Best Oxylabs Alternatives for Web Scraping and AI Agents
Oxylabs is one of the most established proxy providers, with a large residential pool and a solid reputation in the web scraping space. It is not the right fit for every team.
The reasons people go looking for an alternative cluster into four: the cost of bandwidth-metered billing at scale (Oxylabs lists residential proxies from $6/GB on its public pricing page, checked 4 August 2026), no first-class support for agentic multi-step workflows, the architectural split between a rented exit IP and the browser that actually sends the request, and session handling that stops at sticky IPs.
Below we evaluate five alternatives, each with a different strength profile. Every price quoted is read from the vendor's own public pricing page on 4 August 2026. Rate cards move without notice, so confirm before you budget.
Archonum
Intelligence infrastructure for AI agents, built on real dedicated smartphones. Where a proxy network rents you an exit IP and runs your browser somewhere else, Archonum runs Chrome on the handset that owns the IP, so the browser, the operating system, and the network all belong to one device. Built for AI agent workflows that need multi-step, stateful web interactions.
Pricing: Self-serve plans from $24.99/month (Developer, 25 concurrent) to $299.99/month (Scale, 250 concurrent), plus metered browser runtime at $0.09-$0.12/hour and bandwidth at $4.00-$5.00/GB. Enterprise adds custom SLA, dedicated device pools, and SSO. Source: archonum.com/#pricing, checked 4 August 2026.
- Native device fingerprints, because the fingerprint is not synthesised: Chrome is really running on an Android phone
- One network hop between the browser and the target
- Full session persistence, so state survives across a multi-step workflow
- 250,000+ real consumer smartphones across 175+ countries
- Dedicated devices rather than a shared pool, so no other customer's traffic shares your handset
- Drop-in for existing Playwright and Puppeteer scripts, no SDK and no rewrite
- Coverage spans 175+ countries, fewer locations than the largest proxy networks advertise
- Newer provider, so less community content and third-party documentation
- Capacity is bound to physical hardware, which makes provisioning slower than spinning up proxy ports
- Plan fee plus metered runtime and bandwidth is harder to forecast than a single per-GB rate
Bright Data
One of the largest proxy networks by pool size; its own pricing page advertises 400M+ monthly residential IPs (brightdata.com, checked 4 August 2026). Sells residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies alongside Scraping Browser, Web Unlocker, and a dataset marketplace. The broadest product catalogue in the traditional proxy space.
Pricing: Bandwidth-metered per GB for residential and datacenter proxies, with volume discounts; Scraping Browser bills per page load. Bright Data does not publish a single rate card and its rates move, so read brightdata.com/pricing before budgeting.
- Very large residential pool: 400M+ monthly IPs advertised (brightdata.com, 4 August 2026)
- Residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile pools under one account
- Comprehensive product suite (proxies, scraping browser, datasets)
- Well-documented APIs and SDKs
- Self-serve dashboard with instant access
- Active community and extensive knowledge base
- Shared residential IPs: the same exit addresses are used by other customers
- Requests route through a gateway and then a peer device, so your browser and your exit IP are never the same machine
- Complex pricing spread across many product lines
- Residential IPs come from users of SDK-embedded apps, a sourcing model some procurement teams will not approve
- Not designed for AI agent integration
Massive
Massive provides residential proxy infrastructure sourced through an SDK that application developers embed in their software. Users consent to share bandwidth in exchange for using the app for free. Positioned as a cost-effective option with a straightforward API.
Pricing: Developer plans run from $80/month for 10 GB ($8/GB) to $490/month for 100 GB ($4.90/GB), with unused bandwidth rolling over to the next period. Source: joinmassive.com/pricing, checked 4 August 2026.
- Per-GB rate falls with commitment, to $4.90/GB on the 100 GB plan (joinmassive.com, 4 August 2026)
- Unused bandwidth rolls over to the next billing period
- Simple API with quick integration
- Vendor advertises consumer devices in 195+ countries (joinmassive.com, 4 August 2026)
- Transparent bandwidth-sharing model
- Pool size is not published, so coverage depth is hard to verify before a trial
- Limited advanced features: no scraping browser, no built-in parsing
- Less mature documentation and support
- No session persistence beyond basic sticky sessions
Nimbleway
Nimbleway (formerly Nimble) offers a web access platform that combines proxy infrastructure with AI-assisted data structuring. Its Nimble Browser renders JavaScript and handles anti-bot challenges on your behalf. The product delivers structured data rather than raw HTML.
Pricing: Request-based rather than bandwidth-based. Pay-as-you-go starts around $1.00-$1.45 per 1,000 URLs for extraction and $5 per 1,000 search inputs; managed plans run $2,500/month (Startup, 350K page credits) to $15,000/month (Professional), billed annually. Source: nimbleway.com/pricing, checked 4 August 2026.
