Best proxies for scraping Cloudflare-protected sites in 2026
Cloudflare sits in front of a huge share of the web now, and its bot management stack has gotten harder to beat since 2023. TLS fingerprinting, JA3/JA4 checks, Turnstile challenges, and behavioral scoring all run before your request ever touches the origin server. A plain rotating proxy list that worked fine on an undefended site will get walled off here, usually within the first few hundred requests.
This list is for people who scrape for a living or as a serious side project: price monitoring, lead generation, ad verification, SERP tracking, inventory checks. If you’re scraping a handful of pages a week, you probably don’t need any of this and a free tier will do. If you’re running thousands of requests a day against sites that actively fight back, the tool you pick determines whether your pipeline works at all, not just how fast it runs.
I run proxy and scraping infrastructure for a few of my own projects out of Singapore, and I’ve paid for most of the vendors below over the past two years. I’m not going to pretend every one of them is great. Some are good at Cloudflare and mediocre elsewhere. A couple are the opposite.
how I picked
- Does it handle Cloudflare, not just generic rate limiting. A lot of “anti-detect” proxy marketing doesn’t distinguish between Cloudflare, Akamai, and DataDome, and the three behave differently.
- IP type and pool size. Residential and mobile IPs clear Cloudflare’s reputation checks far more often than datacenter ranges, which Cloudflare scores down by default.
- Whether it manages the browser fingerprint and TLS handshake for you, or just hands you an IP and leaves JA3/JA4 spoofing as your problem.
- Pricing model and real cost per successful request, not the headline number, since failed challenges still burn bandwidth on most plans.
- Session control, meaning can you hold a sticky IP long enough to survive a Turnstile challenge and keep the resulting cookie valid.
- Support and documentation quality, because when a target site changes its Cloudflare config overnight, you need a vendor who reacts fast, not a ticket queue.
the picks
Bright Data (Web Unlocker)
Bright Data is the biggest player in this space and it shows in the pool size, tens of millions of residential and mobile IPs across every country you’d need. Web Unlocker is their purpose-built product for exactly this problem: it manages TLS fingerprints, retries failed challenges automatically, and renders JavaScript when a Cloudflare challenge needs it. I’ve used it against sites running Cloudflare’s managed challenge and it clears them reliably, more reliably than any raw proxy pool I’ve tried.
The catch is cost and complexity. Pricing is built around successful requests, which is fair in principle, but it adds up fast on high-volume jobs, and the dashboard has a learning curve if you’re not deep into their ecosystem.
Pros: - Largest IP pool in the industry, strong coverage in Southeast Asia and the US - Web Unlocker handles Cloudflare’s JS challenges and Turnstile without extra config - Enterprise-grade uptime and account management if you’re spending real money
Cons: - Priced for teams with budget, not solo scrapers on a shoestring - Onboarding and API surface take real time to learn
Pricing: Web Unlocker starts around $499/month on the pay-as-you-go tier, roughly $3 per 1,000 successful requests. Full Bright Data review →
Oxylabs (Web Unblocker)
Oxylabs is Bright Data’s closest competitor and, in my experience, the one that edges it out on customer support response time. Web Unblocker is their equivalent product: it auto-selects proxy type per request, handles retries, and includes a headless browser option for JS-heavy Cloudflare pages. I’ve had good luck with it on e-commerce targets running Cloudflare in front of Shopify and Magento storefronts.
Where it falls short of Bright Data is raw pool depth in smaller countries, if you need residential IPs in a market outside the top 20-30, availability thins out.
Pros: - Strong success rates against Cloudflare’s managed and JS challenges - Good documentation and a real sales engineer if you’re on a paid plan - Flexible between datacenter, residential, and mobile within one product
Cons: - Smaller-country IP coverage lags behind Bright Data - Entry pricing is billed on successful requests, so a bad target still costs you
Pricing: starts around $75/month for the entry-level plan, billed per successful request. Full Oxylabs review →
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)
Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo in 2024, kept the same underlying network, and repositioned itself as the value option against Bright Data and Oxylabs. Their Site Unblocker product does the same job as Web Unlocker and Web Unblocker, TLS spoofing, JS rendering, automatic retries, at a lower entry price. For small to mid-size scraping jobs against Cloudflare, it’s the one I point people to first when budget matters.
It’s not as deep a pool as the two above it, and on harder targets running Cloudflare’s Bot Fight Mode with aggressive settings, I’ve seen success rates dip more than with Bright Data or Oxylabs.
