Best Proxies for Web Scraping in 2026 (By Target)

Last updated: August 05, 2026 · Tested with paid plans

The most expensive mistake in web scraping is buying the wrong proxy type. Residential proxies are overkill for Google results, and datacenter proxies are useless against Instagram. The right answer depends on your target's anti-bot stack.

We ran the same scraper through 6 providers against four target classes: search engines, large e-commerce sites, Cloudflare-protected pages, and social platforms. Below is what actually worked, with measured block rates.

The rankings

ScraperAPI

From $49/mo Score: 8.4/10

Handles rotation and retries for you
JS rendering included
Simple endpoint model
Expensive at high volume

Best for: Teams that want a managed scraping API

IPRoyal Residential

From $1.75/GB Score: 8.2/10

Non-expiring GB balance
Good performance on e-commerce targets
City-level targeting
Smaller pool than premium rivals

Best for: E-commerce scraping with flexible usage

DataImpulse

From $1.00/GB Score: 7.9/10

Cheapest residential traffic we tested
Pay-as-you-go with $50 deposit
Decent success on protected targets
API-first reseller options

Best for: Cost-sensitive residential scraping

Match the proxy to the target

## Match the proxy to the target

Search engines (Google, Bing). Datacenter proxies still work if the pool is clean. Rotation on every request, moderate concurrency. Block rate in our tests: 2-8% on good pools, 30%+ on burned ones.

E-commerce (Amazon, Walmart). Needs higher IP quality. Rotating residential or ISP proxies perform best; datacenter pools with diverse subnets are a budget option at lower success rates.

Cloudflare-protected sites. Residential or mobile only. Datacenter ASNs are pre-flagged. Expect to pay per GB, and budget 2-5 GB per 100k pages depending on page weight.

Social platforms. Mobile proxies or high-quality residential. Datacenter is a guaranteed ban.

Rotation strategy matters more than provider

## Rotation strategy matters more than provider

A mediocre provider with smart rotation beats a premium provider with a naive setup. Rotate per request for search engines, per session for e-commerce carts, and per account for social platforms. Sticky sessions of 10-30 minutes cover most multi-step flows.

Budgeting a scraping project

## Budgeting a scraping project

Datacenter: $50-150/month covers most mid-size crawls. Residential: plan $3-8 per GB and measure your actual bandwidth per 1,000 pages in a pilot run before committing to a large package. Never buy a year upfront before a two-week pilot.

FAQ

What proxies are best for web scraping?

For search engines, clean datacenter proxies. For e-commerce, rotating residential or ISP proxies. For Cloudflare-protected sites and social platforms, residential or mobile only.

How many proxies do I need for scraping?

For rotating setups, one gateway endpoint is enough - the pool rotates behind it. For static datacenter setups, plan roughly 1 IP per 1,000-5,000 daily requests depending on the target's rate limits.

Are free proxies good enough for scraping?

No. Free proxy lists are slow, die within hours, and are pre-flagged on every major target. They also pose a security risk - the operator can see your traffic.

What is a good success rate for a scraping proxy?

Above 95% against search engines, above 90% against e-commerce, and above 80% against heavily protected targets. Anything lower wastes more money on retries than the proxies cost.

Related guides

Rankings