# Proxy and web data providers: what AI models recommend, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. Asked as "proxy network" and as "residential proxy provider for web scraping", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/proxy-networks/

**Standing:** Decodo leads with 41% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 46 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Decodo | 41% | 0% | 45 |
| 2 | Smartproxy | 15% | 5% | 21 |
| 3 | Webshare | 13% | 8% | 24 |
| 4 | Oxylabs | 11% | 15% | 55 |
| 5 | Bright Data | 7% | 25% | 52 |
| 6 | SOAX | 2% | 0% | 23 |
| 7 | IPRoyal | 2% | 19% | 27 |
| 8 | DataImpulse | 2% | 0% | 16 |
| 9 | NetNut | 0% | 0% | 15 |
| 10 | Zyte API | 0% | 0% | 10 |
| 11 | ScraperAPI | 0% | 30% | 10 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Decodo, Oxylabs; alternatives Bright Data, SOAX
- GPT-5.4 mini: Bright Data, Oxylabs; alternatives Decodo, NetNut, SOAX
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: SOAX, Smartproxy; alternatives Bright Data, NetNut, NodeMaven, Oxylabs
- Perplexity Sonar: Decodo; alternatives Oxylabs, Proxy-Seller
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Decodo; alternatives Oxylabs, SOAX
- Mistral Small: Decodo; alternatives Oxylabs, ProxyWing
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Smartproxy; alternatives Oxylabs, SOAX
- Llama 4 Maverick: Decodo; alternatives Infatica, Oxylabs, ProxyWing
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Decodo; alternatives Oxylabs
- Kimi K2: Decodo; alternatives DataImpulse, SOAX
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Smartproxy; alternatives Bright Data, Oxylabs, SOAX, Webshare
- MiniMax M2.5: Rayobyte, Smartproxy; alternatives Oxylabs
- GPT-6 Luna: Decodo; alternatives Bright Data, Oxylabs
- Muse Glimmer 30B: Decodo; alternatives Infatica, SOAX

## Sources the answers cite

74 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- brightdata.com: 41 answers, 58 citations
- proxyway.com: 36 answers, 56 citations
- decodo.com: 32 answers, 47 citations
- aimultiple.com: 22 answers, 26 citations
- oxylabs.io: 21 answers, 25 citations
- proxidize.com: 21 answers, 23 citations
- techradar.com: 20 answers, 24 citations
- proxy-seller.com: 19 answers, 20 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://decodo.com/blog/best-proxy-providers (17 answers)
- https://me.pcmag.com/en/proxy/22143/the-best-proxies-for-2024 (16 answers)
- https://thunderbit.com/blog/best-enterprise-proxy-services (13 answers)
- https://proxy-seller.com/blog/best-proxy-providers-top-picks-full-comparison (12 answers)
- https://proxyway.com/research/proxy-market-research-2024 (12 answers)
- https://brightdata.com/blog/proxy-101/best-enterprise-proxy-providers (11 answers)
- https://brightdata.com/blog/proxy-101/best-proxy-providers (11 answers)
- https://cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-proxy-servers (11 answers)
- https://proxyway.com/best/proxy-service-providers (11 answers)
- https://hackernoon.com/12-best-proxy-service-providers-in-2025 (10 answers)

## Warned against

- Bright Data: 13 of 52 labels negative. "Avoid Enterprise-Only Providers (Bright Data, Oxylabs) unless you have enterprise-level budgets" (Kimi K2, direct prompt)
- Oxylabs: 8 of 55 labels negative. "Avoid starting with enterprise-heavy plans like Oxylabs residential if budget is tight" (GPT-5.4 mini, budget prompt)
- IPRoyal: 5 of 27 labels negative. "Providers with Red Flags: IPRoyal: Removed from some recommendation lists due to concerns about fake reviews and transparency issues." (Mistral Small, negative prompt)
- Proxy-Cheap: 4 of 7 labels negative. "Users reported high fraud scores (80%–89%), making these proxies useless for social media, e-commerce, or scraping" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.