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Webshare came into existence in 2018 to meet the fast-growing need for proxies. To achieve this, it provides proxy servers for individual users and organizations, fulfilling over 650 billion proxy requests per month. Its service includes access to 80 million+ static residential proxies, rotating residential proxies, and proxy servers in every country in the world (yes, that’s 195).

In 2024, Webshare officially came under the auspices of Oxylabs, another notable proxy server provider. However, this doesn’t seem to have brought any major changes, as it has continued to operate independently as it did before. It also hasn’t received some of Oxylabs’ advanced features, like web scraping APIs.

Webshare: Plans and Pricing

Webshare charges its service by the type (proxy server, static residential, and rotating residential), number of IPs purchased (for proxy server and static residential), amount of traffic per month (for rotating residential), as well as the duration of the subscription (monthly or yearly).

Proxy server pricing starts at free for up to 10 proxies, which can be used as a free trial, just go get a taste of the service before committing to one of its paid plans with more IPs - but only this particular tier of the service.

The monthly-based proxy server plan with 100 proxies is charged $2.99 each month (that’s $0.0299 per proxy), and the more IPs you choose, the higher the discount, so 60,000 proxies come at a price tag of $0.0179 per IP. Going with the yearly option entails more discounts, so 100 proxies are charged $1.99 per month ($0.0239 per proxy), or $0.0144/proxy if you take 60,000 of them.

Moving onto the static residential proxies ranges from $4 per month for 20 proxies under the yearly plan to $20.01/month for 100 proxies, to $95.05/month for 500 proxies, to $180.09/month for 1,000 IPs, to $1,500.75/month for 10,000 IPs ($0.18 per proxy). There are other options based on the specific number of proxies required. The month-by-month plans are somewhat more expensive.

Finally, rotating residential proxies are cheaper than their static counterparts and are charged per GB. So, a 1 GB plan under the yearly commitment will cost you $2.8/GB/month, 10 GB goes for $2.20/GB or $20.20 per month, 25 GB can be yours at $2.08/GB or $52/month, 100 GB is charged $1.80/GB or $180/month, and 3,000 GB is priced at $1.12/GB or $3,360/month.

That said, Webshare doesn’t offer a free trial for its residential IPs. There’s no money-back guarantee either, but the company does provide a possibility of a refund under certain conditions. These include not having breached 1 GB of bandwidth, having fewer than 1,000 proxies used in the subscription, and making the request not later than 48 hours after the purchase.

Webshare: Features

A user’s adventure with Webshare starts at registration, which can be done via your email address or through an existing Google account. Considering that the platform already caters to more than 60,000 businesses, you know you’re going to be in good hands here. Once the registration is out of the way, you’ll be redirected to a dashboard with access to all of Webshare’s features.

Residential IPs

Webshare’s rotating residential IP addresses are ethically sourced, which means they come from consenting users, something that means a lot in a proxy industry overwhelmed by illegally obtained IP addresses. In other words, Webshare gets its IP addresses from device owners agreeing to join its proxy network in exchange for certain benefits.

Residential IPs are useful in many cases. For example, a hotel comparison site needs to scrape price lists from many hotel websites. However, hotel websites often discourage scraping by placing geo-restrictions and IP restrictions. Suppose a U.S.-based hotel blocks foreign IPs from accessing its website. Webshare lets you bypass it by choosing a proxy U.S. IP address to view the website and scrape pricing information.

Residential proxies are also helpful in e-commerce, wherein price comparison sites scrape data en masse to help people find the best deals. If you run a price comparison site, you can use residential IPs to access localized versions of a retailer’s website and scrape relevant information.

Webshare offers IP addresses in 195 countries around the globe (which means every country in the world as recognized by the United Nations), with the most popular locations including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, China, Australia, France, and Canada. It has over 80 million IP addresses spread across all of these countries.

Still, Oxylabs has 102 million+ IPs, and Decodo has 125 million, but Webshare is getting there, as it has grown the number of its own proxies from 30 million in 50 countries in December 2024 to the current figure that now includes all the recognized countries in the world.

(Image credit: Webshare )Static Residential IPs

Static IPs are a faster alternative to Webshare's residential IPs. They are technically still residential IPs, albeit sourced directly from internet service providers (ISPs). They’re faster and more reliable because the IP doesn’t change with each session, relying on the unstable Wi-Fi connections of the device owners. Static IPs are issued for long-term use and are harder to detect, helping you stay anonymous while browsing.

Webshare’s static IPs have unlimited bandwidth. That’s why it charges per IP instead of by bandwidth like the standard residential IPs. Webshare sources its static IPs from ISPs like AT&T, Sprint, and Cox Communications. These ISPs have massive networks and offer speeds of up to 1 GB per second. Once you pay for a static IP, it's assigned only to you, and your IP address is fixed as long as your subscription remains valid.

