Best Residential Proxies for AI Agents & Browser Automation in 2026

An autonomous browsing agent doesn't scrape a page and move on the way a traditional crawler does. It logs in, reads what's on screen, decides what to click next, fills a form, waits for a redirect, and repeats — sometimes for dozens of steps in a single task. That changes what you need from a residential proxy. A stateless rotating pool built for hammering product pages is the wrong tool for an agent that needs the same IP to hold from the login screen through checkout, and a provider whose "integration guide" is a paragraph saying an API exists isn't the same as one that ships working Playwright code.

This guide ranks seven residential proxy providers specifically for developer-run browser automation: Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium scripts, and the newer generation of autonomous agents that drive a real browser to navigate live websites. The criteria are deliberately narrow — how deep the official tool integration actually goes, how long a sticky session survives a multi-step task, how precisely you can target a city or country for geo-specific runs, whether there's a straightforward API or MCP-style surface to wire into an agent framework, and how the pricing model handles bandwidth that spikes and idles unpredictably rather than arriving in a steady drip. It is not a general residential-proxy ranking; a provider that wins on raw price or pool size elsewhere in this site can land lower here if its session ceiling or its documentation doesn't hold up for this specific job.

How I ranked them

Five things drove the order, in this priority:

1. Depth of official Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium integration. Not "an API exists" — a maintained code repository or documentation page with real authentication and session-handling examples for that specific tool. A vendor blog post that mentions Playwright in passing counts for less than a GitHub repo you can clone and run.
2. Sticky-session length against a real multi-step task. Login, form fill, multi-page navigation, and checkout-style flows all need a session that outlasts the whole sequence. I weighted published (or, where undocumented, absent) sticky-session ceilings, plus any default timeout that could kill a session before the advertised maximum.
3. Geo-targeting precision. Country, city, and — where available — ASN or ZIP targeting, because a geo-specific automation run is only honest if the IP is actually local to the target region.
4. A programmatic control surface for agent frameworks. A plain REST API is table stakes; a dashboard you have to click through by hand is a liability for anything meant to run unattended. Where a provider ships MCP-style tooling for managing the proxy itself, that counts as a genuine differentiator — but I didn't force an MCP comparison where none of the field offers one for a given angle.
5. Pricing flexibility at automation scale. Agent workloads are bursty by nature: a batch of parallel runs can spike usage for a day and then go quiet for a week. Flat, non-expiring bandwidth beats a cheaper-looking rate that resets every month, because a steady-consumption assumption is exactly wrong for this workload.

A note on method: every integration claim below was checked directly against each vendor's current public documentation and GitHub presence — not assumed from a pricing page — because a "supports Selenium" bullet point and a maintained example repository are very different levels of support. Pricing and pool figures are drawn from the same verified baseline used across this site's other residential proxy guides, checked against each vendor's own current pricing pages. Where a vendor doesn't publish a number — a sticky-session ceiling, a non-expiring bandwidth policy — I say so rather than guessing.

Proxidize

Pros: Official MCP server for agent tooling, flat $1/GB non-expiring bandwidth, REST API with Playwright/Puppeteer docs, 195+ countries Cons: No published sticky-session ceiling, no dedicated Selenium guide, no ASN targeting

Proxidize takes the top spot for a combination that's specific to this use case rather than residential proxies in general: an actual programmatic control surface built for agent tooling, paired with a pricing model that doesn't punish unpredictable usage.

The standout is an official, open-source MCP server (proxidize-mcp) that lets Claude, Cursor, and any other MCP-compatible client rotate IPs and check usage directly — a genuine agent-native control surface, not a REST API you have to wrap in your own MCP shim if you want your agent framework to manage the proxy account itself. Layered on top of that is a flat $1/GB rate with bandwidth that rolls over and never expires, even after cancellation, which matters more for agent workloads than almost any other buyer type on this site: an agent project might run flat-out testing a new flow for a week and then sit nearly idle for the next two while the logic gets revised, and a monthly-expiry plan quietly throws away the difference. Coverage spans 195+ countries with country, city, and ISP targeting for geo-specific runs, and the developer docs include Playwright and Puppeteer proxy-configuration examples on top of the REST API.

The honest gaps: Proxidize doesn't publish a maximum sticky-session duration, so if your agent's longest task is a genuinely long checkout-style flow, confirm session behavior with their team before building production automation around it. There's no dedicated Selenium walkthrough — Selenium works fine over standard proxy authentication, but Proxidize hasn't published tool-specific sample code for it the way Oxylabs and Decodo have. And there's no ASN-level targeting for carrier-specific segmentation. For a small team standing up an agent project on a budget that can't be predicted three months out, none of that outweighs the combination of flat non-expiring pricing and a control surface built for exactly this kind of tooling.

Oxylabs

Pros: Public GitHub repo covering Selenium/Playwright/Puppeteer in three languages, documented 24-hour sticky sessions, free deep targeting Cons: Default sessions expire fast unless extended, $6/GB entry, no non-expiring bandwidth

Oxylabs is the pick when integration depth itself is the deciding factor.

