Web scraping is all about accessing websites for collecting data or information critical for business purposes. You can use special tools, bots or scripts to perform this function, and, in most cases, you will need a set or reliable proxies to hide your online presence under different IPs in order to stay below the radars of anti-scraping systems.
In this article we will cover the issue of using proxies for web scraping. We will briefly describe why you would benefit from the use of proxies for such missions. You will find out the main difference between residential and datacenter proxies when it comes to scraping. And, later, we will give you a list of top proxy providers and scraping solution suppliers in the industry these days.
So, let’s start with a brief overview of things that make a private proxy a valuable part of the web scraping solution.
Why You Need Proxies for Web Scraping
An easy answer here would be: to stay undetected by the target web resource when you perform data collection on it. A proxy can cloak your presence under a different IP address to allow unhindered access to information vital to your business research. This technique can be also applied for crawling websites. Follow this link to learn more on the difference between web crawling and web scraping.
Now, some sites employ special anti-bot tools for scraping prevention. That means that a website does its homework for detecting any bot-like activity to lower any unauthorized data collection (or excessive bandwidth loading on it). The following are the types of the most commonly used proxies for web scraping with their key features.
Datacenter Proxies
As you can guess from the name these proxy servers are originated by the data centers and this carries in itself some benefits as well as risks. The main advantage of datacenter proxies is their speed. They are truly high-performing servers that you can use for rapid scraping. The main risk here comes from the type of IPs that can be easily detected by some sophisticated anti-bot systems. And if a datacenter IP is blocked, the whole subnet of DC proxies can be at risk. One of the ways to improve the quality of such IPs is to employ a rotating mechanism to get datacenter rotating proxies granting new IPs for each connection. The same way, you can use special solutions like proxy for coupon aggregators or proxy for local SEO.
Residential Proxies
Residential proxies are the IPs supplied by the Internet Service Providers that represent addresses of individual Internet users. This feature of residential proxies makes them almost undetectable by security systems of web platforms meant to prevent scraping. They are a bit slower than datacenter proxies and, yes, rotating is also possible for such IPs and you can even use sticky sessions for handling multiple accounts or for filling out online forms.
Other Types of Proxies for Scraping
Some proxy providers also supply other types of proxies suitable for web scraping. There are mobile proxies that providers source from cell phone users. Such IPs are truly reliable and virtually undetectable but are extremely scarce and rather expensive. There is also a subsection of residential proxies that are called ISP proxies. Such proxies normally come from small data centers and are also referred to as static residential proxies. The same technology also used at proxy for price monitoring or SEO proxy setups.
The Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2023
So, here is our list of top proxy providers for web scraping. We have included all the industry leaders in the proxy business that specifically provide solutions for scraping various types of web resources. You will find here information on the types of servers and their specs from each of the providers, including some software-related issues (select providers also develop and offer their own proprietary web scrapers for the end users), and, of course, will learn where to buy proxies for web scraping in the open market.
Private Proxy
Over a decade PrivateProxy.me has been busy supplying top-of-the-line proxies for web scraping all across the planet. The company specializes in delivering datacenter and residential proxies for extensive data harvesting missions and data collection online.
Most of the use cases of the provider are documented on its website, but if you have some particular requirements as to the type of your operation or to the volume of the pool of proxies, you can always contact the account managers directly to customize a package of bullet-proof IPs for you.
The provider is known for having one of the best customer support teams in the industry. You can place a query with regards to swapping or fixing a proxy and your account manager will respond momentarily via the chat box on the site. No need for tickets or long email conversations here, when the time is of essence.
Another great feature of Private Proxy is the collection of APIs for scraping available right from the user’s dashboard. You can find a script in any of computer languages to embed into your web scraper at any given time. Also, proxies here are tested on various sites to help you avoid any type of “burn-outs”. If the provider does not currently have a proper solution for your particular use case, you will be told about it prior to committing your budget.
All-in-all, Private Proxy is a reliable of proxies for web scraping for SMEs and large corporate clients for data collection from e-commerce platforms (for lead generation or market research), or for providing a proxy for travel fare aggregation, a proxy for real estate, and other types of servers. Its proxies are compatible with all types of modern scraping bots and the API library is made available in all possible languages.
Main Features
- All demanded types of web scraping proxies available from the most popular locations.
- Great customer support that is always online to help you handle any proxy-related matters.
- User-friendly dashboard that features a whole range of APIs for all possible languages.
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Datacenter – Beginner DC for $59 per month (200,000 requests)
- Residential – Beginner Res for $150 per month (200,000 requests)
- Trial period available to corporate users upon request.