- Data structuring is done for you, which removes parser maintenance
- Built-in JavaScript rendering and anti-bot handling
- Request-based pricing is easier to forecast than bandwidth-based pricing
- Clean API design with structured JSON responses
- Managed plans include MCP integration and custom agent ETL
- Managed plans start at $2,500/month billed annually, a high floor for small workloads (nimbleway.com, 4 August 2026)
- Less flexibility, because the platform decides how to handle each request
- Proxy pool size is not published
- Limited support for custom scraping logic
- No session-level control for multi-step agent workflows
Smartproxy (now Decodo)
Smartproxy has rebranded as Decodo; the site now runs at decodo.com and its footer reads "formerly smartproxy.com" (checked 4 August 2026). It offers residential, datacenter, and ISP proxies with a focus on self-serve accessibility, plus scraping APIs for common targets. A lower barrier to entry than the enterprise providers.
Pricing: Residential proxies at $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, falling to $2.75/GB on the 100 GB plan ($275/month); the entry 3 GB plan is $11.25. Source: decodo.com/pricing, checked 4 August 2026.
- Lowest published residential per-GB rate of the five, at $2.75/GB on the 100 GB plan (decodo.com, 4 August 2026)
- Clean, intuitive dashboard and quick onboarding
- Published per-GB rate card with no quote required
- Good documentation and responsive support
- Scraping APIs for Amazon, Google, and other common targets
- 3-day trial with 100 MB, plus a 14-day money-back option on a first purchase (decodo.com, 4 August 2026)
- Smaller pool than the largest networks advertise: 115M+ IPs versus Bright Data's 400M+ (vendor pages, 4 August 2026)
- Limited enterprise features and customization options
- No real-device or native fingerprint capabilities
- Sticky sessions are capped at 30 minutes, which is not session persistence (decodo.com, 4 August 2026)
What to look for in a Oxylabs alternative
- Performance on your specific target sites — nobody publishes audited success rates, so request a trial and measure against your actual targets before committing
- Fingerprint consistency — a device that runs the browser and owns the exit IP presents one coherent set of signals; a proxy splits those signals across two machines. Test both against the sites you care about
- Session persistence requirements — multi-step workflows (logins, cart interactions, form submissions) need true session persistence, not just sticky IPs
- Geographic coverage — verify the provider has real coverage in your target regions, not just a global headline number
- Pricing model alignment — bandwidth-based pricing (per GB) suits data-heavy scraping, while request-based pricing suits many small requests
- AI agent compatibility — if you are building agentic workflows, check whether the provider supports stateful, multi-step sessions natively
- Compliance and ethics — understand how the provider sources its IPs and whether that aligns with your organization's standards
- Support and SLA — enterprise use cases need a contractual uptime SLA and responsive technical support
Oxylabs is a reliable proxy provider, but the market around it has diversified. If your need is traditional high-volume scraping with broad geographic coverage, Bright Data has the largest advertised pool and the widest product catalogue. If per-GB cost is the deciding factor, Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) publishes the lowest residential rate of the five at $2.75/GB on its 100 GB plan, with Massive next at $4.90/GB on 100 GB (vendor pricing pages, 4 August 2026). For structured data without custom parsers, Nimbleway removes the parsing work, at a managed-plan floor of $2,500/month. And if your use case involves AI agents, authenticated sessions, or targets where fingerprint consistency decides the outcome, Archonum has a structural property no proxy network has: the browser and the exit IP are the same handset, one hop from the target.
None of that tells you which one works on your sites. Run two or three of them against your real target URLs for a week and compare the results you get, not the numbers anyone quotes you.
FAQ
Common reasons are cost at high volume under per-GB billing, the need for AI agent support or true session persistence rather than sticky IPs, and the architectural limit of routing traffic through a device that is not the one running your browser. Oxylabs remains a solid choice for general-purpose proxy work — switching makes sense when you hit the edges of what a traditional proxy network is built to do.
The two bill differently, so the sticker prices are not directly comparable. Oxylabs lists residential proxies from $6/GB. Archonum charges a plan fee ($24.99 to $299.99 per month) plus metered browser runtime at $0.09-$0.12/hour and bandwidth at $4.00-$5.00/GB. Both checked 4 August 2026. The number that actually matters is your cost per successful request, which depends entirely on your targets — run both against them and compare.
Nobody can answer this honestly, including us. No provider in this category publishes independently audited success rates, and any figure a vendor quotes was measured on its own mix of targets, not yours. The only reliable method is to send the same set of your real target URLs through two or three providers over the same period and compare what comes back.
Yes, and many teams do. A common pattern is tiered routing: a low-cost per-GB provider for easy targets, and a real-device or managed provider for the hard ones. It keeps the bulk of your traffic cheap while reserving the expensive path for requests that need it.
Archonum has a free trial you can start at app.archonum.com/register. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) offers a 3-day trial with 100 MB plus a 14-day money-back option on a first purchase (decodo.com, 4 August 2026). Bright Data, Massive, and Nimbleway all run trial or credit programmes, but the terms change often — check each vendor's site rather than relying on a figure quoted elsewhere.
Test Archonum Against Your Hardest Targets
Start a free trial and run your own comparison: same target URLs, your current proxy setup on one side, real-device infrastructure on the other. Self-serve plans start at $24.99/month, so you can measure the outcome yourself before anyone quotes you anything.