The Oxylabs Alternatives We’d Actually Use (2026)
Oxylabs is a strong proxy provider — but it’s priced for big teams. If you’re here, you already know you’re paying $5–$6/GB for residential unless you commit to a terabyte a month, and maybe you don’t need the full enterprise toolchain. The alternative we reach for in our own scraping pipeline is Decodo (formerly Smartproxy): it’s the only one we’ve tested first-hand at scale, and it handles the hard targets that break cheaper IPs. If you’re on a tight budget, Webshare now undercuts everyone on residential and datacenter with a real free tier. For absolute maximum pool size, Bright Data matches Oxylabs spec-for-spec but at an even higher price floor. IPRoyal sits in the middle with non-expiring traffic.
(ProxyPeers may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. We only cover providers we’d use ourselves.)
Why You’d Look Beyond Oxylabs
Oxylabs isn’t bad. It’s a premium provider: 175M+ residential IPs, polished Scraper API at $0.25/1K results, a new Fast Search API, and enterprise support. But its residential pricing tells the story.
- Entry-level pay-as-you-go: ~$5–$6/GB.
- The advertised $2.5/GB floor requires a 1TB/month commitment.
If you’re moving 50–200 GB a month on hard targets, you’re deep in the $5+ band. That adds up. And if you don’t use the newest AI-workflow tools (Fast Search API, OxyCopilot), you’re paying for breadth you don’t touch. The alternatives below give you paths around that pricing. Some match Oxylabs on power; others beat it on value.
How We Evaluate Proxies (Not from a Spec Sheet)
We don’t compare data-plan prices and call it a review. Our pipeline scrapes the kind of targets that fight back: Google Maps review pages, e-commerce product grids, search results across regions. Here’s what we learned first-hand.
Datacenter IPs failed on hard targets. On Google review pages, we measured datacenter proxy success at roughly 22%. Moving those jobs to residential is what made them viable again — but only when the whole stack was sound.
An IP is not enough. We run Camoufox (a hardened Firefox with fingerprint randomization) under xvfb, handle consent-wall modals with DOM inspection, and use token-replay for deep pagination. Blocking is a system problem. When we say a proxy works, we mean it works inside that whole pipeline.
Geography matters to data quality. We pull region-specific ports — a Mumbai port for Indian pages, Gulf ports for UAE content — so the collected HTML matches what a local user sees. That’s not a checkbox on a pricing page; it’s something you either get or you don’t.
For this article, Decodo is the only provider we’ve tested first-hand at scale. Bright Data, Webshare, and IPRoyal are assessed from their public pricing, documentation, and community reports. We never present a researched provider’s benchmark as our own measurement.
The Alternatives, Ranked by What Matters
1. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) — The Workhorse We Actually Use
Testing: First-hand at scale Pool: 115M+ residential, 195+ locations (plus mobile, ISP, datacenter) Headline price (May 2026): $2.0/GB residential; $0.09/1K req Web Scraping API
Decodo is where we go when a target blocks datacenter IPs. The residential pool handles our hardest review- and search-scraping jobs with success rates that match what you’d expect from the premium tier — but at $2.0/GB, not $5–$8.
It’s now a full platform. You get proxies (residential, ISP, mobile, datacenter) and scraping APIs: Site Unblocker at $0.95/1K requests, and the Web Scraping API at $0.09/1K — the cheapest scraping-API entry point in this group. One vendor for everything means no finger-pointing when something breaks.
What works in practice
- Per-outlet IP rotation keeps sessions consistent within a target domain. We use it to pull full pagination without session resets.
- Granular geo-targeting via region-specific ports (Mumbai for India, Gulf for UAE) gives us local-content accuracy.
- The Site Unblocker handles CAPTCHAs and blocks transparently; we haven’t needed a separate CAPTCHA service.
Pricing (May 2026)
| Product | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | $2.0 | /GB |
| Mobile | $2.25 | /GB |
| ISP (static residential) | $0.27 | /IP |
| Datacenter | $0.02 | /IP |
| Web Scraping API | $0.09 | /1K requests |
| Site Unblocker | $0.95 | /1K requests |
Verdict: If you’re leaving Oxylabs because the per-GB math doesn’t work, Decodo is the closest thing to a drop-in replacement. Same power level, lower price, and we’ve proven it on targets that break weaker proxies.
2. Bright Data — The Enterprise Match (More Pool, Higher Price)
Testing: Researched (not first-hand for us) Pool: 400M+ residential, 195 countries Headline price (May 2026): $4.0/GB residential (50% promo on pay-as-you-go; $3/GB on monthly commit)
Bright Data is the only alternative that matches Oxylabs on pool size and managed tooling — and then some. The residential pool is the largest here. The product stack includes Web Unlocker ($1/1K req), Web Scraper API ($1.50/1K successful records), SERP API, Scraping Browser, and ready-made datasets. It’s the supertanker of the proxy world.
The problem: price. Residential at $4/GB is with a 50% promotional rate (regular $8). Even on the $3/GB commit plan, Decodo’s $2/GB is cheaper. For many teams, the extra pool size is overkill; you don’t need 400M IPs to scrape reviews.
Bright Data does shine when compliance is a must — KYC, data-processing agreements, and clear chain-of-custody for enterprise legal teams. If you’re a Fortune 500 company, that matters. If you’re a team of three scraping pricing data, you’re paying a premium you’ll never use.
