Most articles about proxies focus on IP pool size and price per GB. That's the wrong question. If you're: building a price monitoring pipeline for your SaaS, collecting competitor data without getting blocked, or feeding an AI agent with live web data at scale, The proxy you choose determines whether your system works reliably in production — not just in a demo. The Real Problem With Proxy Comparisons Here's what typically happens. A developer finds a proxy provider, signs up, runs a few test requests, sees clean responses. Everything looks fine. Ships it. Then, two weeks later: The tool hits a Cloudflare Turnstile that the proxy can't bypass The JS-rendered page returns empty HTML because the headless browser wasn't configured The credit burn is 25x higher than the advertised price because of hidden multipliers Rate limits kick in at the worst possible moment The proxy worked in testing. It failed in production. That's the gap this guide addresses. How to Read This Comparison Proxy and scraping API providers are not interchangeable. There are two fundamentally different categories: Proxy-first providers (Decodo, Evomi) give you raw IP infrastructure. You bring your own scraper, manage rotation logic, handle retries, and deal with anti-bot detection yourself. Lower cost per GB. Higher engineering overhead. Scraping API providers (ZenRows, Scrapfly, Scrape.do) handle everything behind a single endpoint — proxies, JS rendering, anti-bot bypass, retries. You send a URL and receive clean HTML. Higher cost per request. Zero infrastructure to manage. Neither is better. The right choice depends on whether your bottleneck is budget or engineering time. Each provider here is evaluated on: Anti-bot performance — Cloudflare, DataDome, Akamai bypass Pricing transparency — what you actually pay, not the headline number Developer experience — setup speed, Python integration, documentation quality Free tier honesty — what it actually lets you test Best-fit use case — where it genuinely wins 1. ZenRows — Best for All-in-One Anti-Bot Bypass ZenRows is a universal scraping API that bundles proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and anti-bot bypass into a single endpoint. Instead of managing separate tools for proxies, headless browsers, and CAPTCHA solvers, you configure one request. The architecture is simple: you send a URL with parameters specifying what you need, and ZenRows routes it through the right infrastructure. Basic pages use datacenter IPs. Protected pages automatically trigger residential proxies and browser rendering. The decision happens server-side. Here's what a basic integration looks like: import requests url = " https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XYZ " params = { " apikey " : " YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY " , " url " : url , " js_render " : " true " , # Trigger headless Chrome " premium_proxy " : " true " , # Use residential IPs " autoparse " : " true " , # Return structured data } response = requests . get ( " https://api.zenrows.com/v1/ " , params = params ) print ( response . text ) From here you can build: Price monitoring pipelines for e-commerce sites Competitor intelligence scrapers for SaaS companies Lead generation tools that bypass login pages AI training data collectors from protected domains The Pricing Reality ZenRows uses a multiplier system that's worth understanding before you commit. The base rate looks competitive — but the actual cost depends on what the target site requires: Request type Credits multiplier Basic (datacenter, no JS) 1x JS rendering only 5x Premium proxies only 10x Both (most protected sites) 25x On the Business 300 plan ($299.99/month): a basic request costs $0.10/1K, but a fully protected request costs $2.50/1K . On many real-world targets (Amazon, LinkedIn, major e-commerce), the 25x multiplier applies automatically with no way to disable it. This isn't a dealbreaker — it's just what production scraping costs. The issue is when teams budget based on the headline $0.10 figure and get surprised by the real invoice. Plan Price Basic requests Protected requests Concurrent Free trial $0 1,000 40 5 Developer $69.99/mo 250K 10K 20 Startup $129.99/mo 1M 40K 50 Business $299.99/mo 12.5M 480K 100 Annual discount: 10% off. Pros: 55M+ residential IPs across 50+ geolocations Scraping Browser with native Puppeteer and Playwright support Integrates with n8n, Zapier, and Make natively Only charges for successful requests (404s count as success) Supports CSS selector extraction — returns structured data, not raw HTML Cons: $69.99/month entry point is the highest on this list 25x multiplier on protected sites creates unpredictable billing 10K protected requests on Developer plan is very tight for production testing Success rate variance: 56% on some benchmarks, 92% on others — target-dependent Best for: Teams that want a single API to handle everything and prioritize shipping speed over cost optimization. Particularly strong for browser automation workflows using Puppeteer or Playwright. 