Best proxies for scraping Google SERP in 2026
This list is for people who pull Google search results programmatically and need it to keep working, rank trackers, SEO audit tools, ad verification scripts, price and SERP monitoring dashboards. If you’re querying Google a few hundred times a day from one IP, you’ll get CAPTCHA walls and then blocks fast. Google’s own terms restrict automated access to its services without permission, as stated in their Terms of Service, so this is not a loophole, it’s a workaround that carries some risk. This isn’t legal advice, and I’m not telling you how to violate anyone’s terms of service. I’m describing what operators actually use to run SERP scraping at volume, and what it costs.
I run proxy-dependent projects myself, including a Singapore-based mobile proxy operation, so I’ve bought and burned through credits on most of the providers below across real jobs, not just trial accounts. Some of this list is residential and mobile proxy networks you point your own scraper at, some is dedicated SERP APIs that handle the proxy rotation, headless browser rendering, and CAPTCHA solving for you. I’ve marked which is which because they solve the same problem differently and cost differently.
Prices below are what each vendor was listing on their public pricing page as of July 2026. Proxy pricing moves often, vendors run promos, volume discounts kick in fast, so treat these as a starting point and confirm on the vendor’s site before you commit.
how I picked
- IP pool size and diversity. Google fingerprints and blocks IP ranges, not just individual IPs. A bigger, more diverse residential or mobile pool means fewer collisions with already-flagged addresses.
- Geo-targeting granularity. SERP results vary by country and sometimes by city. I checked whether each provider lets you target down to city level, not just country.
- Success rate against Google’s blocking systems. I ran real queries (search volume checks, rank checks across 20+ keywords) through trial or paid access on each provider and logged how many hit CAPTCHA pages versus clean results.
- Session control. Rotating IP per request versus sticky sessions matters if you’re paginating through results or need consistent geo-location across a multi-page scrape.
- Pricing transparency and entry cost. Whether you can start small and scale, or whether you’re locked into a large minimum commitment.
- Built-in SERP handling. Whether the provider offers a dedicated SERP API (parsed JSON output, CAPTCHA solving included) versus raw proxies you have to wire into your own scraper.
the picks
Bright Data
Bright Data has the largest residential IP pool in the industry, commonly cited north of 150 million IPs, and it’s the one I reach for when a job needs to survive weeks of continuous querying without the pool running dry. Their SERP API is purpose-built for this: you send a search query and get back parsed JSON with organic results, ads, featured snippets, and local pack data, no need to build your own HTML parser or handle CAPTCHA solving yourself. I’ve used it for rank-tracking jobs across 15 countries and the geo-targeting down to city level was accurate every time I checked it against a VPN control. Full breakdown in my Bright Data review.
The tradeoff is cost and onboarding. This is not the cheapest option on this list, and their dashboard has a learning curve if you’ve never worked with a proxy network before.
pros: - Largest residential pool on the market, low collision rate with flagged IPs - Dedicated SERP API returns structured JSON, skip building your own parser - City-level geo-targeting confirmed accurate across multiple country tests
cons: - Highest entry price on this list - Dashboard and account setup take longer to learn than smaller competitors
pricing: SERP API plans start around $75/month on the pay-as-you-go tier, roughly $3 per 1,000 results at entry volume. Raw residential proxies run from about $8/GB. link: brightdata.com
Oxylabs
Oxylabs is Bright Data’s closest direct competitor and the one I’d point a team at if they need enterprise-grade support with an actual account manager who picks up the phone. Their SERP Scraper API handles JavaScript-rendered results, which matters more than people expect since Google increasingly renders parts of the SERP client-side. In my testing, their success rate on heavily localized queries (small-city local pack results) was slightly ahead of Bright Data, though the sample size I ran (about 500 queries) is too small to call that a firm trend.
