Best Residential Proxies 2026: Top Providers Compared

I've spent the last 3 years testing every major residential proxy provider. Burned through about $40K finding out which ones actually deliver on their promises vs which ones are selling you recycled IPs that get you blocked in minutes.

Here's what I learned comparing ProxyLabs, Bright Data, Smartproxy, and Oxylabs on real projects.

Pool Size Is a Lie (Here's What Actually Matters)

Every provider brags about their "100M+ IP pool!" but here's the truth: that number is meaningless.

I ran the same scraping job across 4 providers. The one with the smallest pool (8M IPs) had the lowest block rate. Why? Because they weren't sharing those IPs with 10,000 other customers.

When you're on a shared pool, you're gambling that the person who had your IP 5 minutes ago didn't just hammer Amazon with 50,000 requests and get it flagged. I've had fresh IPs get blocked on the first request because someone else burned them.

What actually matters: Are the IPs private or shared? How many customers are rotating through the same addresses?

Response Time Under Load (Not Marketing Claims)

Bright Data's marketing says "sub-100ms." In reality? I saw 300-500ms consistently when running 50+ concurrent requests. That's fine for casual scraping but disastrous for ticketing where 200ms means the difference between copping and striking out.

I tested each provider with 100 concurrent requests sustained for an hour. ProxyLabs averaged 200ms, Smartproxy hit 300ms, and Oxylabs was consistently 400ms+.

For scraping news sites? Doesn't matter. For hitting Ticketmaster the second drops go live? That 200ms difference is everything.

The Bandwidth Expiry Scam

This one cost me $1,200 before I figured it out.

Most providers make you pay for bandwidth monthly. Buy 100GB, use 60GB, and the other 40GB vanishes at month-end. Marketing teams love calling this a "subscription" like it's Netflix.

I kept buying 100GB thinking "I'll use it eventually" then watching bandwidth expire. Most providers expire it monthly. ProxyLabs doesn't—buy what you need, use it when you need it.

Do the math: If bandwidth expires monthly, your real cost per GB is higher than advertised unless you use 100% every month (you won't).

The Providers (Tested With Real Money)

ProxyLabs - Private Pools at £2.50/GB

Pool Size: 8M+ IPs
Locations: 195+ countries
Response Time: ~200ms (tested with 100 concurrent requests)

Why I switched to them: Private pools. Your IPs aren't shared with anyone else. That alone solved 80% of my "why am I getting blocked" problems.

No subscription minimums. Pay-as-you-go pricing. Bought 500GB during Black Friday, spread it across multiple projects without stressing about monthly expiration.

Sticky sessions hold for 30 minutes reliably. Tested this on 50+ Queue-it implementations - never had a session drop mid-queue.

The catch: Smaller pool than the big players. If you need 10,000 unique IPs per day across 50 geos, this won't cut it. For most use cases (ticketing, sneaker bots, scraping), 8M private IPs beats 100M shared ones every time.

Real cost for 100GB/month: £250 (~$315). No hidden fees, no subscription.

Bright Data - The Enterprise Option at ~$5/GB

Pool Size: 72M+ IPs
Locations: 195+ countries
Response Time: 300-500ms (my tests, not their marketing)

Why enterprises use them: Maximum IP diversity. Their Web Unlocker handles JavaScript rendering and CAPTCHA solving. If you're scraping complex sites at scale with a team of engineers, they have the tooling.

Dedicated account managers. Real human support that understands your use case. Worth paying for when you're doing $500K+/year in revenue from the data.

Why I don't use them for most projects: IPs are shared across their entire customer base. You're rotating through addresses that might've just been hammered by someone else's aggressive bot. Block rates are higher than private pools.

Bandwidth expires monthly. At $5.04/GB, if you buy 100GB and use 70GB, you just threw away $151.

Real cost for 100GB/month: $504, but only if you use every GB. Most people waste 20-30% monthly.

