Webshare is the budget favorite, and for good reason: it has one of the best free tiers in the business and some of the cheapest datacenter proxies anywhere. We run a competing network, and we are not going to pretend those strengths are not real, because they are, and for some jobs Webshare is the right answer. The honest split is about product shape. Webshare is built around cheap datacenter IPs and a free plan. HProxy is built around residential bandwidth at the lowest per-GB price. Which one you want depends on which of those you actually need.
Is HProxy a good Webshare alternative?
For residential proxies, yes. HProxy sells residential IPs at $0.65/GB, pay as you go, with a balance that never expires. Webshare's rotating residential starts at $3.50/GB on a subscription, so for residential traffic HProxy is cheaper at every tier. Webshare still wins if what you want is a free tier to test on or cheap datacenter proxies bought by the unit. Match the tool to the job and both have a place.
The short version
- Residential price: HProxy is $0.65/GB pay as you go. Webshare rotating residential is $3.50/GB to start (a 50% promo off $7), $2.25/GB at 100 GB, $1.40/GB at 3,000 GB. HProxy is cheaper than all of them.
- Free tier: Webshare gives 10 free proxies, no credit card, which is genuinely excellent. HProxy offers a live free proxy list and free checker to try the network.
- Datacenter: Webshare's datacenter proxies are cheap and sold by the proxy on a monthly plan. HProxy sells datacenter by the gigabyte. Different shapes for different jobs.
- Model and independence: HProxy is pay as you go with a non-expiring balance and is independent. Webshare's paid plans are monthly subscriptions, and Webshare is in the Tesonet portfolio alongside Oxylabs and Decodo.
Webshare pricing vs HProxy: the part that decides it
| HProxy | Webshare | |
|---|---|---|
| Rotating residential, entry per GB | $0.65 | $3.50 (50% promo off $7) |
| Residential at 100 GB | $0.65 | $2.25 |
| Residential bulk floor | $0.65 | $1.40 (3,000 GB) |
| Datacenter model | By the GB | By the proxy, from $2.99/mo per 100 |
| Free tier | Free proxy list and checker | 10 free proxies, no card |
| Billing model | Pay as you go, non-expiring | Monthly subscription |
| Onboarding | Self-serve, no KYC | Self-serve, no KYC |
| Protocols | HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, SOCKS5 | HTTP, SOCKS5 |
Here is Webshare's rotating residential pricing exactly as its own page lists it today, so the per-GB figures are not something you have to take on our word:
| Webshare rotating residential | Per-GB | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | $3.50 | 50% off the $7 list rate |
| 100 GB | $2.25 | marked most popular |
| 3,000 GB | $1.40 | bulk |
Two honest notes on that table. The $3.50 entry rate is a promotional 50% off Webshare's $7 list price, so it is a discounted starting point rather than a standing rate, and the $1.40 floor needs 3,000 GB. HProxy's $0.65 is a flat pay-as-you-go rate at any volume with no promo clock. Even against Webshare's deepest bulk rate, HProxy is more than twice as cheap per gigabyte, and against the entry rate the gap is wider.
The billing model differs too. Webshare's paid plans, datacenter and residential alike, are monthly subscriptions, so you are renewing a plan rather than drawing down a balance. HProxy is pay as you go and the balance never expires, so a paused project keeps its credit. The number that decides your bill is what you pay per successful request, and a subscription you underuse pushes that number up every month you do not use the plan you paid for.
Where Webshare genuinely wins
This is the part we mean, because Webshare's strengths are real and specific.
The free tier is the best starting point around. Ten free proxies with no credit card is a genuinely generous way to test, prototype, or run a tiny job at zero cost. If your first question is "can I try this without paying," Webshare has the best answer in the market, and we respect it. We are big believers in trying before buying, which is the whole reason we publish a live free proxy list, and we wrote about exactly when free is the right call in when free proxies are fine.
Cheap datacenter proxies by the proxy. Webshare's datacenter plans start at $2.99 a month for 100 proxies (about three cents each) and fall toward $0.018 per proxy at large volume or on yearly billing. If you want a fixed set of static datacenter IPs bought by the unit rather than metered by bandwidth, that is excellent, predictable value, and it is a different pricing shape from ours.
Clean developer experience. Webshare's dashboard, API, and setup are fast and well documented. For a developer who wants to be running in five minutes on a small budget, that polish counts.
If your job is a free start, a prototype, or bulk static datacenter IPs, Webshare is a legitimately strong pick, and for those cases it may be the better one.
Where HProxy wins as a Webshare alternative
Residential price, at every tier. For real home IPs, the kind that pass strict anti-bot systems, HProxy is $0.65/GB against Webshare's $3.50/GB starting rate, and cheaper even than Webshare's $1.40 bulk floor. When the job actually needs residential, HProxy is the cheaper network. If you are not sure which type your target needs, datacenter vs residential proxies explains where each one works and where it gets blocked.
Pay as you go, not a subscription. HProxy meters residential by the gigabyte you actually use, with no monthly plan to renew and a balance that never expires. You are not paying for a plan between projects.
Residential built for hard targets. Webshare's cheapest product is datacenter, which strict sites distrust on sight. HProxy's residential IPs look like ordinary home visitors, so for scraping, price monitoring, ad verification, and multi-region account work on defended targets, they clear checks that datacenter ranges do not.
Independence. Webshare sits in the Tesonet portfolio next to Oxylabs and Decodo. HProxy is independent, and we map the common-ownership pattern across this cluster in our Bright Data comparison. If buying from a vendor outside a larger group matters to you, that is a real difference.
Who should pick which
Pick Webshare if you want the best free tier to test on, or cheap static datacenter proxies bought by the proxy on a predictable monthly plan, and you are comfortable on a subscription.
Pick HProxy if you want residential proxies that pass strict anti-bot systems, at $0.65/GB pay as you go, with a non-expiring balance and no subscription to renew. For residential traffic specifically, HProxy is both cheaper and more flexible.
The clean way to decide: if the word in your task is "datacenter" or "free," look hard at Webshare. If the word is "residential," HProxy is the cheaper, pay-as-you-go answer.
Try it before you decide
You do not have to take our word on the network. Test HProxy's free proxy checker and the live free proxy list to see the infrastructure (we even published a study of 47 million proxy checks behind it), then start on residential at $0.65/GB pay as you go when you are ready. Our full pricing lays out every per-GB rate, with no subscription to renew and a balance that never expires.