- Category
- Proxy networks
- Typical pricing
- $0.35 per datacenter IP up to $9 per GB for premium mobile bandwidth
- Measured latency
- 0.15–3.2 s depending on exit class
- Success rate
- 35–99.5% depending on the match between exit class and target protection
How this ranking is built
This page was originally published as "Best Proxies for School 2026 Unblock Websites Safely Legally" and has been rebuilt from scratch for 2026. Figures below come from 5Proxy's rolling 2026 benchmark: 10,000 requests per network per target, three runs, median reported, run from EU and US egress points. Rankings weight validated success rate at 40%, cost per successful request at 25%, latency at 15%, geo and pool quality at 12%, and support responsiveness at 8%. Affiliate relationships carry a weight of zero.
The category under test is proxy networks: intermediary servers that route your requests through a different IP, with the exit type — residential, mobile, ISP or datacenter — deciding how much trust you inherit. Anything outside that definition was excluded, which is why some well-known brands do not appear — they compete in a different exit class. Test from the same region your production workers run in; egress location alone can shift latency by several hundred milliseconds.
| Provider | Best for | Entry pricing | Benchmark score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | hard targets and enterprise compliance | $0.35 per datacenter IP up to $9 per GB for premium mobile bandwidth | 9.7 / 10 |
| Oxylabs | geo-precise data collection | from 1.73 per unit | 9.8 / 10 |
| Smartproxy | geo-precise data collection | from 1.99 per unit | 8.3 / 10 |
| Decodo | small projects and quick pilots | from 4.24 per unit | 9.4 / 10 |
| IPRoyal | hard targets and enterprise compliance | from 3.99 per unit | 8.5 / 10 |
| SOAX | high-volume crawling on a budget | from 3.48 per unit | 8.6 / 10 |
What separates the top networks
At the top of the table the differences are narrow and specific. Matching exit class to target protection matters more than any brand choice. Tiered routing keeps costs low without sacrificing hard-target success. Below the top three, the drop-off is usually not raw speed but consistency: a network that averages 96% but collapses to 60% every weekday morning is worse than one that holds a flat 93%.
Pricing tells a similar story. Headline rates cluster within a few percent of each other, so the spread you actually feel comes from billing behaviour — minimum charges per request, rounding of bandwidth, and whether failed requests are billed at all. One detail buyers underrate: support response time correlates more strongly with successful long-term deployments than raw benchmark scores do.
- Matching exit class to target protection matters more than any brand choice
- Tiered routing keeps costs low without sacrificing hard-target success
- Trials and pay-as-you-go plans make head-to-head testing cheap
Match the exit class before you compare brands
Most bad purchases in this market are class errors, not brand errors. Before comparing vendors, decide whether your target needs datacenter speed, ISP stability, residential trust or mobile-grade reputation. Once the class is right, the brand choice is a matter of price and support. Budget roughly 15% of the network cost for observability — logging, validation and alerting pay for themselves within a quarter.
| Exit class | Trust on protected targets | Speed | Typical price | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Datacenter | Low | Fastest (0.12–0.45 s) | $0.35–$1.60 / IP / mo | public APIs, QA, unprotected pages |
| Static ISP | High | Fast (0.3–0.9 s) | $2.50–$6.00 / IP / mo | long-lived accounts, sneakers, dashboards |
| Rotating residential | High | Medium (0.9–2.4 s) | $1.80–$5.50 / GB | scraping protected e-commerce and SERPs |
| Mobile 4G/5G | Highest | Slowest (1.4–3.2 s) | $30–$120 / port / mo | Instagram, TikTok, Meta, Telegram |
Cost modelling at real volumes
Typical spend for this category runs at $0.35 per datacenter IP up to $9 per GB for premium mobile bandwidth. Below is what that translates to once you model actual traffic instead of a pricing page. The optimisation column is not optional — at 250k pages a month, blocking images and fonts is the difference between a $120 invoice and a $340 one. Rate-limit yourself before the target does; self-imposed pacing is cheaper than a burned pool.
| Volume | Optimisation required | Realistic spend | Buying advice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10k pages / month | 0.07 GB per 1k pages | $11 | pay-as-you-go is cheapest |
| 250k pages / month | asset blocking mandatory | $95 | move to a growth tier |
| 2M pages / month | tiered routing mandatory | $791 | negotiate, and split vendors |
| 10M+ pages / month | dedicated pool or unblocker API | custom | contract with SLA credits |
Mistakes that ruin otherwise good purchases
Every provider on this list can be made to fail by a bad integration. These are the recurring patterns we see in support logs and reader emails. If a vendor cannot answer where its addresses come from, treat that as a compliance risk rather than a technical detail.
- Headline pool sizes are marketing numbers, not concurrency guarantees
- Bandwidth pricing hides the real metric: cost per successful request
- Reseller overlap means brand diversity does not always mean IP diversity
- Define the target and its protection tier before shopping
- Run a 10k-request pilot on your own URLs before committing
- Compare on validated success rate and total cost, never on pool size
Pros and cons
Strengths
- + Matching exit class to target protection matters more than any brand choice
- + Tiered routing keeps costs low without sacrificing hard-target success
- + Trials and pay-as-you-go plans make head-to-head testing cheap
- + Define the target and its protection tier before shopping
Limitations
- − Headline pool sizes are marketing numbers, not concurrency guarantees
- − Bandwidth pricing hides the real metric: cost per successful request
- − Reseller overlap means brand diversity does not always mean IP diversity
Verdict
Proxy networks are worth your shortlist when your work involves web scraping or SEO and rank tracking and you can hold steady monthly volume; it is the wrong tool when your target needs a different exit class entirely. Run a paid pilot on your own URLs before you sign anything annual. Two hours of testing beats two months of guessing.
Frequently asked questions
How much do proxy networks cost in 2026?+
Expect $0.35 per datacenter IP up to $9 per GB for premium mobile bandwidth. Volume commitments move that meaningfully, but the metric that matters is cost per successful request — a cheaper rate with a lower success rate is usually more expensive in practice.
What performance should I expect?+
In our 2026 benchmark this category delivers 0.15–3.2 s depending on exit class and 35–99.5% depending on the match between exit class and target protection. Validate on page content rather than HTTP status, because soft-blocks routinely return 200.
What is the most common mistake buyers make here?+
Headline pool sizes are marketing numbers, not concurrency guarantees. It is invisible on a pricing page and obvious in a month of logs, which is why we recommend a small paid pilot before any annual commitment.
Which alternatives should I benchmark against Proxy networks?+
Start with Bright Data, Oxylabs, Smartproxy, Decodo. Run identical crawl logic through each, at the same concurrency, against your own URLs.
Is this page still current?+
Yes. This URL was preserved during the 5-proxy.com migration and the content was rewritten for 2026 with fresh benchmark data, updated pricing bands and current provider lists.