Best Rotating Proxy Services 2026: Ranked for Web Scraping
Eight rotating proxy providers worth shortlisting in 2026, picked by primary use case:
- Cheapest pay-as-you-go ($1/GB, no subscription, traffic never expires): DataImpulse
- Subscription with non-expiring traffic: IPRoyal, from $4.90/GB
- Hardest targets (Amazon, LinkedIn, Cloudflare at scale): Bright Data with Web Unlocker, from $8/GB
- All five proxy classes from one account: Proxy-Seller, from $1.99/500 MB; code AUTOMATE15 for 15% off
Not sure which proxy class fits your target? Read the datacenter vs residential vs ISP decision guide first.
Rotating proxies automatically assign a new IP address per request or per session, preventing sites from rate-limiting a single IP. They're the foundation of any production web scraper.
This guide ranks eight major providers by the metrics that matter most: price per GB, IP pool size, bypass success rate on major sites, and support quality.
Rotating proxy provider comparison (2026)
| Provider | Best for | Residential pool | Entry $/GB | Sticky session | Trial / refund |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPRoyal | Best non-expiring subscription | 32M+ | $4.90 to $7.35 | Up to 7 days | No trial; 1 GB starter |
| DataImpulse | Cheapest PAYG, no expiry | 90M+ | $1/GB ($0.80 at 1 TB) | Yes (configurable) | 7-day money-back (first purchase, excl. crypto) |
| Proxy-Seller | Best all-in-one | 20M+ | From $1.99/500 MB | 5/30 min or API | 24-hour refund |
| Bright Data | Best for hardest targets | 400M+ | From $8 (PAYG) | 10 to 30 min | 7-day free trial |
| Oxylabs | Best for SERP & e-commerce | 175M+ | From $8 (PAYG) | Yes | 7-day free trial |
| NetNut | Best ISP-routed residential | 85M+ | From $3.45/GB (28 GB plan) | Yes | 7-day free trial |
| Smartproxy (Decodo) | Best mid-tier | 115M+ | $3.75 → $2 at 1 TB | Up to 30 min | 3-day money-back |
| SOAX | Best for granular geo-targeting | 191M+ | From $6.40/GB | Up to 1 hour | 24-hour money-back |
How we ranked these rotating proxy services
Every entry below was scored on four dimensions, weighted in this order:
- Effective cost on a real target (raw $/GB ÷ success rate on a representative anti-bot site). Headline price means nothing if 60% of requests bounce.
- Pool size and geo depth in the country mix our readers actually target (US, UK, DE, JP, BR). 400M residential IPs split across 195 countries beats 50M concentrated in three.
- Session model (rotating per request, sticky 5 to 60 minutes, sticky for 24 hours or more, API-triggered rotation). Multi-step flows die without sticky sessions.
- Practical onboarding (free trial or money-back, dashboard speed, public API docs, refund policy). Enterprise SLA is a bonus, not a baseline.
We discounted providers that hide pricing behind sales calls or run sub-1 M IP residential pools. Datacenter-only providers are included only when they meaningfully cover a use case the residential players can't price-match.
What to look for in a rotating proxy service
| Factor | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| IP pool size | Larger pool = harder to block. 1M+ IPs for residential is the working minimum. |
| Residential vs datacenter | Residential looks like real users; datacenter is faster and cheaper but easy to fingerprint. |
| Geo-targeting | Some scraping needs specific country, state, or city IPs. |
| Session stickiness | Sticky sessions maintain the same IP across multi-step flows (login, checkout, pagination). |
| Success rate | % of requests that return 200 on your target. Varies more by target than by provider. |
| Price per GB | True cost metric for residential proxies; compare against effective success rate, not headline price. |
1. IPRoyal: best subscription residential with non-expiring traffic
IPRoyal is the default pick for teams that want a subscription model where purchased bandwidth never expires. The pay-as-you-go curve starts at $7.35/GB on the smallest 1 GB buy, drops to $4.90/GB at standard volume tiers, and falls further (around $1.75/GB) on large 500 GB commitments. Subscriptions hold bandwidth indefinitely until consumed, which matters when your crawl calendar is uneven. For lower headline $/GB with no subscription commitment at all, see DataImpulse below.
| Feature | IPRoyal |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 32M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | $4.90 to $7.35 (varies by volume) |
| Datacenter plan | Yes (from $1.39/GB) |
| Mobile proxies | Yes (4.5M+ IPs) |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city (195+ countries) |
| Sticky sessions | Yes (up to 7 days) |
| Trial | No free trial; start from 1 GB (~$7) |
Best for: Subscription buyers who want bandwidth that never resets, mid-volume crawlers who can plan a 100 to 500 GB monthly buy, and teams already running on the IPRoyal dashboard for other proxy classes.
Limitations: Headline $/GB is higher than DataImpulse for buyers without a subscription commitment. Lower success rate than Bright Data on the hardest targets (Amazon strict listings, LinkedIn at scale). No managed unblocking layer and no enterprise SLA tier.
Deeper dives: IPRoyal review (2026) covers speeds, success rates, and ethical-sourcing claims. IPRoyal pricing plans breaks down the full volume curve and subscription options.
import requests
proxies = {
"http": "http://USER:PASS@gate.iproyal.com:7777",
"https": "http://USER:PASS@gate.iproyal.com:7777",
}
response = requests.get("https://target.com", proxies=proxies)
2. DataImpulse: pay-as-you-go residential with non-expiring traffic
DataImpulse strips the subscription model out of residential proxies entirely. There is no monthly plan to lock into, and unused gigabytes do not reset at the end of a billing cycle. You buy GB, spend them on your own schedule, and what you have not used stays in the account until you do. For uneven crawl calendars (one heavy week, two quiet ones) this avoids the standard residential trap of paying for capacity that evaporates monthly.
Pricing is flat across tiers: Intro at $5/5 GB ($1/GB), Basic at $50/50 GB ($1/GB), Advanced at $800/1 TB (≈$0.80/GB, a 20% volume discount with a dedicated account manager), and Custom+ from $4,000 for 5 TB+ with personalized configuration. Country targeting across all 195 countries is included at no extra cost, with city, ZIP, and ASN targeting available on the residential product.
| Feature | DataImpulse |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 90M+ first-party IPs |
| Price/GB | $1/GB (Intro/Basic), ≈$0.80/GB at Advanced |
| Sourcing | First-party (own bandwidth-sharing app) |
| Geo-targeting | 195 countries; city, ZIP, ASN on residential |
| Sticky sessions | Yes (configurable) |
| Subscription | None (pay-as-you-go, traffic never expires) |
| Trial | 7-day money-back on first purchase (excl. crypto) |
Best for: Teams with irregular crawl schedules where prepaid-GB monthly plans waste money. The $1/GB entry plus non-expiring balance gives small-to-mid scrapers a price floor that the IPRoyal and Bright Data subscription models cannot match at low volume. Enterprise pipelines that need SLAs and managed unblocking are a worse fit.
Honest limitations: The 90M+ pool is mid-tier residential and is enough for most rotating workloads. On the very hardest targets at scale (Amazon strict listings, LinkedIn at high concurrency), Bright Data's 400M+ pool may still edge ahead. No managed unblocking layer like Bright Data's Web Unlocker, so you handle TLS fingerprint and retry logic on your side. Fewer proxy classes than Proxy-Seller (no IPv6 or ISP tier).
Start with the $5 Intro plan, no subscription
import requests
proxy = "http://USER:PASS@gw.dataimpulse.com:823"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}
response = requests.get("https://target.com", proxies=proxies)
3. Proxy-Seller: best for full proxy stack coverage
Proxy-Seller is one of the few providers covering all five proxy types (datacenter IPv4, IPv6, ISP, residential, and mobile) from a single account. Teams running multiple Apify Actors against different target sites can stop switching vendors when their workloads vary week to week.
| Feature | Proxy-Seller |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 20M+ IPs |
| DC IPv4 price | From $0.70/IP/month (MIX) |
| DC IPv6 price | From $0.08/IP/month |
| ISP proxies | From $1.50/IP (23 countries) |
| Residential | From $1.99/500 MB |
| Mobile 4G/5G | $25 to $80/IP (20+ countries) |
| Geo-targeting | 220+ countries, 800+ subnets |
| Sticky sessions | Timer-based (5 or 30 min) or API-triggered |
| Trial | No free trial; 24-hour replacement/refund |
Best for: Teams running multiple scrapers against varied targets who need datacenter, residential, ISP, IPv6, and mobile from one dashboard. The datacenter IPv6 option at $0.08/IP is the cheapest IPv6 offer on the market for Google-scale SERP monitoring. For the full proxy-class decision context, see datacenter vs residential vs ISP proxies.
