Oxylabs Review 2023: What are the features of Oxylabs? [Pros & Cons]

In the market for corporate clients, Oxylabs competes with alternatives like Bright Data and Smartproxy. It is now the top-rated proxy service we have covered on our blog and is one of our recommendations as the Best Proxy provider of 2023.

These two facts show that we think Oxylabs is a very strong choice possibly even for smaller enterprises requiring high-quality infrastructure.

In this Oxylabs review, we will cover the key offering from Oxylabs and compare them to the competition. You will discover thorough benchmarks of performance gathered from weeks of testing along with a general overview. Let us take a look at it!

Oxylabs Review 2023

Oxylabs Review 2023

You would be correct in assuming that many proxy service providers are operating on the fringes of the law. Although, Oxylabs makes a determined effort to explain how it is apart from other providers.

With over 100 million proxies in circulation across 195 nations, the origin of any one proxy will always be immediately apparent. From “vetted vendors that are under stringent duties to tell end-users about their membership in a proxy network and acquire consent from them,” the website claims they are obtained legitimately.

Given its high price tag, steeper-than-average learning curve, and initial investment and bandwidth requirements, Oxylabs might not be a fit for individual and small-team endeavors. Oxylabs should be at the top of your list of potential proxy service providers if you need a top-tier provider and plan to make good use of the service’s many capabilities, such as its vast list of distinct proxy types.

What is Oxylabs?

What is Oxylabs

Founded in 2015, Oxylabs is a Lithuanian proxy service provider. It has become one of the largest companies in the industry, providing a wide range of proxy services as well as a number of data-collecting APIs that enable you to scrape practically any target.

Oxylabs primarily caters to corporate clientele. Everything reflects this, including a neat and orderly website, a list of certificates on the homepage, and a specific account manager. Its goods even have insurance a first for a proxy company. You will, however, pay more than normal costs as a result.

This focus on businesses suggests that Oxylabs wants to tie you to a lengthy contract and develop your connection through account managers. However, the supplier has recently begun to open up its platform and place more importance on self-service.

What do Oxylabs offer?

Oxylabs puts a lot of effort into upholding ethical business practices. You can view our discussions on proxy ethicality and KYC criteria. The provider has created a methodology for ethical proxy collection and is an active member of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative. Through initiatives like 4beta, Oxylabs additionally collaborates with governmental and nonprofit institutions.

1) Oxylabs Datacenter Proxies

Oxylabs Datacenter Proxies

Over 2 million IPs from almost 8,000 subnets make up one of the biggest networks of datacenter proxies in the world, which is under the management of Oxylabs. There are two categories of products available for purchase:

Features

The dedicated datacenter proxies from Oxylabs appear remarkable. They can specify cities and states, support SOCKS5, come from more than 150 places, and have almost no restrictions. Their only disadvantage is that there is no rotation, although the provider’s Proxy Rotator add-on can also fix it.

You can scale whichever much you need using a pool of 2 million IP addresses. Additionally, this guarantees significant IP variety, which is always appreciated for preventing ASN- and subnet-related prohibitions.

There are 10,000 IPs in the US, which is the center of the rotating proxies. The majority of Asian countries have 1,000, compared to 2,000 in Western European nations including the UK and France.

 

Because the service is designed for web scraping, it may generate sessions with a set time limit or modify IP addresses with every connection request. There is no SOCKS5 or city-level tracking in contrast to the dedicated proxies.

 

Performance Benchmarks

The rotating proxy pool along with 100 dedicated US proxies from Oxylabs were last put to the test in March 2023.

The rotating proxy network from Oxylabs performed wonderfully.  Even if you scrape nonstop, its infrastructure shouldn’t interfere with your data extraction process. Additionally, these rotating proxies make up the fastest we have tried, outperforming every rival in our yearly market research.

For operations that require a lot of traffic, such as streaming video, a combination of dedicated and rotational IPs should be practical. Similar findings were shown in both products: excellent performance and acceptable latency. The specialized proxies had some advantages, but at this size the difference was insignificant.

2) Oxylabs Residential proxies

Oxylabs Residential proxies

The most residential proxies on the marketplace are under Oxylabs’ control each month; this number is over 100 million. They are obtained through collaborations with other developers of apps and the bandwidth-sharing application Honeygain.

Features

It offers a wide range of features. In addition to picking up any country, you can also specify a state, a city, or even a ZIP code. The latter choice is provided by very few companies. ASN targeting is also an option, although it’s limited to certain clients.

