Proxy services, sometimes referred to simply as proxies, operate as a sort of identification shield between your device and the open internet. Rather than routing your traffic, activity, and requests directly from your PC or phone to the web, proxy services send and receive that information through their own servers first, thereby obscuring your IP address. Proxies can give devices access to hundreds, even thousands, of IP addresses as potential replacements for their real location.
While the average reader will be better off with an easier-to-use (but likely pricier) VPN, more tech-savvy users might want a proxy for many reasons. In addition to protecting privacy and unblocking geo-locked content—top reasons for using a VPN—proxies are also helpful for more specialized services, such as getting ahead in a virtual line for the latest fashion drops or concert tickets, scraping e-commerce websites for up-to-date pricing information, or learning more about the SEO landscape and which keywords to target on blog posts.
Read on for summaries of the top proxies we’ve tested, followed by everything you need to know about choosing the right one for your needs. Click the review links for more detailed analysis and performance results. Note that proxy services are a new category for PCMag, and as such, we do not yet have an Editors’ Choice winner. For now, our top-rated service is MarsProxies, thanks to its low prices, easy configuration process, and flexibility.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
MarsProxies
Best For All Around Proxy Usage
Why We Picked It
MarsProxies offers an appealing combination of affordability, flexible plans, and an impressive number of IP addresses to help you protect your privacy and spoof your location.
Who Its For
MarsProxies is for anyone who wants the best all-around proxy service, whether you’re shopping for the latest Nike drops, comparing prices on Amazon, or pulling SEO reports for your publication. It’s our top-scoring service, with one caveat that prevents it from earning our Editors’ Choice award: its opaque privacy policy.
PROS
- Competitive pricing across all products
- Unrestricted Netflix access
- Tuned for online shopping and sneaker drops
- Simple configuration process
- 24/7 support line
CONS
- No easy-to-find terms and conditions or privacy policy
- Limited payment options and no free trial
- No in-house browser extensions or mobile option
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of IP Addresses | 500,000 |
| Number of Countries | 186 |
| Protocols Supported | HTTPS, SOCKS5 |
| Mobile Option | |
| Browser Extension | |
| Pay-as-You-Go | |
| Accepts Cryptocurrency |
Learn More
IPRoyal
Best for Sneaker Drops
Why We Picked It
IPRoyal is a contender for its offering of a free server list to choose from to test the service before you use it, as well as its large pool of available IP addresses to rotate through. It offers small businesses and the self-employed alike a wide variety of data scraping options, as well as bots that will help you get the latest fashion drops.
Who It’s For
Whether you’re a sneakerhead or just someone who likes to stay sneaky on the public web, IPRoyal has a streamlined interface and the tools to get even the most inexperienced proxy clients up to speed on its service.
PROS
- Large number of payment processing options
- Many different tiers and types of services offered
- Free proxy option
- Sneaker proxy tool for getting in on the latest online shoe drops
CONS
- High per-gigabyte price for rotating residential proxies
- Limited number of browsers supported
- Slow downloads speeds in testing
- Based in a country with a record of privacy violations
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of IP Addresses | 2000000 |
| Number of Countries | 195 |
| Protocols Supported | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 |
| Mobile Option | |
| Browser Extension | |
| Pay-as-You-Go | |
| Accepts Cryptocurrency |
Learn More
Storm Proxies
Best Speeds
Why We Picked It
Equipped with the toolset to handle both ticket and sneaker drops, as well as offering unlimited bandwidth on its high-speed servers, Storm Proxies offers a useful set of features and good speeds all at a reasonable value.
Who It’s For
Storm Proxies is a solid choice for those who value performance, price, and features that favor the consumer first. Though business customers aren’t left out in the cold, there’s enough here to keep casual users happy as well.
PROS
- Fast download and upload speeds
- Inexpensive monthly plans
- Sneaker and Ticketmaster proxies offered
- Unlimited bandwidth
CONS
- Limited proxy locations and IP addresses
- HTTP is the only protocol provided
- No per-gigabyte plan available
- No option for mobile proxies
- Based in the UAE
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of IP Addresses | 70,000 |
| Number of Countries | |
| Protocols Supported | HTTPS |
| Mobile Option | |
| Browser Extension | |
| Pay-as-You-Go | |
| Accepts Cryptocurrency |
Learn More
Oxylabs
Best for Data Center Customers and Web Scraping
Why We Picked It
If IP address variety is important to you, Oxylabs’ pool of more than 100 million options is one of the largest we’ve seen. The more IP addresses on offer, the stronger your likelihood of getting the level of anonymization you or your business demand from a proxy service.
Who It’s For
While not geared toward the individual customer or the self-employed, Oxylabs has a suite of products and services that are tailor-made for the business user who wants the option to scrape dozens of different data points from across the web.
PROS
- Pool of over 100 million IP addresses
- Extensive technical support articles
- Strong privacy policy
- One week free trial
CONS
- No browser extensions or desktop application
- Complicated setup process
- Severe speed loss in local testing
- Expensive per-gigabyte pricing
- No functionality with top streaming services
SPECS
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Number of IP Addresses | 10,000,000 |
| Number of Countries | 195 |
| Protocols Supported | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 |
| Mobile Option | |
| Browser Extension | |
| Pay-as-You-Go | |
| Accepts Cryptocurrency |
Learn More
Buying Guide: The Best Proxies for 2024
What Is a Proxy Service and Why Do I Need One?
Whether used for personal or commercial purposes, proxies provide an important service to individual users and businesses of all sizes. And, while commonly not as secure or speedy as their privacy cousins, virtual private networks (VPNs), proxies’ inexpensive access to pools of, at times, millions of IP addresses make them a specific product that caters to a select group of customers with specialized needs and use cases. That said, if you’re just looking for an easy-to-use app that’s laser-focused on privacy and you don’t mind paying more, VPNs are the way to go.
