Oxylabs claim that their proxies as some of the best you can find in the market, but is that true? Should you consider having Oxylabs as your proxy provider based on what you see on their website? Everything will be revealed in this article.
- Over 100 million IPs worldwide
- Offer Countries/ Cities/ States Geo-Targeting
- 7-day free trial
Oxylabs has been in operation since 2015; it has been able to use the art of the industry and has successfully gained an averagely good foundation. It offers various services, which comprise Residential proxies, Static proxies, and Datacenter proxies. Oxylabs have several features that help improve their quality of service. The following are some of the features offered by Oxylabs.
Oxylabs Pros and Cons
Just like any other proxy provider, Oxylabs have their advantages and shortcomings. When looking for a proxy provider, there are some features that you need to consider, including pricing, customer support, usability, and IP pool size. That said, below are some of the pros and cons we found on Oxylabs.
Why We Like it
- Large IP Pool: They boast of having a collection of 100+ million IPs spread all over the world.
- Offer Free Trial: A seven-day free feature that helps gain the confidence of their new clients.
- Refund Policy: Have a 3-day money-back policy that enables customers to get their money back if they are not satisfied with their services.
- Friendly Dashboard: Their dashboard is easy to navigate; this makes it easy for new users to access their services without having a hard time.
Why We Don't Like it
Now that we know some of the reasons you should consider Oxylabs, let's dive into some of the factors that may make you change your mind. Oxylabs have a couple of disadvantages that may limit their quality of services.
Unfriendly Prices: Their prices are higher compared to other proxy providers with similar services.
Auto-Renew for Subscriptions: They do not give customers a reminder that their subscriptions are expired. They simply initiate an auto-renew, which is annoying.
Spams with Ads: They send many ads that may end up spamming your company’s bug report.
Arrogant Customer Support: Their customer support team is rude and arrogant; they do not offer any typical assistance.
Dishonest: The company is very dishonest especially in their affiliate marketing program, they seldom make any sales.
Oxylabs Overview
If you have lately been researching proxies, you may have come across Oxylabs. They are a proxy provider that has been around since 2015. They base their proxies as some of the best you can find in the market, but is this statement true? Should you consider having Oxylabs as your proxy provider based on what you see on their website?
By doing that, you may end up making the wrong decision because everyone likes to praise themselves and the quality of service they offer. That is why a third party is essential to provide an honest review of the company. The company has a below-average and arrogant customer support team.
Their terms and conditions are also not clear; you may end up paying for unforeseen extra charges. A good example of this is their auto-renew feature, they do not give you a notice about data deletion. They automatically renew the data package and give you no refund if you aren’t interested.
They also have a habit of sending spam ads which may end up spoiling your company’s bug report. This feature together with their high prices makes Oxylabs a bad choice for proxy services.
We tested various parameters and came up with detailed and conclusive reports on the quality of services they offer.
Oxylabs IP Types
Oxylabs offer three types of proxies: Residential proxies, Static proxies, and Datacenter proxies. Unlike Datacenter proxies, Residential proxies are legit and are not easily blocked or banned. Oxylabs has over 30 million Residential proxies by renowned Internet Service Providers(ISP). Their geo-targeting helps you get residential proxies in almost any country or city.
Residential comes with 100% anonymity that ensures your IP address remains completely masked.
Oxylabs also boasts of having over 2 million Datacenter proxies spread across the globe. Their residential proxies are distributed, with countries such as the US, UK, India, Brazil, Turkey, France, Germany, Spain, and Mexico having over one million proxies.
Oxylabs Pricing
Oxylabs have different pricing for their proxy data plans. Each data plan has a different price which is higher than what most other proxy providers offer.
Their datacenter proxies' starting price is $180/ month which comes with 100 datacenter IPs or $1.8/IP. If you purchase a larger data plan, the cost comes down to $1.2 per IP. Their biggest data center package costs $6000/ month and comes with a total of 5000 IPs.
On the other hand, residential proxies are also more expensive compared to what most of their peers offer. The starting price for these residential proxies is $300/ month and comes with 20GB worth of bandwidth. This price comes to $15/ GB, which is higher compared to the average market price.
Generally, the pricing of Oxylabs proxies is costly and may not be favorable for people with a tight budget. If you are in need of a network provider with a cheaper pricing per proxy, then Oxylabs is not an option.
Oxylabs Authentication and Protocols
Oxylabs allow you to log in with username: password or IP whitelist authentication method. They also offer various protocols to ensure their proxies perform well. They have over 2 million dedicated data center IPs that no one shares. They say that these IPs cover more than 82 locations and support HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocols. Since you are charged per IP, you can use these IPs to concurrently target different websites.