Pros: - Cheapest of the dedicated unblocker products on this list - Same core Site Unblocker feature set as the bigger vendors - Easy signup and clear dashboard, good for a first-time buyer
Cons: - Success rate drops noticeably on the most aggressively configured Cloudflare sites - Smaller total IP pool than Bright Data or Oxylabs
Pricing: starts around $19/month for a limited request allotment, scaling up with volume. Full Decodo review →
NetNut
NetNut’s angle is static residential and ISP proxies rather than pure rotation. That matters for Cloudflare because a lot of the protection relies on session continuity, you solve a Turnstile challenge once and the resulting cookie needs to stay tied to the same IP for a while to stay valid. A rotating pool that changes IP every request breaks that cookie and forces you to re-solve constantly. NetNut’s static ISP proxies let you hold an IP for the length of a session, which cut my re-challenge rate on a project scraping logged-in dashboards behind Cloudflare.
They don’t sell a bundled unblocker product the way Bright Data and Oxylabs do, so you’re pairing the proxies with your own fingerprint spoofing and retry logic, which is more setup work.
Pros: - Static ISP proxies hold sessions well past a single Turnstile solve - Good for logged-in or cart-style flows where session continuity matters - Competitive per-GB pricing at higher volumes
Cons: - No built-in JS rendering or challenge-solving, you build that layer yourself - Best suited to session-heavy use cases, less of an all-in-one for basic scraping
Pricing: monthly plans start around $20 per GB on the static residential tier, with volume discounts. Full NetNut review →
ZenRows
ZenRows is a scraping API rather than a raw proxy service, you send it a URL and it returns rendered, unblocked HTML. Its anti-bot bypass is built around premium protections including Cloudflare, and it handles Turnstile and JS challenges server-side so you never touch fingerprinting yourself. For developers who want to skip proxy management entirely and just get clean output, this is the fastest path I’ve found.
Credits burn quickly on the premium anti-bot tier, and if your use case is mostly simple pages, you’re paying a premium for capability you don’t need on every request.
Pros: - Handles the full stack, proxy, fingerprint, JS render, challenge solve, in one API call - Fast to integrate, a few lines of code and you’re getting HTML back - Premium anti-bot mode specifically tuned against Cloudflare and similar
Cons: - Premium anti-bot requests cost significantly more credits than standard ones - Less control over IP type or geo-targeting than a dedicated proxy vendor
Pricing: starts at $69/month for the entry plan, credit-based, with premium anti-bot requests costing more per call. Full ZenRows review →
ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is the closest thing to a generalist workhorse on this list. It rotates proxies, renders JavaScript, and retries failed requests automatically, and it includes a free tier capped at 1,000 API credits, which is enough to test it against your target before paying anything. Its Cloudflare handling is solid on mid-difficulty sites but I’ve had lower success rates than ZenRows or Bright Data on the hardest Turnstile-gated targets.
It’s a reasonable default if Cloudflare bypass is one of several things you need a scraper for, not the only thing.
Pros: - Free tier lets you test against your real target before committing - Simple API, handles rotation and JS rendering without extra config - Good general-purpose scraper beyond just Cloudflare targets
Cons: - Success rate on the toughest Turnstile challenges trails the dedicated unblocker products - Credit consumption on JS-render requests adds up fast
Pricing: $49/month for the Hobby plan at 100,000 API credits, free tier caps at 1,000 credits. Full ScraperAPI review →
IPRoyal (Royal Residential Proxies)
IPRoyal is a straight residential proxy pool, no bundled unblocker, no JS rendering, just IPs, priced by the gigabyte with no monthly minimum. That makes it the cheapest way to get clean residential IPs on this list, which matters because IP reputation is still the single biggest factor in whether Cloudflare lets a request through before it checks your fingerprint. I use it as the IP layer underneath my own retry and header-spoofing logic rather than expecting it to solve challenges for me.
If you’re not comfortable building your own TLS fingerprint and challenge-handling layer, this isn’t the product for you, it assumes you’re bringing that part yourself.
Pros: - Cheapest genuine residential IPs by the GB on this list - No monthly minimum, good for spiky or seasonal scraping jobs - Sticky session options up to 24 hours for Turnstile cookie persistence
Cons: - No built-in JS rendering or challenge-solving, pure IP layer only - Requires you to handle TLS/JA3 fingerprinting yourself
Pricing: pay-as-you-go from around $7 per GB, no monthly minimum. Full IPRoyal review →
Webshare
Webshare is the budget option and I’m including it because it’s honest about what it is: cheap rotating datacenter and residential proxies with a free tier of 10 proxies to test on. Against Cloudflare it’s the weakest performer on this list, datacenter IPs get flagged fast, and even the residential tier lacks the fingerprint and challenge handling that makes Bright Data or ZenRows worth the premium. I still keep an account for lower-stakes targets that don’t run aggressive bot management, and as a fallback pool when I need volume cheap.