A primary benefit of proxy services is that your true IP address is hidden behind the address of the proxy server. This makes it harder to track you and simpler to get a broad section of data from a single endpoint device. Even dedicated observers have trouble telling whose internet traffic is yours because your data is mixed in with everyone else’s using the server.
Hiding your IP address has another benefit: It makes it harder for others to figure out your location. You can use this to your advantage and connect to distant proxy servers to spoof your location.
Proxy services can be configured into your web browser or to control all traffic that comes to and from your machine if configured on the system-wide level. Android, iPhone, Chrome OS, Linux, Windows, and macOS all have the option to choose your own data routing preferences via a proxy server, and each has its own setup process that differs from the other. This can be one of the barriers to entry for some proxy-curious buyers, but if you’d like to learn more about what a manual configuration looks like on Windows, head over to our story on how we test proxies to learn more.
How Do I Choose a Proxy?
The number of both customer and commercial proxy services has dwindled over the years as VPN services—more secure products that don’t diminish your speeds nearly as much as a proxy might—have taken over.
The reduction in speed is down to the protocols that proxies rely on to route your traffic. These are almost always exclusively reserved for HTTP, HTTPS, or SOCKS5, which is a key limitation of this aging technology. Meanwhile, VPNs are constantly iterating on connection standards with at least 10 different protocols, including bespoke options like ExpressVPN‘s own Lightway protocol, and Wireguard, which is rapidly becoming the next-generation standard. Testing that service, we found some of the strongest security and fastest speeds, something proxies will never achieve on the comparatively ancient trio of connection protocols mentioned above.
When you read reviews, we recommend that you not just focus on connection speed, since that’s the factor you (and the proxy service) have the least control over. Since nearly all proxy companies offer some mixture of the same technologies, consider value when looking for your best proxy service. How can you get the most for the least? Look for extra features like in-house browser extensions, unlimited devices, discounts for large IP pool packages, and so forth. A good proxy service is the summation of its possible use cases, not its outright performance in speed testing.
The best way to know if a proxy works for you is to try it for yourself. See if it can access all the sites and services you need, or find out if the configuration is simple and if the speeds in your area are acceptable. Some proxy services provide free trials, so take advantage of them. And others offer specialized services like “sneaker proxies,” helpful for getting a spot in line to buy the latest shoes. However, features like these are never guaranteed. Sometimes Netflix is blocked, and other times, you might find the IP address pool you had previously been using to grab new kicks has been flagged by Nike and disabled from access.
This is why we recommend starting with a short-term subscription or a pay-as-you-go per-gigabyte option to ensure you are happy with the service first. Proxies, in particular, have this advantage over VPNs, where testing out the service can be as inexpensive as buying a single gigabyte of data for less than $5, depending on the company. Yes, you may get a discount by signing up for a year or by purchasing more bandwidth in a package, but that’s more money at stake should you decide the service doesn’t meet your performance requirements.
Can I Trust My Proxy to Protect My Privacy?
If you’re using a proxy service to route all your internet traffic through its servers, you have to be able to trust the company hosting that bandwidth.
At PCMag, we give attention to the privacy practices of proxy companies and not just the technology they provide. In our testing, we read the privacy policies and terms and conditions on the hunt for a commitment to protecting user information. The best proxy services have a privacy policy clearly stating what the service does, what information they collect, and what they do to protect it.
As part of our research, we also determine where the company is based and under what legal framework it operates. Some countries don’t have data-retention laws, or at the very least, aren’t a part of what’s known as the Five Eyes collective, an intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Every country listed has an agreement of open intelligence sharing with the others, and if subpoenaed by federal agents of any of those nations, it would need to reveal whatever it knows about specific customers using particular services based in the region.
What Are the Best Proxies for Streaming?
While it’s rare that you’ll see Blocked or Limited access when using a proxy as you might with a VPN, the reduction in download speeds can sometimes make for less-than-optimal viewing experiences. For example, while you might be able to stream Standard (3Mbps/720p) or High-Definition (5Mbps/1080p) content smoothly on services like MarsProxies, only one service we’ve tested so far, IPRoyal, cleared the bandwidth bar for 4K (25Mpbs).
Recommended by Our Editors
We did find in select cases that Netflix access was blocked altogether. Not even during our testing of the best VPNs for Netflix did we find a VPN that was completely unable to access the library of content, while Hide.me and Oxylabs found themselves stuck at the gates without a pass to get in, Oxylabs has since contacted PCMag to clarify that streaming access is intentionally blocked by the company itself.
That said, we’ve tested several proxies that have no issue accessing the full Netflix library from multiple servers across every region we evaluate, including Japan, Canada, the UK, Australia, and the US.
Where Are My Proxy Servers?
Speaking of global server distribution, this is another advantage of proxy services over VPNs. Because of their comparatively cheaper operation, proxy services can offer much larger pools of available IP addresses, often on a more widely distributed global network than VPNs. Where an average VPN may have anywhere from 20 to 1,250 servers of total coverage, the average proxy service covers 150 to 195 countries. This means the likelihood of finding a server nearest your current location is much higher, especially for rural regions or underdeveloped nations.
The closer the proxy server, the better the speed and reliability of the connection it can offer you. Remember, you don’t need to connect to a far-flung proxy server to gain security benefits. Depending on where you live, a server down the street is as safe as one across the world.
What’s the Fastest Proxy Service?
When a proxy service is active either on your browser or the entirety of your device, the result is often comparatively sluggish download and upload speeds and increased latency. Google’s internal speed test provides metrics for latency, download speeds, and upload speeds. Any of these can be an important measurement depending on your needs, but we tend to view the download speed as the most important.
The chart below shows our most recent speed test results:
