There’s a lot of information to take in when shopping for a proxy server. Here’s what you should look for when comparing your options.

Proxy type

There are four main types of proxy servers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Confusingly, many companies list them under different names, and you sometimes have the option to purchase dedicated or shared proxies as a subset of proxy types. 

Residential

Residential proxy servers are the most popular proxy types available because of their high-quality IPs and large proxy pools. These come from real devices around the world with IP addresses assigned by internet service providers (ISPs), which makes them less likely to be blocked than datacenter and ISP proxies. That makes them a great choice for popular targets like Amazon, Instagram and Google.

Common use cases:

• Web scraping
• Ad verification
• SEO monitoring
• Limited-edition purchases

Mobile

Mobile proxies are generally considered to have the highest-quality IPs and therefore the most difficult to block. Your connection requests are routed to devices connected to wireless carriers and are often used for sophisticated targets like social media sites. You’ll typically pay almost double for mobile proxies compared to residential.   

Common use cases:

• Social media automation
• Website and app testing

ISP

Also called “static residential” proxies, ISP proxies sit somewhere between datacenter and residential servers. Like residential proxy servers, they’re owned by internet providers but they’re hosted at datacenters, not the devices of end users themselves. These are generally faster than residential and mobile proxies, and with a higher uptime, but they’re more likely to be blocked. 

Common use cases:

• Web scraping
• Managing multiple e-commerce accounts
• Sneaker copping

Datacenter

The cheapest proxy type, and the most likely to be flagged as suspicious by target sites. These live on servers owned by web hosting companies like AWS and Google Cloud. These proxy types have speedy performance but they’re the easiest for websites to detect. Most datacenter proxy servers charge by the number of IPs rather than data usage, but some companies offer both options.

Common use cases:

• Large-scale web scraping
• Price aggregation
• Market research

Dedicated vs. shared

Shared proxies are IP addresses that are controlled by multiple users at the same time, while dedicated IPs are used exclusively by one user at a time. Shared proxies are typically much cheaper than dedicated proxies, but speeds are much slower and you might be sharing IPs with some bad neighbors, which could cause the proxy to be banned on specific websites.  

Proxy pool

A proxy pool refers to the number of IP addresses that a company has available for customers to use. When you buy data from Oxylabs’ residential plans, for example, you’ll automatically be connected to a rotating collection of 175 million IP addresses. A larger proxy pool can share traffic and lower the chances that a single IP will be blocked. 

Fewer IPs in a pool also means fewer locations that you can target. Even though most proxy companies have over a million IPs at their disposal, a smaller proxy pool might not give you the ability to target the specific country or city that your project requires.  

IP quality

A large proxy pool doesn’t necessarily guarantee better results. Not all IPs are created equal, and some pools have a higher percentage of proxies that are more likely to be flagged as fraudulent. To see how each proxy company compares in this metric, I’d recommend taking a look at Proxyway’s 2025 Market Research Report. The company analyzed pools from the top proxy servers and applied an industry standard called IPQualityScore (IPQS), which is commonly used in fraud prevention, risk analysis and threat detection. 

Generally, any IP addresses with an IPQS score above 90 face a higher likelihood of being blocked by a website. Even the best proxy servers consist of a majority of IPs with IPQS scores over 90. The less of these IPs a proxy server has — and the more IPs in total — the more likely your requests will be successful. 

Proxy sourcing

Many proxy servers list their IP addresses as “ethically sourced,” and while that might sound like empty marketing fluff, it actually has some practical implications for your projects. Ethically sourced essentially means that people or businesses are aware that their IP addresses are being used, they give their explicit consent and they’re being compensated for it. All three of our top picks provide a commitment to abiding by these tenets when sourcing their proxies.

In addition to being the right thing to do, proxies sourced without consent can expose a user to liability or grind a business’s operations to a halt through mass blocklisting of a proxy’s IP pool. Any reputable proxy server should have a clear policy on its website for how it sources IP addresses; if it doesn’t, you should pass it over.

Cost and discounts

Proxy server pricing can be incredibly complicated. Some companies charge by the IP for certain proxy types, others by data use and some give you both options. In general, the per-GB price goes down the more you spend. Some providers also offer discounted prices if you commit to annual payments instead of monthly.

If you’re not sure where to start, I’d recommend purchasing one GB and running a few tests to gauge how much data you’ll require. Most proxy servers, including all of our top picks, also offer some sort of free trial, but you may have to contact a sales representative to access it. 

Developer tools and third-party integrations

If you’re already using software for activities like web scraping or market research, there’s a decent chance that a proxy server out there has an integration with it. Oxylabs had the largest collection of tools for developers of any proxy server I tested, but it’s worth poking around for specific integrations before you commit to purchasing a large amount of data.