Netnut

Basic introduction

NetNut is a major provider of rotating proxy servers. It’s less popular than something like Smartproxy or Bright Data but still a well-known option among businesses. Since early 2021, when NetNut introduced cheaper entry plans, it’s also become an affordable choice for customers with smaller requirements (one-off web scraping projects, sneaker copping, or social media management).

In this review, I’ll take a close look at NetNut and especially its residential proxy service. We’ll see how it compares with other premium providers and whether NetNut really controls the fastest residential proxy network, as it likes to claim.

General Information

NetNut is an Israeli proxy provider established in 2017. It belongs to Safe-T Group, which provides cybersec and privacy services. NetNut’s products include rotating datacenter, residential, and ISP proxy networks. There’s also a web scraping API – it comes bundled with the proxy plans if you pay enough.

NetNut can safely be considered a premium provider with an eye to businesses with big needs. This reflects throughout the whole service: from customer support to pricing. That doesn’t mean NetNut is completely inaccessible to entry-level clients: the plans start from $20. But you’ll get better experience – and much better rates – paying $500 and up.

NetNut Proxy Networks

NetNut controls three proxy networks: shared datacenter IPs, peer-to-peer residential proxies, and its signature static residential proxies. NetNut also has a proxy-based web scraping API but does very little to advertise it, so neither will we.

As things usually go with these proxy types, datacenter IPs are best for running small-scale projects with unprotected websites. Rotating residential proxies support more locations and are harder to detect. Static residential IPs work well with protected targets when you need a consistent identity.

Datacenter Proxies

NetNut’s most approachable service is its network of datacenter proxies. They rotate automatically and give you full access to the proxy network. With 100k+ IPs, it’s among the largest of its kind, which should allow for some large-scale data collection. However, the only available location is the US, and you can’t filter for states or cities.

ISP Proxies (Static Residential Proxies)

NetNut advertises around 1 million static residential proxies. While their number has actually decreased throughout the years, NetNut remains among the largest vendors of such IPs.

The static residential proxies cover a little over 30 locations, primarily the US and Europe.  This is okay for most use cases, though if you want IPs in Africa or smaller South American countries, we recommend NetNut’s rotating residential proxies. You can target cities and states, but only in the US. Otherwise, you’re left with country-level precision.

Rotating Residential Proxies

NetNut’s rotating residential proxy network includes between 10-20 million monthly IPs. We can’t know precisely as such IPs come and go – and because NetNut provides conflicting information in different sources.

All in all, the service is pretty basic in features and resembles cheaper providers like PacketStream than NetNut’s premium alternatives.

Pricing

NetNut uses a traffic-based pricing model. You can choose from a wide variety of plans, each having a set amount of gigabytes assigned to it. Custom plans are also available if the options on display aren’t enough for you.

Compared to other residential proxy providers, NetNut leans toward the expensive end of the pricing scale. This is especially true for the entry plans, which start from $25 (static) or $20 (rotating) for 1 GB of data. Even Bright Data charges less at this level. That said, the plans do scale well and start getting increasingly attractive from 250 GBs and up.

The datacenter proxies are much more affordable, but only relative to NetNut’s residential proxies. They start from $20 for 20 GBs of traffic ($1/GB) and reach $500 for 1 TB ($0.5/GB). Competitors like Smartproxy and Bright Data offer better rates; the one thing that helps NetNut is a relatively low entry threshold.

The plans differ not only by traffic but also features. For instance, the smallest option won’t give you Skype support, IP whitelisting, or API access. You can unlock them by shelling out more money.

You can also opt to pay by requests. This model targets customers with very big needs, and it starts from $7,500 per month. Paying for successful requests makes the most sense when you’re scraping heavy web pages.

NetNut Performance Benchmarks

We last tested NetNut for 2023 Proxy Market Research. The benchmarks are based on a custom script and target Cloudflare’s Trace webpage. It doesn’t block requests and connects to the nearest Cloudflare data center, making the page ideal for testing proxy infrastructure.  Our requests came from a server in Germany.

Compared to other residential proxy services, NetNut was among the leaders: while it couldn’t quite catch up to Bright Data or Oxylabs, the provider managed to beat most other providers, even premium companies like smatproxy.