Pool size is the least useful number on any provider site
Every network quotes millions of addresses. That count is cumulative, meaning every address the network has ever seen, not what is available to you right now in the country you want. It is the easiest number to inflate and the hardest to check. Ask instead how many countries you can actually generate against, because a country you cannot select is not coverage.
Latency figures usually describe the gateway, not your request
Under 100 ms is a common claim and it is normally true of the gateway alone, the hop between you and the entry point. A residential exit adds a consumer connection on the far side, so a real end to end request through one is more often one to two seconds. A provider quoting a gateway figure as end to end latency is not lying so much as letting you misread it. Ask which one they mean.
Targeting granularity is where the honest limits show
Country targeting is close to universal. City and state targeting are not, and they are frequently advertised on pools that cannot really do them, which shows up as a request that quietly comes out somewhere else. A provider that tells you plainly which pools support which level of targeting is worth more than one that claims everything everywhere.
Billing is where the money actually goes
Per gigabyte looks simple until you find out whether unused traffic expires, whether there is a minimum term, whether credit is refundable, and whether a subscription renews on its own. Unlimited plans hide the same questions inside a window of time. Read those four answers before comparing any two prices, because they change what the price means.
The only test that counts is a small one you run yourself
Buy the smallest amount the provider will sell you and point it at the exact target you care about. Fifteen minutes of your own traffic against your own use case tells you more than every comparison table on the internet, and it costs about the price of a coffee. Any provider unwilling to sell you a small first order has answered a different question for you.
What to buy
Judge on targeting you can verify, billing you can read, and a small order you run yourself. Ignore pool size entirely. We publish our per country coverage, our billing rules and our smallest order size so all three can be checked before you spend anything.
Common questions
Is there a single best proxy provider in 2026?
No, because the pools are good at different things. A residential network and a datacenter network are not competing on the same axis: one buys trust and the other buys speed and price. The right question is which pool your target needs, and then which provider sells that pool on terms you can read.
What should I test first?
Whether the provider can target the country you actually need, and whether a request through it succeeds against your real target. Both are answerable with the smallest order a provider will sell.
Do bigger pools work better?
Not reliably. Cumulative pool size says nothing about how many addresses are live in your country at the moment you generate, and it is the number most likely to be presented generously. Country coverage you can select from is the checkable version of the same idea.