Top 5 IPRoyal Alternatives & Competitors in 2023

IPRoyal is a proxy service provider that offers affordable anonymous and premium proxies to cater to various needs. Despite its appeal to budget-conscious consumers, every product has room for improvement, including IPRoyal. Some users have cited certain limitations in their services, fueling the search for alternative proxy service providers capable of addressing these concerns and offering a more comprehensive solution.

In this article, we will go through the potential cons for IPRoyal and compare it to the top competitors in the market to assist you in making an informed decision that aligns with your specific needs.

Comparison of IPRoyal and 5 alternatives

Vendors	Residential	Datacenter	Mobile	ISP	Scraping solutions	Free trial	PAYG plan
IPRoyal	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
Bright Data	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	7-day	✅
Smartproxy	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	14-day money-back	✅
Oxylabs	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	7-day	✅
NetNut	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	7-day	❌
SOAX	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	3-day trial for $1.99	❌

We identified IPRoyal competitors based on their employee count and reviews on review platforms. Vendors are filtered based on these verifiable criteria:

• 20+ employees on Linkedin
• 5+ reviews on review sites such as G2, Trustradius, and Capterra.

We used a number of employees and B2B peer reviews in our filtering since they are correlated with a company’s success in the market.

Figure 1: Market presence of top proxy service providers. The total number of B2B reviews of all proxy providers obtained from major B2B review platforms (like G2, Trustradius and Capterra).

IPRoyal overview

IPRoyal is a proxy service provider that offers various types of proxies for individuals and businesses, including datacenter, residential, mobile and ISP proxies. The proxy provider offers more affordable pricing structures, making it accessible especially for individuals and or businesses that have a limited budget.

Key features of IPRoyal proxy servers: 

• Rotating and sticky sessions: Offers rotating and static residential IP addresses. Sticky IP addresses allow users to maintain the same IP for a certain period of time. It is useful for interacting with websites that require a consistent IP for the duration of time. Rotating residential IPs enable users to change their IP addresses for each connection request or after a certain period of time. Using rotating IPs reduces the likelihood of being flagged as automated activity by the website you are scraping from.
• Dedicated IPs: Also known as private IPs. They are used only by a single user for secure and reliable web access. IPRoyal offers dedicated datacenter proxies, providing constant and stable access. 
• Instant IP changes & auto-rotation options: Instant IP changes allow users to rotate their IP addresses on-demand instantly. Auto-rotation changes the user’s IP at regular intervals. 
• SOCKS5 support: Unlike HTTP proxies, SOCKS5 proxies can handle different types of traffic such as HTTP, FTP, and SMTP. 
• City/state targeting: Allows users to select a proxy server located in a specific city or state, particularly useful for various use cases including localized content access, ad verification, and localized testing.  

IPRoyal residential proxies: Detailed review

Figure 2: IPRoyal residential proxies price comparison with its competitors

Key features:

• Offers 2M+ residential IPs
• Extensive coverage across over 195 countries including country, state, and city-level targeting
• Offers rotating and sticky sessions support
• Supports SOCKS5 protocol
• Provides options for automatic proxy rotation at intervals 1, 10, or 30 minutes.

Pricing details:

• Starting price: $7.00 per GB
• There is no requirement for a contract.
• Free trial: N/A

IPRoyal datacenter proxies: Detailed review

Figure 3: IPRoyal datacenter proxies price comparison with its competitors

Key features:

• Offers  datacenter proxies that support HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols 
• Covers 30 countries
• Provides dedicated datacenter IPs

Pricing details: 

• Starting from: $1.39 per proxy

IPRoyal mobile proxies: Detailed review

Key features: 

• Provides 1M+ mobile IPs from a 5G/4G/3G residential cellular network pool
• Supports country, city, zip code, carrier & ASN targeting
• Rotates mobile IPs at specified intervals. The minimum interval for IP rotation is 6 minutes, available with 30-, 60-, and 90-day plans. 

Pricing details: 

• Starting from: $7 per day
• Free trial: They offer 1-Day proxy testing services at a minimum cost instead of free trial. You can test their mobile IPs without any restrictions. 

Shortcomings of IPRoyal proxy services

We analyzed the customer review data from public B2B review sources and noticed a few negative points for IPRoyal: 

• Poor customer service: Some user reviews on G2 mention that they had trouble getting IPRoyal customer service to solve their problems quickly (See figure 4).  

Figure 4: A reviewer on G2 mentioning some disadvantages of IPRoyal customer support

Source: G2¹

• Not offering free trial: According to the information provided on the vendor’s website, IPRoyal does not provide a free trial for their proxy services. Instead, they present an alternative, offering a 1-day proxy testing service at a minimum cost.
• Lack of diversity of IPs: IPRoyal may not have a diverse and extensive pool of IP addresses, particularly for large-scale operations.

1. Bright Data

Bright Data is one of the top proxy service providers, offering a wide variety of proxy servers and web scraping services for data collection purposes. 

Pros:

• Offers a wider range of web scraping services, including  scrapers, scraping APIs, and proxy servers. 
• Has a large IP pool, 72 million+ real residential IPs and 770,000+ datacenter IPs. 
• Covers all proxy types such as residential, ISP, mobile, and datacenter.
• Proxies can be used with all programming languages including React, JavaScript, Python, and Go. 

