Best proxy providers in 2026: Webshare vs IPRoyal vs Decodo vs Bright Data, compared by use case

There's no single best proxy provider. There's a best provider for a given job. A price-monitoring script hitting unprotected pages, a team logging into its own seller accounts from a stable location, and a crawler fighting a bot wall need different products, and the cheapest option for one is a waste of money for another. This comparison sorts the four providers people ask about most by what they're actually good at.

Quick comparison

Provider	Best for	Proxy types	Billing model	Free option	Scraping / unblocking APIs
Webshare	Budget projects, testing, static IPs	Datacenter, static residential (ISP), rotating residential	Monthly plans by proxy count and bandwidth	10 shared datacenter proxies, about 1 GB/month	No, proxies only
IPRoyal	Irregular or seasonal residential use	Residential, ISP, datacenter, mobile	Pay-as-you-go traffic; ISP rented by day, week or month	No permanent free tier	Limited
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)	Small teams that want proxies and a scraping API in one place	Residential, ISP, datacenter, mobile	Subscriptions and pay-as-you-go	Trials on selected products	Yes: Web Scraping API, Site Unblocker
Bright Data	Hard targets, large scale, compliance-heavy companies	Residential, ISP, datacenter, mobile	Pay-as-you-go or monthly commitments	Trials for business accounts	Yes: Web Unlocker, SERP API, Scraping Browser, datasets

If you're unsure which proxy type you need, read residential vs ISP vs datacenter vs mobile proxies first. Picking the wrong type costs more than picking the wrong vendor.

1. Webshare: the cheapest way to start

Webshare is built for self-service. You sign up, pick a proxy count and bandwidth, and get a proxy list in minutes. The free plan gives 10 datacenter proxies with a monthly data allowance of about 1 GB. They're shared, so some sites will already have them blocked, but they're perfect for testing your code before you spend money.

Choose it if you're scraping lightly protected sites, need a handful of static IPs, or want to prove a project works before scaling.

2. IPRoyal: residential traffic that doesn't expire

IPRoyal's best-known feature is billing. Residential traffic you buy doesn't expire at the end of the month, so a 10 GB purchase can last a quarter if your usage is spiky. That suits seasonal price checks, occasional research, and agencies whose client work comes in bursts.

Choose it if your usage is irregular and you hate paying for bandwidth you didn't use.

3. Decodo: the balanced mid-market option

Decodo is the 2025 rebrand of Smartproxy. It covers all proxy types and adds a Web Scraping API and a Site Unblocker, so a small team can start with plain proxies and move hard targets to a managed API without changing vendors. Documentation and dashboards are beginner-friendly.

Choose it if you want a middle ground on price and features and value a short learning curve.

4. Bright Data: the deepest toolbox, at a price

Bright Data has the widest range of products: every proxy type, Web Unlocker (it handles blocks, CAPTCHAs and retries for you), a SERP API, a remote Scraping Browser for Playwright or Puppeteer, and ready-made datasets. It also runs the most formal compliance process. Expect identity verification (KYC) and use-case review before full residential access.

Choose it if blocks are costing you more than proxies, or your company needs a vendor that passes legal and procurement review.

5. Also worth a look

• Oxylabs: an enterprise peer to Bright Data with strong scraper APIs and dedicated account management.
• Proxy-Seller: dedicated datacenter and ISP IPv4 addresses rented per month, in many countries. Good when you need a fixed IP per team member or per client.
• Proxy-Cheap: budget residential and mobile proxies for cost-sensitive projects.

6. What a proxy really costs you

The sticker price per GB is misleading. What you pay for is successful pages:

cost per 1,000 successful pages = (price per GB × MB per page ÷ 1024 × 1000) ÷ success rate

Example with round, illustrative numbers: a 2 MB page through a $4/GB pool with a 60% success rate costs about $13 per 1,000 good pages. The same page through a $8/GB pool with a 95% success rate costs about $16.50. Block images and fonts so the page drops to 0.5 MB, and the cheaper pool falls to about $3.30. Bandwidth discipline usually saves more than switching vendors. See how to cut residential proxy bandwidth costs.

7. Test any provider in 30 minutes

1. Check what you're getting. Through the proxy, request an IP lookup and confirm the country, city and network type match what you paid for:

   curl -s -x http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT https://ipinfo.io/json

2. Measure success on your real target. Run 200 requests against the pages you actually need, not a speed-test site, and count status codes:

   for i in $(seq 200); do
     curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{time_total}\n" -x http://USER:PASS@HOST:PORT "https://target.example/page-$i"
   done | awk '{c[$1]++; t+=$2} END {for (k in c) print k, c[k]; print "avg s", t/NR}'

3. Repeat at a busy hour. Pools behave differently under load.
4. Read the bill. Check how retries, failed requests and JavaScript rendering are charged.

8. Rules and compliance

• Every provider has an acceptable-use policy. Fraud, credential stuffing and accessing accounts that aren't yours are banned everywhere, and residential providers do enforce it.
• Scraping public pages is generally lower-risk than scraping behind a login. Collecting personal data brings GDPR/CCPA obligations no matter which proxy you use.
• For logging into your own business accounts, use one stable ISP or residential IP in the region where your business operates. A consistent location is also a security control: many platforms let you alert on or restrict logins from new locations.