Home / Proxy reviews / ProxyEmpire Review
Read this in-depth ProxyEmpire review to discover what this proxy provider offers and how it compares to its competitors.ProxyEmpire: General Information
ProxyEmpire—in business since 2020—is a small company based in Bulgaria that aims to compete in the premium segment of the proxy industry. According to LinkedIn, the company has fewer than 10 employees, mostly from Bulgaria. Its headquarters is located in Burgas at 8000, 20 Samuil Str., fl. 2.
ProxyEmpire specializes in rotating proxies, both residential and mobile. It also offers datacenter proxies and dedicated mobile proxies. Use cases for these proxies include web scraping, sneaker copping, stock market analysis, price monitoring, travel fare aggregation, social marketing, SEO monitoring, brand protection, ad verification, and web automation.
The provider does not yet seem to have a primary audience, offering plans that can meet the needs of both individuals and enterprises. This is evident from the presence of pay-as-you-go plans, as well as incrementally growing plans for small, medium, and large businesses.
ProxyEmpire is not transparent about how it obtains and manages its residential IPs, only stating they are “ethically sourced.”
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Dig into the types of proxy servers offered by the provider, the countries covered, how many IPs they expose, and how much they cost.
Time to review ProxyEmpire’s proxy offerings!
ProxyEmpire operates a proxy network with over 5 million residential IPs, distributed across more than 170 countries. Each country has a dedicated page on the website, including information on the number of available IPs and useful details about proxies in that region. ProxyEmpire’s residential proxies can be filtered by country, city, state, and ISP.
These residential proxies are ethically sourced and designed to handle CAPTCHAs, IP blocks, and bans effectively. They support routing of HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS, and UDP traffic, and guarantee unlimited concurrent connections in any specific geographic location. ProxyEmpire’s residential proxy network boasts a 99.7% uptime, which is not the best in the market. Each IP address is tested for quality to ensure users receive good rotating proxies. The provider has configurable IP rotation options, from 90 seconds to 1 hour.
The pricing of residential proxy plans depends on the number of GB you choose to purchase, as outlined below:
The presence of a pay-as-you-go plan is great, but the entry price of $9 per GB is above the market average. There are several plans to choose from, with the price per GB decreasing to as low as $3/GB. However, prices become competitive only for large plans costing over $300 per month. Market leaders such as Bright Data and Smartproxy offer fewer plans but are generally more affordable, especially for individual users.
Each plan can be tested with a very limited 100 MB trial for $1.97.
Overall, individual users might find ProxyEmpire’s rotating residential proxies a bit too expensive, especially considering the lack of a real free trial or a consistent refund policy. Instead, mid-sized and large companies may find them more appealing.
ProxyEmpire offers static residential proxies supported by 21 different ISPs across 17 countries. The total number of ISP proxy IPs available is undisclosed. The provider offers multiple IP assignment options, ranging from a few hours to several months. Users can also select IPs based on country, region, ISP, and city.
There is no free trial, and the plans vary depending on the number of IPs and bandwidth you need:
Each static residential IP costs $2 per month. On top of that, users need to purchase one of the bandwidth plans, which provides access to a specific amount of GBs. These bandwidth plans are the same as those for rotating residential proxies. The pricing model can be a bit confusing at first and might require some extra consideration.
ProxyEmpire places significant focus on rotating mobile proxies, offering almost as many IPs as residential ones. Users can choose from 4 million mobile IPs in over 170 countries, primarily from 4G cellular networks.
The features of the mobile proxy network are similar to those of the rotating residential proxies, with the key difference being a slightly higher uptime of 99.8%. A 50 MB trial is available for $1.97.
The pricing plans for rotating mobile proxies are based on the amount of GB bandwidth as follows:
In this case, the pay-as-you-go plan starts at $20 per GB. While this is not too far from the market average, it is significantly higher than top providers like Bright Data or Oxylabs. Luckily, there are many plans available to accommodate various needs.
ProxyEmpire is one of the very few providers that offers dedicated LTE, 4G, 5G, and mobile proxies. These proxies are sourced from dedicated devices available in the United States, Israel, Austria, and the United Kingdom. The uptime is 99.95%, and the IPs come from enterprise-grade, fast, and reliable cellular networks. Over 50 locations are available in the US alone.
Users can reset the IP on demand or change the location entirely. They can also keep the IP for longer periods, similar to a static IP, although it may occasionally change due to the nature of mobile networks. That makes dedicated mobile proxies a hybrid solution between mobile and static proxies.
For these dedicated mobile proxies, users pay a monthly fee for unlimited bandwidth:
There are only two plans available: one starting at $125 per month for multi-country dedicated mobile proxies and another at $250 per month for 5G mobile proxies in the US. Given the uniqueness of this offering in the market, it is challenging to assess whether these prices are honest or not.
