Residential proxies remain one of the most effective tools for accessing web content without triggering automated defenses. Their IP addresses originate from consumer ISP allocations tied to real household devices, which gives them an inherent trust advantage over datacenter alternatives — translating to higher connection success rates and broader geographic flexibility.
This guide evaluates the providers that consistently deliver measurable results, drawing on publicly available performance benchmarks, documented feature sets, and real-world pricing structures.
How to Evaluate a Residential Proxy Provider
Selecting a provider requires assessment across dimensions that directly impact operational outcomes.
Pool Size and Availability. Advertised pool size indicates total theoretical IP capacity, but the relevant metric is how many unique addresses are available during a typical usage window. A provider claiming 100 million IPs may deliver a fraction of that in any given hour, particularly outside tier-1 regions.
Connection Success Rate. Top-tier providers consistently achieve above 99%. Mid-range services fall to 95–98%. At scale, a 2% gap translates to thousands of failed requests per day.
Response Latency. The best-performing providers maintain median response times below one second. Slower infrastructure pushes latency above two seconds — problematic for time-sensitive applications like real-time price monitoring.
Targeting Precision. All major providers cover 150+ countries. The depth varies: basic services offer country-level selection only, while advanced platforms support state, city, ASN, and ZIP code targeting.
Session Management. Sticky session duration limits range from 10 minutes to 24 hours depending on provider. This matters for workflows involving authentication or multi-step interactions.
Pricing Structure. Per-GB pricing ranges from under $1 to over $8. Some services charge extra for premium targeting. Non-expiring packages suit irregular usage patterns; subscriptions offer better rates for consistent monthly consumption.
Provider-by-Provider Analysis
Decodo (Formerly Smartproxy) — Strong All-Around Performance at Competitive Rates
Decodo operates an IP pool of approximately 115 million addresses spanning 195+ countries, with targeting down to city, state, ASN, and ZIP code level. Connection success rates approach 99.9%, and median response times sit around 0.6 seconds. The service supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 protocols including UDP, with session persistence up to 24 hours.
The platform emphasizes self-service accessibility: comprehensive documentation, a browser extension for quick testing, API access for programmatic integration, and around-the-clock customer support. Pricing starts at roughly $3.50/GB for small volumes, dropping below $1.50/GB at the terabyte scale. Free trial access and pay-as-you-go billing are both available.
Decodo is a strong default choice for teams that need reliable infrastructure without the complexity or cost premium of enterprise-tier services.
Oxylabs — Largest Pool and Fastest Infrastructure
Oxylabs operates the largest residential proxy pool in the industry — over 175 million advertised IPs — with global coverage across 195+ countries. Targeting granularity extends to geographic coordinates, a capability few competitors offer. Connection success rates hover near 99.8%, and response times average around 0.4 seconds, making it among the fastest available.
Enterprise customers receive dedicated account management, custom onboarding, and priority support. The dashboard provides detailed analytics and proxy management tools built for large-scale operations.
The trade-off is cost. Per-GB pricing starts at $4 and stays above $2 even at high volumes. The platform is also more complex to configure, which may present a learning curve for smaller teams. Oxylabs is best justified when maximum reliability, geographic precision, and dedicated support are non-negotiable requirements.
PROXY001 — Competitive Pricing with Developer-Friendly Integration
PROXY001 operates a residential proxy network of over 100 million IPs distributed across 200+ countries and regions, with city and state-level geographic targeting. The service supports both rotating residential proxies and sticky sessions with persistence up to 180 minutes — notably longer than several competitors that cap sticky sessions at 30–60 minutes, making it better suited for multi-step workflows like checkout simulation or authenticated scraping.
Protocol support covers HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5. One area where PROXY001 differentiates is developer integration. The platform provides ready-to-use code examples across six languages — Python, Node.js, Java, C#, Go, and PHP — along with API access and integration guides for popular scraping frameworks like Puppeteer and Selenium. For teams that prioritize fast deployment over white-glove onboarding, this self-serve documentation stack reduces time-to-first-request significantly.
Pricing follows a volume-tiered model starting at $2.00/GB for small purchases and scaling down to $0.70/GB at the 1 TB level. An unlimited residential proxy plan is also available from $20/month, which is uncommon in the market and particularly attractive for teams with unpredictable bandwidth consumption. New users can test the service with a 500 MB free trial before committing.
PROXY001 occupies a practical middle ground between budget providers and premium enterprise platforms — offering sufficient pool depth and targeting precision for professional data collection, SEO monitoring, ad verification, and account management workflows, while keeping entry costs and integration friction low.
SOAX — Advanced IP Filtering for Granular Control
SOAX advertises 155 million residential IPs, though daily available inventory is considerably smaller in practice. Infrastructure performs well regardless, particularly for US-based targets where connection speeds rank among the fastest in the market.