Support is the standout here. I’ve had technical questions answered within an hour during business hours, which is rare in this industry.
pros: - Handles JavaScript-rendered SERP elements without extra configuration - Responsive account support, real humans, not just a ticket queue - Strong success rate on localized and long-tail queries in my testing
cons: - Pricing tiers jump quickly once you exceed entry volume
pricing: SERP Scraper API starts around $49/month for a limited request volume, with per-1,000-result pricing dropping as you scale. Residential proxies from about $8/GB. link: oxylabs.io
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)
Decodo is the rebrand Smartproxy completed, and it’s the one I recommend to solo operators and small teams who want residential IP quality without Bright Data or Oxylabs pricing. The pool is smaller than the top two but still large enough that I didn’t run into repeated CAPTCHA walls during a two-week rank-tracking test across 50 keywords in three countries. Their dashboard is the cleanest of any provider on this list, genuinely easy to set up a sticky session and start pulling results within minutes. More detail in my Decodo review.
pros: - Cleanest, fastest onboarding of any provider I tested - Solid price-to-performance ratio for small and mid-size scraping jobs - Sticky session support up to 30 minutes, useful for multi-page SERP pulls
cons: - Smaller IP pool than Bright Data or Oxylabs, more collisions at high volume - No dedicated SERP-parsing API, you’re working with raw proxy output
pricing: Residential proxies from about $7/GB on the pay-as-you-go plan, with subscription tiers for regular volume. link: decodo.com
NetNut
NetNut’s pitch is direct ISP partnerships instead of peer-to-peer residential networks, which means the IPs come from actual internet service providers rather than someone’s phone running an SDK in the background. That translates to lower latency and, in my testing, more consistent uptime on individual IPs during long scraping sessions. For SERP scraping where you’re paginating through results and need the same apparent location for the whole session, this consistency was noticeably better than pool-rotation-heavy competitors.
It’s a smaller network overall, and their entry pricing is less friendly to small operators testing the waters.
pros: - Direct ISP-sourced IPs mean lower latency and more session stability - Static residential option keeps the same IP for the length of a long scrape - Good uptime during multi-hour continuous query runs in my tests
cons: - Smaller overall IP pool limits geo-coverage in less common countries - Entry-level plans cost more than IPRoyal or Webshare for the same GB
pricing: Plans start around $20 for a short trial, standard residential from roughly $300/month for 20GB. link: netnut.io
SOAX
SOAX gives you the most granular targeting controls I’ve used, down to ASN-level selection in some regions, which is overkill for most SERP jobs but genuinely useful if you’re debugging why a specific ISP’s users see different results. Their sticky session window (up to 10 minutes by default, configurable) worked reliably across the rank-tracking tests I ran. Full writeup at my SOAX review.
The dashboard has more knobs than most operators need, and it took me longer to get comfortable with it than Decodo or Webshare.
pros: - Most granular geo and ASN targeting controls on this list - Reliable sticky sessions for multi-page SERP pulls - Starter plans let you test on a small budget before scaling
cons: - Steeper learning curve on the dashboard than competitors - Per-GB cost climbs at low-to-mid volume compared to IPRoyal
pricing: Starter plans from around $9 for a short trial, standard residential plans begin near $99/month for 5GB. link: soax.com
IPRoyal
IPRoyal is the budget option I actually trust. No subscription required, pay-as-you-go pricing per GB, and I’ve used it for lower-stakes scraping jobs (weekly rank checks, not real-time monitoring) without issues. The pool is smaller and success rates dipped noticeably when I pushed past a few hundred queries an hour on the same target, so this is not what I’d use for high-frequency scraping.
pros: - Lowest per-GB cost of the residential providers on this list - No subscription or minimum commitment required - Simple, no-frills dashboard, easy for a first-timer to get running
cons: - Success rate drops at high query frequency against Google specifically - No dedicated SERP API, raw proxies only
pricing: Pay-as-you-go residential from about $1.75/GB, no minimum spend. link: iproyal.com
Webshare
Webshare’s free tier (a small allotment of datacenter proxies) is genuinely useful for testing your scraper’s logic before you spend money on residential IPs. Once you move to their paid residential tier the pricing stays cheap, and I use it for low-volume side projects where getting blocked occasionally isn’t a big deal. Datacenter IPs alone will get flagged fast on Google SERP specifically, so don’t expect to run a serious scraping job on the free tier alone.
pros: - Free tier lets you validate scraper logic at zero cost - Cheapest paid residential entry point I tested - Simple API, minimal setup time
cons: - Datacenter IPs get blocked quickly on Google SERP, residential tier needed for real work - Smaller pool means more repeat IP usage on sustained jobs
pricing: Free tier available; paid residential proxies from about $2.99/GB. link: webshare.io
Nimbleway
Nimbleway (formerly Nimble) markets itself as an AI-native scraping and unblocking API rather than a plain proxy network, and that’s an accurate description of how it behaves. You send a target URL or query, and it handles proxy selection, browser rendering, and retry logic on unsuccessful pulls automatically. For teams that don’t want to build and maintain their own scraping infrastructure, this cuts development time significantly. It’s usage-based pricing, billed per successful request, which is a different mental model than buying GB of bandwidth.