These rely on the endpoint:port format, just as the majority of residential proxy servers.  You can choose to create a sticky session lasting up to 30 minutes or rotate IP addresses with each connection attempt. Customers of Oxylabs in China receive two different ends for better connectivity.

 

Residential proxies will begin to back up the SOCKS5 protocol in the middle of 2023. It is currently restricted to TCP and webpage traffic. One more important detail: With this device, Oxylabs restricts access to Google.

 

Performance Benchmarks 

In March 2023, we last examined Oxylabs’ residential proxies. It is clear from this that Oxylabs can support its marketing promises. In the unprocessed gateway, 3 out of 4 requests provided us with a distinct IP address, and we discovered over 250k American IPs.

Oxylabs managed to generate more than 30,000 IP addresses, including in Australia, wherein proxies are easy to find. Even if this isn’t the best outcome when only considering the unprocessed gateway, Oxylabs, and Smartproxy were first in each individual country pool:

These residential proxies operate amazingly well. The infrastructure of Oxylabs rarely failed us, and its latency for residential locations was exceptional. In our tests, the service was consistently more rapid than any opponent, often by a factor of seven!

All of the tested websites could be easily accessed using the home proxies. They, unfortunately, cannot work with Google, but this is more of a managerial than a technical restriction.

3) Oxylabs Mobile Proxies

Oxylabs Mobile Proxies

On cellular networks, Oxylabs has control over 20 million IPs each month. This may be once more the biggest mobile proxy service that we are aware of. Because it is built on a peer-to-peer network, your links will be forwarded through the equipment of actual individuals.

Features

A great deal of features clients might be interested in are supported by the mobile proxy network. You may further filter proxies by area or ASN (carrier) after choosing any nation. The only thing lacking is city-level targeting, and for those who require it, perhaps ZIP code filtering.

They must rotate since they are peer-to-peer proxies. You may choose whether to create sessions or do it for each connection attempt.  You may employ as many IP addresses simultaneously as you’d like because there is no restriction on parallel connections.

Oxylabs just recently made the SOCKS5 protocol available. It only allows web traffic over TCP, though. It’s also critical to be aware that the provider automatically restricts Google.

Performance Benchmarks

In March 2023, we last examined Oxylabs’ mobile proxies. The mobile proxy pool from Oxylabs is sizable and reliable. The network must be comparatively safe and capable to accommodate even massive tasks because the US has over 70,000 distinct IP addresses. Additionally, Oxylabs has more IPs in significant European cities than any other provider we examined.

The mobile proxy networks had an industry-standard high connection success rate. Additionally, it frequently outpaced the competitors by a factor of many. A close second was Smartproxy. The target benchmarks mirrored the infrastructure outcomes of Oxylabs, therefore they were effective. The only website that gave the provider trouble was Amazon, largely because of timeouts.

4) Web scraping APIs

Web scraping APIs - oxylabs review

Oxylabs furthermore supplies a total of four web scraping APIs in addition to proxy servers. They can go back pages simply by making an API call; the provider handles retries, JavaScript rendering, and anti-bot systems. The all-purpose API from Oxylabs can scrape any page, but it can’t parse data. The other three solutions concentrate on e-commerce, real estate, and search engine websites, respectively.

Features

In the feature section, the scrapers are very piled up. They can be integrated as an API for getting data over a public connection, you can construct task ids to get results anytime you need them (this supports request batching), or you could use the endpoint:port format to operate in place of a proxy server.

As a proxy service, Oxylabs may deliver queries from any nation with the required precision (usually Google), up to the city and coordinate levels. You can alter the base API call with a number of options, such as changing the user agent or requesting that JavaScript be rendered. There isn’t a mechanism to create sessions, pass unique cookies, or communicate with the website, thus the options are limited.

Additionally, there are outcomes for certain targets. Some websites may have several scrapers, such as Amazon or Google. Use an endpoint, for instance, to access Google photos, reviews, or product pages on Amazon. The scrapers can accept a search term or a product ASIN rather than the complete URL because they contain customized settings (such page language for Google).

The variety of web pages that Oxylabs can analyze is one of its advantages. Google and perhaps some Amazon properties are structured around many similar offerings.  However, one supplier keeps parsers up to date for six significant online businesses, and there’s also an AI-based application that tries to organize whatever e-commerce page you toss at it.

The crawler and scheduler are the final two unique features. Without building your own implementation, Oxylabs provides you with the resources to schedule scraping jobs or crawl various levels or URLs. This might result in significant time savings.

