In this post, we will explore the versatility of SOCKS5 Proxies and discover which are the Best SOCKS5 Proxy Providers for your needs, whether you want to mask your IP address, stream geo-restricted movies and web series, download Torrents, or play online multiplayer games. But before that, let us learn a little bit about SOCKS5 Proxies.
What is a SOCKS5 Proxy?
SOCKS is a stylized version of “Socket Secure.” It’s an internet protocol that enables data transfer between two devices through a third device. In this scenario, the third device would be referred to as a SOCKS server or just a SOCKS proxy. Designed to be an all-purpose proxy solution, SOCKS proxies can handle traffic from practically any software, protocol, or source, including games, emails, torrents, webpages, and video streaming.
A SOCKS5 proxy enables the routing of network traffic via a server, offering users more security and anonymity over traditional web browsing. The most recent iteration of the SOCKS protocol, SOCKS5, offers several enhancements over its predecessor, SOCKS4.
Why use SOCKS5 Proxies?
SOCKS5 proxies are an upgrade over the previous SOCKS4 proxies as they are faster and offer improved anonymity and versatility. These proxies are suitable for several uses that HTTP(S) IPs are not. Among them are mobile, datacenter, residential, and ISP addresses.
SOCKS5 Proxies are in demand for the following key features:
- Mask your IP address so that your identity remains anonymous and ensure improved privacy.
- Chat and make video calls with geo-restricted apps like Skype, Telegram, or more.
- Access OTT content and streaming websites like Hulu, Twitch, and many more.
- Download Torrent files from BitTorrent, uTorrent, and similar peer-to-peer communication software.
- Play popular online games that are unavailable in your region.
Best SOCKS5 Proxies
It can be a real hassle to sort through all the proxy service providers on the Internet to find the one that best suits your needs, especially when they all claim to be the best. We have done the legwork for you and compiled a list of the top 5 SOCKS5 Proxy services available as of 2025.
1) Oxylabs
Oxylabs Premium Residential and Dedicated SOCKS5 Proxies, which offer global targeting in 188 countries, are an excellent choice for activities that involve a lot of traffic.
Oxylabs is one of the best tools for gathering online intelligence. It adheres to stringent compliance requirements and corporate ethics. This platform uses lawful and ethical data collecting to provide businesses all around the world with data-driven insights. It is fantastic for people looking for a trustworthy, in my opinion.
Key Features:
With its creative and moral scraping solutions, Oxylabs is a proud leader in the web intelligence collecting market. It provides web intelligence insights to individuals aspiring to be leaders in their fields.
- One of the largest proxy pools (102 million+)
- Oxylabs provides a range of proxy types, including datacenter, residential (shared/dedicated), and mobile proxies, to suit your needs.
- Oxylabs allows you to adjust your proxies’ position, rotation, and stickiness, allowing you to set them up precisely how you need them.
- Oxylabs offers an enormous pool of more than 100 million IP addresses, which is more than enough for demanding workloads and large-scale projects.
- If you have any questions or problems, Oxylabs offers 24/7 customer service, and you can get help from a dedicated account manager.
Locations: Oxylabs has residential proxies in 195 countries, including continental coverage across North America, Europe, and Asia. Additionally, they provide datacenter IPs with locations across more than 50 nations.
IP Network: With more than 100 million IPs available worldwide, Oxylabs boasts a sizable IP pool. This pool ensures that your IPs are difficult to identify as proxy IPs and offers you a range of possibilities.
Pricing: 11GB of residential proxies are available for $99 as the starting price. The pay-as-you-go plan begins at $10 per gigabyte. More appealing pricing is available for the advanced plans, which include options for 5,000 IPs or 1TB of data. Although the costs are greater than those of other proxy providers, you receive excellent quality service in exchange.
Verdict: With Oxylabs’ Residential Proxies with SOCKS5 protocol, you may improve your web scraping experience and obtain public web data from any location while remaining completely anonymous.
Also, Read – Best Residential Proxies #1 Pick
2) Bright Data
One of the best and most top-rated proxy service platforms, Bright Data, provides strong proxy management, comprehensive analytics, and potent data extraction. This platform modifies the methods used by companies and individuals to gather and examine internet data. I think it’s amazing for anyone looking for a solid answer.
Use Bright Data’s Proxy Manager to request quality SOCKS5 proxies for scraping.
Key Features:
Bright Data’s premium SOCKS5 proxies are the best option for secure data collection. With an extensive worldwide IP network, unparalleled speed, and customer-focused methodology. These are a few of its noteworthy Features.:
- More than 72 million IP addresses for homes across 195 nations
- Option to select from pre-paid plans or pay-as-you-go
- Tight guidelines for appropriate usage cases
- Tools for data collecting and proxy management that are well-maintained and useful
- Award-winning instruments for gathering data
Locations: Bright Data guarantees excellent availability and dependability thanks to its extensive network of more than 72 million IP addresses from 195 countries. The network’s 99.99% uptime allows customers to anticipate a flawless experience from any location in the world.
IP Network: With more than 72 million IP addresses, Bright Data has one of the biggest proxy networks out there. Their IP pool consists of 770,000+ shared datacenter IPs from any geography, 700,000+ actual house IPs for long-term use, 7 million+ 3G/4G mobile IPs, and residential proxies rotated from real-peer devices in 195 countries.
Pricing: Prepaid and pay-as-you-go pricing options are available. Prepaid plans are available in four different varieties to best suit your demands and budget, while pay-as-you-go plans start at $15 per gigabyte.
- Starter ($500, $12.5 per GB)
- Advanced ($1000, $11.25 per GB)
- Advanced+ ($2000, $10.5 per GB)
- Enterprise (custom price)
Verdict: Bright Data is ideal for large-scale customers and companies. It provides premium services such as proxy servers, APIs, and site scraping tools. It excels technically with fast residential proxies and a sizable pool.
Also, Read – Best Datacenter Proxies #1 Pick
3) Smartproxy
Smartproxy offers residential, dedicated Datacenter, and mobile IPs that are supported by the SOCKS5 protocol. Reputable customer service, thorough documentation, and user-friendly proxy administration tools set the supplier apart. Thus, the service is appropriate for both novice and seasoned users.
Get access to millions of SOCKS5-supporting IPs from residential, ISPs, mobile networks, and datacenters; enjoy lightning-fast speeds; and enjoy the greatest degree of interoperability with third-party integrations.
Key Features:
Smartproxy has a massive pool of residential and mobile proxies with locations worldwide. Every request causes the proxies to change, but sticky sessions can be held for up to 30 minutes. Dedicated datacenter addresses are only available in the US.
- Free Trial for 100MB of residential proxies for up to 3 days.
- Easy and seamless setup experience along with top-tier anonymous browsing.
- Get 24/7 assistance from the support team anytime and anywhere
- Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a company in growth, pick from cost-effective programs and benefit from the user-friendly dashboard.
Locations: With over 195 location options, Smartproxy provides global coverage, including major regions like the USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, and India.
IP Network: With a vast pool of over 65 million rotating IPs, Smartproxy ensures dependable and private browsing for all of your needs.
Pricing: Smartproxy offers a range of pricing options, including residential proxies, datacenter proxies, and dedicated proxies.
- Residential Proxies: $6 per month
- Datacenter Proxies: $10 per month
- Dedicated DC Proxies: $7.5 per month
Verdict: Smartproxy is a well-liked option for safe and effective data scraping. Its wide network of rotating IPs, which includes datacenter and residential alternatives, offers anonymity and dependability.
Also, Read – Best Shared Proxies #1 Pick
4) Webshare
Webshare offers SOCKS5 protocol-compatible residential, ISP (shared, dedicated), and datacenter (shared, dedicated) proxies for sale. The service has a robust API, affordable rates, and an excellent user interface.
Experience one of the fastest SOCKS5 proxies with Webshare. You can buy SOCKS5 proxies with any subscription, including the Datacenter and Residential Proxy plans, and there will be no additional expenses.
Key Features:
With Webshare SOCKS5 proxies, you can accomplish even the most traffic-intensive online activities; the same proxy servers can be used as SOCKS5 proxies or HTTP proxies, depending on your requirements.
- Webshare is unique in the market thanks to its robust infrastructure.
- Feel secure knowing your true IP address is protected from DNS or header leaks and open port checks.
- Datacenter and ISP proxies that are quick and reliable, allowing you complete control over your subscription.
- In addition to configuring the number and locations of proxies, you may also increase traffic, reserve network priority, and add concurrency to the service.
Locations: Over 10 million rotating residential proxies from 195 countries are available on Webshare. While datacenter proxies are available from more than 50 countries, static residential proxies are restricted to the United States.
IP Network: Webshare has intellectual property rights in 20 to 195 countries globally, depending on the product. Although there is a feature to rotate proxies with each connection request, they are provided in lists of static addresses. Moreover, you have the option to have the list automatically refresh up to once every five minutes.
Pricing: One good thing about Webshare is that it offers 10 Free proxies for all their customers. If you wish to use more than that, then you can upgrade to one of the following proxy packages.
- Datacenter: Shared Proxies ($2.99 per month); Dedicated Proxies ($40 per month)
- Static Residential: $24 per month
- Rotating Residential: $15 per GB (down to $4.8 per GB for Enterprise plans)
Verdict: For people and small organizations in need of quick and reasonably priced proxy solutions, Webshare is the best option. It works well for everything, including social media administration, gaming, and SEO research, in addition to site scraping.
