK-based websites and platforms.
-
What types of UK proxies are available in the market?
You can choose from all types of UK-based proxies, including HTTP(S) and SOCKS, residential, datacenter and mobile servers.
-
Is it legal to use a UK proxy?
It depends on the actions that you are taking while using a UK proxy. If all you are acting in compliance with local laws and websites’ terms and conditions, you will have no problems in using UK proxies.
-
Why and where can I use UK proxies?
A UK proxy can be helpful in accessing region-restricted content, conducting localized marketing research, performing SEO, and more.
-
Is it safe to use free public UK proxies?
Apart from ‘becoming the product’ while using a free proxy, while engaging such a server you subject your network or system to malicious attacks, phishing activities and/or hackers’ intrusions.
Top 5 posts
If you're struggling to choose between Bluecoat Proxy SSL and Proxy SSL, here is a comprehensive guide that will help you weigh out the features of both. This way, you can take an informed decision using the proxy server that best meets your requirements.