Smartproxy
Smartproxy is one of those companies among the proxy providers in our list that acts as a Swiss army knife for web scraping. The company provides both residential and datacenter IPs suitable for this purpose, as well as its custom-made solutions targeted at data collection.
With the IP pool of 40+ millions, you have a vast choice of subnets here and the only question you would have is your budget requirements. Here Smartproxy will be on your side with bandwidth-based plans starting as low as $80 per month (with pay-for-traffic rate of $12.5GB) for residential IPs.
The provider offers residential rotating proxies with a new IP upon each new request and sticky sessions.
The DC proxies from Smartproxy are properly tested to ensure high performance and at this stage the provider offers around 100,000 IPs from 400 subnets. You have shared IPs here but with a minimum number of users and with unlimited bandwidth. All of that becomes yours for a starting budget of $30 (for 50GB of bandwidth from up to 100K IPs).
And if you are ready to invest in scraping even further, the provider will be pleased to equip you with its proprietary SERP Scraping API that ensures an impressive 100% success rate for scraping the most popular search engines (including Google, Baidu and Bing). This scraper is easy-to-use and can deliver data in HTML or JSON format. Should I also mention that the whole might of the impressive DC and residential proxies of the company will be at your disposal here, and that you will pay only for successful requests? All of this will come at an extra cost of around $50 per month.
Main Features
- Impressive pools of residential and datacenter proxies ready for web scraping
- User-friendly scrapers with vetted and integrated proxies from the same provider
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Residential – $12.5 per GB with pay-as-you-go plan
- Datacenter – $30 per month for 50 GB of bandwidth
- 14-day money back guarantee
Oxylabs
Oxylabs could clearly be an absolute winner in all possible categories when it comes to proxy-based scraping if it was not a bit pricey for companies with medium budgets in this area. The provider offers all sorts of proxies for scraping (including residential, DC, mobile, and ISP proxies) as well as custom-made scrapers (APIs) for general purpose, SERP, real estate, and e-commerce market scraping.
The company’s main target is corporate clients. And it does what it takes to please them: you can get a dedicated account manager and even insurance on your proxy performance. But all these perks come at a premium cost. Only recently the company introduced a self-serving proxy platform for small-size pool buyers.
As for its proxy networks, you can get datacenter IPs from nearly 8000 subnets (with over 2 million IPs). And here you can choose from private to shared proxies with rotating mechanisms. The dedicated DC proxies are SOCKS5 from over 150 locations world-wide.
As for residential proxies, the provider offers a whopping 100 million proxies to choose from (clearly a market record). You have a proprietary rotating mechanism on these IPs. The only thing to keep in mind, that the company bans access to Google with these proxies.
Main Features
- World-leading size of pools of web scraping proxies
- Great selection of custom-made scrapers for all possible use cases
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Residential – $15 per GB with pay-as-you-go plan
- Datacenter – $180 for 100 US IPs or 60 non-US IPs
- 7-day trial for corporate users
Bright Data
Bright Data is a serious choice for hardcore web scrapers. You will greatly benefit from the offerings from this provider if you have a dedicated scraping team and a hefty budget to spend on proxies. This Israeli long-term provider of premium proxies previously called Luminati is a champion in branding and visibility. It is also at the top of the list for providing corporate customers with scraping solutions and a complete set of proxies to power them with.
The company was a pioneer in offering residential proxies to its users, which gave it an edge over the competition that only offered datacenter IPs at that time. It is also extremely serious about the ethical aspects of using its proxies. Any questionable use cases can be easily banned or suspended.
The datacenter proxies that the company offers for web scraping come from a wide selection of locations, have unlimited threads and work on SOCKS5. The premium dedicated IPs can be used for scraping e-commerce sites, travel aggregators or social media. A proxy swapping mechanism also works wonderfully here on faulty IPs.
The residential proxies of Bright Data come from one of the largest networks of IPs. The provider boasts over 70 million residential IPs and they are sourced from various services of the company (like its VPN and traffic-sharing apps).
Main Features
- Enormous networks of high-quality residential and datacenter proxies
- Rather pricey plans and proxy setups demanding technical savvy teams
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Residential – $15 per GB with pay-as-you-go and subscription plans
- Datacenter – from $0.11 per GB + $0.8 per IP
- 7-day trial for enterprise users
SOAX
SOAX is a rather new provider in the proxy business, however, it had a truly promising progress over the past couple of years in catering the most demanded IPs for its clients. Now, let’s consider what it has to offer in the area of web scraping.
