Selecting the best proxy provider in 2026 is a lot more difficult than it was in 2024. Today, websites no longer just check an IP address to see if someone is using one. Websites will check what the IP address owner is, the system on the internet connection compared to the one the browser is using, and whether it was used on more than one account. Cheap proxy providers will require you to pay more money because more requests will be blocked compared to the amount of money they save you on your bill.
We compared 6 proxy provider services based on the criteria of which providers are the best proxies. We compared the pool size, price per GB of data or per IP address, type of proxies, targeting precision, and ease of start. Below are the prices as listed by providers on their websites as of September 2026.
1. Proxya: best all-round pick
Proxya allows you to pick and buy all sorts of proxies from one account. You can get rotating or sticky residential proxies, static ISP, datacenter, and mobile proxies. It's important because most projects will need both types, so if you're dealing with two you're going to have two dashboards and two bills.
Proxya provides residential proxies sourced from over 40M+ IPs from over 195 countries at the city or carrier level. It is $2.4 per GB with discounted pricing of $1.6 with volume. There is no monthly subscription or minimum commitment. Datacenter proxies are $1.7 per IP per month with unlimited traffic and ISP proxies are $2.5. Residential proxies, and the ISP and datacenter proxies all support UDP over SOCKS5 proxies and therefore QUIC and HTTP3 traffic. Mobile proxies are live 4G and 5G devices on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and other carriers rented out to a single customer. You can rent one for a day.
The trick is that Proxya offers OS fingerprint matching which other providers do not. Most proxies run on a Linux OS, meaning if you're using Windows, your proxy server will say Linux when you use your browser. Detection systems will pick up on this and will mark your account for review. Proxya will rewrite your OS fingerprint signature on ISP and datacenter proxies and match it with one of 5 profiles for free. Proxya Anty is a free anti-detect browser that you can use with Proxya and it doesn't have a profile limit.
The bad: ISP proxies are only available in 9 countries and not all of them are available daily. Proxya has a smaller residential IP pool than Bright Data and Oxylabs so if you need a lot of residential IPs from one country this is a problem.
2. Decodo: best documentation for teams
Decodo (previously known as Smartproxy) has 115 million+ residential IPs across 195+ countries. They offer a pay as you go service for $4 per GB. Their lowest tier is a 3GB monthly plan for $11.25 which goes down to $2 per GB at 250GB. Their dashboard and documentation are some of the best in the market. They also have code samples for nearly all of the languages. They also sell ISP, datacenter and site unblocker services. The downsides to Decodo are that their larger plans are cheaper, smaller users are nearly twice as expensive, and they don't support cryptocurrency for their per ip ISP and datacenter plans.
3. Oxylabs: best for enterprise scraping
Oxylabs' residential IP network consists of over 175M IP addresses, targeted down to the Zipcode level in 195 locations. Their plans start at 5GB (for $30), $6 per GB, but you can also go for $2.5 per GB for 1TB. The product is very good in terms of reliability at scale and they also offer an amazing set of scraper APIs on top of their proxy network. But it's kind of expensive to use for small projects, and it's obvious this product was designed for companies with a procurement process and not for individual developers.
4. Bright Data: Biggest Network
Bright Data currently claims the largest number of residential IPs, 400 million IPs in 195 countries. They have country, state, city and zip targeting options. Pay as you go pricing starts at $8 per GB, but you can expect to pay $4 per GB. The minimum price per month is $499 with the current discount. They have the most tools available in the industry, they have a proxy manager, scraping browser, datasets, etc. Issues: You have to pass a KYC process which may involve a video call in order to use your residential/mobility IPs. You have to adjust to using the dashboard. They are one of the most expensive options.
5. IPRoyal - Traffic that doesn't expire
IPRoyal has 64 million residential IPs in 195 countries. Their main benefit is that the traffic they sell never expires. So, you can buy a block of gigabytes of traffic and use it for months. IPRoyal traffic is sold at $7 per GB for 1GB, but drops to $1.75 per GB if you buy 10TB. This is not a great offer for light users, but good for heavy users. IPRoyal has one downside in that smaller purchases are quite expensive, and their pool is weak for less common countries.
6. Webshare: cheapest datacenter proxies
Webshare offers the cheapest datacenter proxies available. At just 100 proxies, Webshare offers a total of 100 datacenter proxies for just $2.99 a month. The free tier offers 10 proxies for testing. Webshare has servers available in over 50 countries.
Cons:
- Datacenter proxies are easily flagged as suspicious by strict websites
- Residential proxies are less developed than specialist proxies
How to Pick a Proxy Service
Which company you pick is less important than which kind of proxy you pick. For tasks such as scraping thousands of web pages or searching for prices in many locations, rotating residential proxies are the best option. For sites where you need to log in, static ISP proxies are a good choice because their IP address remains the same for weeks. For tasks that need a phone number to log in, mobile proxies are good. For tasks where the website doesn't check who owns the IP address, datacenter proxies are the cheapest and fastest. Proxya's datacenter proxies cost between $1.30 and $1.70 per IP per month, include unlimited traffic and UDP traffic, and are the best value in this category.
FAQ
What is the cheapest proxy company in 2026?
The cheapest datacenter proxies are $2.99 from Webshare for 100 IPs. The cheapest proxies per GB are Proxya ($1.60 per GB volume) and IPRoyal ($1.75 per GB volume for 10 TB).
Which provider has the most residential IPs?
Bright Data has the most residential IP addresses with 400M, Oxylabs has 175M IP addresses, and Decodo has 115M.