pros: - Handles proxy rotation, rendering, and retries without custom scraper logic - Usage-based billing means you only pay for successful pulls - Good fit for teams that want to skip building scraping infrastructure
cons: - Usage-based pricing gets expensive fast at high query volume compared to raw proxies - Less direct control over individual IP/session behavior than a proxy-only provider
pricing: Usage-based, billed per successful request; check their live calculator for current per-request rates. link: nimbleway.com
comparison table
| Provider | Price | Primary strength | Primary weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | From ~$8/GB, SERP API from $75/mo | Largest IP pool, dedicated SERP API | Highest cost, steeper learning curve |
| Oxylabs | From ~$8/GB, SERP API from $49/mo | JS-rendered SERP handling, strong support | Pricing jumps past entry tier |
| Decodo | From ~$7/GB | Fastest onboarding, clean dashboard | No dedicated SERP API |
| NetNut | From ~$300/mo for 20GB | Direct ISP IPs, low latency, session stability | Smaller pool, pricier entry |
| SOAX | From ~$9 trial, ~$99/mo standard | Most granular targeting controls | Steeper learning curve |
| IPRoyal | From ~$1.75/GB | Lowest cost, no subscription | Success rate drops at high frequency |
| Webshare | Free tier, paid from ~$2.99/GB | Free tier for testing, cheap entry | Datacenter tier blocked fast on Google |
| Nimbleway | Usage-based, per request | No infrastructure to build or maintain | Expensive at high volume |
how to choose
Match the provider to your query volume, not to whichever name you’ve heard most. If you’re running a handful of rank checks a day, IPRoyal or Webshare’s paid tier will cover it for under $20 a month and you don’t need Bright Data’s pool. If you’re running thousands of queries an hour across multiple countries for client rank-tracking or SEO audit software, you need the pool depth of Bright Data or Oxylabs, the smaller providers will start throwing CAPTCHAs once you push volume.
Decide whether you want raw proxies or a managed SERP API before you compare prices, because they’re not really the same product. Raw proxies (Decodo, IPRoyal, NetNut, SOAX, Webshare) are cheaper per GB but you build and maintain the scraper, parser, and CAPTCHA handling yourself. A managed SERP API (Bright Data’s SERP API, Oxylabs’ SERP Scraper API, Nimbleway) costs more per query but hands you structured results and handles blocking for you. If your team doesn’t have someone who wants to own scraper maintenance, pay for the managed option, it’s usually cheaper than the engineering hours you’d otherwise spend.
Geo-targeting granularity matters more for SERP work than for most other scraping use cases, because Google’s results genuinely differ by city in some verticals (local pack results, local service ads). Check that whatever you pick supports the country and city combinations you actually need before you buy a plan, not after.
If your scraping setup also involves managing multiple search accounts or browser profiles to avoid pattern detection, that’s a separate problem from proxy sourcing. multiaccountops.com/blog/ covers session and profile isolation in more depth than I can here, worth a read if you’re running this at any real scale. And Google’s own robots.txt and crawler documentation is worth reading regardless of which provider you pick, it tells you what Google’s automated systems expect from any client, human or scraper. If you’re new to buying proxies generally, our blog has broader buyer guides beyond this specific use case.
One technical note that trips people up: most of these providers support both HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy protocols. SOCKS5 (defined in RFC 1928) handles a wider range of traffic types and is generally the better choice if your scraper stack needs anything beyond plain HTTP requests, headless browser sessions in particular tend to work more reliably over SOCKS5.
verdict / top pick
For most people running real SERP scraping volume, I’d point at Oxylabs first. The JS-rendering handling and support quality edged out Bright Data in my day-to-day testing, and the entry pricing on their SERP Scraper API is more approachable. If budget is the only constraint and volume is low, IPRoyal is the honest cheap option, just don’t expect it to hold up past a few hundred queries an hour on the same target. If you’re already running serious volume and money isn’t the limiting factor, Bright Data’s pool size still wins on raw reliability over long, sustained jobs.
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.