The world we live in is hungry for data and the role of proxies in web scraping is to continue the extraction process. Most businesses need data for multiple purposes which could be price monitoring, sentiment analysis, price aggregation, etc.
In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at the best data center proxies on the market. We’ll be looking at their features, prices, and anything else that makes them stand out. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Mainly people use web scraping to extract data from their target websites. But the disadvantage of using this technique is the blocking of your IP. You can also read our 10 tips to avoid getting blocked while scraping. You need proxies to escape the trap of getting blocked by any website.
Datacenter Proxies
These are normal IPs that we get from the corporate datacenter. These IPs are not related to any ISP. There are basically of three types Data center proxies:
Private DataCenter Proxies
These are dedicated IPs that are allotted to you only by the service provider. These IPs could only work on certain domains.
Shared DataCenter Proxies
These proxies are used by a maximum of three users at a time. Their performance is not better than Private but works better than Public.
Public DataCenter Proxies
Public datacenter proxies are the free proxy list available. These proxies can only be used for changing your location while browsing but not for web scraping purposes. Their success rates are very low as far as data extraction is concerned.
Now, we are going to compare the 10 best data center proxy providers in the market. We scraped Google, Amazon, Yellowpages, and eBay. We have judged them on the basis of:
- Price
- Performance on the basis of 500 requests.
List of 9 best datacenter proxies:
- Scrapingdog
- Oxylabs
- Brightdata
- Proxyrack
- Storm proxies
- Smartproxy
- High Proxies
- Privateproxy
- Infatica
Scrapingdog
Scrapingdog is a web scraping API. By making a simple GET request you can get the raw HTML of any website. You can even render JS by using our dynamic parameter. It offers datacenter, mobile 4G, and residential proxies for different domains. It also offers a Linkedin scraping API through which you can scrape private LinkedIn profiles.
The reason it’s on the top of the list is the customization features offered by this tool. ScrapingDog is also offering economical datacenter proxies.
Pricing:
- The Basic plans come with 250k API calls which costs $20 per month only. Then there is a standard and pro plan with 1 and 3 million API calls respectively. Standard costs $90 and pro costs $200 per month.
- It also offers a generous free pack with 1000 API calls for a month.
- You can also ask for a custom plan if you have bigger needs.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Oxylabs
Oxylabs is the data-gathering proxy provider. They have a pool of 100M+ proxies from genuine suppliers. They provide both residential and datacenter proxies. One thing I personally like about their proxy is they allow geo-targeting in datacenter proxies. You can use their proxy for web scraping, ad verification, price monitoring, etc. The best part is their proxy pool keeps growing. Plus they provide a dedicated account manager for resolving any issue asap.
Pricing
- Their datacenter starter proxy plan starts from $180. The starter plan will provide you with 160 proxies. Unfortunately, you cannot scrape google & other search engines using their proxies.
- They also offer a free trial for their datacenter proxies. You have to contact your account manager to get this trial.
- The overall performance of their proxies is great.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Brightdata
Brightdata provides a data extraction tool and a proxy network. They have a pool of more than 750k datacenter proxies which involve proxies from more than 95 countries. You can also use their data collection tool if you are finding it difficult to scrape a website. Their proxies work great with search engines and social media crawling. They also offer SDKs for web and mobile developers. They also have a user-friendly dashboard from where you can create your own package. You have the freedom to set your own budget. All in all, it is a great product.
Pricing
- Their starter pack starts from $500 and you get proxies at $0.60 per IP. You can even select the pay-as-you-go option to use their services without any restriction.
- They also offer a 14-day free trial.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Proxyrack
Proxyrack offers datacenter proxies with unlimited bandwidth for a fixed rate. If you have a budget constraint then going with proxyrack is advisable. They offer mixed, USA, and Canada datacenter proxies. They have a pool of 20k proxies. Yes! I know that is very low. But the interesting thing is they won’t charge you on the basis of bandwidth or the number of requests. You can even track your usage pattern by using their dashboard. You get a money-back guarantee if you found their proxies are unsuitable.
Pricing
- USA & mixed datacenter proxies basic package starts from $65 per month for 100 threads.
- Canada datacenter proxies start from $49 per month for 100 threads.
- Static USA datacenter proxies start from $50 per month for 100 threads.
- They also offer a 3-day trial for $13 for every proxy type they offer (Residential and datacenter).
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Storm Proxies
Storm Proxies have a dedicated proxy for almost every social media platform. Residential, dedicated, sneaker & ticket proxies are part of their small proxy network. The dedicated proxies that we offer are hosted on a server network owned by them only. They do not offer soax proxies. According to our analysis, their proxies are not as good as proxyrack but it also depends on your demands. Since they have a money-back guarantee then maybe you can give it a try with a small pack.
Pricing
- Dedicated proxies will cost a minimum of $39 per month for 40 threads (but you can only use 25% of the allotted threads at a time). So, practically you can only use 10 threads in the basic pack at a time.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Smartproxy
Smartproxy offer both datacenter and residential proxies with pricing based on traffic usage. They offer proxies from more than 195 countries. This makes them one of the biggest players in the proxy business. They are safe and reliable and on top of that, their overall performance is very good. Their customer support service is spot on which makes implementation, even more, easier for beginners.
Pricing
- Datacenter plan goes from $50 per month for 100 GB of data to $500 per month for 1000 GB of data.
- Money-back guarantee if you have used 20% or fewer resources.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
High Proxies
High Proxies are specialists in social media proxies. All of their proxies are secure and dedicated. They do not provide rotating proxies. But you can select a subnet or a city of your choice. Also, they do not offer SOAX proxies. Our experience with them was below average.
Pricing
- A dedicated social media proxy starts from $2.60 per proxy.
- They do not offer any trial
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Privateproxy
Privateproxy is another proxy provider for a small budget. They have somewhat of a unique concept of evaluating the request. After analyzing the request they apply a datacenter or residential proxy to successfully create a tunnel. Their proxies work great for SEO purposes. They offer both dedicated and rotating proxies.
Pricing
- Dedicated proxies will cost $3 each and rotating proxies go from $59 for 200k requests to $999 for 15M requests.
- They do offer a trial.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Infatica
Infatica is an expert in providing premium proxy service for web scraping. You get fresh proxies on sign-up so that you don’t have to compete with the neighbor for the bandwidth. They have a pool of 10M+ proxies, which is quite impressive. To safeguard your privacy and business secrets, your data is encrypted end to end.
Pricing
- Their proxy plan starts from $360 for 40 GB of data and goes to $20000 for 10000 GB of data.
- They do offer a free trial.
Testing
500 requests were sent for each website.
Analyzing the results
We used a small script to test all these data center proxy providers with 500 requests each on four websites. Now we have to aggregate all the results for a final verdict.
Amazon
eBay
Yellow Pages
Final Verdict
Selecting a proxy provider for web scraping could be a tough process. In our experience, the first 2000 to 3000 requests work fine and then the websites like google and amazon start blocking you. You need to be careful with this while selecting a suitable proxy provider for your business. You should always consider taking a trial prior to your paid subscription. You need to be careful of the different techniques used by websites to trap a web scraper. You can read tips to avoid getting blocked while scraping.
Selecting the right proxy is driven by checking the price, speed, and reliability. With low-quality proxies, you can end up getting blocked.
We are pretty confident that the providers listed here can meet your web scraping demands.
Dedicated Data Center Proxies Use Cases
There are many reasons why one might want to use a proxy server at their data center. Below are some of the most common use cases:
Access Control – A proxy server can be used to control access to certain websites or web applications. This is often done for security or compliance reasons. For example, an organization may want to block access to social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Content Filtering – A proxy server can be used to filter out unwanted or inappropriate content. This is often done for security or compliance reasons. For example, an organization may want to filter out websites that contain malware or pornographic content.
Load Balancing – A proxy server can be used to balance the load across multiple back-end servers. This is often done to improve performance or to minimize the impact of server outages.
Caching – A proxy server can be used to cache frequently accessed resources. This is often done to improve performance. For example, a proxy server may cache popular websites like Facebook or Twitter.
Additional Resources
Here are a few additional resources that you may find helpful during your web scraping journey:
