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Proxy Market Research 2023 – Blogcadre

Welcome to Blogcadre‘s 2023 Proxy Market Research report! As a leading proxy expert, I‘m excited to provide an in-depth look at the state of the proxy market this year. In this guide, I‘ll be analyzing key trends, developments, and providers across residential, mobile, datacenter, and ISP proxies.

My goal is to help you make informed decisions when choosing proxy services for your needs in 2023. Whether you‘re a developer, marketer, researcher, or business owner, this report will give you unbiased insights into the proxy landscape. Let‘s dive in!

Participants

Here‘s a quick overview of the 12 major proxy providers we‘ll be covering:

  • Bright Data – A proxy juggernaut backed by EMK Capital that offers comprehensive tools and proxy networks worldwide. Known for residential proxies and ethical data sourcing.

  • GeoSurf – A veteran provider focused on enterprise clients. Offers customized residential proxy solutions.

  • Infatica – A new provider that emphasizes ethics and competitive pricing for SMBs and enterprises. Based in Singapore with Eastern European staff.

  • IPRoyal – Offers a range of affordable proxy types for developers and individuals. Based in Lithuania.

  • NetNut – Focuses on enterprises and resellers. Previously active in the sneaker niche via Chi Proxies. Based in Israel.

  • Oxylabs – A market leader with the largest proxy networks. Targets mid-large businesses with SLAs and personalized support. Based in Lithuania.

  • PacketStream – A bandwidth marketplace for inexpensive residential proxies. Hasn‘t innovated much recently. Based in the U.S.

  • Rayobyte – A datacenter proxy powerhouse looking to become a one-stop shop. Recently rebranded from Blazing SEO. Based in the U.S.

  • Shifter – Long-time provider for businesses, priced by proxy ports instead of traffic. Based in the U.K.

  • Smartproxy – A premium provider focused on delivering high-quality rotating residential proxies. Based internationally.

  • SOAX – Sells residential and mobile proxies, rapidly growing in scale and branding. Based in the U.K.

  • Webshare – Self-service platform acquired by Oxylabs in 2022. Known for flexibility and customizability. Based in the U.S.

Market Trends

Let‘s look at the key trends and developments in the proxy market this year.

Fast Growth, Cautious Optimism

2022 was an excellent year across the board, with rapid expansion from providers like IPRoyal and Webshare. Major players now have hundreds of employees. However, competition has also increased, especially in the enterprise segment.

While economic uncertainty looms, most providers haven‘t been impacted yet. Some believe data infrastructure will remain resilient, while others are ready to weather potential storms. Proxy demand looks set to keep growing in 2023.

Expanding Horizontally, New Scraping Tools

Providers have been expanding into web scraping tools, with a focus on scraping and parsing APIs. The goal is to help developers handle toughening bot mitigation while capturing more value from proxy networks.

Many launched new APIs in 2022, including Infatica, Oxylabs, Shifter, Smartproxy, and SOAX. Bright Data offers pre-collected datasets and insights based on scraped data. Proxies remain core, but fewer may run in-house scraping.

Residential Proxies Still Reign Supreme

Residential proxies remain the most popular product for most providers. Mobile networks have a specialist role, while datacenter and ISP proxies meet specific niche demands. Rotating residential proxies are favored by enterprises.

Demand for hyper-targeted options like city-level residential proxies is increasing. Meanwhile, mobile browsers and devices are underutilized by major providers compared to individuals and specialty vendors.

E-Commerce Domination, Emerging AI Potential

E-commerce leads proxy use cases, generating up to 50% of revenue for some vendors. Beyond retail, ad verification, cybersecurity, localization, and web scraping remain key applications.

Many mentioned the enormous potential of data collection for AI training models. The need for large, high-quality datasets could significantly benefit proxy providers.

General Observations

Here are some overarching insights from testing the participants‘ proxy networks directly.

Residential and Mobile Networks Vastly Improved

Modern residential and mobile proxies rarely fail on their own and display impressive uptime and speed. For example, many residential providers now have sub-second response times.

Advanced options like city-level targeting are emerging. However, residential proxy networks still contain lots of mislabeled datacenter IPs, especially in high-demand locations like the US.

Prices: Residential > Mobile > Datacenter

As expected, residential proxies are most expensive, followed by mobile and then datacenter. However, datacenter proxies vary greatly in pricing.

