Oxylabs Review 2023: In-Depth Performance Tested & Complete Guide to Oxy Proxy

Justin Shin

Are you looking for an expert opinion on the Oxylabs proxy service before making a purchase from them? Then be our guest as we will be providing you with a review of the Oxylabs service, including some performance tests carried out to ascertain the performance to expect.

When mentioning the market leaders in the proxy market as a whole, there is every chance Oxylabs will be mentioned as it is in the league of the tier-1 residential proxy service. But does that automatically makes it a buy, or are there other things to consider. Oxylabs does have a solid PR behind it but as with other providers out there, it is still not the provider for everybody. There are areas it does well and areas it flops. I will reveal all of these to you to help you make the right purchase decision.

Table Of Contents

Oxylabs Overview

Official Website: https://oxylabs.io

Oxylabs is one of the top proxy providers offering proxies in a good number of proxy categories. With this provider, you can purchase residential, datacenter, mobile, and even ISP proxies. It has also recently ventured into the business of web data extraction as a service, providing web scraping APIs and some no-code scraping tools. This provider is known for its web scraping support, as it has a proxy infrastructure that can power web scraping projects at any scale.

Their residential proxies are the focus of this article. Their residential proxy network has the largest proxy pool in the market with good location support. You get to rotate and change IP for as long as you dim fit at no extra cost, as you are charged based on bandwidth, not the number of IPs used. However, you also need to deal with some issues with using Oxylabs residential proxies.

The number one issue you have to deal with is the issue of KYC and the fact that you’ll need their support to help you get some things done — it is not everything you will be able to do by yourself. Pricing can be said to be on the high side a little, and there are some performance issues here and there.

Pros and Cons of Oxylabs Residential Proxies

Oxylabs Pros

Oxylabs Cons

Overall, Oxylabs offers a large pool of residential proxies with global coverage and a high success rate. However, there are some drawbacks, such as the higher cost, limited free trial, and complex setup process. Users should consider the pros and cons before deciding to use Oxylabs residential proxies for their specific needs.

When was Oxylabs founded?

Oxylabs was founded in 2015 with the mission of enabling businesses to enhance their data gathering practices and gain access to top-tier web intelligence insights.

Where is Oxylabs based?

Oxylabs is located in Lithuania. The company is based in Vilnius, the capital city of the country. However, they provide their services and proxy IP addresses to clients all around the world

How many proxy IP addresses does Oxylabs offer?

As of 2020, Oxylabs provides more than 102 million ethically gathered proxies worldwide.

What new product did Oxylabs introduce in 2023?

In 2023, Oxylabs rebranded its Next-Gen Residential Proxies to Web Unblocker, an AI-powered solution for block-free scraping.

Proxy Pool Size

The number of IP addresses in the proxy pool of any residential proxy network is something of interest. A larger active pool will mean you get as many IPs as you want in the case of IP rotation. When it comes to proxy pool size, then Oxylabs is arguably the leader here. As at the time of writing this Oxylabs review, Oxylabs has got over 100 million IP addresses in its pool, making it the largest proxy network in terms of pool size.

This figure is the figure quoted by Oxylabs, as there is no way we can know the actual number of IPs in their pool. Interestingly, during our performance test, we discovered we got over 65 percent unique IPs, making this claim likely true. It is important you know that Oxylabs does not own the IP addresses and devices it routes your request through. The IPs are gotten via P2P networks, with some of the participants being aware, while a good number of them are not aware since information about their participation is hidden within a large chunk of privacy documents.

This is not only peculiar to Oxylabs; other providers, including Bright Data and Smartproxy, engage in the same practice.

Location Coverage

Having a large proxy pool is good. But equally important is the spread and the locations compared in your pool. This is especially true for an Internet that has become localized, where websites are increasingly showing different information to users based on their location. What are the locations supported by Oxylabs? Oxylabs has gotten good location coverage as all countries in the world are captured in their pool. They have also gotten a good spread in terms of states and cities. This, together with their large proxy pool, makes Oxylabs the perfect proxy infrastructure for scraping localized data.

To support and give their good location coverage a meaning, the network does support geo-targeting. This is a feature that allows users to choose the specific location they need IP from. Currently, you get the option to choose a location at different levels — country-level, state-level, and city-level geo-targeting. However, it is important you know that as you move down from country-level targeting to city-level targeting, the number of IPs available to you will drastically reduce.

