Residential Proxies are the most commonly used proxies in web scraping, primarily to avoid web scraper blocking, throttling and captchas.
Since residential IPs are assigned to real addresses by ISPs they are often not included in various bot-tracking databases. However, this also means residential proxies are less stable, less reliable and more expensive.
In this article, we'll take a look at what makes the best residential proxy and what we think are the best 5 residential proxy providers on the market for web scraping.
What Scraping Targets Need Residential Proxies?
Any target that is prone to blocking web scraper will be much easier to scrape using residential proxies. Especially anti scraping service protected targets and social networks such as Instragram.
Proxy Evaluation Methodology
Before we explore the top residential best proxy services, let's take a quick look at what makes residential proxies good for web scraping and the main features to look out for when evaluating a proxy provider for web scraping.
Residential proxies help disguise web scrapers from being identified as bots which result in access block, throttling or just plain captchas. Just by using residential proxies web scraper's "bot score" can be lowered significantly enabling access to protected content without extra reverse engineering procedures.
That being said, the main disadvantage of rotating proxies for web scraping is connection quality and price.
This is because most rotating residential proxy traffic goes through rented residential devices - be it someone's computer, phone or tablet - which is expensive.
This also means that residential proxies are often priced by bandwidth usage which can be a significant budget problem for data-intensive web scrapers.
It's also worth noting the static residential proxies (aka ISP residential proxies) which can maintain IP connections much longer. This is a useful feature for some web scrapers that need long persistent sessions like login-based scraping.
In this article we'll be using this evaluation table to help visualize what to expect from each proxy provider:
| Feature | Example Service |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | How many IP addresses are available in total? |
| Geo Targeting | How many countries can IP addresses be chosen from? |
| Anti Bot Bypass | Does this service have anti bot service bypass? |
| Javascript Rendering | Does this service provide javascript rendering? |
| Log Monitoring | Does this service provide log monitoring dashboard? |
| Minimum monthly commitment | What's the minimum monthly cost? |
| Price per GB | What's the price per gigabyte of bandwidth used? |
| 50GB Project Estimate Cost | Estimate of how much an average web scraping project of 50GB bandwidth would cost |
| Speed | Response return speed (Above or Below or Close to market average |
| Success Rate | Success rate of common web scraping connections (Above or Below or Close to market average |
| Reliability | Rate of connection failures or other errors (Above or Below or Close to market average |
#1 ScrapFly
ScrapFly is a web scraping API that can be best described as a proxy on steroids.
We believe the future of web scraping lies far beyond traditional proxy lists. Instead, it depends on a smart middleware layer—one that not only routes traffic but also intelligently manages fingerprinting, solves anti-bot challenges, renders JavaScript, and now, optimizes your own proxy infrastructure using Proxy Saver.
Here’s a quick overview of ScrapFly’s core features and why it outpaces conventional proxy services—especially for modern, scale-ready scraping operations:
ScrapFly uses a credit-based pricing model, making it easier to scale and budget compared to bandwidth or IP-count billing. With flexible, usage-based pricing, you’re never locked into a rigid setup—perfect for agile scrapers.
Choose between datacenter or residential proxies, with geo-targeting across 50+ countries.
Automatically upgrade HTTP1 requests to HTTP2, helping avoid blocks and increasing speed.
Enable Anti Scraping Protection (ASP), which solves CAPTCHAs and bot blocks automatically—only charging you for successful solutions.
Render JavaScript content via browser-based rendering, which emulates real-user behavior and reduces scrape complexity.
Supercharge your existing proxy infrastructure with Proxy Saver, a middleware that reduces bandwidth by stubbing unnecessary requests, improves reliability, and adds smart caching—saving time and costs.
To explore these and many more developer-friendly features, visit our full documentation!
Let’s take a refreshed look at how ScrapFly stacks up in our evaluation table:
| Feature | ScrapFly (2025) |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | 190M IPs |
| Geo Targeting | 50+ countries |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ✅ |
| Javascript Rendering | ✅ |
| Log Monitoring | ✅ |
| Proxy Saver Optimization | ✅ |
| Smart Caching | ✅ |
| Minimum Monthly Commitment | $30 |
| Price per GB | per request (credit model) |
| 50GB Project Estimated Cost | $100/Mo |
| Speed | Above market avg |
| Success Rate | Above market avg |
| Reliability | Above market avg |
#2 Oxylabs
Oxylabs offers many types of proxies: datacenter, ISP, mobile and residential proxies. The latter ones are by far the most popular types of proxies used in web scraping and the most popular product by Oxylabs.
Oxylabs' residential proxies are known for being faster and more reliable than the market average, and it offers some niche features like city-based geo-location selection however, this comes at a premium price tag and high minimum commitment:
| Feature | Oxylabs |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | 102M IPs |
| Geo Targeting | 82 countries |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ❌ |
| Javascript Rendering | ❌ |
| Log Monitoring | ❌ |
| Minimum monthly commitment | $300 |
| Price per GB | $15 |
| 50GB Project Estimated Cost | $600/Mo |
| Speed | Above market avg |
| Success Rate | Market avg |
| Reliability | Above market avg |
#3 Bright Data (Luminati)
Bright Data (formerly Luminati) is another big name in the proxy world. Like Oxylabs, Bright Data offers datacenter, mobile, ISP and residential proxies and offers an almost identical feature set and pricing model:
| Feature | Bright Data |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | 72M IPs |
| Geo Targeting | 82 countries |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ❌ |
| Javascript Rendering | ❌ |
| Log Monitoring | ❌ |
| Minimum monthly commitment | $300* |
| Price per GB | $15 |
| 50GB Project Estimated Cost | $625/Mo |
| Speed | Above market avg |
| Success Rate | Market avg |
| Reliability | Above market avg |
* Bright Data also offers "Pay as you go" option which lowers minimum commitment to $25/Mo, but that's $25/GB of data which is double the market average. Unfortunately, this could only be a viable option for rare extremely low bandwidth scrapers, but it's always nice to have options.