Webshare has over 100,000 static IPs in its pool covering various countries. You can manage your proxies in an intuitive dashboard, utilizing them to bypass geo-restrictions and browse the web without revealing your actual IP address to third parties.

Proxy servers

Webshare offers its proxy servers with 400,000 IPs according to your specific needs. This means you can choose between shared proxy servers (shared with more than two users), private proxy servers (shared with one to two users), or dedicated servers (fully owned by you), with the pricing to match.

A dedicated proxy server offers much faster speed, as you aren't sharing resources with other users. It's similar to running your proxy network but with the features and flexibility that Webshare provides. With a dedicated proxy server, all your activities are only known to Webshare and are not shared with third parties.

You can connect to dedicated proxy servers using the HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols. Webshare’s dedicated servers offer up to 100 Gbps and unlimited bandwidth, which is ideal for massive data scraping. With nearly 100% uptime, which we verified during our test, you shouldn’t worry about reliability when using Webshare’s proxy servers.

Webshare’s dedicated proxy servers start from $26.60 monthly for 20 proxies with 250 GB bandwidth. If you surpass your bandwidth allocation, you can pay extra fees to get as much bandwidth as you need. You can also pay additional fees for unlimited IP authorizations, high concurrency, and a high-priority network (recommended when using proxy servers for time-sensitive data scraping).

Meanwhile, choosing a proxy server that you share with multiple users (more than two) is a budget option that provides the reliability of a standalone, but comes at a more affordable price. You can connect to shared servers with the HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols and choose IPs from over 50 countries.

You have unlimited bandwidth and speeds of up to 100 Gbps, the same as a dedicated server. However, your speed will vary depending on the workload of other users sharing the same server.

A shared proxy server costs $24 monthly for 25 proxies and 250 GB bandwidth, which can be upgraded to as much bandwidth as needed. You can also choose add-ons like unlimited IP authorization, high concurrency, and high-priority network.

The middle road is the private proxy option, where you only share your server with one to two other users, but nonetheless, you have access to all the perks offered by the above services - reliable uptime, HTTP/SOCKS5 support, IPs in 50+ countries, and a lower price.

(Image credit: Webshare )Chrome Extension

Webshare offers a browser extension for Google Chrome that lets users rotate proxies at the click of a button. This extension is ideal for individual users whose primary use case for Webshare is bypassing geo-restrictions. Whenever you encounter a geo-restriction, just choose a proxy IP from the relevant country and refresh the website to view the previously restricted content.

Webshare gives 10 free proxies, which you can access from the browser extension instead of visiting the website whenever you need a new proxy.

Webshare: Ease of Use

Webshare offers an intuitive dashboard that makes all features easy to understand. From your dashboard, you can set up any proxy type that you've paid for. Whether it's a static or rotating residential IP or a dedicated proxy server IP, you can spin one up at the click of a button. You'll see the complete list of all available IPs, which you can change anytime.

(Image credit: Webshare )

The dashboard shows detailed analytics about your proxies, including the error ratio and bandwidth consumption. This analytics lets you monitor your real-time proxy usage and make any needed adjustments. You can switch between dark and light mode depending on what suits you.

Webshare: Customer Support

Webshare offers reasonable support to users, both directly and indirectly. The Help Center contains detailed user guides and manuals for all its features, teaching users how to deploy and manage proxies effectively. Webshare provides extensive technical documentation for its APIs, making it easy to integrate its proxies into external applications. The API documentation guides users in configuring Webshare’s proxies to perform their required tasks.

You have access to a FAQ section with solutions to common problems. The Webshare blog provides numerous tutorials on integrating your proxies with other applications. We found this section very helpful when testing the app and its integrations.

If you need direct help, you can email Webshare’s support team and expect a response within 48 hours. However, there is no live chat or telephone support option, which we consider a drawback. You might need urgent support requiring real-time chat, but Webshare doesn’t provide this option.

Webshare: The Competition

There’s no shortage of competition in the proxy software market. We’d like to single out Decodo (formerly Smartproxy), Bright Data, and PacketStream as the most noteworthy Webshare rivals.

Decodo has a more expansive proxy network than Webshare. It offers 125 million+ IPs, compared to Webshare's 80 million+. Decodo offers search engine, social media, and e-commerce scraping APIs, but Webshare lacks this feature. The tradeoff is that Webshare has more affordable proxies.

PacketStream is a peer-to-peer proxy service, unlike Webshare, which is a centralized service. It is far more affordable and reimburses users who contribute their bandwidth to its network. The drawback is that PacketStream offers only residential proxies: there are no ISP proxies or dedicated proxy servers like Webshare. PacketStream’s peer-to-peer, decentralized nature also makes its IPs less reliable: the platform has no control over the internet speed of the device whose IP you share.