Pricing highlights (May 2026)
| Product | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | $4.0 ($3 commit) | /GB |
| Web Unlocker API | $1.0 | /1K req |
| Web Scraper API | $1.50 | /1K rec |
| ISP & Datacenter | — | /IP |
Verdict: The Oxylabs alternative that matches on raw size and enterprise polish, but at an even steeper sticker price. Only worth it if you genuinely need the largest pool and the deepest compliance story.
3. Webshare — The Budget Leader and Free Tier
Testing: Researched Pool: 80M+ residential Headline price (May 2026): $1.4/GB residential; $0.018/IP datacenter
Webshare has pulled ahead on price. When we compiled these numbers, it was the cheapest residential and the cheapest datacenter of the group — and it offers a genuine free tier: 10 proxies, up to 1GB/month, no credit card.
No, it doesn’t have a scraping API or an unblocker. Webshare gives you raw proxies and expects you to handle blocks, retries, and browser fingerprinting yourself. If your scraping stack is already battle-hardened (you run your own headless browser, handle CAPTCHAs, rotate headers), that’s not a drawback — it’s a cost advantage.
The residential pool at 80M IPs is smaller than Oxylabs or Bright Data, but for mid-scale jobs it’s plenty. Datacenter IPs are practically free at $0.018 per proxy. For high-speed scraping on targets that don’t aggressively block datacenter IPs, Webshare is the cheapest compute.
Pricing highlights (May 2026)
| Product | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Rotating Residential | $1.4 | /GB |
| Static Residential | $0.23 | /IP |
| Datacenter | $0.018 | /IP |
| Free tier | $0 | 10 proxies, 1GB/mo |
Verdict: The best place to start if price is your top signal. The free tier lets you test without commitment. The catch: no managed unblocking layer. You bring your own anti-block stack, but at $1.4/GB residential, you save enough to build one.
4. IPRoyal — The Flexible Middle Ground
Testing: Researched Pool: Global residential (exact count undisclosed) Headline price (May 2026): $1.75/GB residential (non-expiring traffic)
IPRoyal sits between Webshare and Decodo in both price and feature set. Residential at $1.75/GB is cheaper than Decodo, and the traffic doesn’t expire — useful if your scraping is bursty and you don’t want monthly commit pressure. They’ve added a Web Unblocker ($1/1K req) and a Video Scraper API recently, so the lineup is now broader than Webshare’s.
The residential pool is smaller than the top-tier providers, and mobile pricing ($10.11/GB) is high. For the hardest targets, Decodo or Bright Data will likely yield higher success rates, but for general web scraping, IPRoyal is a solid, low-commitment option.
Pricing highlights (May 2026)
| Product | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | $1.75 | /GB |
| ISP (static residential) | $2.0 | /IP |
| Datacenter | $1.39 | /IP |
| Web Unblocker | $1.0 | /1K req |
Verdict: A flexible all-rounder that won’t punish you for irregular workloads. Good value, but not the top performer on the worst targets.
Quick Comparison Table (May 2026 Pricing)
| Provider | Residential /GB | Pool Size | Scraping API Entry | Free Trial | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | $5–$6 (PAYG), $2.5 at 1TB | 175M+ | $0.25/1K rec | Business trial | No |
| Decodo | $2.0 | 115M+ | $0.09/1K req | 3-day / money-back | Yes |
| Bright Data | $4.0 (promo) | 400M+ | $1.50/1K rec | Verified business | No |
| Webshare | $1.4 | 80M+ | None (raw) | Free tier, no card | No |
| IPRoyal | $1.75 | Undisclosed | $1.0/1K req | Limited/money-back | No |
What We Actually Run (and Why)
When a target blocks datacenter IPs — and they always do on review pages, Q&A, search — we use Decodo residential with per-outlet rotation. The proxy request goes through a port pinned to the target country. Our browser (Camoufox under xvfb) loads the page, handles consent dialogs, and replays tokens for pagination. This stack keeps our success rate high without touching Oxylabs’s pricing.
For high-volume, low-block targets, we’d likely reach for Webshare datacenter at $0.018/IP — but we haven’t yet needed to switch. Decodo’s datacenter works fine for easy jobs, and keeping one vendor simplifies ops.
If a compliance team handed us a checklist, we’d evaluate Bright Data. For everyone else, Decodo is the pragmatic default.
When to Pick Each Oxylabs Alternative
- You want Oxylabs-level power at almost half the price: Decodo. It’s the only one we’ve battle-tested, and it wins on hard targets.
- Price is your only filter, and you handle blocking yourself: Webshare. $1.4/GB residential, free tier, no excuses.
- You need the absolute biggest pool and enterprise compliance: Bright Data. It’s the Oxylabs mirror, just more expensive.
- You want non-expiring traffic and a broad but cheaper lineup: IPRoyal. Good for bursty workloads without commitment.
FAQ
Is Decodo really a drop-in replacement for Oxylabs? In our pipeline, yes. The residential pool handles blocked targets, the scraping APIs cover e-commerce/search/social, and the price is significantly lower. The only thing missing is Oxylabs’s AI-search tools, but for most scraping jobs those aren’t needed.
Why would anyone pay Bright Data’s higher prices? Compliance and pool size. If your legal team requires audited data supply chains and you need 400M IPs for web-scale crawling, Bright Data is the answer. Most teams don’t.
Can I really scrape with Webshare’s free tier? Yes, if your volume is tiny and you handle blocks in-house. 1GB/month covers about 500K page requests at a lean payload. Beyond that, you’ll pay the lowest rates on this list.
What’s the one thing people overlook when switching?
That the IP is only half the story. A cheap residential proxy with a naive curl will still get blocked. Invest in browser fingerprint management and consent handling. We learned that the hard way.