Best Proxy Services for Web Scraping: 2026 Rankings

We review the leading proxy providers for web scraping. Below is our independent ranking for 2026, based on network size, proxy types, features, pricing and value, and each review explains how its score was reached. Looking for a scraping API or a platform of ready-made scrapers instead? See our scraping API rankings. Bright Data takes the top spot as the industry gold standard, but every provider here is one we actively recommend.

Prefer a Scraping API?

If you'd rather not manage proxies, browsers and retries yourself, a scraping API or platform handles them behind one endpoint. We rank those separately: see the best web scraping APIs, led by Bright Data, Apify and Oxylabs.

Best Proxy Service by Use Case

The ranking above is the overall order. The right pick depends on what you're scraping and how much of it:

Best Proxy API for Web Scraping

"Proxy API" means different things to different people, so here's how the options split:

• Unblocking proxy. You keep your own scraper and route it through a proxy that solves blocks for you. Bright Data's Web Unlocker is the reference product: proxy-style integration, success-based billing from $1.50 per thousand requests.
• Scraping API. You send a URL to an endpoint and get the page (or parsed JSON) back. ZenRows leads on anti-bot bypass; ScraperAPI leads on simplicity and has a real free tier; Apify adds ready-made scrapers for particular sites; Oxylabs' Web Scraper API is the enterprise option with parsed output for search and e-commerce.
• Search-specific API. For Google and other engines, a purpose-built product such as the Bright Data SERP API returns parsed results from any location and bills only on success.

All of these are ranked in our scraping API rankings. If you're not sure whether you need an API at all, our proxy types guide covers where raw proxies stop being enough.

How to Choose a Proxy Service for Scraping

Five questions settle most decisions:

1. What do your targets block? Sites with no real defenses are fine on datacenter proxies. Anything that blocks datacenter traffic needs residential or ISP IPs, and bot-managed sites (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX) usually need an unblocking tool or a scraping API on top of any proxy.
2. How much traffic, how often? Per-GB pricing favors light pages at high volume; per-request billing favors heavy pages and hard targets, because failed attempts cost nothing. Bursty or seasonal work favors non-expiring traffic.
3. Where do you need to appear from? Country targeting is universal; city, state and ASN targeting are not. Check before you buy if local results matter.
4. Rotating or sticky? Crawling wants a new IP per request; anything with a login or a multi-step flow wants a session that holds an IP.
5. How much do you want to build? Raw proxies are cheapest per request and most flexible, but you own the browser automation, retries and CAPTCHA handling. If that's not where you want to spend engineering time, pay for an API.

Our guide to avoiding blocks while scraping covers the request-side hygiene that matters whichever provider you pick, and the proxy types guide goes deeper on the residential vs datacenter vs ISP vs mobile decision.

How we rank providers

Our rankings weigh network size and quality, breadth of proxy types and tools, pricing and value, and ease of use. Each review explains how its score was reached: most come from our editorial assessment, and some, such as Webshare's, are based on the provider's published pricing and docs rather than hands-on testing. We update the order as providers change their products and prices, and no provider can pay to change its position. See how we test.

FAQ

What is the best proxy service for web scraping?

Bright Data is our top-ranked proxy service for web scraping: the largest network (400M+ residential IPs across 195 countries), every proxy type, and unblocking tools like the Web Unlocker for the hardest targets. Oxylabs is the closest alternative, and budget providers such as DataImpulse and IPRoyal are better value for mainstream targets at small scale.

Should I use residential or datacenter proxies for scraping?

Residential proxies for any target with real anti-bot protection, because the traffic looks like a home user; datacenter proxies for fast, cheap scraping of sites that don't fight back. ISP proxies sit in between (datacenter speed, residential trust) and mobile proxies are the last resort for the most aggressive targets. The proxy types guide has the full breakdown.

Is a scraping API better than a proxy service?

A scraping API such as ZenRows or ScraperAPI bundles proxies, browser rendering, retries and CAPTCHA handling behind one endpoint, so it's the faster path if you don't want to run that infrastructure. Raw proxies are cheaper per request at volume and give you full control, but you build and maintain the scraper yourself.

How are these proxy services ranked?

Rankings weigh network size and quality, breadth of proxy types and tools, pricing and value, and ease of use. Each review explains how its score was reached; Webshare's, for example, is based on its published pricing and docs. No provider can pay to change its position. Scraping APIs are ranked separately, in our scraping API rankings.

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