Best proxies for scraping local search results in 2026

I run rank tracking and lead-gen scrapes for local SEO clients across Singapore, the US, and the UK, and local search is the one category of scraping where proxy choice actually makes or breaks the project. This list is for anyone doing the same: local SEO agencies pulling Google local pack positions across dozens of cities, franchise operators checking Google Business Profile visibility neighborhood by neighborhood, and anyone building a Yelp or Google Maps lead list tied to a specific metro.

Local search is different from regular SERP scraping because Google, Bing, and Yelp all personalize results by inferred location, sometimes down to a specific zip code or even a few city blocks. Scrape “coffee shop near me” from a proxy in Chicago and a proxy in Singapore and you get two completely different local packs. That means the proxy’s geo-targeting granularity matters more than raw IP pool size, and a provider that’s great for general SERP scraping can still be useless for local pack work if it only targets at the country or state level.

I picked these seven after running actual city-level pulls with each one over the past several months, checking whether they hold a fixed location long enough to complete a multi-page scrape, whether their IPs get flagged by Google Maps specifically (not just plain google.com search), and what the real bandwidth cost looks like once you’re pulling hundreds of cities a day. For background on how Google decides what counts as a local result, Google’s own documentation on the local pack is worth reading before you build a scraper against it.

how I picked

geo-targeting granularity down to city or zip level, not just country, since local pack results shift within the same metro
verified success rate against Google Maps and Google Business Profile listings specifically, not just plain web search
residential or mobile IP pools as the default, since datacenter ranges get flagged fast on Maps and local pack lookups
sticky sessions long enough to finish a multi-page local pack pull without the IP rotating mid-scrape
transparent per-GB pricing with no surprise per-request fees stacked on top of bandwidth
decent documentation for pairing with common scraping stacks (Playwright, Scrapy, Outscraper-style pipelines)

the picks

Bright Data

Bright Data has the largest residential IP pool of anyone on this list, and it’s the one I reach for when a client needs city-level targeting in a market outside the usual US/UK/EU rotation, think secondary cities in Southeast Asia or the Gulf. Their proxy manager lets you lock a session to a specific city and it holds long enough to page through a full local pack plus the “more places” expansion without dropping. I go deeper on their residential network setup in my Bright Data review.

deepest city-level coverage of any provider I tested, including secondary markets
sticky sessions that reliably hold through multi-page Maps pulls
dedicated SERP scraper API that handles the local pack markup for you
expensive at low volume compared to everyone else on this list
dashboard has a learning curve if you’re not already used to proxy manager tooling

Pricing: residential pay-as-you-go starts around $8.40/GB, with lower effective rates on committed monthly plans. brightdata.com

Oxylabs

Oxylabs is the other enterprise-grade option and the one I’d pick if the project leans more toward a managed SERP API than raw proxy access. Their SERP Scraper API returns structured local pack data (business name, rating, address, position) without you having to write parsing logic for Google’s constantly shifting local pack HTML, which saves real engineering time on a multi-city rollout.

SERP Scraper API returns pre-parsed local pack fields instead of raw HTML
large residential pool with solid city-level accuracy in North America and Europe
account manager support if you’re running enterprise volume
city targeting outside major Western markets is thinner than Bright Data’s
minimum commitments on the better SERP API tiers push the entry cost up

Pricing: residential proxies from around $8/GB pay-as-you-go, SERP API priced separately per 1,000 results. oxylabs.io

Decodo

Decodo (the rebrand of Smartproxy) is the one I recommend to clients who want city-level targeting without paying enterprise rates. Coverage in the top 50 US metros and most major European cities is genuinely solid, and I’ve had good luck holding sessions steady through a full Google Maps business listing scrape.

cheapest entry point among the city-accurate residential providers
clean API and browser extension for quick manual spot-checks between scrape runs
decent mobile proxy add-on if you need to test how results look on a phone-inferred location
IP pool thins out fast once you go past the top 100 or so US metros
support response times lag the bigger players when something breaks mid-scrape

Pricing: residential plans start around $7/GB pay-as-you-go. decodo.com

SOAX

SOAX is built around granular targeting and it shows, this is the provider I use when a client needs to distinguish results between two zip codes in the same city, which comes up constantly for franchise clients checking visibility in adjacent neighborhoods. Their targeting dashboard lets you filter by city, region, or ISP in one pass rather than juggling separate endpoints. I cover their targeting dashboard in more detail in my SOAX review.

most precise sub-city targeting of anyone on this list, useful for adjacent-neighborhood comparisons
ISP-level filtering on top of geo-targeting, handy for matching a specific carrier’s local results
responsive support when a session drops mid-scrape
pricier per GB than the budget options once you’re past the entry tier
smaller total IP pool than Bright Data or Oxylabs, so heavy concurrent scraping can hit limits

Pricing: plans start around $99/month for roughly 20GB of residential traffic. soax.com

IPRoyal

IPRoyal is the budget pick for anyone testing a local search scraper before committing to a bigger contract. No monthly minimum, pay-as-you-go by the GB, and city-level targeting that’s accurate enough for the top 100 US and European metros. It’s not going to hold up for a large franchise rollout across secondary markets, but for a single-city or single-region local SEO project it’s the cheapest way to get real residential IPs.