Smartproxy - Middle Ground at ~$4/GB

Pool Size: 55M+ IPs
Locations: 195+ countries
Response Time: ~300ms

The pitch: Bigger pool than ProxyLabs, cheaper than Bright Data. They've got browser extensions if you want to manually browse through proxies (I've never found this useful but some people like it).

The reality: Shared pool with monthly bandwidth expiry. You're paying $80/month minimum even if you only need 10GB. Did the math last year - I was wasting $30-40/month on unused bandwidth that expired.

Who should use them: If you absolutely need a 50M+ IP pool and can't afford Bright Data's pricing. Decent middle option.

Real cost for 100GB/month: $400, plus the bandwidth you don't use disappears.

Oxylabs - Enterprise Compliance at $8/GB

Pool Size: 100M+ IPs
Locations: 195+ countries
Response Time: 400ms+ (consistently slow in my tests)

Who uses them: Banks, hedge funds, companies that need SOC 2 compliance and enterprise SLAs. If you're a Fortune 500 and need custom contracts with legal guarantees, they deliver.

Why I don't use them: $8/GB is hard to justify unless you specifically need their compliance features. Response times are consistently slower than competitors. Minimum commitment is $300/month.

Real cost for 100GB/month: $800. You're paying for enterprise support and compliance guarantees, not raw performance.

What I Actually Use for Different Projects

Ticketing (Ticketmaster, AXS, SeatGeek)

I use: ProxyLabs

Why: When Taylor Swift tickets drop and sell out in 90 seconds, you need sub-200ms response times and sticky sessions that don't drop. Private IPs mean you're not getting blocked because someone else hammered the same addresses 10 minutes ago.

Tested this on 40+ drops last year. Success rate was 3x higher than when I was using shared pools.

Scraping (E-commerce, price monitoring, data collection)

I use: ProxyLabs

Why: Most scraping doesn't need 100M IPs. It needs clean IPs that don't get blocked. Private pools solved my "mysteriously blocked after 500 requests" problem.

For massive scale operations (millions of pages daily across thousands of domains), Bright Data's pool diversity might be worth the premium. But for 99% of scraping projects, quality beats quantity.

Enterprise Data Pipeline (SEC filings, financial data, large-scale monitoring)

I'd use: Bright Data or Oxylabs

Why: If you're building a data product that generates $500K+ annually, pay for the enterprise tooling. Managed services, dedicated support, and legal guarantees are worth the premium when your business depends on it.

For personal projects or startups? Way overkill.

SEO Monitoring

I use: ProxyLabs or Smartproxy

Why: Geographic coverage matters more than pool size. Both have good location diversity. ProxyLabs is cheaper if you don't need 50M+ IPs.

Social Media (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok automation)

I use: ProxyLabs

Why: Social platforms are aggressive about blocking datacenter IPs and shared proxy pools. I had Instagram accounts getting flagged within hours on shared residential proxies.

Switched to private pools, problem disappeared. These platforms definitely track IP reputation across users.

Real Cost Comparison (100GB/month)

This assumes you actually use 100GB every month. Most people don't.

| Provider | Monthly Cost | Wasted if you use 70GB | Annual Cost | |----------|--------------|------------------------|-------------| | ProxyLabs | $315 | $0 | $3,780 | | Smartproxy | $400 | $120 (30GB wasted) | $4,800 | | Bright Data | $504 | $151 (30GB wasted) | $6,048 | | Oxylabs | $800 | $240 (30GB wasted) | $9,600 |

With ProxyLabs, I buy in bulk during sales and use it whenever I need it. Saves me $1,500+ annually vs monthly subscriptions.

Red Flags I Learned the Hard Way

When evaluating providers, I now watch for:

1. No trial or money-back guarantee: Legit providers let you test first. If they won't let you try 1GB, they know their IPs are garbage.

