The residential proxy market has shown significant growth because it provides you with the capability to access content without being restricted or detected. Marketing companies are making use of web scraping with residential proxies to gather comprehensive and accurate data for market research, competitive analysis, and much more, without geographical content restriction.
According to recent market forecasts, the global residential proxy market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.48% from 2024 to 2029. Now there are a variety of residential proxy providers in the market, and it becomes hard to determine the one that best fits your needs. Remember, your choice will impact the performance, reliability, speed, and especially the security of your data, so a thorough analysis of all options is mandatory.
In this article, we will discuss the best residential proxy providers, the features they offer, the cost involved, and how reliable they are in terms of performance so that you can confidently choose the right residential proxy provider that suits your needs and preferences. Let’s start by understanding how a residential proxy works.
What is a Residential Proxy and How it Works
The residential proxy acts as a middleman between you and the target website you are accessing. The residential proxy providers have a vast pool of real residential home IP addresses provided by the ISPs. When you request to access any website, the residential proxy server receives this request, selects a residential proxy from the pool, masks it to your original IP address, and forwards the request to the target website. This way, it appears that the request has originated from the residential area and the residential proxy hides your actual IP address. For a more detailed explanation, you can refer to our informational post Understanding residential proxies: The Complete Guide.
What Makes a Good Residential Proxy Provider?
Several factors make a difference in the service quality of residential proxy providers. However, we have considered the most important factors that can help you find the right residential proxy provider for your needs. Here they are:
- Vast IP Pool – The availability of a vast IP pool means that you can route through a large number of unique IP addresses that reduce the risk of being blocked or flagged.
- Efficient IP Switching – A good residential proxy provider will allow you to switch to a new residential proxy immediately even if your IP is blocked.
- Ethicality – Many providers tend to claim but only a few residential proxy providers have set the standard of ethical sourcing i.e., transparency about obtaining the residential proxies with the consent of the IP owners.
- Speed and Performance – The speed of your proxy server directly impacts the efficiency of your tasks. Reliable residential proxy providers provide a high-speed and stable connection that reduces the risk of interruption during online activities.
- Security and anonymity – The best residential proxy providers have deployed top-tier security to protect you from potential attacks and hide your actual IP address to protect your privacy.
Top Residential Proxy Providers for 2024
Below you can find a detailed comparison of top residential proxy providers in 2024.
| Residential Proxy Provider | Features | Performance | Pricing | Customer Satisfaction(See Reviews from TrustPilot) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | - 100M+ IP Pool, - Location coverage of residential proxies in 195 countries, a - Dashboard for tracking usage, - APIs for integration. | Good speed, stability | Starting from $99 for 11GB | 4.8/5 |
| Bright Data | - 72 million IP addresses from 195 countries, - Access to multiple proxy types, - Data collection APIs, - Web scraping tools, and pre-collected data sets. | Good performance, very reliable | Starting from $15/GB | 4.7/5 |
| Smartproxy | - 65 Million+ rotating IPs, - Global coverage of 195+ countries, - Scraping APIs | High speed, fast setup | Starting from $6/month | 4.7/5 |
| IPRoyal | - 2 million authentic residential proxies from 195 countries, - Easy configuration, and usage tracking. | Reliable speed | Starting from $7/GB | 4.6/5 |
| Webshare | - 10+ million rotating residential proxies - 195 countries, - provides 10 free proxies, - Supports HTTP and Socks5 protocols | Reliable speed | Starting from $24/month | 4.4/5 |
| Nimble | - Vast IP Pool with worldwide location coverage, - Management dashboard, - Proxy API, and ASN locking for durable session retention. | Excellent speed | Starting from $8/GB | 4.4/5 |
| SOAX | - 191 million IPs, - 195 countries, - Data collecting APIs, - Web scraping tools, and pre-collected data sets. | Good speed | Starting from $6.6/GB | 4.4/5 |
| Infatica | - Pool of over 60 million home IPs, - Global coverage with 195 countries, - Web scraper API, - 150 geolocations & unlimited bandwidth. | Decent speed | From $96/month to $1 per Gb | 4.6/5 |
| NetNut | - 52M rotating residential proxies, - 30 locations(static) in US/Europe and 150 countries(rotating), - Flexible payment options. | Good speed | $17.5/GB for static and $24/GB for rotating | 4.2/5 |
| RayoByte | - Residential proxy 1M IPs, - Covering 150+ countries, - Supports HTTP/ Socks5 protocols. | Average speed | Starting from $1/GB | 4.0/5 |
| MarsProxies | - 1M+ IP pool with authentic residential IPs, - covering 190+ locations, - dashboard for proxy configuration, - supports Socks5, dual authentication, and non-expiring traffic. | High speed | Starting from $0.99/GB | 4.1/5 |
| LunaProxy | - 200M world’s finest value proxies covering locations from 195 countries and ensuring maximum privacy and security for users. | Normal speed | Starting from $0.7/GB | 3.8/5 |