Oxylabs Proxy Speed & Performance Test

Speed is an important factor for many when it comes to accessing data online. Unfortunately, proxies can introduce bottlenecks that will reduce your Internet speed, and this happens with all providers. But this does not mean the bottleneck introduced should be so huge that speed is greatly affected. If this occurs, then there is a performance issue here. According to the information on the Oxylabs website, it is the fastest provider in the market. We need to test this claim out. And to do that, we choose 5 targets — Amazon, Instagram, YouTube, Google Search, and Booking. Below is the result of the test.

Website Download Speed (Mbps) Upload Speed (Mbps) Ping
Amazon 23.49 27.16 26
Instagram 31.35 34.87 21
YouTube 28.52 26.84 9
Google Search 26.97 39.52 25
Booking 21.87 28.08 37

Looking at the above, you will agree with me that Oxylabs is fast. But what happens when sending concurrent requests? So far, we have tried that, and performance wasn’t really affected until we started sending too many requests. But that is not the problem. The major problem we faced that is related to the performance is the issue of connection timeout and dropped connections. While trying out the service, we noticed a little over 10 percent of the requests didn’t go through. And this was related to a timeout error, and drop connections, with a few blocks and captcha occurrence.

Proxy Rotation and Session Management Reviews

IP rotation is one of the core features of residential proxies. And this is not even by choice — it is by design, as the providers cannot afford to rent out static IPs since they do not have control of them.  However, even in this lack of control, a provider should have some level of control, making it possible for them to set session times and also rotate only at specific periods. Where does Oxylabs stand in this?

Oxylabs is a rotating residential proxy network. And does have support for two types of rotation systems. The first one of their high-rotating proxies which change IP after every request. This is perfect for web scraping and other forms of automation. Aside from this, the service also has support for session-based proxies. These are proxy ports that will assign you an IP for a period before switching the IP. Oxylabs gives you control over this as you can set IP rotation time from anywhere between one minute to 30 minutes.

One thing you will come to like about Oxylabs is the it supports unlimited concurrent sessions. However, there are complaints of sessions terminating prematurely, and this happens all the time.

Scraping Success Rate and Response Speed Test

One of the key aspects proxies are used is in the area of web scraping. Looking at the Oxylabs homepage, you’ll notice that the provider takes pride in its proxies when it comes to web scraping. But how well is it actually suited for that? Is it compatible with most of the websites online or it get easily detected. To test this out, we used a custom developed tool to scrape specific web targets and measure the success rate goten and the average response time for each of the web target. Below is the result of the test carried out.

Site Success Rate (%) Avg. Response Rate (sec)
Amazon 94.65 1.08
Instagram 87.98 1.43
YouTube 91.56 1.74
Google Search 93.13 1.012
Booking 88.56 1.98

From the above, you can see that the majority of the request sent were successful, which is great. However, there are still issues of unsuccessful requests for all of the targets. Usually, the more requests you send to a target, the more you begin getting errors. From the errors gotten, these unsuccessful requests were as a result of too many retries, too slow, or outrightly got blocked.

Plans and Pricing Review & Recommendations

No doubt, pricing is one of the important features we need to look into making a choice of a provider. Some providers might have all of the features we seek but drive us away wit their pricing. While pricing is not the single most important feature that conveys the kind of quality to expect, there is no denying that price can give you an idea of quality. Oxylabs is a top provider, and as such, you do not expect it to come cheap.

Well, you might be wrong. In the past, you need a minimum of $500 to get started with this provider. This is no longer the case, as Oxylabs now offers a Pay-As-You-Go payment option. With this, you are able to purchase 1GB for $15 monthly. If you are a heavy user, then going for their packages will get you more value for your money. Their starter package is sold for $300 and comes with 25GB.

The price per GB can even go down to $8 per GB if you go for their $800 plan. One thing you will come to like about Oxylabs pricing is that you can create sub-users and share your proxy bandwidth with them for free. When it comes to making payments, you have the option of paying via credit card, PayPal, and Wire Transfer.

Customer Support

Customer support is one aspect many providers do not look into, as I have had to deal with inexperienced customer support agents in the past. Yet, this is one of the most important aspects of a business. As a proxy user, you might need help beyond what is obtainable from the help documentation on a provider’s website. So how does Oxylabs deal with this? Oxylabs already has documentation and also provides a guide on how to make use of their proxies. However, they do not stop there. Away from this, Oxylabs has a dedicated support team in place to help solve the issues of customers. 

