Best Proxies for Market Research & Data Collection 2026
By Marcus Reiner · 2026-04-19 · 8 min read · Use Cases
Market research data is only as good as the IPs that collected it. Here are the proxies enterprise researchers trust in 2026.
What market researchers need
Country and city-targeted residential IPs, audit-ready logs, GDPR-compliant sourcing, and structured data delivery (datasets, APIs).
Top picks
**Bright Data Datasets & Web Scraper IDE** — End-to-end, compliance-first. **Oxylabs E-Commerce + SERP APIs** — Structured JSON across major retailers. **Decodo Residential** — Best $/GB for DIY teams. **NetNut** — Fastest sustained throughput.
Why compliance matters here
Research teams in regulated industries (pharma, finance, insurance) need vendor compliance documentation as part of their audit trail. SOC 2 / ISO 27001 isn't optional.
Scale typical
Mid-market research project: 50–200GB/month across 30+ countries. Enterprise: 1–10TB/month with daily refresh. Budget $2–8/GB accordingly.
Delivery options
Self-collected raw HTML. Vendor-delivered structured JSON. Pre-collected datasets refreshed weekly. Pick based on engineering capacity.
FAQ
Is scraping public data legal for market research?
Generally yes — public-data scraping is well-established legal territory in the US and EU. Personal data triggers GDPR obligations.