Also, Read – Best Amazon Proxies #1 Pick
5) MarsProxies
MarsProxies offers one of the best price/quality ratios on the market and provides a wide range of services. This is a great option for consumers and business customers searching for dependable, simple proxies at extremely low prices.
Key Features:
MarsProxies is appropriate for web scraping, eCommerce, automation, testing, and other common use cases. It offers four different types of proxies. These are a few of the primary Features.
- 1 million+ residential proxy pools spread across more than 190 locales.
- Sneaker proxies, datacenter, ISP (static residential), and residential (rotating) proxies.
- Residential traffic that never expires, SOCKS5 support for all services, limitless traffic with PTP datacenter, ISP, and sneaker proxies, daily plans, and round-the-clock assistance are all included.
No hidden fees or upsells.
Locations: In more than 190 places across the globe, MarsProxies provides real home proxies. For any area that is offered, clients can target by nation, state, or city at no additional cost. The top visited places across all continents are covered by other proxies:
- ISP proxies: 26 countries
- Datacenter proxies: 29 countries
- Sneaker proxies: 23 countries.
IP Network: MarsProxies controls almost one million proxies globally, half of which are actual residential IPs. Although it’s not the largest proxy network in the market, it’s sufficiently big and adaptable for nearly any use case.
Pricing: MarsProxies is a fantastic supplier for small and medium-sized projects since it provides non-expiring residential traffic and completely configurable programs (including daily alternatives).
- Residential proxies start at $0.99 per GB
- ISP proxies start at $1.09 per proxy
- Datacenter proxies start at $0.99 per proxy a day or $1.98 per proxy a month.
Verdict: MarsProxies is dedicated to offering quick, dependable, and affordable proxies for any application, including internet shopping, sneaker copping, and market research. It provides four widely used proxy kinds tailored for various jobs so you may select the one that best suits your requirements.
Also, Read – Best Mobile Proxies #1 Pick
Who should use SOCKS5 Proxies?
When people want to access content that is forbidden or get around firewalls while still remaining somewhat anonymous, SOCKS5 proxies come in handy. Frequently, they are employed for:
Accessing Geo-Restricted Content & Websites – By directing their requests through a server situated in a different geographic location, users can access content that might be restricted in their locality.
Enhanced Privacy – SOCKS5 proxies help prevent websites and services from tracking user activity by disguising the original IP address.
Peer-to-Peer Sharing – They are frequently used in peer-to-peer networks when users want to share data privately.
FAQs
What are the advantages of SOCKS5 proxies?
The primary advantages of SOCKS5 proxies include:
- When it comes to VoIP and video streaming, SOCKS5 supports both TCP and UDP protocols.
- SOCKS5 offers superior performance compared to other protocols. This is of utmost importance for tasks that necessitate both high bandwidth and low latency.
- Proxies that use SOCKS5 instead of SOCKS4 allow for authentication using a username and password.
How are SOCKS5 proxies different from VPNs?
A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts all data sent over the Internet. It redirects it via an encrypted server, offering complete anonymity and security at the cost of certain performance drops. However, SOCKS5 proxies are better for high-performance jobs like accessing complex web targets, avoiding geo-restrictions, or gathering real-time data because they are more flexible, offer faster speeds, and do not encrypt traffic.
How to configure SOCKS5 proxies?
Start the SOCKS5 proxies on your Windows or MacOS device and make sure they are active.
Windows 10/11 – Select Proxy in Settings > Network & Internet. Enable auto-detect > Click Edit under Manual proxy setup. Enable proxy server > Your SOCKS5 proxy list IP and port number > Save settings.
Mac OS Ventura 13 – Go to System Settings Network > Open Proxies. Enable auto proxy discovery. Enable SOCKS proxy. Provide server and port information. Click OK.
Conclusion
It is now within your power to choose the best SOCKS5 proxy for 2025. We investigated the best SOCKS5 proxy services, which will provide you with unrestricted access to the internet for a small fee. Make sure you know exactly what you need before making a choice. In the year 2024, go out and find the top SOCKS5 proxy services.
My top priority when looking at SOCKS5 proxies is to locate a provider that strikes a good balance between speed, dependability, and security. SOCKS5 proxies offer a multi-purpose solution for web scraping, gaming, and circumventing geo-restrictions. If you are still having trouble making a decision, see my recommendation of the best services below.
If you need thorough web intelligence insights, Oxylabs is the solution for you because of its 99.95% success record and remarkable scalability.
Secure and dependable data collecting is made easier with Bright Data’s largest proprietary home IP proxy network, which boasts an uptime of 99.99%.