#4 Smartproxy
On the other end of the big proxy provider spectrum is Smartproxy which aims to provide proxies for smaller projects with much lower minimum monthly commitment of $75. Smartproxy offers datacenter and residential proxies from almost every country in the world and many US cities:
| Feature | Smartproxy |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | 40M IPs |
| Geo Targeting | 240~ countries |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ❌ |
| Javascript Rendering | ❌ |
| Log Monitoring | ❌ |
| Minimum monthly commitment | $75 |
| Price per GB | $15 |
| 50GB Project Estimated Cost | $400/Mo |
| Speed | Above market avg |
| Reliability | Above market avg |
| Success Rate | Market avg |
#5 Zyte (Crawlera)
Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) like ScrapFly also offers a smart proxy approach called "Smart Proxy Manager". Just like ScrapFly, it uses per-request pricing rather than bandwidth which is a much more accessible pricing model for web scrapers.
| Feature | Zyte's Smart Proxy Manager |
|---|---|
| Pool Size | 500,000 IPs |
| Geo Targeting | 12+ countries |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ❌ |
| Javascript Rendering | ✅ |
| Log Monitoring | ❌ |
| Minimum monthly commitment | $30 |
| Price per GB | per request |
| 50GB Project Estimated Cost | $246/Mo |
| Speed | Market avg |
| Success Rate | Market avg |
| Reliability | Market avg |
Zyte has been in the web-scraping industry for a while and accumulated a lot of engineering expertise, meaning they can match the service speed and reliability of other best proxy providers like Oxylabs or Bright Data while offering more features. All being said though, that does mean it comes at a premium price tag which might not be accessible for many.
Improving Proxy Performance
If you do choose to go with a traditional rotating residential proxy for your web scraper there are a few improvements that can drastically reduce proxy price.
To start, if you're using web browser automation tools like Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium we recommend blocking non-critical media resources which can reduce bandwidth usage 2-10 times. We write how to block these resources in our scraping questions section:
- How to block resources in Puppeteer?
- How to block resources in Playwright and Python?
- How to block image loading in Selenium?
Another way to improve proxy performance is to use custom proxy rotation if it's possible to get access on raw proxy IPs. For more on that see:
How to Rotate Proxies in Web Scraping
In this article we explore proxy rotation. How does it affect web scraping success and blocking rates and how can we smartly distribute our traffic through a pool of proxies for the best results.
Residential Proxy Summary
| Feature | ScrapFly | Oxylabs | Bright Data | Smartproxy | Zyte |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pool Size (IPs) | 190M | 102M | 72M | 40M | 0.5M |
| Geo Targeting | 50+ | 82 | 82 | 240~ | 12+ |
| Anti Bot Bypass | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Javascript Rendering | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Log Monitoring | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Minimum monthly commitment | $30 | $300 | $300* | $75 | $300 |
| Price per GB | per request | $15 | $15 | $15 | per request |
| 50GB Project Estimate Cost | $100/Mo | $600/Mo | $625/Mo | $400/Mo | $246/Mo |
| Speed | Above market avg | Above market avg | Above market avg | Above market avg | Market avg |
| Reliability | Above market avg | Above market avg | Above market avg | Above market avg | Market avg |
When it comes to modern web scraping a classic proxy service is a tough sell. Even with the recent advances in proxy quality these services still fall short compared to dedicated web scraping APIs which can apply additional, smart connection strategies to prevent captchas, blocking or throttling.
ScrapFly's combination of smart connection strategies and extra UX features like Javascript Rendering and Anti Bot Bypass can make even the hardest targets easily accessible while also simplifying the web scraping process!
FAQ
Now, let's address some common questions about residential proxies:
What Makes Residential Proxies the Best Proxies for Web Scraping?
Residential proxies are among the best proxies for web scraping because they use genuine IP addresses assigned by ISPs, making them less detectable and reducing the chance of blocks, throttling, or CAPTCHA challenges.
Why Should I Use Rotating Proxies for Web Scraping?
Using rotating proxies for web scraping ensures your requests come from different IP addresses, significantly reducing detection risks and increasing scraping reliability. They're particularly effective against targets with aggressive anti-scraping measures.
What are Static Residential Proxies and When Should I Use Them?
Static residential proxies (or ISP proxies) provide fixed IP addresses with residential authenticity, ideal for web scraping tasks that require persistent, long-term sessions like account-based scraping or consistent geo-targeting.
Summary
Selecting the best proxy providers for web scraping is crucial to ensure successful, efficient, and uninterrupted data collection. Residential proxies stand out as the best proxies for web scraping due to their ability to mimic genuine user behavior and avoid detection, blocks, or CAPTCHAs. Whether choosing rotating proxies for dynamic scraping tasks or static residential proxies for persistent sessions, your choice directly impacts scraping performance, reliability, and overall project cost.
Among top services, ScrapFly excels with its innovative middleware solution, offering smart proxy selection, anti-bot bypassing, and JavaScript rendering at competitive pricing. Providers like Oxylabs and Bright Data offer strong reliability but with higher costs, while Smartproxy balances affordability with robust global coverage. Zyte’s Smart Proxy Manager also presents an appealing alternative with its intelligent per-request pricing. Leveraging proxies like 922 proxy, ISP proxies, and services such as ProxyEmpire can further refine your scraping approach, ensuring you achieve optimal results.
