# Proxy and web data providers for small business buyers: 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 small 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/smb/

**Standing:** Decodo leads with 40% of first choices; verdict contested. 50 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Decodo | 40% | 0% | 45 |
| 2 | Webshare | 20% | 0% | 32 |
| 3 | Smartproxy | 12% | 5% | 21 |
| 4 | Bright Data | 8% | 33% | 45 |
| 5 | IPRoyal | 6% | 19% | 27 |
| 6 | Oxylabs | 4% | 40% | 42 |
| 7 | DataImpulse | 2% | 0% | 13 |
| 8 | SOAX | 0% | 6% | 18 |
| 9 | NetNut | 0% | 15% | 13 |

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

- Claude Haiku 4.5: no first choice
- GPT-5.4 mini: Decodo; alternatives Oxylabs, Webshare
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Decodo; alternatives Evomi, IPRoyal, NodeMaven
- Perplexity Sonar: Decodo; alternatives IPRoyal, NetNut
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Decodo; alternatives Webshare
- Mistral Small: Decodo, IPRoyal; alternatives Oxylabs
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Rayobyte; alternatives IPRoyal, SOAX, Smartproxy
- Llama 4 Maverick: Decodo, IPRoyal, Oxylabs
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Decodo; alternatives Bright Data, Oxylabs
- Kimi K2: Decodo; alternatives MarsProxies, Oxylabs, SOAX, Webshare
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Decodo, Smartproxy; alternatives IPRoyal, SOAX, Webshare
- MiniMax M2.5: Rayobyte, Smartproxy; alternatives Decodo, MarsProxies, Webshare
- GPT-6 Luna: Decodo; alternatives Cloudflare One
- Muse Glimmer 30B: Decodo; alternatives Bright Data, Oxylabs

## 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:

- decodo.com: 38 answers, 51 citations
- proxyway.com: 35 answers, 57 citations
- brightdata.com: 33 answers, 59 citations
- aimultiple.com: 25 answers, 27 citations
- techradar.com: 23 answers, 30 citations
- cnet.com: 23 answers, 25 citations
- me.pcmag.com: 22 answers, 25 citations
- dataimpulse.com: 16 answers, 26 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-proxy-servers (23 answers)
- https://decodo.com/blog/best-proxy-providers (23 answers)
- https://me.pcmag.com/en/proxy/22143/the-best-proxies-for-2024 (21 answers)
- https://brightdata.com/blog/proxy-101/best-proxy-providers (17 answers)
- https://agilityportal.io/blog/best-proxy-providers (14 answers)
- https://uk.pcmag.com/proxy/151018/the-best-proxies (13 answers)
- https://oxylabs.io/blog/best-proxy-providers (11 answers)
- https://proxyway.com/research/proxy-market-research-2024 (11 answers)
- https://aimultiple.com/proxy-providers (10 answers)
- https://comparitech.com/proxies/best-business-proxies (10 answers)

## Warned against

- Oxylabs: 17 of 42 labels negative. "Avoid premium business-first providers like Oxylabs, Bright Data, or SOAX if budget is tight" (Perplexity Sonar, budget prompt)
- Bright Data: 15 of 45 labels negative. "Avoid premium business-first providers like Oxylabs, Bright Data, or SOAX if budget is tight" (Perplexity Sonar, budget prompt)
- IPRoyal: 5 of 27 labels negative. "Users report ISP proxies that actually appear to be datacenter IPs; aggressive account closures when disputes arise; high costs relative to actual value" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)
- Proxy6.net: 4 of 4 labels negative. "Numerous complaints about refusing refunds, delivering faulty proxies, and ignoring support requests." (MiniMax M2.5, 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.