What ProxyScrape is known for: a free proxy list
Most people meet ProxyScrape long before they pay it anything. The company, based in Belgium, publishes a free public proxy list: thousands of HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 endpoints, rechecked constantly, filterable by protocol, anonymity level, country and latency, and available as a plain download, a public API, or a GitHub mirror. Nefo has no equivalent and does not try to compete with it. It is genuinely useful for smoke-testing that a scraper handles proxy failure correctly before any money changes hands, and ProxyScrape is upfront about the caveats — public proxies come and go, and their anonymity is unknown.
The paid catalogue is deliberately broad: bulk premium datacenter IPs, dedicated static proxies, rotating residential, an unlimited residential tier priced by throughput rather than volume, and a mobile option. That breadth is the proposition — one self-serve account covering most proxy shapes, aimed at developers and scraping teams rather than enterprise procurement.
- A free, minute-fresh public proxy list with an open API
- Bulk datacenter and dedicated static IPs, which Nefo now sells as datacenter proxies and per-address static IP proxies
- An unlimited residential tier where you buy Mbps of throughput instead of gigabytes
- One vendor and one dashboard across several proxy types
ProxyScrape billing cycle vs prepaid gigabytes
The clearest structural divergence is how each provider counts what you use. ProxyScrape's residential plans are subscription-shaped: an allowance attached to a billing cycle, which resets when that cycle rolls over. Its unlimited residential tier takes this further and removes volume from the equation entirely — you buy a throughput ceiling for a fixed period and push as much data through it as that pipe allows. Both models reward steady, predictable consumption. You size the pipe or the allowance to a normal week, and if your weeks look alike, it pays off.
Nefo meters gigabytes only, prepaid, and flexible plans are non-expiring: bandwidth stays in the account until traffic consumes it. Generating credentials is free, so an idle account costs nothing. That suits uneven work — a two-week project, a client engagement that ends, a crawler that sits quiet for a month and then runs hard for three days. It is the weaker model for a pipe running flat out around the clock, where per-gigabyte pricing eventually loses to throughput pricing.
Neither approach is cleverer than the other; they fit different demand curves. Before choosing, it is worth looking at your last three months of actual consumption rather than your intended consumption, because the two are rarely the same.
What Nefo proxies give you
Nefo sells residential proxies, datacenter proxies, static IP proxies, IP Vault addresses, and mobile ports on real carrier modems. Credentials are free, as many as you like, and geography and session behavior are set with username tokens such as -country-us and -session-<id>.
- HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5, all using username and password authentication
- 227 countries and territories, with the United States targetable down to state and city
- Region and city targeting in selected countries including the UK, Canada, Germany and France
- ASN/ISP targeting — pin traffic to a named cable, fibre or mobile carrier within a country
- Rotating (a new IP per request) or sticky (the same IP from one minute up to 24 hours)
- Prepaid from 5GB, topped up whenever, with flexible plans non-expiring
Targeting and session length compared
On geography the two are close enough that it is not a reason to move. ProxyScrape also offers country, state and city targeting plus ISP and ASN filtering on its residential pool, and both providers support HTTP and SOCKS5 with username and password authentication. If your requirement is simply country-level or ASN-pinned residential traffic, you will get it from either.
Session length is where the two genuinely part. ProxyScrape exposes sticky sessions through a session identifier and lifetime, and its own guidance recommends keeping them to roughly two hours. Nefo holds a sticky IP for up to 24 hours, set per credential. If your work is a long authenticated session that must not appear to change network partway through a working day, that ceiling is the thing to test. If you rotate on every request, it is irrelevant.
Mobile proxies: two different models
Both catalogues list mobile proxies, but the products are shaped differently. ProxyScrape has offered mobile as part of its pooled catalogue, with country coverage narrower than its residential footprint. Nefo's mobile product is a port on a real carrier modem: one live 4G/5G IP on that port for the rental period, changeable on demand, with US state- and carrier-level targeting.
The consequence is billing shape rather than quality. A mobile port is rented by duration — hours up to 30 days — so there is no bandwidth meter to watch, which suits continuous mobile-context work. If you need a mobile IP only occasionally, drawing it from a pooled per-gigabyte plan commits you to less.
How to test Nefo against ProxyScrape, and who should stay
A proxy migration does not need a cutover. The smallest Nefo plan is 5GB ($4.50) and credential generation is free, so an honest side-by-side costs no more than that first 5GB. Keep ProxyScrape live throughout; point one copy of one job at the new credential and compare on your own targets rather than on headline pool figures. Integration work is minimal, since both sides are username and password authentication over HTTP or SOCKS5 — a host, a port and a credential string. You assemble the username with geography and session tokens on both, so mostly the token names change.
Stay with ProxyScrape if your setup leans on its throughput-priced unlimited residential tier and you are genuinely saturating it — per-gigabyte pricing will not beat an unmetered pipe you are keeping busy. Stay if the free list is part of how your team works. Stay too if you specifically need features Nefo still does not sell, such as a managed scraping API.
Nefo is the better fit when you want prepaid non-expiring residential or datacenter bandwidth, when consumption is lumpy and unused bandwidth carrying over indefinitely is worth more than an allowance that resets, when sticky IPs must be held far longer than a couple of hours, or when you want a time-rented mobile port instead of pooled mobile bandwidth. A fair number of teams end up running both, using one vendor for the free-list and throughput-style use cases and the other for prepaid residential, datacenter, static IPs, or mobile.
- Buy the smallest prepaid block and generate one credential matching your current ProxyScrape geography
- Mirror a single job onto it rather than moving the whole fleet
- Measure block rate, retries, and gigabytes burned per thousand successful requests
- Test sticky behaviour explicitly if you rely on long sessions, since the ceilings differ
- Let the ProxyScrape cycle lapse only once the comparison is settled — unused Nefo bandwidth does not expire while you decide
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Datacenter proxies start at $0.66 for 1 GB, static datacenter IPs from $1.17 for 7 days, and static residential ISP IPs from $1.76 for 7 days, alongside residential and 4G/5G mobile. If you depend on ProxyScrape's unlimited residential tier or its free public list, you may still keep both.
Nefo bandwidth never expires: prepaid gigabytes sit on the balance until traffic uses them, so a quiet month costs nothing and there is no reset to plan around. ProxyScrape's residential plans are tied to a billing cycle.
Nefo sticky sessions hold an IP from 1 minute up to 24 hours. ProxyScrape supports sticky sessions through a session identifier with a lifetime in minutes, and its own guidance recommends staying around two hours. If long sessions are central to your work, test that specifically.
In most cases. Both offer country, state and city targeting plus ISP or ASN filtering. Nefo covers 227 countries and territories, 22,417 cities and 14,252 ISPs/ASNs, set with username tokens such as -country-us and -city-losangeles. See residential proxies.
Not on the headline per-GB figure. Cost depends on gigabytes used per thousand successful requests on your targets, and whether you reliably consume a monthly allowance. If you exhaust it every cycle a subscription is efficient; if you use half of it most months, non-expiring bandwidth is cheaper in practice.
No. Nefo is self-serve: plans start at 5 GB prepaid, credentials are free, and you can top up at any time. Custom volume pricing exists above 10 TB, from $0.30/GB on contract, but ordinary usage needs no conversation.