For example, Oxylabs‘ residential proxies cost 3x more than mobile and 30x more than its rotating datacenter IPs. However, PacketStream‘s datacenter proxies were incorrectly measuring usage, inflating costs 10x.

Self-Service Adoption, Trials, and Refunds

Nearly all providers offer self-service signups, trials, or refunds, which greatly reduces barriers to entry. However, residential proxy trials are mostly limited to business customers.

After testing, it‘s disappointing when providers like PacketStream and NetNut have deceptive practices around costs and IP types respectively. Always vet providers thoroughly!

Residential Proxies

Now let‘s dive into the dedicated sections for each proxy type, starting with residential.

Proxy Pool and Quality

  • Oxylabs, Bright Data, Smartproxy, and Shifter have the largest residential proxy pools.

  • However, pool size doesn‘t always translate accurately. For example, Shifter had fewer unique IPs than SOAX‘s much smaller pool.

  • Bright Data, Smartproxy, and Oxylabs had the highest percentages of correctly labeled residential IPs.

  • Many providers boosted their US pools with suspicious datacenter IPs. SOAX‘s US pool was 61% residential IPs, for instance.

Infrastructure Performance

  • Oxylabs, Smartproxy, and Bright Data are the speed demons, with sub-second response times.

  • SOAX, Shifter, and PacketStream also made major infrastructure improvements for speed.

  • Success rates were above 95% for all major providers, showing that downtime is no longer a major issue.

Success Rates with Real Sites

  • Scraping Google, Amazon, social media, and Walmart, SOAX and Infatica performed the best overall.

  • Bright Data, Oxylabs, and Smartproxy couldn‘t access Google. But other providers had issues with it too.

  • Homedepot and Walmart posed few issues. However, Amazon did trip up many providers.

Features and Pricing

  • Bright Data has the most robust features, followed by Infatica and SOAX for out-of-the-box offerings.

  • New filtering options like city-level targeting are emerging. But most residential proxy features remain unchanged.

  • Despite a big price hike, IPRoyal is still one of the cheapest options until enterprise scale. PacketStream‘s costs were falsely inflated 8-10x.

Mobile Proxies

Now let‘s discuss the specialized mobile proxy solutions.

Proxy Pool and Quality

  • Oxylabs boasts the largest mobile proxy network by far, with over 10 million IPs.

  • For country-specific pools, Oxylabs and Smartproxy dominated. SOAX also impressed given its smaller size.

  • Mobile proxies were truthfully labeled by most providers. Only NetNut falsely advertised datacenter IPs as mobile.

Infrastructure Performance

  • Response times improved tremendously, with SOAX doubling its speed. But Rayobyte made the biggest gains while remaining the slowest option.

  • Uptime was excellent, with all major providers achieving 95%+ success rates. Only Bright Data had issues assigning IPs occasionally.

Success Rates with Real Sites

  • Scraping Google, social media, Amazon, and more, SOAX and GeoSurf performed the best.

  • Bright Data‘s proxies worked well but couldn‘t be assigned around 50% of the time, inflating failure rates.

  • Homedepot and Walmart posed no issues, while Amazon and Google were challenging for most.

Features and Pricing

  • Bright Data has all the bells and whistles, albeit for a premium. SOAX comes well featured out of the box.

  • Prices start high but decrease with scale. Unfortunately, mobile networks scale worse than residential.

  • At 100 GB, plans cost over $1000 on average. But Smartproxy provides the best value, while Bright Data is the priciest.

Rotating Datacenter Proxies

Rotating datacenter proxies offer inexpensive IP diversity. Let‘s break them down.

Infrastructure Performance

  • Success rates were above 99% for Oxylabs, Bright Data, and Smartproxy. Only NetNut faced major downtime issues.

  • Speed-wise, Oxylabs outpaced competitors by 2-4x. But most providers performed decently. NetNut was again an outlier on the slow end.

  • In bandwidth tests, Bright Data and Webshare proved the speediest, while NetNut averaged under 5 Mbps.

Success Rates with Real Sites

  • Targeting Amazon, Walmart, and Home Depot, Smartproxy and NetNut performed the best.

  • Oxylabs and Bright Data couldn‘t access Amazon around 50% of the time, likely due to blocked IPs.

  • Similarly, Bright Data and Webshare struggled with Walmart. So did Rayobyte, which couldn‘t access Amazon 80% of the time.

