Webshare Proxy Servers Review: Pros & Cons, Features, Ratings, Pricing and more

Webshare was founded in 2018 to capitalize on the fast-growing proxy software market. This California-based company provides private proxy servers for individuals and businesses. Unlike many proxy servers that rely on white-label services, it prides itself on developing its technology in-house. Webshare offers residential and datacenter proxies across the globe, with a network of 30 million+ IPs.

After its founding, Webshare operated as an independent, fast-growing company for several years. However, in 2022, it was acquired by Oxylabs, another prominent proxy server provider. Webshare operates independently from Oxylabs, so that shouldn’t be a worry. However, it lacks some features available on Oxylabs, e.g., web scraping APIs.

Webshare: Plans and Pricing

Webshare bills users according to their type and number of IPs. Datacenter proxies range from $2.99 monthly for 100 proxies to $1794 monthly for 100,000 proxies. The greater the number of proxies on your plan, the lower the unit cost. For example, $2.99 monthly for 100 proxies equals $0.03 per proxy, but $1794 for 100,000 proxies equals $0.018 per proxy.

Users pay according to bandwidth for residential IPs. Pricing ranges from $7 monthly for 1 GB to $13,500 monthly for 3,000 GB. The higher the bandwidth, the lesser the unit cost. For instance, $13,500 monthly for 3,000 GB equals $4.5 per GB, compared to the typical $7 per GB.

Pricing for static residential IPs is different from typical residential IPs. Static residential proxies provide a fixed IP address that doesn't change with each session, while standard residential IPs are rotated frequently from the pool. They both route your online activity through real residential IPs, but static proxies are better for browsing websites with strict IP restrictions. Static residential IPs are also called ISP proxies.

Webshare’s static residential IPs range from $6 monthly for 20 proxies to $2,250 monthly for 10,000 proxies. As usual, the greater the number of proxies, the lower the unit cost. $6 monthly for 20 proxies equals $0.30 per proxy, but $2,250 monthly for 10,000 proxies equals $0.22 per proxy. The discount is significant for bulk users.

Webshare is one of the few proxy providers that offer a free plan. It offers 10 free proxies with no time limit. Of course, 10 IPs are too small for a large-scale project, but this plan suits individual users who need just a few IPs for their work. Webshare offers this plan with the hopes of converting free users into long-term paying customers.

Note that Webshare offers no free trial for its residential IPs. The free plan is the only way for users to test its features.

Webshare: Features

Registration begins a user’s journey with Webshare. You can sign up with your email address or an existing Google account. Nearly 60,000 businesses use Webshare, so you’ll be in good hands as a new user. After registration, you’ll be redirected to a dashboard where you can access Webshare’s features. Let’s dive deeper into these features below:

Residential IPs

Webshare gives users residential IP addresses, i.e., IP addresses tied to a physical device like a smartphone or PC. These IP addresses are sourced from consenting users, which is crucial in a proxy industry plagued with illegally obtained IP addresses. Webshare gets IP addresses from device owners who agree to join its proxy network in exchange for benefits. As a Webshare customer, you can access a website using another device’s IP address.

Residential IPs are useful in many cases. For example, a hotel comparison site needs to scrape price lists from many hotel websites. However, hotel websites often discourage scraping by placing geo-restrictions and IP restrictions. Suppose a U.S.-based hotel blocks foreign IPs from accessing its website, Webshare lets you bypass it by choosing a proxy U.S. IP address to view the website and scrape pricing information.

Residential proxies are also helpful in e-commerce, wherein price comparison sites scrape data en masse to help people find the best deals. If you run a price comparison site, you can use residential IPs to access localized versions of a retailer’s website and scrape relevant information.

Webshare offers IP addresses in 50+ countries, with the most popular locations being the U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, France, and Canada. It has 30 million IP addresses spread across all available countries. However, Webshare’s IP pool is smaller than you’d find on many rival platforms. For example, Oxylabs has 102 million+ IPs across 195 countries, and Smartproxy offers 55 million IPs across 195 countries. Webshare’s IP pool is concentrated in Europe, North America, and Asia, unlike Oxylabs and Smartproxy, whose IP pools are spread fairly across all continents.

Static Residential IPs

Static IPs are a faster alternative to Webshare's residential IPs. They are technically still residential IPs, albeit sourced directly from internet service providers (ISPs). They’re faster and more reliable because the IP doesn’t change with each session, relying on the unstable Wi-Fi connections of the device owners. Static IPs are issued for long-term use and are harder to detect, helping you stay anonymous while browsing.

Webshare’s static IPs have unlimited bandwidth. That’s why it charges per IP instead of by bandwidth like the standard residential IPs. Webshare sources its static IPs from ISPs like AT&T, Sprint, and Cox Communications. These ISPs have massive networks and offer speeds of up to 1 GB per second. Once you pay for a static IP, it's assigned only to you, and your IP address is fixed as long as your subscription remains valid.

Webshare has over 100,000 static IPs in its pool covering various countries. You can manage your proxies in an intuitive dashboard, utilizing them to bypass geo-restrictions and browse the web without revealing your actual IP address to third parties.

