Best Proxy Services for Data Collection
To streamline web data extraction, you need a dependable and reliable proxy pool to bypass rate limits, avoid IP bans, access geo-blocked content, bypass anti-bot systems, enhance privacy, and facilitate scaling. Nonetheless, not all proxy services offer these benefits.
Many proxy services may promise to deliver the aforementioned benefits only to disappoint. That’s why we’ve handled the hard part to allow you focus on what matters.
Here are top 10 proxy services for web data collection. Not only are these reliable and dependable, they also offer transparent billing and scalable options, supercharging your scraping efforts.
Our Pick of 10 Top Proxy Services for Data Collection
1. Bright Data
At the top we got Bright Data. A proxy service built for beginners and experienced scrapers. Bright Data gives you access to innovative tools including a web unlocker, scraping browser, and web scraper API.
If you are a beginner, the scraping browser is a no-code solution for efficient scraping while the web unlocker helps with bypassing blocks, including CAPTCHAs and other anti-bot systems. For an experienced scraper, you also get access to these tools and the web scraper API to automate data collection from complex websites.
With access to over 72 million ethically sourced residential IP addresses, you worry less about IP blocks, regional blocks, and rate limits. You also have the option of tailoring the proxy and scraping solutions to your needs alongside a 24/7 expert assistance add-on.
2. SOAX
Like BrightData, SOAX boasts a large pool of ethically sourced proxies — about 8.5 million proxies. However, these IPs encompass mobile, data center, ISP, and residential proxies.
Residential proxies are known to offer the best results when it comes to web data collection. This is because residential proxies allow for precise targeting based on location, device type, and ISP.
SOAX proxy provides tools for both beginners and experts, too! For instance, they offer a custom web unblocker and scraper API, each with a 100% success rating. Despite this, note that you are to pay for only successful requests, optimizing spending.
3. Apify
Unlike SOAX and Bright Data, Apify tailors its services to developers, offering the infrastructure and tools required to build web scrapers. Even so, as a beginner, you have access to pre-built scrapers, referred to as actors.
Actors are web automation and data extraction tools built for specific websites or platforms like TikTok, Amazon, and Google Maps. As a developer, you get all the docs and tools you need to build these tools. Then, you get paid for every regular user.
Apify handles the actors marketplace. There’s no upfront payment to publish actors. Apify takes care of the billing and scalability. So, you don’t need to worry about storage, proxies, authentication, or compute power.
4. ScraperAPI
True to its name, ScraperAPI is a data collection solution designed for consistency and scalability. It is a combination of APIs and low-code tools built to scrape and unlock various websites despite their scale.
With over 40 million IPs spreading across 50 plus geolocations, ScarperAPI’s solutions bypass IP blocks and rate limits flawlessly.
Moreover, the scraping APIs come with built-in anti-bot technology like proxy rotation, browser navigation, and CAPTCHA resolvers to simplify data collection.
5. Infatica
Infatica emphasizes on ease of use, allowing you to manage IP rotation, proxy geotargeting, authorization, IP whitelisting and more — all from the same dashboard.
This user-friendly dashboard is accessible for both beginners and advanced users.
You get global proxy coverage, including residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies. On top of this, there’s a web scraper API covering 150 geolocations, enabling quick setup and use during data collection.
6. ScrapFly
Like Apify, ScrapFly offers scraping solutions to developers. They offer three custom solutions — web scraping, extraction, and screenshot API.
The web scraping API comes with 130 million plus proxies from over 120 countries. This coupled with automatic anti-bot bypass, browser control, and automatic data structuring optimizes data collection.
To maximize data extraction efficiency, the extraction API allows you to extract data effortlessly with the help of artificial intelligence and Large Language Models (LLMs). And, when you are dealing with a stubborn website, the screenshot API comes in with its ability to capture web page screenshots for data collection.
7. Oxylabs
Oxylabs makes it possible to scrape websites even for complete beginners. This is possible thanks to their custom OxyCopilot feature.
OxyCopillot makes it possible to obtain data through prompting. You input the target site’s URL and prompt the ML-driven solution to collect data.
After extracting the desired data, OxyCopilot parses raw HTML into structured data, optimizing usage. And, you can scale your operations using Oxylabs’ web scraper API that comes with over 100 million ethically sourced proxies.
8. Octoparse
Octoparse simplifies the whole web data collection process with the help of its no-code web scraping solutions.
Key features include an AI-powered auto-detection, a library full of pre-built web scraper templates, and a visual workflow designer.
All these solutions are combined with a robust proxy pool with functionalities such as IP rotation, AJAX handling, and CAPTCHA resolution, making Octoparse ideal for scraping even the most challenging sites.
9. NetNut
NetNut focuses on offering an advanced proxy network to power data collection. They offer a unique direct ISP connectivity model, ensuring a reliable and fast data extraction operation.
Rather than having all types of proxies in one place, NetNut packs more than 85 million residential IPs in 195 countries, 5 million mobile IPs in 100 countries, and one million static IPs with 24/7 availability, making it suitable for web scraping operations of all sizes.
10. Zenrows
Besides all the features necessary to ensure a smooth scraping experience such as IP rotation, Zenrows offers an AI web unblocker for scraping different websites.
Overall, Zenrows packs solutions aimed at ensuring no website blocks you from scraping content. These solutions include user agent rotator, CAPTCHA bypass, WAF bypass, and more.
Closing Words
And, there you have it! 10 proxy services to eliminate most web scraping challenges. These proxy services offer location diversity, optimal residential proxy rotation, reliability, performance, and high uptime. Put one at a time to the test to find one that suits your needs and budget.