The differentiator is filtering architecture. Beyond standard geographic targeting, SOAX offers IP uniqueness filters, stability scoring, and rotation behavior that mimics organic browsing patterns. The service supports SOCKS5 with UDP and QUIC, with customizable sessions up to 60 minutes. Subscribing also unlocks the full product suite including datacenter and mobile proxies.
Per-GB pricing starts at $4, decreasing to approximately $2 at high volume tiers. SOAX suits teams that need precise control over IP selection behavior and are willing to configure advanced filtering options. For straightforward use cases, simpler services offer better value.
NetNut — Deep Pool Coverage in US and UK Markets
NetNut maintains approximately 85 million addresses with particular strength in the United States and United Kingdom. Targeting supports country, state, city, and ASN levels. Connection success averages 98.4% with response times around 1.2 seconds — functional but notably slower than top competitors.
A standout feature is detailed usage analytics: per-session success rates, error classification, and latency distributions alongside standard request and bandwidth metrics. This operational visibility supports iterative configuration optimization.
Pricing starts at approximately $3.45/GB for packages of 28 GB or more, with a seven-day trial for qualifying business accounts. The enterprise-oriented structure makes NetNut most suitable for medium to large organizations. The user interface lags behind competitors like Decodo or Oxylabs in terms of polish and onboarding experience.
DataImpulse — Non-Expiring Bandwidth at $1/GB
DataImpulse offers a straightforward value proposition: residential proxy bandwidth at $1 per GB with no expiration date. The IP pool is estimated at 90 million addresses across 150+ countries with ZIP code–level targeting. Performance benchmarks show 99.5% success rate and 1.2-second average response time.
Session persistence extends to 120 minutes. A premium tier at approximately $5/GB provides access to a curated subset of higher-performing addresses. The provider sources its own proxy network rather than reselling third-party infrastructure.
The inherent risk of budget-priced services applies: low per-GB rates attract heavy usage that can degrade IP quality through over-utilization. DataImpulse works well as a secondary proxy source, for early-stage projects under tight budgets, or for high-volume operations where per-request quality is less critical than aggregate cost efficiency.
Bright Data — Deepest Feature Set for Complex Deployments
Bright Data operates approximately 150 million IPs with the broadest targeting matrix of any single provider: country, city, ASN, ZIP code, geographic coordinates, and operating system. An open-source proxy manager delivers granular control over routing rules, retry logic, and session management. Dedicated IP allocations and IPv6-only addressing are available for specialized scenarios.
Performance benchmarks indicate approximately 99% success rate and 1.1-second average response time, though independent testing has noted artificial throughput limits under certain conditions. Pricing starts at $4/GB, scaling to $2.50/GB at terabyte volumes. A seven-day trial is available for business accounts.
Bright Data's complexity is both its strength and its barrier. The platform demands meaningful setup effort, and KYC verification for certain use cases is more rigorous than competitors impose. This service is optimized for enterprise teams with dedicated proxy operations staff and multi-region requirements that justify the configuration overhead.
Pricing Benchmarks Across the Market
Bandwidth pricing for residential proxies spans a wide range. The following tiers provide a framework for budget planning at the 100 GB volume level:
Budget tier ($0.49–$1.00/GB): DataImpulse, Evomi. Trade-offs in IP freshness and targeting granularity. Best for cost-sensitive or experimental workloads.
Mid-market ($1.50–$3.50/GB): Decodo, PROXY001, SOAX, Infatica, Ping Proxies. Balanced performance-to-cost ratio suitable for most professional applications. PROXY001's tiered pricing is particularly aggressive at higher volumes, reaching $0.70/GB at the terabyte scale.
Premium ($3.50–$5.00+/GB): Oxylabs, Bright Data, NetNut. Larger pools, faster infrastructure, dedicated account management. Justified for high-stakes or high-volume operations.
Volume discounts are universal but vary in slope. Some providers reduce rates gradually; others offer steep drops at specific thresholds (100 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB). Non-expiring packages eliminate billing-cycle waste for projects with variable demand.
Free trials are uncommon for individual users. Most providers offer limited paid trials or 3–7 day money-back guarantees. PROXY001 and Decodo are among the few that provide free trial bandwidth for new accounts without requiring business verification.
Selecting the Right Provider
The decision ultimately reduces to three variables: target difficulty, geographic requirements, and budget.
For teams scraping well-defended targets across multiple regions, premium providers like Oxylabs or Bright Data minimize failure rates and engineering overhead. For standard data collection workloads with moderate geographic requirements, mid-market services like Decodo and PROXY001 deliver the best performance-per-dollar ratio — with PROXY001 offering a particular advantage for developer teams that value fast integration and flexible pricing models. For cost-constrained projects or secondary proxy sourcing, DataImpulse and similar budget options provide acceptable performance at a fraction of the cost.
No single provider dominates every dimension. The most operationally mature teams maintain accounts with two or three services, routing traffic to the provider best suited for each specific target and geography.