Features and Pricing

  • Features are straightforward: mostly just country targeting and unlimited threads. Some providers have SOCKS5 support.

  • Pricing is usage based. But many don‘t offer pay as you go, unlike the market norm. Self-service signups are widespread though.

  • At the tested scales, Oxylabs is cost-competitive despite being premium. But PacketStream had falsely inflated usage metering.

Dedicated Datacenter Proxies

For unrestricted datacenter IPs, dedicated proxies are the way to go.

Infrastructure Performance

  • Bright Data‘s proxies averaged around 90% of our baseline speed. But others ranged from 25-60% in bandwidth tests.

  • In success rate and speed tests, Oxylabs, Smartproxy, and Bright Data performed well. NetNut experienced major slowdowns.

  • Uptime was excellent for all, showing that these proxies stay highly available when working as intended.

Success Rates with Real Sites

  • Targeting Amazon, Homedepot, and Walmart, Oxylabs, Rayobyte, and Smartproxy achieved over 90% success.

  • Bright Data performed poorly, suggesting its IPs were already abused earlier. Webshare also had minor issues with Amazon.

  • Aside from Amazon, very few failed requests occurred overall. Most proxies could access the sites reliably.

Features and Pricing

  • Dedicated proxies have few limitations, with unlimited threads and traffic being common. Most providers also support SOCKS5.

  • But Bright Data restricts domains, while Oxylabs charges more for non-US IPs. Webshare limits threads unless you pay.

  • Oxylabs starts expensive at $180/mo with custom pricing. Others offer cheap trials and start below $10/mo per proxy.

ISP Proxies

ISP proxies can mimic residential IPs. But obtaining and maintaining them at scale is challenging.

Infrastructure Performance

  • Webshare averaged 125 Mbps in bandwidth tests, even outpacing our baseline speed without proxies. So did NetNut and Rayobyte.

  • Bright Data and IPRoyal were much slower, both pushing around 50 Mbps on average. But this is still usable.

  • All achieved 95%+ success rates, showing ISP proxies stay highly available when working correctly.

Success Rates with Real Sites

  • Targeting Google, Amazon, Walmart, and Homedepot, Oxylabs and IPRoyal achieved over 99% success.

  • Rayobyte and NetNut also performed excellently. Only Bright Data and Webshare faced minor issues with Google.

  • Overall, ISP proxies accessed the sites with few issues compared to residential and datacenter options.

Features and Pricing

  • Bright Data offers ISP proxies in the most countries, beating competitors by a wide margin.

  • But its pricing is prohibitive. At $15 per GB, you can use 1 TB of datacenter traffic for the cost of 5 GB of ISP!

  • IPRoyal is much cheaper at $2.68 per IP flat. However, Rayobyte costs half as much per IP.

Conclusion

The proxy market grows increasingly sophisticated each year. While residential proxies remain dominant, new proxy types and tools continue emerging.

For now, major developments include improving infrastructure, expanding into web scraping APIs, and renewed attention to ethics. However, legal ambiguity persists around topics like social media scraping.

Among individual providers, Oxylabs and Bright Data excel in network scale and performance. Smartproxy balances quality and value, whereas new players like Infatica and SOAX are competitive on features.

Make sure to evaluate providers thoroughly based on your specific needs. I hope this 2023 proxy market report provides unbiased insights to help you make the right proxy choice! Let me know if you have any other questions.

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Written by Python Scraper

As an accomplished Proxies & Web scraping expert with over a decade of experience in data extraction, my expertise lies in leveraging proxies to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of web scraping projects. My journey in this field began with a fascination for the vast troves of data available online and a passion for unlocking its potential.

Over the years, I've honed my skills in Python, developing sophisticated scraping tools that navigate complex web structures. A critical component of my work involves using various proxy services, including BrightData, Soax, Smartproxy, Proxy-Cheap, and Proxy-seller. These services have been instrumental in my ability to obtain multiple IP addresses, bypass IP restrictions, and overcome geographical limitations, thus enabling me to access and extract data seamlessly from diverse sources.

My approach to web scraping is not just technical; it's also strategic. I understand that every scraping task has unique challenges, and I tailor my methods accordingly, ensuring compliance with legal and ethical standards. By staying up-to-date with the latest developments in proxy technologies and web scraping methodologies, I continue to provide top-tier services in data extraction, helping clients transform raw data into actionable insights.