Best Residential Proxy Service for Web Scraping in 2026
Bright Data wins for residential proxies in 2026. 72M IP pool, 99.9% uptime, 50% rev share PartnerStack up to $1K. Smartproxy for value, Oxylabs for enterprise.
Rankings reflect documented features, public pricing as of the "Last Updated" date, and category positioning analysis. We apply a Commercial Gate: only tools we can earn a commission from (now or in the next 12 months) enter the ranking pool. When a non-monetizable tool is the right answer, we name it with a caveat. How rankings work · Editorial policy
Bright Data
Bright Data wins for residential proxies in 2026. 72 million IP pool, 99.9 percent uptime, 195+ country coverage, and a PartnerStack revenue share of 50 percent up to $1,000 per customer (highest payout in the proxy category). Smartproxy is the value pick for solo operators. Oxylabs is the enterprise runner-up. Skip free proxy lists; they are scraped and blocked within hours.
Try Bright DataAt a Glance
| Feature | Bright Data | Smartproxy | Oxylabs | IPRoyal | Apify |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | From $5/GB | From $7/GB | From $8/GB | From $1.75/GB | From $49/mo |
| Starting Price | - | - | - | - | - |
| IP Pool Size | - | - | - | - | - |
| Country Coverage | - | - | - | - | - |
| Best For | - | - | - | - | - |
Quick Comparison
Our Top Picks
Bright Data
0Largest residential proxy network with 72M IPs. PartnerStack 50% rev share up to $1K per customer.
- 72M residential IP pool (largest in category)
- 195+ country coverage
- ZIP-code-level geotargeting
- Built-in scraping browser for JS-rendered pages
- PartnerStack 50% rev share up to $1K (highest in category)
- Pricing per GB stacks fast at high volume
- Setup requires technical knowledge
- Compliance reviews required for some use cases
Smartproxy
Value residential proxy with 65M IP pool. Best for solo operators and mid-volume scraping.
- Cleaner self-serve onboarding
- 65M IP pool (still huge)
- 195+ country coverage
- Strong customer support for SMB ops
- No PartnerStack affiliate (direct only)
- Smaller IP pool than Bright Data
- Less granular geotargeting
Oxylabs
Enterprise-tier residential proxy with 100M+ IP pool. Best for high-volume corporate scraping.
- 100M+ IP pool
- Dedicated enterprise account management
- Strongest compliance posture in category
- Custom enterprise contracts
- Sales-led signup, not self-serve
- High minimums for entry tier
- No PartnerStack affiliate
IPRoyal
Cheapest credible residential proxy. Best for budget-conscious solo ops.
- Cheapest credible residential proxy
- Self-serve signup with no minimums
- Decent for low-volume use cases
- Smaller IP pool (8M vs 72M Bright Data)
- Lower SLA than premium providers
- No PartnerStack affiliate
Apify
Scraping platform with proxies built in. Best when you want managed scraping not just proxies.
- Pre-built scrapers for major sites
- Residential proxies included
- Zero engineering required
- Per-result fees stack at high volume
- Less flexibility than DIY proxy + scraper
- No PartnerStack affiliate
How This Was Tested
Rankings reflect documented features, public pricing as of April 2026, and operator-reported success rates on standard scraping benchmarks (Google SERP, Amazon product pages, social media profiles). PartnerStack payouts current at publication.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bright Data is the best residential proxy service in 2026. 72 million residential IPs, 195+ country coverage, ZIP-code-level geotargeting, 99.9% uptime SLA. PartnerStack pays 50 percent revenue share up to $1,000 per new customer, the highest payout in the proxy category.
Residential proxies route through real consumer ISP IPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.) so target sites see them as normal users. Datacenter proxies route through cloud provider IPs that target sites recognise and block. For scraping protected sites (Google, Amazon, social media), residential proxies are required. For scraping low-protection sites, datacenter proxies are cheaper.
Residential proxies in 2026 cost $1.75-$8+ per GB. Most ops land at $5-$8 per GB with volume discounts. Plan for $50-$500 a month at solo-op scale, $1,000+ a month at production scraping scale. Bandwidth-based pricing means efficient scrapers cost less than wasteful ones.
Yes for accessing publicly available data. Bright Data, Smartproxy, and Oxylabs all enforce compliance reviews to ensure customers are scraping public data and not violating terms of service or copyright. For sensitive use cases (healthcare, financial services), check with the vendor compliance team before scaling.
Partially. Bright Data offers the Web Scraper IDE and Scraping Browser that handle most setup automatically. For complex use cases or custom scrapers, you need engineering knowledge. For pre-built scrapers, Apify might be a better fit than raw Bright Data.