no monthly commitment, straightforward pay-as-you-go billing
residential and static ISP proxy options in the same dashboard
good enough city accuracy for major metros at a fraction of enterprise pricing
coverage thins noticeably outside major metros
no dedicated local pack or SERP API, you’re building the scraper logic yourself

Pricing: residential pay-as-you-go from about $7/GB, no expiry on purchased traffic. iproyal.com

NetNut

NetNut’s static residential and ISP proxies are the right call when you need a location to stay fixed across an entire scraping session, useful for long-running rank tracking where you’re checking the same set of cities daily and want consistent IPs rather than a fresh rotation every request. They peer directly with ISPs for their static IPs, which shows up as more stable connections during longer pulls.

static ISP proxies hold the same location without re-rotating, good for daily rank tracking
fast connection speeds relative to the rotating residential pools of competitors
decent support for pairing with headless browser setups
pricier than IPRoyal or Decodo for comparable volume
monthly minimum spend applies even on the entry plans

Pricing: plans start around $18/GB with a monthly minimum. netnut.io

Webshare

Webshare is the one to use for testing a scraper’s logic cheaply before you spend real money on residential traffic elsewhere. Their datacenter proxies are close to free, and they’ve added a residential tier that’s usable for lower-stakes targets like Yelp or Bing Places, though I wouldn’t rely on it for Google Maps at scale since the datacenter IPs in particular get flagged fast.

cheapest way to prototype and debug a scraper before scaling up
free tier with a handful of proxies, useful for a quick proof of concept
simple dashboard, fast signup with no sales call required
datacenter IPs get flagged quickly on Google Maps and Google Business Profile lookups
residential pool is smaller and less city-granular than the dedicated residential providers above

Pricing: datacenter plans from about $2/month, residential proxies from around $3.75/GB. webshare.io

comparison table

pick	price	primary strength	primary weakness
Bright Data	from $8.40/GB	deepest city-level coverage, even in secondary markets	expensive at low volume
Oxylabs	from $8/GB	SERP API returns parsed local pack data	thinner targeting outside Western markets
Decodo	from $7/GB	cheap entry price with solid city accuracy	pool thins past top 100 US metros
SOAX	from $99/mo (~20GB)	most precise sub-city and ISP-level targeting	smaller total IP pool
IPRoyal	from $7/GB, no minimum	no monthly commitment, easiest to test	no dedicated local pack API
NetNut	from $18/GB	static IPs hold a fixed location for daily tracking	pricier, monthly minimum applies
Webshare	from $2/mo datacenter	cheapest way to prototype a scraper	datacenter IPs flagged fast on Google Maps

how to choose

Start with how granular your targeting actually needs to be. If you’re tracking rank across whole cities, Decodo or IPRoyal will cover it for less money. If you’re comparing adjacent zip codes or need to match results down to a specific carrier’s network, SOAX’s ISP-level filtering is worth the extra cost, because a provider that only targets at the city level will silently blend results from neighborhoods that Google treats as distinct.

Match the IP type to the target. Google Maps and Google Business Profile lookups are far more sensitive to datacenter ranges than plain Yelp or Bing Places scraping, so if Maps is your primary target, spend on residential or static ISP proxies rather than the cheap datacenter tier. Google’s own guidance on automated querying in Search Essentials is a good reminder that heavy automated traffic against their systems is against their terms regardless of what proxy sits in front of it, so build in delays and reasonable concurrency rather than treating a bigger proxy pool as a license to hammer the endpoint. This isn’t legal advice, just a practical note on staying under the radar and not burning through IP pools faster than necessary.

Session stability matters more than raw pool size for local pack work specifically, since a full local pack pull often spans several page loads (the initial pack, the “more places” expansion, individual listing detail pages) and losing the session mid-pull means starting the city over. Bright Data and NetNut both held sessions the longest in my testing, which is why they show up for higher-volume, higher-stakes projects despite costing more per GB. If you’re also running the scraper through a fingerprinted browser to avoid detection stacking on top of IP-based blocks, it’s worth reading antidetectreview.org’s browser reviews since proxy quality and browser fingerprint quality solve two different halves of the same detection problem, and providers like Cloudflare are explicit that bot detection increasingly looks at both signals together rather than IP reputation alone.

Budget for testing separately from budget for production. Every project on this list should start on Webshare or IPRoyal to validate the scraper logic against real local pack markup before switching over to a pricier residential provider for the actual production run. It’s a cheap way to avoid burning $50 of Bright Data traffic on a scraper that has a bug in its pagination handling.

verdict / top pick

For most local SEO and rank-tracking projects, I’d start with Decodo. It’s the best balance of city-level accuracy and price for anyone tracking local pack positions across a defined set of metros without needing sub-zip precision. If the project needs adjacent-neighborhood granularity or ISP-level matching, SOAX earns its higher price. And if you’re running enterprise-scale local pack tracking across secondary international markets, Bright Data is still the one that holds up when nothing else does.

For more proxy and scraping comparisons, see the full blog index.

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 2026-07-13.