👉 Start your ZenRows free trial here — 1,000 free requests, no credit card required. 2. Scrapfly — Best for High-Stakes Anti-Bot Targets Scrapfly is a French scraping API that consistently ranks first in independent benchmarks for anti-bot bypass. On Scrapeway's bi-weekly benchmark across 11 popular targets, Scrapfly holds a 98.8% success rate — the highest measured figure in the market. What makes it technically distinctive is ASP (Anti-Scraping Protection) — a proprietary bypass engine built around two in-house tools: Curlium (byte-perfect Chrome on the wire) and Scrapium (an anti-detect Chromium patched at the C++ level). When you enable asp=True , Scrapfly detects the active anti-bot vendor, builds a coherent browser fingerprint, solves the challenge, and replays the request transparently. Failed scrapes — including bot blocks and upstream errors — are not billed, unless your failed traffic exceeds 30% of requests within a one-hour window. from scrapfly import ScrapflyClient , ScrapeConfig client = ScrapflyClient ( key = " YOUR_API_KEY " ) result = client . scrape ( ScrapeConfig ( url = " https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/ " , asp = True , # Anti-bot bypass engine render_js = True , # Headless Chrome rendering proxy_pool = " public_residential_pool " , # Route through residential IPs country = " us " , # Geo-target cache = True , # Cache identical requests )) print ( result . result . content ) From here you can build: Real estate data pipelines for Zillow, Redfin, and similar protected sites Price trackers for Amazon and heavily protected e-commerce AI training data collectors with LangChain and LlamaIndex (native integrations) Screenshot pipelines and PDF export workflows The Credit Math Scrapfly's credit system is flexible but requires attention: Request type Credits cost HTTP (datacenter) 1 credit Residential proxy 25 credits + JS rendering +5 credits + ASP bypass +10 credits Max per protected request 30 credits On the Discovery plan ($30/month, 200K credits): 200K ÷ 30 = ~6,666 fully protected requests. Not much. On the Pro plan (~$100/month, 1M credits): ~33,333 protected requests — workable for moderate production use. The other important detail: credits don't roll over between months, and there are no annual plans. If your usage is variable, that's a real cost consideration. Plan Price Credits/month Concurrent Free $0 1,000 — Discovery $30/mo 200,000 5 Pro ~$100/mo 1,000,000 20 Startup ~$250/mo 3,000,000 25 Enterprise Custom Custom Custom Pros: 98.8% success rate — #1 in Scrapeway's independent benchmark SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001 + GDPR certified — the most complete compliance posture here Native integrations with LangChain, LlamaIndex, n8n, Zapier, Make AI extraction included: natural-language instructions return structured JSON Screenshot API, Extraction API, and Crawler API included under same key Cons: Credit math complexity: easy to miscalculate actual cost before testing Discovery plan has only 5 concurrent requests — hits a ceiling fast No annual pricing or rollover credits The jump from Discovery ($30) to Pro (~$100) has no intermediate tier One user reported mid-contract price doubling — verify terms before scaling Best for: Teams scraping heavily protected targets where success rate is the primary constraint — DataDome, PerimeterX, Kasada-protected sites. Also the strongest option for AI-powered extraction workflows. 