As far as residential proxies, SOAX is doing its best to stay in the affordable price range, while covering most countries in the world and even providing a map for very precise (ASN-level) IP coverage on the ground. You also get a pretty sophisticated rotation mechanism here for controlling all possible options of IP rotation. Both SOCKS5 and HTTPS are supported.
Unlike most other providers in our list, SOAX does not offer datacenter proxy solutions for scraping, instead you have an impressive pool of Mobile proxies to choose from. These IPs come from a pool of 3.5 million (according to the provider) and will let you access and scrape data from truly protected websites where even residential proxies fail to perform.
The geography of mobile proxies is truly impressive and the tested performance of such IPs has also been verified and acclaimed (with response time figures only topped by Oxylabs and Smartproxy).
Main Features
- Over 150 locations on rotating proxies with sophisticated rotation mechanism
- Good selection of mobile proxies for competitive rates
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Residential – $99 for 8 GB (300 ports)
- Mobile – $99 for 3 GB (300 ports)
- Paid trial of 100 MB for $1.99
Infatica
Infatica is a proxy provider from Singapore with a clear business vision of excellence in supplying one product that would let it compete with the monsters in the industry. This product is its residential proxies. Originally, the company concentrated all of its business around supplying residential proxies to businesses and later expanded into a familiar lineup of DC and mobile proxies with a range of web scraping solutions.
As for the pool of residential IPs, the company has over 10 million proxies to offer to its clients. You have the usual geo-filtering on a city and ASN level here. The rotation is also present with optional sticky sessions and incremental rotation. SOCKS5 protocol is supported.
The company offers a rather complex dashboard for monitoring your proxy activity, buying new IPs and choosing your plan payment parameters. However, some reviewers consider the UI/UX solutions present here rather confusing. On the plus side, there is a documentation hub that has all scraping related info that could help you during the deployment of the APIs powered by the residential IPs of Infatica. The code copying is made really easy right off the website of the provider.
Main Features
- Vast network of affordable residential IPs ready to be deployed for web scraping
- Nice scrapers to choose from right on the website
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Residential – $96 for 6 GB
- Paid 3-day trial of 100 MB for $1.99
Rayobyte
If Infatica was all about premium residential proxies, Rayobyte tries its best to secure its name among the top suppliers of datacenter IPs. It has an appealing offer to its clients with really affordable yet high-quality DC IPs, sending a strong message to its close rivals in the industry. And, as of now, the company has both an impressive network of datacenter proxies and the usual lineup of other proxy-related products (residential IPs, scraping bots used for Google and Amazon, rotating ISP servers).
The company has US roots and it is proud of its origins. The provider claims that all of its IPs are ethically sourced and are enterprise-friendly. As for the size of the pool, the DC network has over 300K IPs hosted in the company’s own datacenters. As far as the quality, you have dedicated and semi-dedicated proxies to choose from. Most of the IPs come from the US and there are certain pools from South America and Asia.
The origin of the IPs plays an important part here, since the US-based datacenter proxies are usually rather cheap proxies for web scraping. This allows the provider to keep the prices on a considerably competitive level on average. And in terms of performance, these IPs demonstrate an impressive 90% success rate on Amazon, which would save you a lot on proxy deployment.
In the residential proxy sector, the provider is rather new and now covers “only” about 100 locations with servers sourced from via its own proxywear app. And as for mobile IPs, Rayobyte is clearly one of the best places to buy proxies with virtually no traffic limits and suitable for web scraping in over 100 locations. The only downside with residential and mobile proxies is that SOCKS5 is not supported here.
Main Features
- Full range of web scraping related proxy solutions with concentration on DC proxies
- No support of SOCKS5 on residential and mobile IPs
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Datacenter – $5 for 5 shared IPs
- Residential – $15 for 1 GB
- Two-day refund policy for 5 IPs (on DC proxies)
IPRoyal
In the case of IPRoyal we see a brave player in the proxy business who is ready to compete for the middle-sized clients with its affordable IPs and good customer service. After all, this is what you should do to stand out in the tough and competitive market of web scraping.
The company has an impressive pool of residential proxies ethically sourced from its app and now the network boasts a few millions of IPs. Originally, the prices on the IPs were set at the lowest level possible, but over time the offering matched the industry average.
As for DC proxies, they are unlimited in traffic and threads and support SOCKS5. This makes them suitable for a range of use cases including copping sneakers, TV streaming and even gaming. You have a list of 30 countries to choose from, so the selection is also pretty wide.
