Timely access to market data, customer sentiments, or a competitor’s pricing strategy can turn struggling businesses into profitable trailblazers. However, access to such insights is becoming harder as websites implement increasingly sophisticated preventative measures. Luckily, rotating proxies turn such restrictions into growth opportunities.
This guide covers everything you need when shopping for trustworthy proxy providers. You’ll find a handy comparison table for quick decision-making and brief overviews of each provider’s features. Additionally, answers to frequent questions will help you make an informed choice.
What Makes a Good Rotating Proxy Service?
The general quality of a proxy service comes down to its ability to provide a seamless user experience. They need a large IP pool to convincingly simulate genuine connection requests while making it easier to hone in on specific locations. Frequent IP rotation offers the best results, yet users should be able to set up sticky sessions to retain an IP in situations where sights may flag frequent changes.
A dependable proxy service boasts a combination of near-perfect uptimes, high success rates, and fast responses. Different IP types are suitable for specific tasks. The more a provider offers, the more diverse clients it can attract.
Standout proxy services care as much about legal compliance and ethical IP sourcing as maintaining user anonymity. They also streamline integration and authentication for quick integration into established workflows and hassle-free yet safe access.
Comparison of the Best Rotating Proxy Providers for 2024
There’s no shortage of proxy providers out there. We narrowed the choice down to ten that proved to be the most robust regarding stability, speed, security, and features. Take a look at the comparison table and individual descriptions to get a better idea.
| Bright Data | Oxylabs | Smartproxy | SOAX | IPRoyal | NetNut | Infatica | DataImpulse | Rayobyte | Shifter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proxy network size | 72M+ residential 1.6M+ datacenter 700K+ ISP 7M+ mobile | 100M+ residential 2M+ datacenter 360K+ ISP 20M+ mobile | 55M+ residential 100K+ datacenter 10M+ mobile | 155M+ residential 100K+ datacenter 30M+ mobile | 32M+ residential 2M+ mobile | 85M+ residential 150K+ datacenter 5M+ mobile | 15M+ residential 5M+ mobile | 5M+ residential Unspecified datacenter & mobile | Not specified | 31M+ residential IPs |
| Rotation & sticky sessions | Per request – 24h | Per request – 30min | Per request – 30min | Per request – 24h | Per request – 24h | Per request | Per request – 60min | Per request – 120min | Per request | 1 – 60min |
| Targeting limit | City, ASN, ZIP code | City, ASN, ZIP code | City, ASN, ZIP code | City, ASN | City | City, ASN | City, ASN | City, ASN, ZIP code | City, ASN | Country |
| Pricing (minimum or no commitments) | $8.40/GB residential & mobile $0.6/GB datacenter $18.75/GB ISP | $8/GB residential & mobile $1.20/IP datacenter $2.10/IP ISP | $7/GB residential $0.60/GB ($50 minimum) datacenter $7.5/GB mobile | $6.60/GB ($99 minimum) residential. Mobile, & ISP | $7/GB residential $117/month mobile | $6/GB ($84 minimum) residential & mobile $1/GB ($100 minimum) datacenter | $8/GB residential & mobile $5/IP ISP | $1/GB residential $0.5/GB datacenter $2/GB mobile ($50 minimum for all) | $7.50/GB residential $0.60 datacenter $50/2GB mobile | $0.60/GB special $0.30/GB basic ($199.99 & $99.98 minimums, respectively) |
| Trial | 7 days free for business | 3 days free for individuals, 7 days free for business | $1.99, 100MB for 3 days | 3 days for $1.99 | N/A | 7 days free for business | $1.99 3-day trial | $5/2.5GB residential & mobile, 10GB datacenter | 50MB free | 3 days free for individuals, 7 for business |
| TrustPilot score | 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.6 | 4.3 | 4.7 | N/A | 2.9 |
Proxy network size refers to the number of IPs each provider offers. With greater numbers comes better coverage, and the provider can accommodate more use cases if they offer a broader rotating proxy type variety. Rotation frequency is important for maintaining anonymity and preventing repeated access from the same IP, which increases the chances of a ban. Conversely, the ability to retain an IP for longer periods ensures it won’t change mid-session and log you out or otherwise interfere with data gathering.
Targeting limit reflects a provider’s granularity potential. For example, country or state-level targeting is enough for monitoring nation-wide ad campaigns. On the other hand, maintaining SEO for clients operating local businesses in different cities or getting pricing information based on a ZIP code require more finesse.
The prices you can get with minimum or no commitments reflect how budget-friendly a proxy provider is, especially for clients on a budget with smaller projects in mind. Everyone offers discounts based on data usage or IP count, and you can get hefty discounts for longer commitments. Trials are an excellent way to attract new clients and help them get a feel for the offered services, so not having one can hurt a provider.