| Proxyrack | Access to IPs from 140+ countries and offers the option to pay per stream instead of per GB. | Average speed | Starting from $49.95 per month | 4.5/5 |
| ASocks | A trusted pool of over 7 million IPs with location coverage of 200 countries, One price for all, provides full anonymity and free ASN set-up. | Good speed | $3/1GB | 4.9/5 |
| DataImpulse | IP pool of 6M+ covering locations from 100+ countries, non-expiring traffic, reseller API, and good customer support. | Decent speed | 1$/GB | 4.6/5 |
Rotating vs. Static Residential Proxies
Choosing the best residential proxy provider is not enough, you also need to choose the appropriate proxy type. There are two main proxy types available depending on your needs and the type of service you avail from your residential proxy provider. Either you will access the target website with a single fixed IP address masked on your original IP, or your masked IP address keeps changing periodically. We will closely look at both proxy types to pick the right one as per your needs.
The diagram below illustrates the difference between rotating and static residential proxies.
Static Proxies
The residential proxy provider will assign you a single IP address from a real ISP but it stays consistent throughout your session with the website and only changes in a new session. This proxy type is less expensive as compared to others and also provides you with a high connection speed.
ISP and data center proxies are typically the only ones that can be static. This is because they are hosted on servers that stay online to assign you a fixed IP address.
The static residential proxy type provides you with less customization and is not recommended for large-scale data collection and web scraping. However, it is most useful when ‘human-like’ activity is important with a stable and fast connection.
Rotating Proxies
Rotating proxies are assigned from a large pool of IP addresses and the assignment keeps changing periodically. This proxy type is more expensive but provides a high level of anonymity and security, making it harder to block or ban you. With credit and debit card transactions generating over USD 1.2 billion in revenue for the alternative data market in 2023, it’s clear that rotating proxies play a crucial role in collecting such vast datasets anonymously and securely.
Rotating residential proxies are generally safe to use if the service is provided by a reliable service provider. In some cases, free proxy providers providing the rotating proxy service are not safe as they can steal your information while using their proxies.
Rotating residential proxy type is best suited for large-scale data scraping and collection as it is very hard for the target websites to detect them. They are also useful for accessing geographically restricted content or content protected by anti-bot measures because they are distributing the request across multiple real residential IPs of multiple regions. There are also a few rotating residential proxy service providers that allow you to hold the same IP Address throughout the session for a certain period of time.
Best Residential Proxies for Web Scraping, Security, and Privacy
Residential proxies make it more difficult for websites to detect and prohibit your scraping activities by presenting your requests as normal user traffic from various IP addresses. This helps you get around restrictions like IP blocking, rate limiting, and captcha challenges, keeping your activity secure and private. Let’s go through some of the top contenders:
-
Oxylabs
Stands out for its large pool of proxies and great results in collecting data through scraping. It also has strong security measures to keep user information private and secure. -
Smartproxy
Provides a versatile and reliable proxy service that includes more than 65 million IPs. It offers both residential and datacenter proxies, which helps to ensure high anonymity and strong security to scrape web content. It also provides web scraping APIs, including a no-code scraper.
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Bright Data
Offers a massive IP pool with advanced security and strong privacy features making it ideal for large-scale data collection. On top of that, it offers data collection APIs, no-code web scraper, and pre-collected data sets.
NetNut provides you with residential proxies connected directly to the ISP, ensuring high-speed and reliable connection. It emphasizes security and privacy, making it suitable for sensitive web scraping tasks. -
Zyte
Zyte is a complete web scraping solution that can match other proxy providers’ service speed and reliability. Although it has been in the web scraping business for a while it has also accumulated a lot of engineering experience. It provides you the rotating proxies to avoid detection and ensure successful scraping. -
Proxyrack
Serves individuals and businesses that require advanced security features, privacy, and a variety of options for location. It offers reliable solutions for site scraping, data mining, SEO operations, and much more. -
SOAX
Prioritizes user privacy and ensures that scraping activities carried out through their proxies are secure and untraceable. Users may perform market research, ad verification, site scraping, and other tasks with increased efficiency, security, and anonymity. -
IPRoyal
residential plan is an excellent choice for web scraping and multi-accounting while ensuring security and privacy due to its global coverage and advanced session control for each IP. -
Shifter
product suite prevents unauthorized access and prioritizes encryption protocols to ensure data security. It offers data center and residential proxies, as well as APIs for web scraping and SEO data collection.