ProxyEmpire’s datacenter proxy offering is quite limited, comprising only 41,500 IPs across 13 countries. These are United States, United Kingdom, India, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Hong Kong, Singapore, Austria, and Switzerland. Geo-targeting options are restricted to country selection.
Plans are based on the amount of GB needed per month:
These prices are in the market average, but they do not match those offered by top-tier proxy providers. Note that there is no pay-as-you-go plan available.
The key features of ProxyEmpire’s proxies and plans include:
ProxyEmpire offers 24/7 customer support via live chat. For longer interactions, reporting bugs, or opening complaints, staff is available at [email protected]. This email address is also used to request account deletion. For questions about pricing and to find the plan that best suits one’s needs, users can e-mail the sales team at [email protected]. In case of assistance in integrating proxy solutions into any software stack, technical support is available as well.
Like many proxy providers, ProxyEmpire guarantees different levels of customer support based on the price of the purchased plan. All customers receive dedicated VIP support for integration, while enterprises and large businesses can be assigned dedicated account managers.
When evaluating customer service and service quality, it is essential not to rely only on what is advertised on the provider’s website. Reading customer experiences and checking reviews is critical. ProxyEmpire has 68 reviews on Trustpilot, with a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars.
Most reviews are highly positive, with only 5 negative reviews, all addressed by the ProxyEmpire customer team within 24 hours. None of these seem very concerning—to be honest. However, the limited number of reviews might indicate a limited customer base. Sure, that could mean more personalized attention. On the other hand, it is worth considering what will happen when more users join the network.
On G2, there are only 3 reviews, all 5-star.
The sign-up process does not involve any KYC procedures. Users are only required to check a box confirming that they won’t use the service for financial websites or any illegal activities. As you can imagine, this minimal step does not effectively deter bots and malicious users. At least, ProxyEmpire’s Privacy Policy states that data processing complies with GDPR regulations. Nevertheless, there is no mention of CCPA or other data privacy standards.
A significant concern arises from potentially misleading information on the website. For instance, the homepage claims that the provider offers over 25,750,000 proxy IPs.
At the same time, the sum of the total IPs mentioned across individual proxy type pages amounts to only 9 million IPs. This discrepancy is confirmed in the footer, which also states 9 million IPs:
Another concern is a FAQ stating that “All payments and subscriptions made by users are strictly non-refundable.” This policy limits refund options, although there is a provision, “If you feel like your refund case has special surrounding circumstances, please contact us and we will decide on a case by case basis if you do qualify for a refund.” Plus, notice that “Payments in virtual currencies are non-refundable in all cases.”
It is important to note that the wording on the site can be misleading. For example, one FAQ mentions, “We do not change setup fees, we only charge a $1.97 account activation fee.” This seems to suggest that you need to pay $1.97 to activate your account in addition to the chosen paid plan. Fortunately, that is not the case. The expression “activation fee” refers to the optional trial users can activate to try the service. This fee can be avoided by proceeding directly to a paid plan.
ProxyEmpire is mainly a pure proxy provider, which means it does not offer a wide range of additional services, products, or features. Still, it does have a couple of services worth exploring.
Browser Extension Like most proxy providers, ProxyEmpire offers an extension to simplify proxy integration within browsers. This is called “ProxyEmpire Proxy Manager” and you can find it on the Chrome Web Store.
Currently, the extension is only available for Chrome and provides a simple interface that enables users to manage their proxies with ease.
Scraping API As of this writing, this product is still under development. While in the “coming soon” state, the ProxyEmpire site advertises it as an API for data scraping with advanced anti-bot detection and bypassing capabilities. This product will aim to circumvent common obstacles like IP blocks and CAPTCHAs using sophisticated algorithms designed to mimic human interactions.
After activating a $1.97 trial, you will receive 1,000 Scraping API credits to use when this product is ready.
Scraping API is an umbrella term that refers to three different scraping services:
Keep in mind that most other proxy providers offer scraping solutions of this type.
ProxyEmpire is a capable proxy provider, offering all types of proxy servers and covering most countries worldwide. It comes with some aspects of a top-notch provider, such as dedicated customer service, but it has not yet reached that level of service. Additionally, 9 million IPs are too few for a top-tier proxy provider.
There are a few concerns, such as the lack of KYC procedures to restrict malicious users and bots from entering its proxy network. Ot the misleading discrepancies on its official website. Additionally, it lacks complementary products to enhance its proxy offerings. Sure, a Scraping API solution is under development, but no release date is available at the time of writing.
The concept of dedicated mobile proxies is innovative, and the range of plans to meet different bandwidth needs is excellent. Still, the price per GB is far from cheap. The user reviews, although few, are mostly positive. While ProxyEmpire is not an industry leader and might never become one, it is trustworthy enough to be worth trying.
Final verdict: 6.4/10