Bright Data
Ex-Luminati; the industrial-scale residential proxy network - the ethical and legal center of the proxy market (Hola feeds it historically).
HTTP/SOCKS proxies: lighter than a VPN, weaker on almost everything else.
Short answer: Bright Data is our top pick as of 2026-09-27 (4.9/10) - read why, and who we ranked below it and why.
Ex-Luminati; the industrial-scale residential proxy network - the ethical and legal center of the proxy market (Hola feeds it historically).
Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo (2024); mid-market scraping proxies.
Budget residential/socks proxies; popular in sneaker/streaming/automation scenes.
Enterprise scraping-proxy giant; the 'clean' end of a market that also runs on infected/rented devices.
Passive-income residential bandwidth sharing (Hola/Bright Data model with a payout veneer).
Old-school rotating HTTP proxy; simple, small, long-lived.
Small retro proxy shop for scraping/sneakers.
Developer-friendly datacenter/residential proxy SaaS.
On documented facts and weighted scores. Privacy evidence and ownership weigh heaviest; free apps are judged harder on trust than paid services because the incentive to abuse users is bigger.
The renewal price (not the teaser), the logging evidence class, the jurisdiction, and who owns the brand. Then check whether you need the paid service at all - see the alternatives in every review.