Honest limitations: Residential pool (20M+ IPs) sits well below Bright Data's 400M+. On the hardest targets, that gap shows in success rates. No non-expiring bandwidth model like IPRoyal's for uneven crawl schedules.
Risk: Free replacement or refund within 24 hours if a proxy doesn't work.
Discount: Apply code AUTOMATE15 at checkout for 15% off datacenter, IPv6, ISP, and residential (10% off mobile), stacking with the bulk and duration discounts already baked into the configurator.
Deeper dive: Proxy-Seller review (2026) covers all 5 proxy types in detail with verified pricing, SDK support, and refund policy.
4. Bright Data: best for enterprise and hard targets
Bright Data is the largest residential proxy network with 400M+ IPs and specialized unblocking technology. Their Web Unlocker handles Cloudflare, CAPTCHA, and TLS fingerprinting automatically.
| Feature | Bright Data |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 400M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | From $8.00 (volume discounts available) |
| Web Unlocker | Yes (all-in-one bypass) |
| Scraping Browser | Yes (Playwright-compatible) |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city, ASN |
| Sticky sessions | Yes (10 to 30 min) |
| Trial | 7-day free trial |
Best for: Amazon, LinkedIn, major e-commerce sites, compliance-critical workloads, enterprise scale.
Limitations: Significantly higher price per GB than alternatives. Overkill for small projects.
Deeper dives: Bright Data review (2026) for the full feature audit, Bright Data proxy setup guide for endpoint configuration, and how to bypass Cloudflare for context on Web Unlocker vs. DIY anti-bot.
5. Oxylabs: best for SERP and e-commerce scale
Oxylabs positions itself on enterprise SERP scraping with a dedicated Real-Time Crawler API.
| Feature | Oxylabs |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 175M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | From $8 (volume deals) |
| SERP API | Yes (dedicated endpoint) |
| E-commerce APIs | Amazon, Wayfair, others |
| Geo-targeting | Country, city |
| Trial | 7-day free |
Best for: Large SERP monitoring, price intelligence at scale, teams that need dedicated scraping APIs.
Deeper dive: Bright Data vs Oxylabs (2026) compares pool size, unblocking layers, and pricing head-to-head.
6. NetNut: best ISP-routed residential
NetNut routes residential traffic through direct ISP partnerships instead of a peer-to-peer device network. The result is lower median latency than P2P residential pools and steadier throughput on long-running scrapes, at a price closer to mid-tier residential than premium.
| Feature | NetNut |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 85M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | From $3.45/GB on the 28 GB starter plan; volume tiers go lower |
| Architecture | Direct ISP routing (not P2P) |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city; ASN on enterprise |
| Sticky sessions | Yes (configurable) |
| Trial | 7-day free trial |
Best for: High-volume scrapes that need predictable latency, teams that want residential-grade IP reputation without P2P variability, ASN-aware targeting.
Limitations: Smaller pool than Bright Data and Decodo. Pricing is competitive but not the cheapest at low volumes. P2P residential providers may rotate fresher IPs on the very hardest targets.
7. Smartproxy (Decodo): best mid-tier residential
Smartproxy (Decodo) sits between IPRoyal and Bright Data on price and performance, a good fit for growing projects.
| Feature | Smartproxy (Decodo) |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 115M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | From $3.75/GB (to $2/GB at 1TB+) |
| Datacenter plan | Yes |
| Sticky sessions | Yes (up to 30 min) |
| API | Yes |
| Trial | 3-day money back |
Best for: Projects outgrowing IPRoyal but not needing Bright Data's full stack.
8. SOAX: best for granular geo-targeting
SOAX positions on flexible rotation control and deep geo-targeting (country, state, city, and ASN), with separate residential, mobile, and US ISP pools. Their dashboard exposes more rotation knobs than most competitors, which is useful when scraping geo-personalized content like ads, SERP, or local pricing.
| Feature | SOAX |
|---|---|
| Residential pool | 191M+ IPs |
| Price/GB | From $6.40/GB on starter plans; drops on annual commitment |
| Mobile pool | Yes (real 3G/4G/5G) |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city, ASN, carrier |
| Sticky sessions | Up to 1 hour |
| Trial | 24-hour money-back |
Best for: Geo-personalized scrapes (local SERP, ad verification, regional pricing), workflows that need fine-grained rotation control, mobile and ISP in one account.
Limitations: Headline price is mid-pack, not the cheapest. Smaller mobile and ISP pools than the largest competitors.
Which provider should you choose?
