When web scraping, rotating proxies allow you to gather publicly available web data at scale without having to worry about bans or rate-limiting but with so many proxy providers, it can be difficult to choose the best and cheapest rotating proxy service.
In this article, you will learn rotating proxies are, all their important features, and the best proxy services on the market in 2025.
Understanding Rotating Proxies
Before we talk about the top proxy services that are available right now, let us first learn more about rotating proxies.
A rotating proxy automatically changes your IP address either after a set time interval or with each new request, unlike a static proxy which maintains the same IP address for a prolonged period, sometimes months or years.
The key distinction lies in how these proxies handle IP assignment. Static proxies use a single, consistent IP address for all requests, making them more easily detectable by websites, while rotating proxies automatically switch between different IP addresses based on either time intervals or per request making it challenging for websites to identify patterns in access behaviour since each request appears to come from a different location.
There are generally three types of IPs that rotating proxy services offer:
- Residential proxies — These are real IP addresses originating from connected devices such as mobile phones or computers to home-based Internet service.
- Datacenter proxies — These IPs originate from datacenters and use IP addresses which can be easily identified as being on datacenter networks or ASNs. They are cheaper but easier to ban.
- Mobile proxies — These are IP addresses that belong to mobile devices with 4G/5G connectivity and have IP addresses. Mobile proxies are even more anonymous than the other proxies since mobile network operators tend to share IP addresses between hundreds of customers using carrier-grade NAT, making them very difficult to ban without collateral damage.
Rotating Proxy Use Cases
Rotating proxies can be used in a wide-range of activities but here are just a few of their most common use cases:
- Price monitoring — Companies can use web scraping to track competitor prices and some e-commerce stores even have automated systems to price match key competitors.
- Market research — A wide range of industry data is publicly available information on the internet and this means firms can gain insights from web scraping whether it's studying competitor marketing or looking for new M&A opportunities.
- AI & LLMs — AI requires large datasets. Many AI tools use Common Crawl, a vast database of already-scraped data, as a basis for their foundation models but firms also crawl new websites constantly to try to gain a competitive edge. For example, Nvidia scraped thousands of hours of video gameplay from YouTube to train its AI.
- SEO monitoring — Companies like Ahrefs and Semrush (along with internal marketing departments) constantly scrape search engines and crawl web-pages to gather information about their search rankings for specific keywords and to reveal competitor backlinks.
- Financial market analysis — Hedge Funds are increasingly looking for alternative data to feed into their investment models in order to beat the market. There's a wide range of data on the internet, from subreddits like WallStreetBets to stock endpoints on e-commerce websites.
- Real estate market analysis — Many real estate firms use web scraping to collect property prices and market trends in specific areas along with sale times and overall inventory. This helps large property management companies and investors time the market and oversee their portfolio.
Key Factors in Choosing the Best Rotating Proxy
There are a few key things to look for when picking the right rotating residential proxies for your use-case and budget.
Proxy Pool
The number of proxies provided by a service is probably the single strongest factor when it comes to choosing a rotating proxy service.
A large proxy pool means that the provider has a pool of many IP addresses, usually tens of millions. This means you have access to a diverse range of proxies and the larger the pool, the less likely the proxies are to be heavily used or banned, almost guaranteeing that at least some of the available proxies will work for your specific use-case.
Large pools also typically offer superior geographic coverage too, letting you target specific countries, cities, and ISPs more effectively since there are more IP addresses in the network for each targeting characteristic you need.
Service Provider
Moving away from the core characteristics of the proxy pools themselves, you’ll also want to look at the provider to see if their pricing models, tooling and customer support are up to scratch since this will have a big impact on your overall experience.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating a service provider:
- Price Per GB or IP — Some providers will charge per GB for rotating proxies while others will change per thread or port with some even charging for both?! These pricing models will have a large effect on your overall spend and the suitability of a specific provider for your use-case.
