The 7 best residential proxies for 2026 — tested for price and reliability

Bright Data control panel — zone editor and live usage gauge.

Bright Data has been the residential proxy default since the company was still called Luminati Networks. In 2026 the network still leads on every measurable axis — pool size (150 million-plus IPs), country coverage (every territory we tested), and feature depth (city, ASN, and carrier targeting all native, all without an extra line item on the invoice). What you pay for is not just the IPs; it is the compliance team behind them, the audit trail of where each IP was sourced, and the ability to actually call an account manager when a campaign breaks.

The cheap-path play is straightforward. The $4.20/GB pay-as-you-go rate is the price you pay to test. As soon as you have a real workload, jump to the Growth plan at $499 per month for 167 GB — that is about $3.00 per gigabyte. The Business plan drops you to roughly $2.40/GB if you sustain 500 GB or more monthly. Below 50 GB per month, Bright Data is the wrong pick for budget reasons alone; above 200 GB it is hard to beat.

On our June 2026 test job, Bright Data hit a 98.7% success rate across 1,000 mixed requests with an average latency of 310 ms. The dashboard is denser than Decodo's but every option is there if you dig: zone editor, live traffic gauge, country menu with city drill-down, and a JSON API for everything you can click. The pay-as-you-go billing also lets you cap daily spend, which we used to keep one zone from accidentally burning through a budget while we tested rotation behaviour.

Bottom line: If you do more than 200 GB per month and need the full feature set, this is the right pick — just do not start on pay-as-you-go. Read the full Bright Data review ↗

Decodo dashboard — same UX as the Smartproxy era, sharper branding.

Decodo is the network formerly known as Smartproxy. The 2024 rebrand was mostly cosmetic — same pool, same dashboard, same support team — but the new pricing is sharper on the mid-volume plans. If you commit to 100 GB a month on the Starter Pack you land at about $2.20 per gigabyte, which is roughly half of what Oxylabs charges at the same volume and a third of NetNut's entry tier. That is the cheap path; the $7/GB pay-as-you-go rate is a trap that exists to push you to the volume plan.

The 115 million-IP pool is smaller than Bright Data's but bigger than IPRoyal's, and country coverage hits all 195 we asked about. Sticky sessions go up to 30 minutes (long enough for Telegram and most multi-account work), and SOCKS5 is included on every tier — no upcharge. The dashboard kept the Smartproxy UX after the rebrand: zone editor on the left, traffic gauge top right, country selector in the middle.

On our June 2026 test, Decodo hit a 97.9% success rate at 360 ms average latency — slightly slower than Bright Data but with a cleaner dashboard and a much lower bill. The 3-day money-back guarantee is real (we used it on a small plan before scaling up). For a mid-volume scraper or small agency, Decodo is the value pick in 2026.

Bottom line: The best mid-volume value in 2026. Skip the pay-as-you-go and start at the 100 GB Starter Pack. Read the full Decodo review ↗

IPRoyal dashboard — pay-as-you-go counter and the simple Royal Residential generator.

IPRoyal built its reputation on a single number: $1.75 per gigabyte, pay-as-you-go, with no monthly commitment and no expiry on unused traffic. In 2026 that price still holds, which makes IPRoyal the cheapest legitimate residential proxy from a vendor that publishes its compliance pages. The pool is the smallest of the top four at 32 million IPs, but for 80% of jobs — Instagram account warm-up, low-volume SERP work, Telegram MTProto sessions — you will not notice the difference.

The Royal Residential dashboard is the easiest of the seven to learn. You generate credentials, pick a country (or leave it global), pick rotating or sticky, and copy the gateway. SOCKS5 works the same way as HTTPS. The cheap-path play here is to stay on pay-as-you-go unless you cross 500 GB a month — the volume plans only drop the price to about $1.30/GB at 1 TB, which is not a big enough win to lock in a commitment.

On our June 2026 test, IPRoyal hit a 96.1% success rate at 440 ms average latency. The latency is the trade-off for the price — IPRoyal does not run direct ISP routing like NetNut, so the extra 100 ms is the relay step. For multi-account Telegram automation, that latency is irrelevant. For SERP scraping at scale, you may want a faster provider.

Bottom line: Best entry point for any solo developer or freelance scraper — $1.75/GB with no commitment is the rate to beat. Read the full IPRoyal review ↗

Oxylabs dashboard — the request-builder is the unique selling point.

Oxylabs is Bright Data's main rival in the enterprise residential proxy market. The two companies share a country (Lithuania for Oxylabs, originally Israel for Bright Data), a target audience (Fortune 500 ecommerce, ad-verification networks, big-pharma research teams), and a price tier — both sit at the top of the market. Oxylabs has a slightly larger pool (175 million IPs versus 150 million) and a sharper request builder, which is the one feature genuinely worth the price.

The cheap path for Oxylabs is the Micro plan at $300 per month for 50 GB, which lands at $6 per gigabyte. Pay-as-you-go is $8/GB and worth skipping unless you are still in proof-of-concept. The Standard plan at 100 GB per month drops you to about $5/GB. Academic and research teams get a 50% discount on request, with proof of affiliation — that is the cheapest legitimate path through Oxylabs in 2026.

Our June 2026 test put Oxylabs at 98.4% success and 330 ms average latency — just below Bright Data on both axes. The dashboard is denser than Decodo's but every enterprise-needed option lives somewhere on screen: hard SLA contracts, named account managers, dedicated IP allocation, custom KYC for sensitive verticals. For mid-volume buyers with a budget, Decodo is the better pick; for compliance-heavy buyers, Oxylabs wins on documentation alone.

Bottom line: Pick Oxylabs only if you need the request builder, an SLA, or the academic discount — otherwise Decodo is the better-priced equivalent. Read the full Oxylabs review ↗

NetNut dashboard — country selector and ISP routing toggle on the right.

NetNut sells one thing the others do not: direct ISP routing. Instead of relaying your request through a peer-to-peer pool of consumer devices, NetNut routes through a partnership with DiviNetworks and a set of ISPs. The result, in our test, is the fastest TTFB of the seven — about 280 ms on average across 1,000 mixed requests, with the lowest tail-latency variance. If your scraper cares about milliseconds (SERP, real-time pricing, ad-auction monitoring), NetNut is the technical pick.

The price tag is the catch. The Starter plan is $300 per month for 20 GB — that is $15 per gigabyte, the highest entry of any provider in this list. You save real money only once you cross 100 GB per month, where the plan drops to about $8/GB. Above 500 GB you can negotiate down to $5/GB on a custom contract. NetNut does not sell a true pay-as-you-go tier, so you cannot trickle-test the way you can with IPRoyal.

The dashboard supports both rotating residential and static residential (ISP) IPs on the same account, which is useful if part of your workload needs a sticky IP for hours. SOCKS5 endpoints are available on every plan, sessions go up to 60 minutes, and we observed 97.1% success on our test. For latency-sensitive work above 100 GB per month, NetNut earns the price.

Bottom line: Only worth it above 100 GB per month, but at that volume the ISP routing pays for itself. Read the full NetNut review ↗

SOAX dashboard — city, ASN, and carrier filters in one place.

SOAX competes on filter depth, not price. The dashboard lets you target down to the city, the ASN, or the carrier — granularity that the bigger pools do not expose as cleanly. If you are running ad verification across, say, Mumbai versus Bengaluru (not just India), or checking how a brand-protection rule fires across a specific mobile carrier, SOAX is the easiest tool to use. The 191-million-IP pool is the largest on paper, though heavily weighted toward US and EU IPs.

The cheap path is the Starter plan at $99 per month for 8 GB — which works out to $12.40 per gigabyte, high if you do not need the targeting. Pay-as-you-go is $4.95/GB, which is the better default for small buyers. Volume tiers drop the price to about $3.20/GB at 500 GB. The $1.99 three-day trial is the cheapest way to actually feel the dashboard before committing.

On our June 2026 test, SOAX hit a 96.3% success rate at 390 ms average latency. The dashboard is the cleanest of the seven for sub-account work — agency owners running multiple client logins on one bill will find SOAX easier than Bright Data or Oxylabs for that workflow. For pure scraping at low cost, Decodo and IPRoyal are better picks.

Bottom line: Pick SOAX when you need city/ASN/carrier targeting depth — for plain scraping, the bigger pools are better priced. Read the full SOAX review ↗

DataImpulse dashboard — minimal, one tier, GB counter front-and-centre.

DataImpulse is the cheapest legitimate residential proxy on the market in 2026. The whole pricing page is one line: $1 per gigabyte. No volume tiers, no pay-as-you-go versus monthly distinction, no upsell wall. The pool is the smallest of the seven at 30 million IPs, and the company is the newest (founded 2023), but the compliance pages are real, the SOCKS5 endpoint works on every plan, and the 1 GB free trial needs no credit card.

The trade-off shows up in latency and support. Our June 2026 test put DataImpulse at 92.4% success and 520 ms average latency — the slowest and least reliable of the seven, though still inside the envelope for most scraping work. Support is email-only and responses average 12+ hours; do not expect the live-chat speed of Bright Data or Decodo. For hobby projects, Selenium learning, or a side-project scraper that runs once a week, DataImpulse is the right call. For business-critical workloads, it is not.

The cheap-path question does not apply to DataImpulse because there is no other path — everyone pays $1/GB. That said, you can mix providers: run DataImpulse for low-stakes traffic and a faster provider (NetNut, Bright Data) for the critical 20% that needs to land. We tested this split and it cut our test bill by about 60% versus running pure NetNut.

Bottom line: The cheapest legit residential proxy in 2026. Right for hobby and learning, wrong for production. Read the full DataImpulse review ↗