2. "Unlimited bandwidth" claims: Nothing is unlimited. This is marketing speak for "we'll throttle you or ban you when you use too much."

3. Terrible documentation: If their API docs are confusing, their support will be worse. I judge providers by their docs before buying.

4. Hidden expiration policies: Ask directly: "Does bandwidth expire?" and "Are IPs shared or private?" If they dodge the question, walk away.

5. Fake reviews: Every provider has 5-star Trustpilot reviews. Look for detailed technical reviews on Reddit and Discord where people share real block rates and response times.

How I Test Before Committing Money

Buy 1-5GB from a provider. Run this script to test real performance:

import requests
import time

proxy_config = {
    'http': 'http://user:pass@provider-host:port',
    'https': 'http://user:pass@provider-host:port'
}

response_times = []
for i in range(100):
    start = time.time()
    try:
        r = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/ip', proxies=proxy_config, timeout=10)
        response_times.append((time.time() - start) * 1000)
        print(f"Request {i+1}: {response_times[-1]:.0f}ms - IP: {r.json()['origin']}")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Request {i+1}: FAILED - {e}")

avg_time = sum(response_times) / len(response_times)
print(f"\nAverage response time: {avg_time:.0f}ms")
print(f"Success rate: {len(response_times)}/100")

What you're looking for:

• Consistent response times: Not all over the place. If you see 150ms, then 800ms, then 200ms, that's a red flag.
• Success rate above 98%: Lower than this means unreliable IPs or bad infrastructure.
• Different IPs on each request: Run set(ip_list) to verify rotation is working.
• Sticky sessions work: Configure a session and verify the IP stays the same for 20+ minutes.

I've caught providers advertising "rotating IPs" but actually rotating through the same 50 addresses. This test exposes it.

Bottom Line

For most developers: ProxyLabs at £2.50/GB with private pools and the fastest response times is the best value. I switched 2 years ago and my block rate dropped 70%.

For enterprises with big budgets: Bright Data or Oxylabs if you need managed services, massive IP diversity, and enterprise SLAs.

For mid-range needs: Smartproxy if you need a bigger pool than ProxyLabs but can't justify Bright Data's pricing.

The "best" provider depends on your use case. A provider charging $8/GB isn't necessarily better - you might be paying for features you don't need.

My Testing Process

When I'm evaluating a new provider:

1. Buy 1-10GB from 2-3 providers (not just one)
2. Run your actual workload for 48 hours, not a synthetic test
3. Measure what matters: success rate, block rate, response time under YOUR load
4. Calculate true cost: Factor in expiring bandwidth and minimum subscriptions
5. Choose based on your data, not their marketing

I wasted $5K testing providers by believing marketing claims. Now I test everything myself.

FAQ (From Real Questions I Get)

Q: Should I use free residential proxies?
A: Hell no. Free proxies are honeypots. They log your traffic, inject malware, or sell your data. I tested 20 "free proxy lists" once - 18 were malicious, 2 were just slow datacenter proxies pretending to be residential.

Q: How much bandwidth do I actually need?
A: Start with 10GB and monitor real usage. I've seen people buy 100GB/month and use 15GB. Most scraping uses 1-3GB per million requests depending on page size.

Q: Can I use residential proxies for Netflix/streaming?
A: Technically yes but you'll burn through bandwidth fast. Streaming 1 hour of HD video uses ~3GB. Residential proxies are priced for data collection (small requests), not media consumption (giant files).

Q: Are residential proxies legal?
A: Using proxies is legal. What you do with them might not be. Scraping public data? Usually fine. Bypassing paywalls or terms of service? That's where you get into gray/illegal territory. Don't use them for fraud.

Q: Rotating vs sticky - which do I need?
A: Rotating = new IP every request. Good for scraping where you want to look like different users. Sticky = same IP for 10-30 minutes. Necessary for checkouts, Queue-it systems, or any flow that tracks your session. I use sticky 90% of the time.

---