Courtesy of proxies, scrapers get to bypass website rate limits, avoid IP bans, access geo-limited data, stay anonymous, and improve scraping efficiency. Even so, not all proxies are suitable for web scraping.
Robust web scraping proxies must have access to mobile or residential proxies, handle high traffic, ensure stable connections, effectively rotate IPs, and provide security and anonymity. To access a proxy server capable of these in most cases means incurring higher costs and foregoing performance or speed.
Undoubtedly, no one wants to pay extra for a scraping web proxy that’s slow. That’s why we’ve put together a list of proxy providers that have figured out how to have fast yet affordable proxy servers suited for web scraping.
6 Best Proxy Servers for Web Scraping: Fast andAffordable
Speaking of figuring it out, the most challenging part for many web scraping proxy providers is obtaining fast residential or mobile IPs.
Most residential or mobile networks have limited bandwidth and higher latency. Nonetheless, routing traffic through these networks offers maximum authenticity, anonymity, and reliability.
So, to deal with this issue, these proxy providers have had to build custom solutions alongside running the solutions on powerful infrastructure. The solutions also address other issues that may cause a proxy to slow down like network congestion, and IP rotation delays.
The providers have also made proxy networks pricing simpler. They use various pricing models including IP-based pricing and pay-as-you-go to cut down on the extra cost. Here is an extensive look into the solutions and rates of these providers.
1. BrightData
BrightData takes first spot with over 72 million IP addresses spread out across195 countries. This makes it possible for you to access geo-blocked content and scrape data world wide without worrying about IP bans. Moreover, their servers and network have an uptime of 99.99%, making them ideal for both small and large scale web scraping.
Moreover, BrightData gives you access to innovative web scraping automation tools. For instance, you can use their Web Unlocker tool, built to automate IP rotation, CAPTCHA solving, and proxy management, simplifying and optimizing the scraping process. You also get automated integration through various APIs, including scraper APIs for popular sites likeAmazon and LinkedIn.
Not forgetting, they offer a flexible pricing model for both small and large scale scraping operations. You get access to proxy management tools, giving you full control over the proxies, making it easier to down and up-scale as desired.
2. Smartproxy
Besides offering web scraping proxy servers with an average speed of 0.8s, SmartProxy hosts over 65 million IPs. Most of the IPs are of residential, static residential, and mobile proxies. This way, clients can effortlessly switch between IPs to avoid throttling and IP bans.
With the availability of residential and static residential proxies, users have the option of running scraping operations on sticky or rotating sessions. While stick sessions use one IP for a defined period, rotating sessions change the IP address per request, enhancing security and anonymity.
Their server coverage expands to 195 locations with a record uptime score of 99.99%. On top of this, they simplify proxy management through a user–friendly dashboard. And, all these merits and more are packaged into affordable offers. For instance, at the time of writing this post, it cost $2.2/GB for the residential proxies.
3. WebScraping.AI
WebScraping.AI brings the efficacy of AI into web scraping. They offer an AI-powered engine capable of scraping sites of various sizes while managing a pool of proxies and avoiding CAPTCHAs. Users get access to the AI-powered engine through an API, reducing costs and setup time.
To optimize scraping, the AI-powered scraping engine is fitted with GPT-powered tools. With these tools, you get to interact with unstructured scraped pages through questions and obtain answers, summaries, and more. The engine can also get you text from dynamic pages to facilitate LLM/GPT prompting.
And, you get these perks and more at prices that scale based on your needs. For instance, a $42/month price tag gets you 10 concurrent requests, geo-targeting, and 250,000 API credits.
4. Oxylabs
Like SmartProxy, Oxylabs’ proxy network coverage spans 195countries, coupled with 102 million IPs. This significantly increases reliability and speed as users can switch swiftly from one IP to the other.Moreover, more IPs means less occurrences of IP bans.
Oxylabs gives you access to different web scraping proxies including residential, mobile, and ISP proxies alongside advanced web scraping tools. The tools include a Web Scraper API, AI-powered Ublocker, and OxyCopilot. With a tool like OxyCopilot, you can start scraping through prompting.
To optimize integration with your projects or systems, Oxylabs includes ready-to-use code examples in their documentation. Their documentation also details ways to improve proxy performance for web scraping.
All these features and benefits come at fair pricing, with residential proxies starting from $8 and mobile proxies at $9.
5. SOAX
Promising a record proxy server response time of 0.55s and99.5% connection success rate, SOAX stands out as one of the fastest proxy services in the market.
It is known for maintaining a clean IP pool of about 40million plus IPs consisting of residential, ISP, mobile, and data center IPs. This ensures that their clients can rely on them to deliver an efficient and uninterrupted scraping experience.
Apart from offering a large IP pool, SOAX offers a web unblocker and scraper APIs. To cut down on costs, when using the Web Unblocker, you pay for successful requests only. In addition to this, their plans are affordable. For instance, with $99/month, you get 15 GB of traffic coupled with24/7 support, automatic proxy rotation, and unlimited concurrent sessions.
6. Netnut
Netnut is known for offering fast and stable residential proxies. They offer both rotating and static residential proxies, enhancing the reliability of your scraping operations. You get access to 85 million plus auto rotating IPs, global coverage, and cost-effective premium proxies.
They are capable of offering premium proxies with high uptime at an affordable cost thanks to custom solutions like website unblockers and SERP scraper APIs.
Their user-friendly dashboard also helps reduce cost as it allows for real-time proxy management, settings customization, and comprehensive analytics.
7. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI’s mission is to ease the process of scraping. They provide a simple API to scale data collection without worrying about CAPTCHA handling, proxies, or browser complexity. They’ve built low-code solutions and Scraper APIs to help you unlock and extract data from sites of various sizes.
With more than 40 million proxies in over 50 countries, you can send numerous requests asynchronously. This merit combined with automated data pipelines, and structured endpoints ease and speed up scraping, buying you time to focus on strategic use of the scraped data.
Their pricing is ideal for both small and large scale projects. Starting from $49/month, you get about 20 concurrent threads, 100,000API credits, and select geo-targeting.
ClosingWords
Unlike proxy servers suited for other purposes, those suited for web scraping must have fast response time, rotate IPs effectively, and have a large pool of IP addresses.
And, there are more requirements, including having access to residential or mobile IPs and a high uptime (ideally 99% or more).
Most a times, finding a proxy server with all these requirements is pretty challenging. However, with the help of this guide, you are now capable of making an informed decision.