Figure 5: User review explaining pros and cons of Bright Data services on G2

Source: G2²

Cons: 

• Might be expensive for small businesses and individual users. 

Figure 6: User review discussing benefits and difficulties using Bright Data solutions on Capterra

Source: Capterra³

Pricing details: 

• You’re charged based on the total amount of data sent through the proxy service. 
• Offers 7-day free trial for proxy and web scraping solutions. 
• Offers a Pay-As-You-Go plan for all proxies, Web Unlocker, Web Scraper IDEs, and SERP API. 

2. Smartproxy

Smartproxy provides four types of proxy networks: residential, ISP, mobile, and datacenter, each available in regular and enterprise packages. They also offer data collection solutions including no-code web scraping tools, and web scraping APIs. 

Pros: 

• Targets specific country, city, or US state
• Offers automatic IP rotation to ensure a seamless browsing or scraping experience
• Maintains the same IP address for up to 30 minutes
• The most frequently highlighted advantage of Smartproxy products is the simplicity of using their proxy services along with their good customer support.

Figure 7: A reviewer on G2 commenting about their experience with Smartproxy

Source: G2⁴

Cons: 

• Looking at customer feedback on sites like G2, some customers have shared their disappointment, highlighting issues with using the dashboard.

Figure 8: A reviewer discussing issues they have with Smartproxy proxy management dashboard

Source: G2⁵

Pricing details: 

• Offers sequential and non-sequential IP addresses for dedicated proxy servers.
• 14 day money-back guarantee

3. Oxylabs

Oxylabs is a web data collection platform that provides proxies and web scraping solutions such as scrapers and APIs. The provider offers a diverse proxy network that includes static, rotating, dedicated, and shared proxy servers.

Pros: 

• The aspect most often praised about Oxylabs is its customer service.

Figure 9: A reviewer on G2 commenting about their experience with Oxylabs’ customer service

Source: G2⁶

• Offers diverse geographic locations and a large IP pool like Bright Data and Smartproxy. Oxylabs’ proxy network includes 100M residential; 29K shared datacenter proxy pool, 2M dedicated datacenter IPs, and 20M mobile IPs. 
• State, city and ASN targeting

Cons:

Based on our analysis of user reviews and the vendor’s claims, Oxylabs has the following disadvantages:

• Compared to IPRoyal, choosing a proxy provider with a large IP pool like Oxylabs could prove to be a costlier alternative for cost-sensitive customers.
• One of the most frequently mentioned drawbacks of Oxylabs proxy services, based on customer reviews on G2, pertains to the proxy management dashboard. Customers have expressed disappointment regarding the usability and functionality of the dashboard. 

Figure 10: User review explaining pros and cons of Oxylabs services on G2

Source: ⁷

Pricing details:  

• Offers regular (individuals or small to medium-sized businesses) and enterprise (large businesses ) pricing plans .
• 7-day free trial
• Pay as you go option is available for mobile and residential proxies. 

4. NetNut

NetNut offers 4 types of proxies (residential, ISP, datacenter and mobile)  and web scraping solutions, including social media scraper and SERP scraper API. 

Pros:

• Offers rotating (52M) and static (1M) residential IPs.
• Supports HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 protocols 
• Enables users to target cities and states while scraping data. 
• Provides shared and private datacenter IPs 

Cons:

The speed of NetNut proxies is the most mentioned shortcoming of NetNut proxy network. However, it is important to note that the speed of a proxy server can be influenced by different factors such as the target website’s server speed.

Figure 11: A reviewer on G2 mentioning some disadvantages of NetNut proxy network

Source: G2⁸

Pricing details: 

• 7-day free trial
• Caters to a wide range of customers, from individuals to large enterprises. 

5. SOAX

SOAX is a proxy service provider that offers mobile and residential proxies for different purposes, such as data collection and social media management. The provider also provides rotating US ISP proxies with extended IP sessions. SOAX provides an 8.5M+ proxy IP pool, including residential, ISP, and mobile network.

Pros:

• Offers automatic proxy rotation and sticky sessions
• Supports HTTP, SOCKS5, and UDP 

Cons: 

Some customers on G2 have highlighted the starting package of 15 GB as a problem. They find the 15 GB starting package too large for their needs . Pay-as-you-go or per GB plans may be cost-effective for users who do not require a large amount of data. 

Figure 12: User review explaining pros and cons of NetNut proxy servers on G2

Source: G2⁹ ”NetNut Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023

Pricing details: 

• Provides users with crypto (bitcoin) payment options for proxies. 
• 3-day trial for $1.99

Further reading

For a more in-depth understanding of proxy server types and a data-driven comparison of proxy providers, fell free to read our whitepaper:

Proxy Service Selection Guide

For guidance to choose the right tool, go through data-driven list of proxy services, and reach out to us:

Find the Right Vendors

1. ”IPRoyal Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
2. ”Bright Data Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
3. ”Bright Data Reviews & Product Details“, Capterra, Retrieved September 27, 2023
4. ”Smartproxy Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
5. ”Smartproxy Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
6. ”Oxylabs Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
7. ”Oxylabs Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023
8. ”Netnut Reviews & Product Details“, G2, Retrieved September 27, 2023