Dedicated Proxy Server

Webshare offers a dedicated proxy server for your business or personal use. A dedicated proxy server offers much faster speed, as you aren't sharing resources with other users. It's similar to running your proxy network but with the features and flexibility that Webshare provides. With a dedicated proxy server, all your activities are only known to Webshare and are not shared with third parties.

You can connect to dedicated proxy servers using the HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols. Webshare’s dedicated servers offer up to 100 Gbps and unlimited bandwidth, which is ideal for massive data scraping. With nearly 100% uptime, which we verified during our test, you shouldn’t worry about reliability when using Webshare’s proxy servers.

Webshare’s dedicated proxy servers start from $26.60 monthly for 20 proxies with 250 GB bandwidth. If you surpass your bandwidth allocation, you can pay extra fees to get as much bandwidth as you need. You can also pay additional fees for unlimited IP authorizations, high concurrency, and a high-priority network (recommended when using proxy servers for time-sensitive data scraping).

Shared Proxy Server

A dedicated proxy server might be too expensive for you. To solve this problem, Webshare offers a proxy server shared with up to 2 other users. This option gives you the reliability of a standalone proxy server but for a more affordable price. You can connect to shared servers with the HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols and choose IPs from over 40 countries. You have unlimited bandwidth and speeds of up to 100 Gbps, the same as a dedicated server. However, your speed will vary depending on the workload of other users sharing the same server.

A shared proxy server costs $24 monthly for 25 proxies and 250 GB bandwidth, which can be upgraded to as much bandwidth as needed. You can also choose add-ons like unlimited IP authorization, high concurrency, and high-priority network.

Chrome Extension

Webshare offers a browser extension for Google Chrome that lets users rotate proxies at the click of a button. This extension is ideal for individual users whose primary use case for Webshare is bypassing geo-restrictions. Whenever you encounter a geo-restriction, just choose a proxy IP from the relevant country and refresh the website to view the previously restricted content.

Webshare gives 10 free proxies, which you can access from the browser extension instead of visiting the website whenever you need a new proxy.

A Missing Feature: Web Scraping APIs

Webshare provides reliable and superfast proxy IP addresses. But this platform lacks a noteworthy feature: web scraping APIs. Many proxy providers offer APIs that let users automatically scrape public data from websites. This feature is crucial because automated web scraping is the most common use case for proxy servers.

Instead of heading to another platform to scrape data, proxy platforms help you kill two birds with one stone. They’ll provide the proxies to bypass geo-restrictions and the APIs to scrape data. Unfortunately, this feature doesn’t exist on Webshare.

Webshare: Ease of Use

Webshare offers an intuitive dashboard that makes all features easy to understand. From your dashboard, you can set up any proxy type that you've paid for. Whether it's static or rotating residential IP or a dedicated proxy server IP, you can spin one up at the click of a button. You'll see the complete list of all available IPs, which you can change anytime.

The dashboard shows detailed analytics about your proxies, including the error ratio and bandwidth consumption. This analytics lets you monitor your real-time proxy usage and make any needed adjustments. You can switch between dark and light mode depending on what suits you.

Webshare: Customer Support

Webshare offers reasonable support to users, both directly and indirectly. The Help Center contains detailed user guides and manuals for all its features, teaching users how to deploy and manage proxies effectively. Webshare provides extensive technical documentation for its APIs, making it easy to integrate its proxies into external applications. The API documentation guides users in configuring Webshare’s proxies to perform their required tasks.

You have access to a FAQ section with solutions to common problems. The Webshare blog provides numerous tutorials on integrating your proxies with other applications. We found this section very helpful when testing the app and its integrations.

If you need direct help, you can email Webshare’s support team and expect a response within 48 hours. However, there is no live chat or telephone support option, which we consider a drawback. You might need urgent support requiring real-time chat, but Webshare doesn’t provide this option.

Webshare: The Competition

There’s no shortage of competition in the proxy software market. We’d like to highlight Smartproxy, Bright Data, and PacketStream as the main Webshare rivals.

Smartproxy has a more expansive proxy network than Webshare. It offers 55 million+ IPs in 195 countries, compared to Webshare's 30 million+ IPs in roughly 50 countries. Smartproxy offers search engine, social media, and e-commerce scraping APIs, but Webshare lacks this feature. The tradeoff is that Webshare has more affordable proxies.

PacketStream is a peer-to-peer proxy service, unlike Webshare, a centralized service. It is far more affordable and reimburses users who contribute their bandwidth to its network. The drawback is that PacketStream offers only residential proxies: there are no ISP proxies or dedicated proxy servers like Webshare. PacketStream’s peer-to-peer, decentralized nature also makes its IPs less reliable: the platform has no control over the internet speed of the device whose IP you share.

Bright Data offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies like WebShare. It also provides web scraping APIs, a Web Unblocker, and ready-made datasets to use instead of scraping from scratch. It has a significantly larger IP pool than Webshare and is overall a better tool. However, expect to pay for Bright Data’s proxies than you will for Webshare.

Webshare: Final Verdict

Webshare is a proxy provider you can rely on. It’s a user-friendly platform that makes it easy to manage and monitor your proxy usage. However, it has drawbacks, such as limited customer support and a smaller proxy network than many rivals.

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