3. Decodo — Best Proxy Infrastructure for Teams Scaling Beyond Basics Decodo (formerly Smartproxy, rebranded 2025) is the most complete proxy-first platform on this list. Where ZenRows and Scrapfly handle everything through a managed API, Decodo gives you raw infrastructure — 125M+ ethically sourced IPs across residential, mobile, ISP, and datacenter pools — plus a Web Scraping API as a secondary product. The architecture difference matters. If you already have a scraper and need reliable IP infrastructure behind it, Decodo is the cleaner choice. If you need anti-bot bypass handled automatically, ZenRows or Scrapfly will serve you better. The residential proxy performance data is compelling: 99.86% success rate, 0.54s latency (Proxyway benchmark, fastest among all providers tested). Decodo consistently wins on raw proxy speed. Here's how the residential proxy integration works in Python: import requests proxy_url = " http://user:password@gate.decodo.com:7000 " proxies = { " http " : proxy_url , " https " : proxy_url , } response = requests . get ( " https://example.com/product-page " , proxies = proxies , timeout = 30 , ) print ( response . status_code ) print ( response . text [: 500 ]) For teams who want to skip the proxy configuration and use the Scraping API instead: import requests payload = { " url " : " https://example.com " , " headless " : " html " , # JS rendering } response = requests . post ( " https://scraper-api.decodo.com/v2/scrape " , json = payload , auth = ( " YOUR_USERNAME " , " YOUR_PASSWORD " ), ) print ( response . json ()) From here you can build: Price monitoring systems with geo-targeted residential IPs Multi-account management tools with sticky session support SEO rank trackers pulling localized SERP results by city Data pipelines that combine raw proxies with the Web Scraping API Pricing — Residential Proxies: Volume Price/GB Pay as you go ~$7/GB 3 GB ~$4/GB 25 GB (most popular) ~$2.20/GB 100+ GB from $2/GB Free trial: 100MB / 3 days. Card required, no charge upfront. Pricing — Web Scraping API: Tier Price/1K requests Core $0.32/1K Advanced $0.88/1K Pros: 125M+ IPs in 195+ countries — one of the largest pools on the market 99.86% success rate and 0.54s latency on residential proxies (Proxyway #1) Proxies + Web Scraping API + SERP API + eCommerce API under one dashboard Native n8n integration (launched 2026) Pay-as-you-go available with no monthly commitment via Wallet 130K+ clients; robust documentation and 24/7 live support Cons: Web Scraping API success rate (~85.88%) trails Scrapfly and Scrape.do significantly For Cloudflare/DataDome/Kasada bypass, the managed APIs above outperform Pay-as-you-go residential costs ~$7/GB — significantly higher than subscription tiers Free trial is only 100MB, which is too limited to properly evaluate production behavior Best for: Teams who need the best raw proxy infrastructure at a competitive price — price monitoring, SEO tracking, account management, geo-targeted data collection. Also the right choice when you need a single vendor for multiple proxy types. 👉 Try Decodo free for 3 days — 100MB residential traffic, no upfront charge. 4. Evomi — Best Budget Proxy for Teams That Manage Their Own Scraper Evomi is a Swiss proxy provider with the lowest published residential proxy price on the market: $0.49/GB on the Core plan . The proxies are ethically sourced from volunteer nodes, the company is GDPR-compliant by Swiss jurisdiction, and every plan includes a free trial without requiring a credit card. It's the right choice for one specific situation: you already have a scraper that works, you're not hitting heavy anti-bot defenses, and you need to drive down your proxy cost. import requests # Evomi rotating residential proxy proxy_url = " http://user:password@resi.evomi.com:1000 " proxies = { " http " : proxy_url , " https " : proxy_url , } # Sticky session — same IP for up to 120 minutes # proxy_url = "http://user-country-us-session-abc123:password@resi.evomi.com:1001" response = requests . get ( " https://example.com " , proxies = proxies , timeout = 20 , ) print ( response . status_code ) From here you can build: Price scrapers for lightly protected e-commerce sites Content aggregators with basic geo-targeting needs Research tools that require rotating IPs across 195+ countries Data pipelines where cost per GB matters more than bypass capability The Pricing Trap Worth Knowing Evomi's $0.49/GB is the base rate on the Core plan — without any targeting filters. The moment you add geo-targeting at the city or ASN level, multipliers apply. At the maximum multiplier, the effective cost can reach $7.35/GB — comparable to premium providers and higher than Decodo's pay-as-you-go rate. The Business plan has lower multipliers