The service has got a live chat feature that even non-registered members can make use of. This makes customer support swift and responsive. There is also a ticketing support system as well as email support. The service has got dedicated customer support that handles sales-related issues. As a subscriber to any of their plans ($300 and above), you are assigned a dedicated account manager that helps you with the onboarding process and help provide you with more personalized customer support.

Ease of Usage

The Oxylabs service provides some of the most advanced features you can get in the proxy market. In fact, the only provider that can match it in this aspect is Bright Data service. With these advanced features, you can tell that it won’t be the easiest to use out there. The major problem you will face with Oxylabs is at the point of registration. Unlike other smaller services, the big proxy providers like Oxylabs mandate their customers to go through their KYC process in other to prevent abuse of their system. This is not something that goes down well with a good number of proxy users — and it could waste your time.

Aside from this, there is nothing difficult for you here. The user interface for the user dashboard is intuitive and easy to use, even for first-time users. And to make things easier for you, you have a dedicated account manager that will put you through should you have any challenge. Oxylabs also provide an Oxylabs extension that makes it easier for you to use proxies in your browser.

How to use use Oxylabs: A Comprehensive Guide

This guide covers the entire process of using Oxylabs, from registration and proxy management to documentation and customer support.

  1. Registration You can register with Oxylabs either by completing the registration form and confirming your email or by contacting their sales team. The latter option is aimed at businesses and requires providing your full name, business email, phone number, and industry. After registering, you will need to complete a KYC procedure, which is standard practice for premium proxy providers.

  2. Dashboard Upon logging in, you will be directed to the Oxylabs dashboard, which provides information about product usage, resource links, and subscription management. The dashboard is available in English and Chinese and offers quick access to account managers and live chat support.

  3. Proxy Management Setting up proxies depends on the type of proxy you are using. Datacenter IPs require simple authentication, while rotating proxies use backconnect gateway servers. However, Oxylabs does not provide a widget for proxy setup, so you will need to consult their documentation page for instructions and examples.

  4. Usage Tracking The dashboard includes usage graphs that vary by product type. Rotating proxies display traffic usage and requests, APIs show response time and request data, and static proxies provide the most detailed statistics, including traffic use, requests, and HTML codes.

  5. Subscription Management Oxylabs supports self-service for rotating datacenter proxies and the two cheapest residential proxy plans. Other products must be purchased by contacting sales. There is no wallet functionality, so transactions must be made every time a plan renews.

  6. Public API Oxylabs offers public APIs for programmatic control of residential and dedicated datacenter proxies, allowing you to manage access, track usage, retrieve proxy lists, whitelist IP addresses, and monitor offline proxies.

  7. Supporting Tools Oxylabs provides a browser extension for Chrome-based browsers and an Android app, allowing easy setup and switching of proxy servers on your browser or phone.

  8. Documentation Extensive documentation is available for both non-technical and technical questions. The Learning Hub FAQ addresses common queries, while quick-start guides offer an overview of specific products. The technical documentation provides comprehensive usage instructions, examples in multiple programming languages, and integration guides with third-party software.

Developer Support

How well a provider makes it easy for developers to use their proxies goes a long way in describing the ease of use of a service. While non-coders make use of proxies too, coders as the main users of proxies, and as such, if it is not easy for them to make of, then it becomes a problem. Oxylabs is an enterprise-level provider, and as such, it is expected to offer good developer support. But do they meet up with that? First, Oxylabs does have a developer API. Using this developer API, you can access your proxies and account programmatically, which makes it easier for you to integrate their service into your code as a developer.

But that is not all; the Oxylabs service offers comprehensive API documentation. This makes it easier for new users to learn how to make use of the developer API offered by the service. Another feature related to developer support is their dedicated customer support. Because you have a dedicated customer agent that helps you in the onboarding process and serves as your support in their company, you get better support should you need any help as a developer.

Verdict: Is Oxylabs Good Enough?

Oxylabs remains one of the top contenders as a market leader in the proxy market. But does that mean you should purchase proxies from them? Looking at the reviews above, you can tell that it can’t go unnoticed, considering its proxy pool size, the speed you get, and its location coverage.

However, there are still reasons for concern. Some users do complain of connections dropping often. Aside from this and the compulsory KYC system in place, Oxylabs is a good enough option as far as proxy networks are concerned. For this reason, Oxylabs is recommended, but you need to make sure that you can deal with some of the few cons mentioned in the article.

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