Top 5 Residential Proxies in 2024

JUNE 12, 2024 • PRIVACY & ANONYMITY • EXPERT OPINION

Residential proxies are essential for staying anonymous online, bypassing regional restrictions or IP bans, and creating multiple accounts on a single platform. The Smart Proxy Team analyzed popular residential proxy providers' features, characteristics, and user reviews and selected the top five.

When you visit a website, your device and the website you’re accessing know each other's IP addresses and communicate directly. When you use a proxy, it routes all the requests and responses of the website or creates a channel for data transmission. Consequently, instead of your IP address, the web page receives information from and sends it to the proxy address IP address. This makes it significantly harder for websites' anti-fraud systems to identify users.

Proxies can be classified into several types:

• Mobile Proxies. These obtain IP addresses from mobile Internet providers. They are used to access blocked social media or manage multiple accounts on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
• Datacenter Proxies. As the name suggests, these servers are located in datacenters. They offer high speed and low cost, making them suitable for mass tasks like load testing and SEO research.
• Residential Proxies. These IP addresses belong to regular people's devices, which makes anti-fraud systems trust them more and block them much less frequently. Residential proxies are ideal for web scraping, bypassing regional restrictions, testing marketing hypotheses, SEO monitoring, and multi-accounting.
• ISP Proxies. Connections through these servers are usually stable and do not raise suspicion from websites. ISP proxies are used for traffic-intensive tasks and access to well-protected targets.

When choosing a proxy provider, consider the following factors:

• Proxy Types Available. Make sure the provider offers residential proxies.
• IP Pool Size. The more addresses and countries in the provider's proxy pool, the higher the likelihood of always having access to fast proxies in the desired location.
• Connection Protocols. Check which protocols are supported, and make sure secure ones like HTTPS and SOCKS5 are offered.
• Uptime. This indicates how often proxies are available. Choose a provider with a 99% uptime or higher.
• Success Rate. The higher the success rate, the fewer routing errors occur. As with uptime, you should choose providers with a 99% success rate or higher.
• Technical Support. Review the support schedule and their contact channels. Ideally, support should be available 24/7.
• Reviews. Check sites like Trustpilot and G2 to see user ratings of the service quality. Reviews can help identify which provider will best meet your needs.
• Pricing. Compare the cost of similar types of proxies from different providers. Check if they offer a trial period and pay attention whether their payment model is subscription or pay-as-you-go.

Smartproxy has an ethically sourced database of over 65 million IP addresses from 195 countries. It features a proxy manager for easy management and quick setup of multiple proxies. In addition to proxies, Smartproxy offers web scraping tools, a free browser extension, and a proxy checker. Detailed integration instructions are available on their website. For three consecutive years, Proxyway has named Smartproxy the best proxy provider.

Features:

• Proxies respond in less than 0.6 seconds.
• You can select the proxy country and city.
• No limit on the number of proxies you can use simultaneously.
• 24/7 support via LiveChat and email.
• Uptime of 99.99%.
• Three-day trial version is available.

Pricing: Residential proxies cost $2.2 per GB. The provider offers a 14-day money-back guarantee if you are dissatisfied with the service quality.

Reviews: Users rated Smartproxy 4.7 on Trustpilot and 4.6 on G2 for its high-quality technical support and performance.

Bright Data offers a pool of 78 million addresses from 195 countries. The provider claims to use only ethically sourced IP addresses. Proxy management is available through a dedicated manager or a browser extension. Bright Data also offers an API and a web-scraping browser.

Features:

• You can select the country, city, operator, or ASN.
• Uptime of 99.99%.
• Success rate also reaches 99.99%.
• No limit on the number of simultaneous requests.
• Free trial for the first seven days.

Pricing: Residential proxies cost $5.04 per GB.

Reviews: Rated 4.6 on Trustpilot and G2 for helpful support and the quality of their IP address pool.

Oxylabs have collected over 100 million IP addresses in 195 countries. In addition to standard tools, the provider offers a Chrome browser extension and an Android app for proxy management. Oxylabs also sells a web scraping tool based on artificial intelligence for web scraping without bans.

Features:

• Server response time is 0.6 seconds.
• 99.95% of connections are successful.
• 24/7 support.

Pricing: Residential proxies cost $8 per GB. You can pay as you go and get a refund within 30 days.

Reviews: Oxylabs has a rating of 4.8 on Trustpilot and 4.5 on G2. Users appreciate this proxy provider for its reliability and excellent support.

Webshare targets small and medium-sized businesses. It has over 30 million IP addresses from 50 countries and offers a convenient dashboard for managing multiple proxies.

Features:

• The proxy success rate on Google searches is 99%.
• Operates on a self-service model.
• Offers a free plan for ten proxies without time limits.

Pricing: Residential proxies cost $4.5 per GB.

Reviews: Webshare has a rating of 4.3 on Trustpilot for quality, flexibility, and prompt support.

IPRoyal offers over 34 million IP addresses in 195 countries. In addition to proxies, IPRoyal sells proxy extensions for Chrome and Firefox and a service for mass proxy checking.

Features:

• 24/7 year-round technical support.
• A success rate of approximately 99.7%.

Pricing: Rotating residential proxies cost $1.75 per GB.

Reviews: IPRoyal is rated 4.7 on Trustpilot and 4.5 on G2. Users highlight the high performance and reliability of IPRoyal proxies.