and is the more realistic option for teams that need consistent targeting. Product Base price Residential proxies $0.49/GB (Core, 100GB min) Datacenter proxies $0.30/GB Mobile proxies $2.20/GB Static ISP proxies $1.00/IP Evomi also includes Evomium — a free antidetect browser — with every plan. For teams managing multiple accounts alongside scraping workflows, this is a meaningful addition. Pros: Cheapest published residential rate: $0.49/GB at volume without targeting filters Free trial with no credit card required Ethically sourced IPs (volunteer nodes, Swiss compliance) HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 support; sticky sessions up to 120 minutes 195+ countries, city + ASN + ZIP targeting options Evomium antidetect browser included free Cons: IP pool is small: 5M residential IPs vs 125M for Decodo — impacts quality on high-trust targets Core plan multipliers for targeting can reach 15x, eliminating the price advantage No Scraping API — you manage all anti-bot handling yourself Less documentation and community support than larger providers Performance can degrade on heavily protected targets without dedicated bypass tooling Best for: Teams with existing scrapers targeting unprotected or lightly protected sites, where cost per GB is the primary constraint and geo-targeting requirements are basic. 5. Scrape.do — Best Balance of Speed, Reliability, and Transparent Pricing Scrape.do is a scraping API that consistently ranks second in independent benchmarks — 98.19% success rate, 4.7s average response time — at a lower entry price than most competitors. What distinguishes it from ZenRows and Scrapfly is the pricing model. Parameters are opt-in by default. Residential proxies, JS rendering, and premium features only activate when you explicitly enable them. There are no automatic multipliers on certain domains, no forced feature combinations. You pay for what you turn on. That's a meaningful operational difference. Teams who've been burned by ZenRows' automatic 25x multiplier on certain targets, or Scrapfly's 30-credit ceiling per request, consistently cite Scrape.do's pricing transparency as the reason they switched. import requests url = " https://api.scrape.do " params = { " token " : " YOUR_SCRAPE_DO_TOKEN " , " url " : " https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09XYZ " , " render " : " true " , # Enable JS rendering (opt-in) " super " : " true " , # Enable residential proxies (opt-in) " geoCode " : " us " , # Geo-target (opt-in) " output " : " markdown " , # Return LLM-ready markdown } response = requests . get ( url , params = params ) print ( response . text ) For teams feeding scraped data into AI pipelines, the output=markdown parameter is particularly useful — it returns clean, structured text that feeds directly into LLM context without HTML parsing overhead. From here you can build: Price tracking systems with predictable monthly costs AI data collectors that feed into LangChain or similar pipelines Competitive intelligence tools with geo-targeted requests High-volume scrapers where billing clarity is operationally important Pricing: Plan Price Requests Price/1K Free $0 1,000 — Starter $29/mo 250K $0.12/1K Business $99/mo 1.5M $0.07/1K Enterprise Custom Custom Custom No multipliers. All parameters are opt-in. Failed requests are not billed. Pros: 98.19% success rate — second only to Scrapfly across independent benchmarks 4.7s average response time — fastest among all scraping APIs tested Transparent opt-in pricing: no automatic feature triggers, no surprise multipliers $29/month entry point — most accessible serious scraping API on the list Markdown output mode for LLM-ready data without post-processing No credit card required for the 1,000 free credits Cons: Smaller ecosystem than ZenRows or Scrapfly (less third-party documentation) No dedicated proxy product — can't separate raw IP access from the managed API Brand recognition lower than competitors — fewer community tutorials Less feature richness for complex browser automation scenarios vs ZenRows Best for: Teams that prioritize reliability + speed + budget predictability. The strongest entry point for scraping projects where you want production-grade performance without the financial risk of hidden multipliers. 