- Software and Dashboard — The provider’s dashboard and accompanying software will affect how you use your proxies and whether you have a good experience. Though often overlooked, things like easy proxy exporting, proxy user management systems, and even billing aspects like invoice downloading will affect your experience and the quality of these systems varies widely between some companies.
- Customer Support — Customer support is crucial for when things go wrong (they always do eventually). Check user reviews focusing on reliability and support quality, and test both proxy performance and support responsiveness before committing.
Performance and Reliability
You want to be able to rely on your proxies at any time and not have to worry about overages or instability issues. Overall reliability and performance can be measured in a few different ways which we’ll now breakdown.
Success Rate
Another key determinant is success rate, or more simply, the percentage of requests you make when using a proxy which do not get blocked or fail when accessing a specific website. The lower the success rate, the worse the performance and the less effective your web scraping will be at achieving your end goal of gathering bandwidth.
A low success rate can be indicative of an unreliable backconnect network, poor routing logic or a bad pool of proxies which are banned on the website you’re trying to use them on.
Some companies also still charge for failed requests so if your success rate is lower, you could end up spending more just to do the same amount of successful requests.
Research shows that established players like Ping Proxies, Bright Data, Oxylabs and Smartproxy, appear to have the best success rates and overall performance.
Uptime & Reliability
If your proxies aren’t online then they aren’t very useful to you - that is why uptime and reliability matters.
Proxy providers route traffic through servers which then route your packets to peers in their proxy network. These servers form the backbone of the provider’s backconnect network and they play an incredibly important role in ensuring proxies are fast and your connection is routed to the best peer in the network for your specific request.
If the backconnect network is unreliable or slow then you’ll face issues and your rotating residential proxies will be more difficult to use.
You should check whether providers have service level agreements (SLAs) or advertise their historical uptime to see whether they operate a reliable network. Providers like Oxylabs, Ping Proxies and Bright Data all have public status pages and very good historical uptime performance.
Bandwidth Tracking
Most rotating proxies are charged per GB i.e the amount of data that flows through the proxy and this means tracking bandwidth usage is incredibly important and if a provider can’t do so accurately, they could mischarge you and make certain proxies uneconomical.
Providers should be able to offer near real-time bandwidth and request tracking which is accurate and easy to understand but unfortunately, this isn’t always the case with Proxyways review of PacketStream showing that the companies systems overcounted traffic use by eight to ten times.
If you’re ever unsure of a provider's tracking system you can run some tests with traffic monitoring software like Wireshark but you can also rely on trusted providers with a good track record like Ping Proxies, Webshare, Oxylabs or Bright Data.
Connection Speed
Connection speed determines how quickly tasks can be completed through a proxy, measured by response time and data transfer rates.
Datacenter proxies consistently offer the fastest speeds but are more easily detected by websites while residential proxies provide better anonymity at the cost of slower speeds, since they route through real consumer internet connections.
Remember, time is money! That's why speed becomes particularly crucial for time-sensitive operations like purchasing limited items, large-scale data collection, or automated tasks requiring quick responses. The actual performance you'll experience depends heavily on factors like the proxy location, network infrastructure, and current server load.
Cost and Affordability
Proxy pricing varies widely based on the type of proxy, traffic volume, number of IPs, geographic locations, and additional features offered.
Datacenter proxies typically cost the least since they operate from commercial servers, while residential proxies command higher prices due to the complexity of maintaining a network of real residential IPs. Mobile proxies generally sit at the premium end of the pricing spectrum.
Most providers structure their pricing either around bandwidth usage or IP counts, with volume discounts available for larger commitments. Budget providers offer basic proxy services at lower rates but may compromise on performance or reliability, while premium services charge more but deliver better speeds, success rates, and support.
When evaluating cost-effectiveness, consider not just the base price but also factors like proxy reliability, success rates, and whether the provider charges for failed requests.
Great and affordable options include Ping Proxies and Webshare.
The Best Rotating Proxy Services of 2025
We’ve evaluated the offerings from several rotating proxy providers and collated their strengths and weaknesses.
Ping Proxies
Ping Proxies is a great fit for those that want a self-service platform with affordable prices but premium features and service offerings.
