Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2026: A Complete Comparison

Why Choosing the Right Proxy Matters for Web Scraping

Web scraping at scale requires proxies. Without them, target websites detect repeated requests from a single IP address and block you within minutes. But not all proxies are equal — the wrong type leads to high block rates, slow scraping speeds, and wasted budget.

In 2026, anti-bot systems like Cloudflare, Akamai, and PerimeterX have become significantly more sophisticated. They analyze TLS fingerprints, browser behavior patterns, and IP reputation scores in real time. The proxy type you choose directly determines your success rate.

This guide compares every major proxy type for web scraping, breaks down when to use each one, and shows you how to implement them with working code examples.

Types of Proxies for Web Scraping

There are four main proxy types used in web scraping. Each has different characteristics that make it better suited for specific targets and use cases.

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies route your traffic through real IP addresses assigned by Internet Service Providers to homeowners. To a target website, your request looks like it's coming from a regular user browsing from their home.

Best for: Scraping heavily protected sites (Amazon, Google, social media platforms), geo-restricted content, and any target with aggressive anti-bot systems.

Key advantage: Highest trust score. Residential IPs are almost never pre-flagged in IP reputation databases because they belong to real users.

Trade-off: Higher cost per GB compared to datacenter proxies, and slightly higher latency due to routing through residential networks.

Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies come from cloud hosting providers and data centers. They're fast and cheap but easier for anti-bot systems to detect because the IP ranges are publicly known to belong to hosting companies.

Best for: High-volume scraping of lightly protected sites, internal tools, price monitoring on smaller e-commerce sites, and targets without advanced bot detection.

Key advantage: Speed and cost efficiency. Datacenter proxies deliver sub-100ms latency and cost a fraction of residential proxies.

Trade-off: Higher block rates on protected sites. Many large platforms automatically flag datacenter IP ranges.

Mobile Proxies

Mobile proxies use IP addresses assigned by mobile carriers (4G/5G). Since carriers share IP addresses across thousands of devices using CGNAT (Carrier-Grade NAT), blocking a mobile IP means blocking thousands of legitimate users — so websites rarely do it.

Best for: The hardest targets — platforms with the most aggressive bot detection, mobile-specific content verification, and social media scraping.

Key advantage: Virtually unblockable. The shared nature of mobile IPs makes them extremely trustworthy.

Trade-off: Most expensive proxy type. Higher latency due to cellular network routing. Limited availability.

ISP Proxies

ISP proxies combine the speed of datacenter proxies with the trust level of residential IPs. They're hosted in data centers but registered under residential ISP ASNs, making them appear as regular consumer connections.

Best for: Speed-sensitive scraping tasks that also require residential-level trust. Ideal for SERP tracking and real-time price monitoring.

Key advantage: Fast like datacenter, trusted like residential. Consistent performance with low block rates.

Trade-off: Limited geo-targeting options compared to pure residential pools. Mid-range pricing.

Proxy Type Comparison

Feature	Residential	Datacenter	Mobile	ISP
Detection Risk	Very Low	High	Minimal	Low
Speed	Medium	Very Fast	Slow-Medium	Fast
Cost per GB	$$	$	$$$	$$
IP Pool Size	Millions	Thousands	Hundreds of Thousands	Thousands
Geo-Targeting	City-level	Country-level	Country-level	Country-level
Best Use Case	Protected sites	High-volume, easy targets	Hardest targets	Speed + trust
Session Support	Sticky + Rotating	Sticky + Rotating	Sticky + Rotating	Static

Key Features to Evaluate

When selecting a proxy provider for web scraping, these are the features that directly impact your success rate and cost efficiency.

IP Pool Size and Diversity

A larger IP pool means more unique addresses to rotate through, reducing the chance of repeated IPs triggering detection. Look for providers with millions of residential IPs across diverse subnets and ASNs. Geographic diversity matters too — if you need to scrape localized content, the pool should cover your target locations.

Rotation Options

Your proxy provider should support both rotating and sticky sessions:

• Rotating proxies assign a new IP for every request — ideal for high-volume scraping where each request is independent.
• Sticky sessions maintain the same IP for a set duration — necessary when you need to log in, maintain cookies, or navigate multi-page flows.

The ability to control rotation intervals (per-request, per minute, per session) gives you flexibility to match your scraping pattern to the target's behavior expectations.

Geo-Targeting Granularity

Different scraping tasks require different levels of geographic precision. SERP tracking needs city-level targeting to capture local search results. E-commerce price monitoring may need country-level targeting to see region-specific pricing. Your provider should offer targeting at least at the country level, ideally down to city or state level for residential proxies.

Success Rate and Reliability

The metric that matters most is your effective success rate — the percentage of requests that return the data you need without blocks, CAPTCHAs, or errors. A good residential proxy provider should deliver 95%+ success rates on most targets. Ask for or test real-world success rates rather than relying on marketing claims.

Pricing Model

Proxy pricing typically falls into two models:

• Pay-per-GB: You pay for bandwidth consumed. Better for scraping heavy pages (images, JavaScript-rendered content) in smaller volumes.
• Pay-per-request: Fixed cost per successful request. Better for high-volume scraping of lightweight pages.

Calculate your expected cost based on your scraping volume and page sizes. A proxy that's $2/GB cheaper but has a 15% lower success rate may cost you more in retries. Check out ProxyHat's pricing for transparent per-GB rates with no hidden fees.

How to Use Proxies for Web Scraping

Here are practical implementation examples using ProxyHat's proxy infrastructure. All examples use rotating residential proxies with authentication via the ProxyHat API.