They also have more than 100 million residential proxies. These proxies cover all countries in the world. They claim that their residential proxies include mobile IPs as well. However, the service provider doesn't give you an option to choose them specifically for a task. Unlike datacenter proxies, residential proxies do not support the SOCKS5 protocol. They have an auto-rotate option that ensures the IP addresses change every few minutes.
Oxylabs also have static non-rotating residential proxies that come from Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These give you a combination of data center and residential proxies; they also support the SOCKS5 protocol.
Testing Oxylabs
To write an effective review, we carried out a test on Oxylabs proxies. Although they have a high price for their proxies, we could still acquire some and went on with the test.
We tested various features, including data scraping, social media platforms, sneaker sites, and speed. The proxies seemed to work better in data scraping as it scores 87/100 while the lowest score was for Sneaker sites which stood at 80/100. The table below summarizes the whole test.
| Tested for | Data scraping | Social platform | Sneaker sites | Speed test |
| Rating | 87/100 | 82/100 | 80/100 | 85/100 |
For Data Scraping Performance
Average Rating – 87%
We tested the performance of the proxies on various data scraping platforms, including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Aliexpress. The proxies performed well in eBay and Walmart but not so well in Amazon. The low Performance on Amazon may have been due to their strict anti-spam filters and bot-blocking features.
In general, all the proxies performed averagely well, however, we did not get a 90% rating for any of the shopping sites. The results we got from this proxy provider were not as we expected, especially how they claim to have the best data scraping proxies.
Test on Social website
Average Rating – 82%
For the test on social media websites, we got an average rating of 82%. We focused on YouTube and Facebook because they have a history of blocking most proxy providers. These two sites score well relative to other sites.
However, none of the social media platforms got a rating of 90% as expected. That's a far cry from the 99.2% t success rate they claim. The results we get from this test do not match what OxyLabs claims to provide. Relative to other premium proxy providers, Oxylabs doesn't have much of an advantage. So think carefully before your purchase!
Test on Sneaker Site
Rating = 80%
We also carried out a test of the efficiency of Oxylabs proxies on sneaker sites. The test was done on some of the most popular sneaker sites. Generally, the proxies did well but not as we expected as none of them got a rating of more than 82%. As this may not be so badly off, it does not come in handy based on the price they charge.
Having a proxy provider that cops well with sneaker sites is very important. The ratings for Oxylabs show that there is a higher chance of being blocked by sneaker sites. This is only a show of bad faith as they claim to offer the best sneaker site copping proxies.
Speed Test
| Oxylabs Residential Proxy | Ping(ms) | Download (Mbps) | Upload( Mbps) |
| Oxylabs proxy 1 | 345 | 13.54 | 10.73 |
| Oxylabs proxy 2 | 219 | 20.53 | 18.72 |
| Oxylabs proxy 3 | 537 | 5.76 | 3.28 |
| Oxylabs proxy 4 | 281 | 10.69 | 15.74 |
| Oxylabs proxy 5 | 182 | 19.31 | 23.42 |
Rating: 85%
An important factor to consider when choosing a proxy provider is the speed of the offer. Having a proxy provider with a low rate increases the chances of being blocked or banned by sites. This is usually the case, especially for websites with high-speed bot filters.
Despite Oxylabs indicating that they offer a good speed on their proxies, we decided to put that to the test. Some of the seed variables that we tested include Ping, download speed, and upload speed. We undertook five different tests and came up with a decent conclusion.
But results are extremely out of what we expected from Oxylabs. It ranks in the lower middle of the premium proxy providers.
Oxylabs Customer Support
It is essential to have a proxy network provider with responsive customer support. Customer care is essentially what makes a proxy excellent or bad. Oxylabs claim to offer live support and 24/7 customer care services. However, this is not the case. Their claims are false as they can only be reached via email.
Using other options such as social media handles and live chat options will lead to no replies. Additionally, they also take a long time to reply to their emails; this means you won't have the luxury of getting an immediate response to your queries.
Another thing worth noting is the attitude of their support team. The team is extremely arrogant and doesn't offer quality assistance. They claim to offer people with larger proxy plan dedicated account managers but in reality, they don’t give the necessary service as they say.
The Editors Verdict
Although Oxylabs may have some advantages, they are not entirely practical. Their proxies are very expensive, and many people may not be able to afford them. They also do not have a very effective customer support system. In essence, Oxylabs mainly caters to big businesses.
With all that in mind, we would recommend if you need an affordable proxy provider, Oxylabs may not be a good option. You may want to consider other vendors we have tested.
Oxylabs Alternatives
As Oxylabs may not be the best bet for proxy services, there are other alternatives that you may want to try. Bright Data is the best alternative to Oxylabs, they have excellent scraping performance and excellent customer support. Soax also has similar features such as city Geo-targeting but comes at a lower price. Another good alternative is Smart Proxy which has a similar control panel to Oxylabs.
Last Updated on December 12, 2022
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