Best Proxy Services for Web Scraping in 2026: Residential vs Datacenter vs Rotating

Web scraping at scale requires proxies. Without them, you'll hit IP bans, CAPTCHAs, and rate limits within minutes. But the proxy market in 2026 is confusing — residential, datacenter, rotating, managed APIs — what actually works? I've tested dozens of proxy providers over the past year. Here's a no-BS breakdown of what works, what doesn't, and how to choose. The Three Proxy Tiers Explained 1. Residential Proxies Residential proxies route your requests through real consumer IP addresses assigned by ISPs. To the target website, your request looks like it's coming from a regular home user. Best for: Sites with aggressive anti-bot detection (social media, e-commerce, search engines) Pros: Extremely hard to detect and block Access geo-restricted content naturally High success rates on tough targets Cons: Most expensive tier Slower than datacenter proxies Quality varies wildly between providers Top residential providers: ThorData — My go-to for affordable residential proxies. They offer rot