The Best Proxies for Scraping in September 2026

The best proxy for scraping is the cheapest one your target tolerates — and you find that out by testing, not by reading spec sheets. On 2026-09-19 the published field ran from datacenter rotating at $0.30/GB to residential at $1.75–$6.00/GB to managed scraping APIs from $49/mo. This page ranks the options and dates every price.

How we evaluate scraping proxies

Three things decide a scraping proxy, and only one of them is on the pricing page. We check each against the procedure on How we test:

1. Rotation — does the pool hand you a new IP per request, and can you control the window? Every provider here publishes rotating sessions; the depth of control varies.
2. Targeting — can you pick country, city, or ISP? Deep targeting (city, ISP, ASN) is what turns a generic pool into a geo-scrape tool. SOAX publishes ASN+ZIP on its higher plans; Webshare publishes city/ZIP/ASN on residential.
3. Price with its condition — the entry rate and whether it is a promo. Bright Data, Webshare and ProxyEmpire all publish 50%-off entries off $7–8/GB lists in September 2026; budget for the list rate after the promo.

The comparison table

All prices read from vendor pages on 2026-09-19. “Starting price” is the smallest purchasable plan.

Read 2026-09-19. Promo prices carry their list rate. Units differ by design: per GB, per IP, or per 1,000 requests.

The ranked picks

1. Rayobyte — the cheapest datacenter rotating (from $0.30/GB)

For the default job — scrape an open target at volume — nothing in the dataset beats Rayobyte’s datacenter rotating at $0.30/GB (1–50 GB tier), falling to $0.23/GB at 351–1,000 GB. When the target fights back, its residential tiers start at $3.50/GB and drop to $0.50/GB at 5 TB+. The gap: pool size and free tier are not published.

2. Webshare — the self-serve dashboard (from $2.99/mo)

$2.99/mo buys 100 datacenter proxies, 10 are free to start, and the dashboard is the best place in the dataset to run a small scraping operation alone. Residential rotating from $3.50/GB (promo) adds city/ZIP/ASN targeting. When you want to click, not email sales, this is the row.

3. IPRoyal — the cheapest residential GB (from $1.75/GB)

When datacenter 403s force you residential, IPRoyal’s from-$1.75/GB is the cheapest published entry — and its scraping API from $1.00 per 1,000 requests is the cheapest managed request path in the dataset. Caveats: session types and free tier are not published, and “from” is not the rate at 1 GB. Full review.

4. Decodo — the flat-rate residential workhorse ($3.75/GB)

$3.75/GB at 3 GB, $2.75/GB at 100 GB, no coupons — the rate you see is the rate you pay. A 115M+ pool and free trials on monthly plans make it the low-friction residential option for mid-volume scraping. Full review.

5. Bright Data — coverage and scraping APIs for hard targets ($4.00/GB promo)

The 400M+ published pool and free geo targeting matter when the scrape list is wide or the locations are rare. Bright Data also sells scraping APIs for targets that resist raw proxies. You pay the channel’s biggest promo premium for it: $4.00/GB is 50% off an $8.00/GB list. Full review.

6. Oxylabs — managed scraping tooling (scraper API from $49/mo)

If running your own parser is the bottleneck, the scraper API (from $49/mo) and web unblocker (from $9.40/GB) do the parsing and unblocking for you. Residential from $6.00/GB is the priciest entry here, and no pool size is published. Full review.

7. SOAX — deep targeting when geo precision is the job (from $3.00/GB usage)

Country, region, city, ISP — and ASN+ZIP on Scale/Enterprise — is the deepest published targeting in the dataset. The price shape ($200/mo plan plus metered usage) only makes sense for jobs that need the depth.

What the table doesn’t tell you

• Test with datacenter before buying residential. Run a few hundred requests through a $0.30/GB line at your target. If they pass, you are done. If you see hosting-range 403s, upgrade to residential with evidence in hand — never buy the premium pre-emptively.
• Rotation control is a feature, not a footnote. A per-request rotating pool is the default scrape shape; a sticky window is for targets that fingerprint session consistency. Bright Data, Decodo, Webshare and Infatica publish both; IPRoyal does not publish session types.
• Promos skew every comparison. Bright Data ($4.00/GB = 50% off $8.00), Webshare ($3.50/GB = 50% off $7.00) and ProxyEmpire ($3.50/GB = 50% off $7.00) all print discounted entries today. Compare list rates, or you are comparing two discounts.
• “Not published” is a real answer. Rayobyte, Oxylabs and SOAX do not publish pool sizes; IPRoyal does not publish session types. Those cells stay empty on principle — the policy is on How we test.

Who wrote this

Written by the Runein operator — the same person who pays for and runs these tools. Corrections and vendor price changes go to [email protected] and are re-read, re-dated and logged. Disclosure: some links on this page point to vendor official sites; if we later add affiliate links, buying through one may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what we recommend.