In the world of proxies, you are either a big and bulky one-size-fits-all company with a huge pool of IPs and an unfathomable myriad of API-based SaaS solutions for scraping and data mining or a smaller, more agile, and individually service-oriented real-life solution provider that knows exactly what customers are looking for when they buy proxies for their everyday needs.
Here we will talk about the best places to buy proxies if you ever considered getting your IPs from the leaders in the industry. You will learn how customers who come across buying proxies for the first time go through their decision-making process in choosing between Bright Data – the colossus in the room – and Bright Data alternatives (other proxy providers), and what other players do differently to create a return customer base in their respective portfolios.
We will share our users’ experience dealing with the top proxy providers and talk about offers and proxy provision policies of such companies as Oxylabs, SmartProxy, NetNut, and SOAX to showcase alternatives that are present in the market.
1. PrivateProxy
The most important thing we value about our services is the customer experience of proxy users while they deal with our brand. And by the brand, we mean the whole package of interaction, starting from the process of navigating the site to the level of technical support from our top-notch customer support team. We want the clients to be safe while using our products and be able to rely on a human response (not human-like) if they encounter a problem related to any proxy bans or set-up issues.
Another important aspect is that since we are not dealing with extremely vast pools of IPs, we can concentrate on the quality of the proxies. This being said, we invest time and money in hand-testing the proxies to make sure that the claimed response rate and performance are real.
The bottomline is quite simple: if you are representing a business interested in web scraping with high-quality proxies on board, you can choose PrivateProxy as your primary provider without any second thoughts. It is a great Bright Data alternative for SMEs without super-deep pockets for proxy spending at the very start.
2. Oxylabs
Oxylabs is the closest Bright Data competitor in terms of size. The company is concentrated around the idea of complete automation of proxy delivery services. It couples its vast networks of the most demanded residential and datacenter proxies with a bundle of proxy-powered tool, from industry-specific scrapers (for instance, for real estate, e-commerce, and SERP) to schedulers and parsers (tools directed at simplifying your process of data collection online).
Oxylabs has made an obvious effort to automate the process of IP selection for your upcoming missions. You are greeted and guided by an AI-driven assistant, Otty, who will lead you through layers of generic questions before you get to talk to a human account manager.
Overall, Oxylabs is a huge proxy provider with high-performing proxies and plans with individual account management; however, you are likely to benefit from the services of this provider if you are willing to spend slightly above the average.
3. Smartproxy
Smartproxy is another Bright Data alternative well-known for offering its users one of the most affordable datacenter rotating proxy plans in the industry. The provider has a whole range of scraping APIs for all possible proxy-powered use cases (from social media scraping to SERP and e-commerce scaping) and offers a complete selection of IPs: residential proxies, ISP proxies (residential static proxies), mobile proxies, and datacenter IPs.
The company right now promotes an out-of-the-standard product called Site Unblocker. Think of it as a proxy scraper on steroids. You will be able to access any website, including JavaScript-heavy sites, and successfully scrape them.
4. NetNut
NetNut is well-known for featuring a record-breaking volume of rotating residential IPs ready for scraping. It has over 52 million residential IPs in its rotating network, covering 200 countries. You can choose from city- or state-targeting and enjoy unlimited threads. As far as the proxy protocols, you will be able to choose from HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxies here.
Also, NetNut is making progress in supplying mobile proxies to the market. Currently, it has over 250k IPs to offer to its clients all across the mobile spectrum (from 3G to 5G) and claims to have a 99.9% success rate.
As for the static residential network, NetNut has over a million of ready-to-be-deployed IPs to offer. And the DC proxies (or datacenter proxies) that the provider caters to its users are in rather limited numbers (around 150k IPs worldwide) that also have a rotating mechanism for scraping provided.
5. SOAX
By many, SOAX is considered a cheaper alternative to Bright Data. The company seems to be more user-request-driven in its approach to supplying proxies. You have the usual proxy server plans (Residential, US ISP Proxies, Mobile Proxies, US Datacenter Proxies) that start at $1.99 for a few days of trial (and later over $99 for 15GB and more), as well as solutions like Web Unblocker.
With Web Unblocker you pay only for successful scraping. So, in the case with SOAX, you are charged for a SaaS solution that will guarantee data collection for further analysis from a target website without the need to run your own or a third-party script for successful scraping. The price tag for such a service starts at $99 for 10GB of traffic.
In Conclusion
The world of proxies is developing so rapidly with the interests of end users in mind that even the largest and most affluent players have to remain agile and attentive to the actual needs of the market. In the examples above, we have shown what alternatives you, as a user, have when selecting among a few dozens of top names in the proxy industry before you commit your money and time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
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What are the pricing criteria for choosing Bright Data vs other proxy providers?
If you are looking for a set of proxies for scraping, you need to identify the number of IPs that you will likely need for your project. If you are likely to require a number in the thousands, then you can consider alternative providers to Bright Data, since the latter could be highly expensive in your particular case.
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Is it safe to rely on a single provider when it comes to buying proxies?
Yes, for sure! But not until you are absolutely happy with the level of service quality from this provider. You need to build a lengthy and successful track record first to be able to commit all your proxy budget to one name in the industry.
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Is the size of a provider’s pool important in choosing a proxy company?
Of course, especially if you are running many large scraping campaigns at once. However, maintaining and paying for large pools of IPs can be rather costly, especially for small and medium-sized companies. So, you need to decide for yourself if you need a personalized approach to your scraping in terms of tech support, even with small pools, or if you take a chance and do everything yourself until you reach large scraping volumes.
Top 5 posts
If you are not quite familiar with the concept of IP bans, you are lucky! But since you are reading this, the chances are that you experienced the frustration from interrupted scraping sessions on social media, search engines or e-commerce sites in the past. In this Guide we have put together some of the most frequent reasons for getting your access banned by the IP and set forth measures for overriding and avoiding such ‘traps’.