- Under $20/month budget: DataImpulse Intro at $5 for 5 GB ($1/GB, traffic never expires) is the cheapest legitimate entry point. IPRoyal's 1 GB starter at ~$7 is the alternative if you prefer the IPRoyal dashboard and ecosystem.
- Pay-as-you-go residential with no subscription: DataImpulse. $1/GB across Intro/Basic, ~$0.80/GB at 1 TB, traffic never expires. Best fit for irregular crawl schedules.
- Scraping Amazon, LinkedIn, Google at scale: Bright Data. The 400M-IP pool plus Web Unlocker handles the hardest targets.
- One vendor across datacenter, ISP, residential, IPv6, and mobile: Proxy-Seller. Useful when workloads vary week to week.
- SEO/SERP monitoring at scale: Oxylabs. Dedicated SERP API beats raw residential rotation for Google.
- High-volume scrapes that need predictable latency: NetNut. Direct ISP routing avoids P2P jitter.
- Scaling project, $50 to $200/month: Smartproxy (Decodo). Sits between IPRoyal and Bright Data on price and success rate.
- Geo-personalized scraping (local SERP, ads, regional pricing): SOAX. Country + state + city + ASN + carrier targeting in one dashboard.
- Public data on unprotected sites: datacenter proxies are cheaper and faster; see the datacenter vs residential decision guide before paying for residential.
For pricing tiers and volume discounts, see IPRoyal pricing plans 2026 and the Bright Data vs Oxylabs comparison.
FAQ
A rotating proxy assigns a new IP per request (or per session) from the provider's IP pool, typically 20 million to 400 million addresses depending on the vendor. The provider's gateway picks the exit IP for each connection, so the target site sees a different source for each request instead of one IP making thousands of hits.
Bright Data with 400M+ residential IPs. SOAX follows at 191M+, Oxylabs at 175M+, Smartproxy (Decodo) at 115M+, DataImpulse at 90M+ first-party IPs, NetNut at 85M+, IPRoyal at 32M+, and Proxy-Seller at 20M+. Pool size matters more on aggressive targets like Amazon and LinkedIn where IP overlap drives block rates up.
DataImpulse leads on headline price at $1/GB (Intro and Basic) with no subscription, dropping to ≈$0.80/GB at the 1 TB Advanced tier. IPRoyal runs $4.90 to $7.35 per GB on volume tiers with the unique benefit that purchased bandwidth never expires. Smartproxy (Decodo) reaches $2/GB at 1 TB commitments. Compare effective cost, not just headline rate: $1/GB on a target that bounces 50% of requests is $2/GB of usable data.
If the target enforces per-IP rate limits or runs anti-bot (Cloudflare, DataDome, PerimeterX), yes. Without rotation, every request from a single IP gets tracked and blocked within minutes. If the target is an open API with no rate limit, a single static proxy or no proxy is fine.
Use rotating for stateless scraping (product listings, SERP, public pages) where every request is independent. Use sticky sessions when you need the same IP across multiple requests, such as logged-in sessions, multi-step checkouts, or paginated results that change on IP rotation. Most providers let you toggle per request.
Yes for accessing publicly available data, which has been affirmed by US courts including hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn. Bypassing authentication, scraping personal data without consent, or violating a site's enforceable contract crosses legal lines. Always check the target's terms and applicable jurisdiction.
Free rotating proxies exist but are unreliable for production scraping. The IPs are typically overused, blacklisted on major targets, and lack geo-targeting or sticky session support. They're fine for one-off tests. For anything ongoing, free trials from Bright Data, Oxylabs, NetNut, and Smartproxy (Decodo) give you real infrastructure without paying upfront. DataImpulse offers a 7-day money-back guarantee on first purchases (excluding crypto), which functions as a low-risk way to test their pool at the $5 Intro tier.
Residential proxies describe the IP source (real consumer devices on home ISPs). Rotating proxies describe the IP assignment behavior (a different IP per request or per session). Most rotating proxies are residential, but datacenter and mobile pools can rotate too. "Rotating residential" is the common combination for web scraping.
For light scraping (under 5 GB/month), the cheapest entry is DataImpulse's $5 Intro pack ($1/GB, traffic never expires). $30 to $50 covers a small residential plan from IPRoyal or Decodo. Mid-volume (50 to 100 GB/month) lands around $50 (DataImpulse Basic) to $700 depending on provider. Enterprise volumes (1 TB+) drop the effective $/GB toward $0.80 (DataImpulse Advanced) to $2 (annual commitments at the major vendors).