Finally, we chose to include each provider’s TrustPilot score. TrustPilot is a reliable review aggregator where real users share their experiences. Having a lot of reviews is a sign of popularity and reliability. More importantly, it lets you cut past the marketing speak, see which issues clients like yourself are likely to encounter, and how the provider handles them.
Bright Data
The go-to enterprise solution for a decade now, Bright Data continues to set trends & expectations as one of the market’s elite rotating proxies for business. The diversity and amount of features are staggering, from rotation support for every server type through their industry-leading Proxy Manager to access to existing datasets.
Bright Data takes its reputation and user security seriously, insisting on ethically sourced servers. Moreover, a strict vetting procedure ensures only clients with legally sanctioned intentions can use its rotating proxy services. A household brand and focus on enterprise clients allow Bright Data to charge premium rates. While comprehensive, its documentation and tools may require technical knowledge first-time and casual users may lack.
Oxylabs
Oxylabs is another well-known provider with an impeccable pedigree. They catered to enterprise clients at first, which one can still observe in their world-class customer support. Qualifying clients have access to a dedicated account manager. They can ask Oxylabs to recommend specific residential rotating proxies when scraping otherwise difficult websites.
More than 100 million residential IPs, a versatile scraping API, and high success rates add to Oxylabs’ overall appeal. Pricing is a different matter, especially if you need affordable ISP solutions. Continued commitments bring more reasonable prices and support priority, so clients with high scraping or ad verification requirements may find locking better long-term deals in beneficial.
Smartproxy
Smartproxy is among the best rotating proxy providers regarding the variety, uptimes, and success rates of their residential proxies. It entered the stage at a time when there weren’t many appealing options for smaller clients looking for reasonable prices without long-term commitments. It has managed to keep such clients’ trust while expanding its services to provide a tempting enterprise alternative to our top two picks.
Speed is another Smartproxy hallmark, as are respectable success rates across the board. Thanks to flexible pricing, clients can either pay as they go or opt for monthly plans. The latter is cheaper, and extra charges apply per GB if you exceed the limit. Unlike most others on the list, Smartproxy’s proxy rotation solutions limit sticky sessions to 30 minutes.
SOAX
SOAX has come a long way since its rocky 2019 start. It boasts one of the largest proxy networks on our list, with stable and adequately responsive connections in all but the most remote parts of the world. Being able to zero in on the city or ASN level is a plus. So is the intuitive dashboard, complete with extensive support for newbies.
At $6.66 per GB, SOAX offers more affordable rotating proxies than our top three yet matches many of their premium features. The catch is that you have to commit to at least $99 worth of traffic, so you’ll want to make good use of the 3-day trial.
IPRoyal
Do you have a mid-range scraping project in mind and want rotating proxy services with features and pricing to match? IPRoyal offers targeting at the city level in 195 countries. It also lets you specify rotation duration, ranging from new IPS per request to 24-hour sticky sessions. The dashboard mainly caters to residential proxy management. Still, it provides enough information to handle other proxy types effectively as well.
Price-wise, IPRoyal has an advantage over most competitors at $7/GB. That’s even better than SOAX for smaller projects since you pay as you go. Speaking of payment, IPRoyal has a wide range of options – including crypto – if you top your virtual wallet up on the site. There’s no free trial, though.
NetNut
You’ll get the most use out of NetNut if you’re after rotating proxies for scraping at scale. The company directly acquires IP addresses from more than a hundred worldwide ISPs, ensuring ethical, clean, and speedy service few competitors can match. P2P-sourced IPs are available for less sensitive tasks.
NetNut prices its tiers with high-volume clients in mind. You’ll get more bang for your buck with alternatives like Smartproxy if your needs are modest. The more you invest, the cheaper the service and you get better perks like a personal account manager.
Infatica
Not all rotating proxy services need complete global coverage for reliable operations. Infatica restricts its operations to around 100 countries, with a focus on Europe and the US. In return, you can take advantage of precise targeting at the city or ASN level while enjoying mid-range prices that reflect Infatica’s infrastructure and features well.
Infatica may not be as appealing to enterprise clients as Bright Data and Oxylabs since it doesn’t offer datacenter rotating proxies. While not a problem for tricky scraping projects, load testing or harvesting data from sites without IP blocks or bot prevention measures may not be cost-effective.
DataImpulse
Proxy providers that cater to clients on tight budgets usually sacrifice quality. That’s not the case with DataImpulse! The IP pool is understandably small since the company is only two years old and strives to build up its own. Even so, precise targeting for major hubs, a generous trial, and great uptimes make a compelling case.