They offer Static Residential Proxies, Rotating Residential Proxies and Datacenter proxies all from an intuitive dashboard which has real-time analytics and a proxy user management system with much more flexibility than other providers.
You can view their impressive historical uptime and reliability via their public status page and if you do decide to purchase from them then you can use all major payment cards and cryptocurrencies along with support ACH, Wire and UK BACs payments for businesses.
Infatica
Infatica is an established residential proxy provider who targets business customers. They have a substantial proxy pool which is growing along with pretty affordable pricing.
Their core product is great and overall reliable but they could do with some improvements to their dashboard and proxy user management systems.
If you’re a midsized firm seeking an affordable solution for web scraping then you should definitely consider them.
IPRoyal
IPRoyal has been growing incredibly quickly over the past few years thanks to a robust set of proxy offerings backed by their own residential peer network and earn-style application, Pawns.
The rotating proxy service with simple and easy affordable pricing and flat stable performance as demonstrated by IPRoyal makes it the right choice for many users and works well for web crawling.
They do require identification and a KYC process for some products which is a barrier to entry for some users that want to onboard quickly.
Webshare
Webshare operates on the lower end of the market and has some incredibly cheap plans, and even gives customers free proxies.
This makes them a great fit for customers on a budget that want to do basic web-scraping but firms looking for clean pools and great success rates may want to look for a more premium provider.
Some users have also reported that their pricing can be confusing with options for shared/dedicated, network priority and bandwidth options.
Bright Data
Luminati was rebranded to Bright Data some years back now but it is one of the biggest and most popular proxy services currently out there.
In terms of relative costs of service, Bright Data is higher than those offered by other providers listed here; still, this provider does have a huge network and great overall performance.
Their platform isn’t really suited to the average user though and their target customer tends to be Fortune 500 companies and other large multi-nationals.
Smartproxy
Smartproxy operates as part of Tesonet group which also owns part of Webshare and Oxylabs.
They’re an established player with reasonable pricing and are a good option for those wanting proxies for e-commerce monitoring and SERP scraping.
Oxylabs
Oxylabs is the number of established two players in the proxy space and have been competing with Bright Data to try to gain a foothold in the enterprise segment of the proxy market all while still trying to service smaller clients.
They have a fantastic proxy network which performs well by all measures but their pricing is quite high when compared to others on this list.
If budget isn’t a sticking point then their rotating proxies are great for companies that focus on web scraping and data extraction.
SOAX
SOAX is an established UK based proxy provider which has been operating since 2020 in the shadow of larger players like Bright Data, Netnut and Oxylabs.
Their service offerings seem good and they’re well reviewed but their pricing is quite similar to Oxylabs and Bright Data.
NetNut
Netnut is widely regarded as the third largest proxy provider and has a unique sourcing model for their residential proxies. Rather than operating a peer network with real residential devices all over the world, they work directly with ISPs for IP allocations which they then turn into proxies.
This makes their proxies very fast and reliable but limits their diversity and can harm success rates for websites with anti-scraping systems.
Rayobyte
Blazing Proxies has recently rebranded as Rayobyte and is one of the cheapest providers on this list.
They’re based in the USA and have okay reviews with a 3.7/5 Trustpilot rating at the time of writing. We found that their dashboard and website felt quite dated and difficult to use compared to other providers on this list.
Conclusion
The ideal rotating proxy provider depends primarily on your specific use case and requirements. Our analysis shows a clear market segmentation: Ping Proxies, Smartproxy, and IPRoyal offer strong value for small to medium-scale operations, delivering reliable performance at competitive prices. For enterprise-level needs, Oxylabs, Bright Data, and NetNut provide comprehensive solutions with larger proxy pools and advanced features, though at higher price points.
Your choice should be guided by three key factors: your required request volume, the specific type of proxies needed, and your budget. The most expensive provider isn't always the best fit - what matters is finding a service that reliably handles your particular use case, whether that's web scraping, e-commerce monitoring, or market research.