Python

Using the ProxyHat Python SDK:

from proxyhat import ProxyHat
client = ProxyHat(api_key="your_api_key")
# Rotating residential proxy - new IP each request
response = client.get("https://example.com/products", proxy_type="residential")
print(response.status_code)
print(response.text[:500])
# Sticky session - same IP for multiple requests
session = client.session(proxy_type="residential", sticky_ttl=300)
page1 = session.get("https://example.com/login")
page2 = session.post("https://example.com/login", data={"user": "test"})
page3 = session.get("https://example.com/dashboard")

Node.js

Using the ProxyHat Node SDK:

import { ProxyHat } from 'proxyhat';
const client = new ProxyHat({ apiKey: 'your_api_key' });
// Simple GET with rotating proxy
const response = await client.get('https://example.com/products', {
  proxyType: 'residential',
  country: 'US',
});
console.log(response.status);
console.log(response.data);
// Concurrent scraping with automatic rotation
const urls = [
  'https://example.com/product/1',
  'https://example.com/product/2',
  'https://example.com/product/3',
];
const results = await Promise.all(
  urls.map(url => client.get(url, { proxyType: 'residential' }))
);
results.forEach(r => console.log(r.status));

Go

Using the ProxyHat Go SDK:

package main
import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/ProxyHatCom/go-sdk/proxyhat"
)
func main() {
    client := proxyhat.NewClient("your_api_key")
    // Rotating residential proxy
    resp, err := client.Get("https://example.com/products", &proxyhat.Options{
        ProxyType: "residential",
        Country:   "US",
    })
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    defer resp.Body.Close()
    fmt.Println("Status:", resp.StatusCode)
}

Proxy Rotation Strategies for Scraping

How you rotate proxies matters as much as which type you use. Here are the main strategies, ranked from basic to advanced.

Per-Request Rotation

Every HTTP request gets a fresh IP. This is the simplest strategy and works well for stateless scraping — fetching product pages, search results, or public data where each request is independent. Most proxy providers, including ProxyHat, support this as the default behavior.

Timed Rotation

Maintain the same IP for a set period (1-30 minutes), then rotate. Use this when scraping paginated results or navigating through a site's pages in sequence. It mimics natural browsing patterns where a user visits multiple pages from the same IP.

Failure-Based Rotation

Only rotate the IP when you receive a block (403), CAPTCHA challenge, or timeout. This maximizes the lifespan of each IP and reduces the number of unique IPs consumed. Implement this with retry logic:

from proxyhat import ProxyHat
client = ProxyHat(api_key="your_api_key")
def scrape_with_retry(url, max_retries=3):
    for attempt in range(max_retries):
        response = client.get(url, proxy_type="residential", rotate=True)
        if response.status_code == 200:
            return response
        # Automatic IP rotation on retry
    return None

Geo-Distributed Rotation

Spread requests across IPs from different geographic locations. This is critical for SERP tracking where search results vary by location, and useful for bypassing regional rate limits on large platforms.

Common Mistakes That Get You Blocked

Even with the best proxies, poor scraping practices lead to blocks. Avoid these common mistakes:

1. Sending Too Many Requests Too Fast

Anti-bot systems track request frequency per IP. Even residential IPs get flagged if they send 100 requests per second to the same domain. Implement delays between requests — 1-3 seconds for moderate protection, 5-10 seconds for heavily guarded sites.

2. Using the Same Headers for Every Request

Sending identical User-Agent strings, Accept-Language headers, or missing headers that real browsers send is a major detection signal. Rotate User-Agent strings and include realistic browser headers with every request.

3. Ignoring Cookies and Session State

Some websites require a valid session cookie before serving content. If you skip the homepage and jump directly to deep pages, the missing cookie triggers bot detection. Use sticky sessions to maintain state when needed.

4. Scraping Predictable URL Patterns

Sequential URL access (/product/1, /product/2, /product/3) is a dead giveaway. Randomize your scraping order and mix in different page types to mimic organic browsing.

5. Not Handling JavaScript Rendering

Many modern websites load content dynamically via JavaScript. If you only fetch the raw HTML, you get empty pages and waste proxy bandwidth. Use a headless browser (Puppeteer, Playwright) with your proxies for JavaScript-heavy targets.

Choosing the Right Proxy Type for Your Target

Here's a practical decision framework based on what you're scraping:

Target	Recommended Proxy	Why
Google / Bing SERPs	Residential	Search engines aggressively block datacenter IPs
Amazon / Walmart	Residential	Advanced anti-bot systems, need high trust IPs
Small e-commerce sites	Datacenter	Light protection, speed and cost matter more
Social media platforms	Mobile or Residential	Strictest detection, need highest-trust IPs
Real estate listings	ISP or Residential	Moderate protection, benefits from speed
News / public data	Datacenter	Minimal protection, optimize for speed and cost
Airline / travel prices	Residential	Geo-sensitive pricing, need location targeting
Government / public records	Datacenter	Usually no anti-bot, maximize throughput

Key Takeaways

• Residential proxies are the best all-around choice for web scraping — they offer the highest success rates on protected sites.
• Datacenter proxies win on speed and cost when scraping lightly protected targets.
• Mobile proxies are the last resort for the hardest-to-scrape platforms — expensive but nearly unblockable.
• ISP proxies are the sweet spot for speed-critical tasks that need residential-level trust.
• Your rotation strategy, request patterns, and headers matter just as much as the proxy type.
• Match your proxy choice to your specific target — there's no single "best" proxy for all scraping tasks.

Ready to start scraping? Check ProxyHat's pricing for residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies with straightforward per-GB billing and no hidden fees. Our API documentation will have you sending your first proxied request in under 5 minutes.