Bright Data offers residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies like WebShare. It also provides web scraping APIs, a Web Unblocker, and ready-made datasets to use instead of scraping from scratch. It has a significantly larger IP pool than Webshare and is overall a better tool. However, expect to pay for Bright Data’s proxies more than you will for Webshare.

Webshare: Final Verdict

Webshare is a reliable proxy provider that does a great job in its field. It’s easy to use, making the management and monitoring of your proxy usage a walk in the proverbial park. That said, it has its drawbacks, like limited customer support and the missing web scraping API feature offered by many proxy providers to let users automatically scrape public data from websites - a common use case for proxy servers.

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You know those shows that feel like a warm hug whenever they return to our screens, even if their subject matter isn't always savory? Only Murders in the Building season 5 is exactly that, and for me, it's by far the best installment of the Hulu show to date.

For anyone that needs a recap, poor Arconia doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca) was bumped off at the end of season 4, leaving our clumsy podcasters Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) to try and solve the crime in new episodes. Pretty much all of our Arconia residents and recurring cast members return for more distant sleuthing, with new guest stars Renée Zellweger, Dianne Wiest and Keegan-Michael Key each having a crucial role to play.

It's rare that a TV show can get me to laugh out loud, resist fast-forwarding through typical filler scenes and try to jump the gun by deciding who the murderer is even if I'm wrong, but the quickly turned-around season 5 has managed that with ease.

It's more of the same, unsurprisingly, but you can't mess with near perfection, can you? We passed the signpost warning us of ridiculous storylines back in season 1... so of course we're all in for this delicious new round of chaos. Can it be more unhinged? Turns out, yes.

Only Murders in the Building season 5 kicks things up another notch

Obviously, I'd be committing the cardinal whodunnit sin if I gave away any spoilers, but I can tell you that I've not enjoyed a season of Only Murders in the Building as much as I have with season 5. Why? Mostly because we've got the perfect balance of old and new. Our main cast have embodied their roles so well that they're essentially symbiotic, while our new players are introduced in ways that continue to surprise and delight.

I started episode 1 thinking season 5 was basically a glorified Disney channel for adults who don't want to age out of their silliness – and then I realized that's exactly what the show's been this entire time. Everything about its composition is incredibly playful, able to manipulate the typical boundaries of genre and structure that we'd normally see our best streaming services rigidly stick to. In a nutshell, it's in its own lane.

The chemistry between Martin, Short and Gomez is obviously what's continuing to drive all of this. I genuinely believe that they're unlikely best friends both on and off camera, and the fact that the podcasters know each other as well as they know themselves only makes the overall story land that much more naturally.

I'm still surprised at how well some of the one-liner zingers land, somehow veering away from cringe-worthy tropes and straight into laughs that register across different generations. This, if nothing else, is the sign that something is well-crafted and knows exactly what it is and what it wants to achieve.

I know Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep, but I need more

Meryl Streep as Loretta in Only Murders in the Building. (Image credit: Hulu)

If I really had to pick Only Murders in the Building season 5 apart – and I wouldn't be a good reviewer if I didn't – there are some small details that could bother me if I let them. We're effectively just getting more of exactly the same without any distinct changes, and what is different is incredibly far-fetched.

Four people have died in The Arconia by the time season 5 kicks off, and street smarts should tell us that every single resident should have moved out by now. Obviously, the fact that more death is now on the horizon requires a belief suspension so big, it's practically floating on the ceiling. But if you've taken anything seriously up until this point, that's on you.

My biggest gripe is that season 5 has the least amount of Meryl Streep screen time since her arrival in season 3. When I was 17, I co-founded a Meryl Streep fan club at school called The Mezralites around the time The Iron Lady came out. There were only two of us, and we got t-shirts made. I've been the equivalent of Cam in Modern Family ever since (who once said: "Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice"), so nothing short of constant exposure is ever going to be enough for me.

Still, you can find her in the latter half of season 5, and it's majorly worth the wait. Loretta (Streep's character) decides to play a Danish clairvoyant for reasons that will become clear when you watch, and my side were splitting watching her. There's no presence, Awards chat or need to be an icon here: The Arconia is her actor's playground, and she's letting rip.

Having said all of this, you don't fix something that isn't broke. Of course Only Murders in the Building was never going to deviate away from a hugely successful format and brand, and we should be thanking our lucky stars that season 5 is just as good as it ever was (nay, better). Shoutout to Zellweger for being the best and campiest guest star we've had on in the last few years, and being the only person to match Oliver's unique brand of unhinged self-delusion.

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