A $50 commitment for as many residential gigabytes makes DataImpulse our most accessible choice. The catch is that you’ll have to pay double if you want better than country-level targeting. You’ll also want to mind your usage since there’s no per-GB option after exceeding the limit.
Rayobyte
US-based provider Rayobyte initially focused on datacenter proxies with coverage mainly for the American & European markets. Depending on your needs, you can either pay a reasonable $0.6/GB or less if you use the pool format or get five Ops for $18.75/month with unlimited traffic. Its rotating offerings now include residential and mobile proxies, which aren’t as developed yet.
Rayobyte adopts a casual tone hoping to attract individual and smaller business clients. Even though there’s never a shortage of connections, not disclosing proxy pool sizes isn’t doing it any favors. The Proxy Pilot unlocks fine-tuning features that mimic genuine user behavior to extract data from problematic sites more successfully. Slow response times are the only major drawback.
Shifter
Our final recommendation is unconventional but may be the right fit for customers looking for a solution centered on providing value at scale. Residential proxies are Shifter’s only product with rotating features. There are more than 31 million IPs at your disposal.
Shifter’s proxies have competitive success rates and some of the fastest response times. Buy-in starts at $100/month for five IPs and 200GB of traffic, becoming relatively cheaper per GB the more IPs you commit to. However, the Basic plan randomizes geolocation while blocking access to popular e-commerce & social media sites. You’ll have to pay double to remove these restrictions, eliminating much of the pricing advantage.
Best Rotating Proxy Providers for Specific Use Cases
Higher-ranked providers may offer more features, but that doesn’t mean they’ll automatically cater to your needs the best. For example, NetNut has dedicated social media proxies tailored for easier account management and social media scraping.
That said, Bright Data is hard to beat for users conducting market research due to its extensive network and focus on data aggregation. Enterprise clients with large-scale scraping and e-commerce data extraction projects can’t go wrong with leveraging Bright Data or Oxylabs’ established & diverse IP pools.
Granularity is essential for ad verification and SEO monitoring. Smartproxy and DataImpulse’s fine-tuned targeting options will appeal to users who want to balance cost and competence.
Mobile IPs are particularly resilient to blocking and other preventative measures. SOAX and Smartproxy have strong mobile IP pools and pricing most users will find approachable.
Penetration testing or simulated DDoS attacks need to leverage thousands of IPs from different geographic locations for realism. Oxylabs has the largest datacenter proxy pool, making it the best choice.
All our recommendations support SOCKS5 connections, which contribute to user security and anonymity.
How to Choose the Best Rotating Proxy Service
Defining your use case and setting a budget will impact your proxy provider choice the most. Ensure that they have a healthy IP pool for the geographical location you want to target and can meet your needs whether they grow or shrink.
- Assessing a provider’s uptimes and ability to extract data from challenging sources is tricky if you only reference their promotional materials. Spend some time researching the right option, relying on user testimonials and expert reviews.
- Consider providers’ stances on legal compliance and IP sourcing. Ensuring that their tools respect individual sites’ data access guidelines and comply with laws like the GDPR and CPPA will protect your reputation. Compliant providers are also less likely to use compromised or blacklisted IPs, leading to fewer hiccups.
- Don’t overlook providers’ reputations when it comes to customer support either. Speedy responses and professional support staff are crucial for minimizing the impact issues have on your data-gathering efforts.
- Lastly, we strongly encourage you to stick with paid rotating proxies. Assessing a reputable provider’s proxies through trials is the only time you should take advantage of free offers. Remember that there’s always a price; it’s just that paid providers are upfront with theirs.
Free alternatives are appealing, especially if you use proxies occasionally and for smaller tasks. Even so, the malware & data theft risks associated with such companies aren’t worth the savings.
Integrating Rotating Proxies with Scraping Tools or Software:
Proxy integration with scrapers & other software has advanced quickly. In most cases, you’ll need a minimum of coding experience and can rely on providers’ exhaustive documentation if you get stuck.
Setup usually only involves entering your provider’s API endpoint or list of IPs. Rotation is also automatic yet configurable for sticky sessions. Still, you can use manual rotation to check the proxy’s performance or switch to an IP pool in a different geographic location. The API key doubles as an authenticator. Alternatively, you may need to enter a username & password.
Even the best rotating proxies will encounter request timeouts or use an IP a website blocked before. Scrapers will automatically retry the connection or switch to a different IP if they keep failing. However, some frameworks need manual configuration.
Conclusion
Seamlessly accessing the data you need to anticipate trends, manage logistics, or gauge customer interest is now a crucial prerequisite for successful business operations. Partnering with a reputable provider that offers fast and secure rotating proxies not only levels the playing field – it may tip the scales in your favor. Define your goals, pick the right provider with our help, and take advantage of new data-driven opportunities.