Another good thing about IRRoyal is its user-friendly dashboard for proxy control and monitoring and a well-documented API library. The provider also features Google Chrome and Firefox browser extension to ensure ease of use of its proxies.
Main Features
- Affordable proxies for all web related activities including heavy duty scraping
- Great API support and browser extensions for proxy monitoring
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Datacenter – $9 for 5 IPs
- Residential – $7 for 1 GB
- 24-hour refund policy
Webshare
As a proxy provider Webshare concentrates its business around the idea of self-service. This effort is made towards keeping the rates for its proxies at the lowest level possible.
Unlike a whole range of professional players in the industry, the company is taking a super bold step by supplying a free plan on its proxies with 10 IPs from a dedicated pool of proxies as the provider claims it.
The primary offering of Webshare is DC proxies and you can get them rather cheap. Such proxies will be great for web scraping applications involving headless browsers and for downloading heavy files.
If you start experiencing blocks on some platforms, you can upgrade your proxying with the average priced residential IPs. You have an impressive geo coverage of 195 countries here with proxies supporting both SOCKS5 and HTTPS. Such servers behave very well on sites featuring Captchas and proceed with data gathering in a human-like fashion.
Main Features
- Low prices on datacenter proxies with ultimate self-service experience in the industry
- Free proxies to get you started with niche web scraping
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Datacenter – $5 for 5 IPs a month
- Residential – $18.75 per month
- Free plan with 10 IPs
NetNut
NetNut has a rather interesting mixed policy on its most demanded web scraping proxies. You can get a rather good selection of proxies for a remarkably low pay but then uncover new features for extra money.
In the proxy business NetNut is famous for good performance of its residential proxies. It claims to have “the fastest pool of residential IPs in the industry” and is often tested for performance parameters here.
As far as customer support, this Israeli provider can be described as a large corporate-level targeting company. You will definitely feel an upgrade in service once you start spending over $500 for your fleet of IPs with NetNut.
As for the range of web scraping ready proxies, you have a selection of static residential IPs, shared datacenter proxies and rotating residential proxies. The DC proxies are positioned to run on small-sized projects. The rotating resi proxies will serve you well on e-commerce websites and static IPs will be suitable for all sorts of targets where IP should remain the same for the whole duration of scraping.
As far as pricing, NetNut is in the premium segment of the proxy spectrum here and has a variety of preset plans with customizable options.
Main Features
- Stable and high performing residential proxies
- improvements needed on the documentation side and customer support front
Starting Prices for Web Scraping Proxies
- Datacenter – $20 for 20 GB
- Residential – $20 for 1 GB
- 7-day trial available
Why These Web Scraping Proxy Solutions Are the Best
Well, the answer is straight-forward here: you need to supply ultimate proxy solutions for web scraping with top-notch tech support. All for a reasonable price for the end users. And the companies that have made it into the list cope with this the best way. All of them had their proxies publicly tested and have proven product-market fit on the whole range of offered IPs, APIs, proxy-based solutions and other services like proxy for reputation intelligence or recruitment proxy.
Proxy Service Summary
Great, you made it to this point! No matter what your main priority is, when you are looking for a perfect provider of proxies for web scraping – the size of pools or IP networks, speed of residential proxies, dashboard functionality or affordable pricing – the list above will always have a couple of alternatives in the proxy industry to match your requirements. So, choose wisely and carry on successfully with your online endeavors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
-
What key performance specs did you evaluate while compiling this list of Top 10 best proxy providers for web scraping?
This list was compiled based on multiple sources and opinions of proxy users across all specters of web scraping. We made it as concise as possible to outline the main traits of companies that supply web scraping proxies and solutions. All of these providers have a great reputation in the industry and constantly improve their offerings.
-
What is uniting all the providers that made it into the list of the Top 10 scraping proxy providers?
Yes, we only provide private dedicated proxies from our unique pool of proxies. Unlike others, we won’t provide proxies from hacked computers (alias “public proxies”) or scrapped proxies from the Internet.
-
What are the main criteria for including proxy companies into this list of the best web scraping IP providers?
We took several main aspects. One, the technical characteristics of pool sizes and proxy availability. Two, the quality of tech support and dashboard usability. And, three, the pricing policy of the providers in the respective market niche of web scraping proxies.
Top 5 posts
If you are trying to access geo-restricted or blocked sites, the first thing you might find is sites that offer fake IP addresses or free proxies to use. In some cases, these tools can help you with your tasks, but in exchange you will put your personal data at risk. In this article, we will discuss the risks of fake IP addresses and reasons why not use free proxies.