How to Choose the Best Residential Proxy Provider
Choosing the best residential proxy provider is as important as choosing the right proxy type. You need to consider some important factors before purchasing the service from any residential proxy provider. Let’s take a closer look at those particular factors:
- Purpose of using Residential Proxies
You might have multiple uses in mind before purchasing the service from the residential proxy provider because different proxy providers provide different types of services for different use cases. Choosing the right one depends on your purpose of using the proxy. Some require the proxy for securing the network and some for data collection through web scraping across borders. For example, if your purpose is to collect large-scale data from multiple websites that may block your IP then you need to choose the right proxy type and the proxy provider that changes the IP Address if the one you are using is blocked. - IP Pool
The best proxy provider for your company should offer a good balance of available IP addresses in legitimate, established proxy pools. A larger IP pool allows you to mask each connection request with a unique IP address, reducing the chance of IPs being blocked and making your activity more stable and reliable. - Geographical Coverage
If your purpose aligns with marketing and ad management, where the collection of data may be necessary across multiple regions, you should choose the provider that offers broad geographical coverage enabling you to operate across multiple markets. - Network Size and Performance
The size of each residential proxy provider’s network varies, which affects their overall performance. If your purpose is to use the residential proxies for web scraping, a larger network supplier gives more subnets of IP addresses. Due to the wide network, connections can be made more quickly and reliably, giving you access to the information seamlessly. Additionally, choose the provider that offers an optimized way of routing to enhance overall performance and connection speed. - Pricing and Budget
Compare features and cost of the service provided by the residential proxy provider. More expensive doesn’t always mean it is better, particularly if you plan not to utilize all the capabilities that the provider is offering. Likewise, the less expensive choice may not be better if it lacks essential features.
Integrating Residential Proxies with Scraping Tools and Applications
Web scraping is an effective technique for gathering data, but restrictions like IP bans and geo-restrictions often make it difficult. Many websites are using advanced anti-scraping tools, such as Cloudflare, DataDome, and PerimeterX to identify and prevent web scraping. These anti-scraping tools identify and block requests from specific IP addresses by using request and behavior profiling techniques. Therefore, choosing the best residential proxy type and the residential proxy provider is just not enough, you will need to take steps to avoid bans and operate effectively. Below are some of those steps:
Step 1: Setting up the Residential Proxy Service
Different residential proxy providers provide you with different ways to use their services. Some provide the APIs to use and some provide the single endpoint proxy which just needs to be added once in configuration. The residential proxy API is more flexible and customizable as it allows you to have more control over the proxy management. Alternatively, a single endpoint proxy way is simpler to use as the proxy provider handles everything. You just need to set a parameter at your application or tool level that contains the configuration of the proxy.
Step 2: Integrating the Residential Proxy Service
Once you have your residential proxy details in the parameter, you can add them to the requests you are making in your scraping tool. Your requests will route through the residential proxy network, import the information through the residential proxy, and provide you with the HTTP response once the request is completed. Most of the popular web scraping tools like ScrapeBox, Apify, PhantomBuster, etc., support proxy integration with a very simple setup.
Step 3: Testing the Residential Proxy Service
After making the request you can verify your residential proxy IP address by using the tools like ipapi and ipstack.
Conclusion
Choosing the best residential proxy provider is a critical choice, not just for your web scraping and data collection needs but for security and privacy as well. The right residential proxy provider will enhance your digital strategies and give you a competitive advantage.
To select the best provider for your needs, you should list your technical and business needs in the order of priority. Then compare important aspects of different providers, such as features, performance, pricing, and customer satisfaction to make the right choice.
Another important thing you need to know is whether you want to use rotating or static proxies depending on your requirements. While rotating proxies are helpful for large-scale scraping and anonymity, static proxies ensure that you will have a stable and faster connection.
Whether it is for business or personal needs, finding the perfect balance between your budget, performance expectations, and proxy requirements is crucial. Doing so will allow you to experience the full potential of residential proxies while ensuring the success of your business.