👉 Start with Scrape.do — 1,000 free credits, no credit card Quick Comparison Table ZenRows Scrapfly Decodo Evomi Scrape.do Type Scraping API Scraping API Proxy + API Proxy only Scraping API Entry price $69.99/mo $30/mo $2.20/GB $0.49/GB $29/mo Free tier 1K requests 1K credits 100MB/3d ✅ no card 1K credits Success rate 56–92% 98.8% 85.88% N/A 98.19% Response time 10–11s 8.1s 0.54s N/A 4.7s IP pool 55M+ Managed 125M+ 5M Managed JS rendering ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ Anti-bot bypass ✅ Strong ✅ #1 Basic ❌ ✅ Strong Pricing traps ⚠️ 25x multiplier ⚠️ Credit math ✅ Transparent ⚠️ Targeting filters ✅ Opt-in only Python SDK ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ n8n / Zapier ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ The Decision Framework The right tool depends on one question: where is your actual bottleneck? If your bottleneck is... Use this Anti-bot bypass on the hardest targets Scrapfly Billing predictability at scale Scrape.do All-in-one with browser automation ZenRows Raw proxy infrastructure, lowest latency Decodo Cost per GB on unprotected sites Evomi A few additional rules worth internalizing: Don't mix categories. Using a scraping API when you need a raw proxy (or vice versa) creates unnecessary cost. If you already manage your own scraper and just need rotating IPs, Decodo or Evomi will outperform ZenRows or Scrapfly on price. Test on your actual targets. Benchmark success rates are averages across a fixed set of test sites. Your target might be in the 21% success group or the 99% group depending on which anti-bot vendor it uses. Always run a cost estimate against your real URLs before committing to a plan. The free tier is a test, not a tier. Every provider on this list offers a free starting point. Use it specifically to test your actual target sites — not to build a production pipeline. The behavior on heavily protected targets often diverges significantly from what you see on the demo endpoints. FAQs What's the difference between a proxy and a scraping API? A proxy is a raw IP you route your own requests through. You handle everything: rotation, headers, retry logic, JS rendering, CAPTCHA solving. A scraping API is a managed service that handles all of that behind a single endpoint. Proxies are cheaper per GB; scraping APIs save engineering time and handle anti-bot bypass automatically. Which option has the best free tier? Scrape.do offers 1,000 free credits with no credit card required. ZenRows gives 1,000 requests on a 14-day trial. Scrapfly gives 1,000 credits with no expiry. Evomi has a free trial for residential proxies with no card needed. Decodo offers 100MB for 3 days with card verification (no charge). Can I use these with Python? Yes, all five work with Python's requests library. Scrapfly also has a dedicated SDK ( pip install scrapfly-sdk ) with retry logic built in. ZenRows offers a Python SDK as well. Decodo and Evomi work through standard proxy authentication. What's the actual cost for scraping Amazon at scale? At 100K requests/month on heavily protected targets like Amazon: Scrapfly (~30 credits/request on $100 Pro plan) = ~3,333 requests before overage. Scrape.do (opt-in only, ~$0.12/1K on Starter) = roughly $12 for 100K basic requests, more if you enable all features. ZenRows (25x multiplier active) = $0.10 × 25 × 100 = $250 on Business plan. Run the math on your actual use case before choosing. Do these work with AI agents and LLMs? Yes. Scrapfly has native integrations with LangChain and LlamaIndex. ZenRows connects to n8n, Zapier, and Make. Scrape.do returns markdown output that feeds directly into LLM context. For MCP-based agent workflows, all five expose REST APIs that can be wrapped as MCP tools. Final Thoughts Most web scraping projects fail not because the code is wrong, but because the data layer wasn't production-tested. The proxy choice determines whether your system hits a 98% success rate or a 55% success rate. Whether your monthly bill is what you budgeted or five times that. Whether your team is debugging proxy failures at 2am or shipping features. If you need one place to start: Scrape.do for reliable, predictable scraping at the best entry price. Decodo if you need raw proxy infrastructure at scale. Scrapfly if success rate on the hardest targets is non-negotiable. Test on your actual targets. Budget based on the real multipliers, not the headline rate. Ship something that works in production. Looking for technical content for your company? I can help — LinkedIn · kevinmenesesgonzalez@gmail.com