Don’t buy Webshare expecting it to clear a hard Cloudflare Turnstile wall consistently. It won’t, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Pros: - Genuinely free tier to test before paying anything - Cheapest paid tier of any proxy service on this list - Fine for low-protection targets or as overflow capacity
Cons: - Weakest Cloudflare success rate on this list by a clear margin - No native fingerprint spoofing or challenge automation
Pricing: datacenter plans start under $3/month, residential proxies from around $6/GB. Full Webshare review →
comparison table
| Vendor | Price | Primary strength | Primary weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | from $499/mo, ~$3/1,000 requests | largest IP pool, strong Turnstile success rate | expensive, steep learning curve |
| Oxylabs | from $75/mo, per successful request | fast support, strong e-commerce success rate | thin coverage in smaller countries |
| Decodo | from $19/mo | cheapest dedicated unblocker product | weaker on the hardest-configured sites |
| NetNut | from $20/GB | static IPs hold sessions past Turnstile solve | no built-in challenge-solving |
| ZenRows | from $69/mo, credit-based | full-stack bypass in one API call | premium anti-bot burns credits fast |
| ScraperAPI | from $49/mo, free tier at 1,000 credits | good generalist, free tier to test first | trails on the toughest Turnstile targets |
| IPRoyal | from $7/GB, no minimum | cheapest genuine residential IPs | you build the fingerprint layer yourself |
| Webshare | from ~$3/mo | genuinely free tier, cheapest paid plans | weakest against Cloudflare of any pick here |
how to choose
Start with what Cloudflare setting the target runs. Sites on Cloudflare’s free or pro tier with basic “I’m Under Attack Mode” settings are beatable with a decent residential pool and some header hygiene, IPRoyal or Decodo will get you through most of the time. Sites running Turnstile with a full managed challenge and aggressive Bot Fight Mode need a product that solves the TLS handshake and JS challenge for you, which is where Bright Data, Oxylabs, and ZenRows earn their higher price. Cloudflare’s own documentation on how it classifies bot traffic is worth reading before you pick a tool, since it explains the signals, IP reputation, TLS fingerprint, JS execution, mouse and timing behavior, that every vendor on this list is trying to spoof or satisfy.
TLS fingerprinting deserves more attention than most buyers give it. Cloudflare and other bot management vendors use JA3 (and increasingly JA4) hashes of your TLS client handshake to flag traffic that doesn’t look like a real browser, independent of your IP’s reputation. Cloudflare’s own writeup on JA3 fingerprinting explains why a proxy alone, without matching the fingerprint of a real Chrome or Firefox client, still gets caught even from a clean residential IP. This is why the bundled unblocker products (Web Unlocker, Web Unblocker, Site Unblocker) outperform raw proxy pools on hard targets: they manage the handshake, not just the IP.
If your workflow also needs browser-level fingerprint control, cookies, canvas, WebGL, fonts, consistent across sessions, that’s a separate problem from proxies and worth solving with a dedicated tool rather than trying to bolt it onto a proxy vendor’s API. I cover that side of the stack in more depth over at antidetectreview.org, which is useful reading if you’re scraping logged-in flows or anything that needs a persistent browser identity alongside the IP.
On session persistence: if your scrape involves solving a Turnstile challenge and then making follow-up requests, sticky sessions matter more than pool size. NetNut and IPRoyal both offer session lengths up to 24 hours specifically for this. Cloudflare’s Turnstile documentation is worth skimming to understand what the challenge is actually verifying, since it explains why re-solving on every request is both wasteful and a signal in itself. Also worth a quick legal note here: scraping a site whose terms of service explicitly ban it can be a contract issue even when no law is broken, this isn’t legal advice, and if you’re scraping at scale you should check your jurisdiction and the target’s ToS yourself rather than take a blog post’s word for it.
verdict / top pick
If money isn’t the constraint and you need Cloudflare bypass to just work, Bright Data’s Web Unlocker is the safest bet, it has the deepest pool and the most mature challenge-handling of anything on this list, and I’ve never had it fail a target that Oxylabs or Decodo also couldn’t clear. If you’re running a leaner operation and want the best balance of price and success rate, Decodo is where I’d start, it clears the majority of Cloudflare-protected sites at a third of the entry price of the big two, and you can upgrade later if a specific target proves too hard for it. For session-heavy scraping behind Cloudflare, logged-in dashboards, cart flows, anything where the Turnstile cookie needs to survive multiple requests, NetNut’s static ISP proxies solve a problem the others don’t attempt to.
Whatever you pick, test it against your target before committing to a monthly plan. Cloudflare configs vary wildly site to site, and a vendor that clears one target at 95% can drop to 40% on another running stricter settings. More comparisons like this one live on the proxyscraping.org blog if you’re evaluating proxies for use cases beyond Cloudflare.
Written by Xavier Fok
disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-07-12.