Performance Benchmarks

For our study on online scraping APIs, we last put Oxylabs’ scrapers to the test in January 2023. During the testing period, the web scraping API’s success rate was (almost) faultless, with only a small number of queries being unsuccessfully processed. Additionally, it was quick to produce results, especially when data processing was turned on.

 

Amazon also had a 100% success rate. Despite Amazon’s bigger page sizes, Oxylabs’ APIs provided information even faster than while scraping Google. Yet again, the API was successful each and every time, demonstrating that Oxylabs has a well-organized web scraping infrastructure. Response time wasn’t as quick this time, though. The API presumably had to try more than once to reach GraphQL, and starting up browsers in the headless test made things much slower.

 

Pros and Cons of Oxylabs

Pros

  • Large varieties of proxy pools with 195 countries
  • Free trial available
  • Intelligent web scraping methods
  • Wide variety of goods and services

 Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • No direct support through phone
  • Above average pricing

How much does Oxylabs cost?

oxylabs pricing

When it comes to the pricing front, If you require at least 100 IPs in the US, Oxylabs’ cost is actually competitive for a premium provider. Otherwise, up until you scale up, its prices are more than typical. 20% of the proxies can be replaced each quarter without cost thanks to Oxylabs.

A subscription-based pricing structure is used for both dedicated and rotating proxies. After the billing cycle, it renews itself automatically. Rates for Oxylabs’ dedicated service are determined by how many IPs you receive. The least expensive proxies are in the US, whereas prices in other nations might increase by as much as 66%. Additionally, a different rate can be applicable for specific targets. This product doesn’t offer self-service, so its pricing is a little hazy.

Oxylabs currently follows the “Pay as you go” model for residential and mobile proxies, meaning that you only have to pay depending on the amount of traffic you use. The price of their Rotating Proxies starts at $15 and their mobile proxies are priced at $22. You also get monthly payment subscriptions for the following services:

  • Rotating ISP Proxies: $340 per month
  • Shared Data Proxies: $50 per month
  • Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: $180 per month
  • SOCKS5 Proxies: $15 per month

This service is much easier to pick up, as you can go and buy a plan without dealing with salespeople. If you want to know more about the proxy plans and pricing details for their Scraper API and Advance Proxy Tools, visit the Oxylabs official website right away.

Any Alternatives to Oxylabs?

If Oxylabs is in your price range, Smartproxy should be your next stop. It has excellent user experience, comparable performance, and proxy-based features. fewer features, though. The primary rival of Oxylabs in the premium market is Bright Data. Even more functionality, potent proxy tools for management, and comprehensive pre-scraped data sets are also available.

About Smartproxy

Oxylabs Alternative - Smartproxy

Smartproxy is a rotating residential proxy network that gathers and analyzes data from several websites using a network of over 10 million rotating proxies.

It enables you to access even the most limited resources in any nation on the planet without running the risk of being blacklisted or having your IP address compromised. Residential proxies and IPv4 addresses are available through this reliable and speedy internet service in more than 238 nations and territories.

Click Here to read our detailed Smartproxy Review.

About Bright Data

bright data proxy - Alternatives to Oxylab

Bright Data is a proxy service geared toward enterprises and offers businesses a platform for automatic online data collecting that enables them to acquire current data-driven business insights that are especially suited to their firm’s requirements. Bright Data enables these companies to do market research, obtain competition intelligence, and make data-driven decisions with the goal of building and protecting their brands.

Further Read:

Conclusion: Oxylabs Review – Should you go for it?

Due to its hefty beginning fees, bandwidth expenses, and above-average learning curve, Oxylabs is overkill for the majority of small-scale and freelancer projects.

Oxylabs must be at the top of your list of potential proxy providers if you’re looking for one of the finest and plan on taking advantage of all of its features, including a thorough list of various proxy types.

It’s not the type of service that requires you to just put something in your shopping cart, pay for it, and leave with a flimsy instruction booklet. Here, business is being discussed in a delicate, elegant, and direct manner.

You will establish connections with genuine people who will pay attention to your requirements, remember your name, and make an effort to keep you happy. You’ll get fantastic service, but most importantly, you’ll get dependable service.

Both the scraping tool and the proxies are of the highest caliber, To put it briefly, you will be in good hands.

You will be required to pay extra in return. Additionally, some items necessitate experiencing the entire sales process, which is fine for large corporations but may be too much for smaller ones.

With more advanced plans, the pricing seems much more appealing, but at that point, we’re talking about 1TB of data or 5,000 IPs.

It all comes down to two considerations: Will you fully utilize it and would you require the most efficient proxy service on the market? If so, you may have just discovered a proxy provider.

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