It publishes a public, maintained GitHub repository (oxylabs/proxy-integrations) with working tutorials for Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, Pyppeteer, and aiohttp, with code across Python, JavaScript, and Java — the kind of runnable reference a developer can actually clone and adapt into an agent framework, rather than a documentation page that describes an integration in prose. Sticky sessions are documented up to 24 hours via the sesstime parameter, comfortably covering a multi-page or checkout-style automation task, and targeting reaches city, ZIP, coordinates, and ASN for free across 195+ locations — real precision for a geo-specific automation run.

The catch that matters most for an unattended agent: default sessions expire after 10 minutes or 60 seconds of idle time unless sesstime is explicitly set. An agent that pauses to reason between actions, or that hits a slow page load, can lose its session well short of the advertised 24-hour ceiling if the session parameter isn't managed carefully in code. Entry pricing is $6/GB, six times the flat-rate options, with no stated non-expiring bandwidth policy — a real cost when agent usage swings unpredictably rather than arriving steadily. For a team that wants the deepest documented integration path and is willing to pay for it, Oxylabs earns the position; for a bursty, budget-conscious project, the price and the idle-timeout trap both need active management.

Bright Data

Pros: Browser API runs Puppeteer/Playwright/Selenium on managed cloud browsers, markets directly to autonomous agents, largest pool Cons: $8/GB PAYG, no non-expiring bandwidth, KYC onboarding friction

Bright Data is the only provider in this guide selling a product built specifically for this job rather than raw proxies you wire up yourself.

Browser API runs your existing Puppeteer, Playwright, or Selenium scripts on managed cloud browsers through a single endpoint change, with built-in CAPTCHA solving, automatic proxy rotation, and unlimited concurrent sessions — meaning you keep your automation code largely as-is and let Bright Data run and maintain the actual browser fleet. Its own documentation and customer testimonials lean directly into autonomous AI agent workloads navigating websites and performing actions automatically, which is a more direct fit for the "AI agent" half of this guide's angle than any other provider here. The pool is the largest in this guide at 400M+ IPs, with free targeting to ZIP, coordinates, and ASN.

The cost is the real constraint. $8/GB pay-as-you-go is the priciest entry point in this guide, the next tier floors at $499/month for 71GB, and there's no stated non-expiring bandwidth policy — a bad combination for a workload that's bursty by nature rather than steady. Raw residential-proxy sessions outside Browser API time out after just 5 idle minutes by default. Mandatory KYC onboarding also adds friction that a two-person team standing up one agent doesn't need. Reserve Bright Data for a project where the managed-browser convenience genuinely offsets the price, rather than running a small experimental agent through it by default.

Decodo (Smartproxy)

Pros: Official GitHub repos for Playwright and Selenium, documented 24-hour sticky sessions, free ASN/ZIP targeting Cons: No dedicated Puppeteer repo, bandwidth expires monthly, $3.75/GB entry

Decodo is the pick for a team that wants official, runnable example code without Oxylabs' price tag, and doesn't mind a steadier usage pattern.

It publishes separate official GitHub repositories for Playwright and Selenium — real authentication and scraping example code, with the Selenium repo covering five languages — which is a genuine step above a vendor blog post. Sticky sessions are configurable from 1 minute up to a documented 24 hours, publicly specified rather than something you discover in production, comfortably covering a multi-step automation task. Targeting reaches ASN, ZIP, city, and state for free, and independent Proxyway testing measured its pool's fraud and risk scores well below the market average — a real signal for an agent navigating sites that actively challenge bot traffic.

The trade-off specific to this use case: unused bandwidth expires monthly rather than rolling over, which is a genuine cost for an agent workload whose usage is inherently uneven — a quiet week's leftover gigabytes don't carry into next month's burst. There's also no dedicated Puppeteer repository to match its Playwright and Selenium coverage; Puppeteer is documented, but more generically. At $3.75/GB entry, it's pricier than the flat-rate options too. For a team whose agent runs on a fairly predictable schedule and wants official code for Playwright or Selenium specifically, Decodo is a strong pick; for genuinely bursty usage, the monthly expiry works against you.

DataImpulse

Pros: Matches Proxidize's non-expiring $1/GB, broad tool coverage across 15+ integrations, ZIP/ASN targeting Cons: Sticky sessions run roughly 30-120 minutes, no dedicated GitHub repo, self-serve only

DataImpulse is the pick for a team that wants Proxidize's pricing model with broader — if shallower — tool documentation.

It matches the $1/GB entry rate and drops to $0.80/GB at a terabyte, with traffic that never expires, the same bursty-friendly economics that put Proxidize first. Its documentation lists integration guides across 15+ tools, including Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer, with code samples in seven languages — broader raw tool coverage than most providers in this guide bother publishing, even if it's presented as documentation pages rather than a maintained public code repository. It also adds ZIP and ASN targeting for a small add-on fee, finer geo-precision than Proxidize offers.

The gap that matters most for an autonomous agent: DataImpulse's own documentation describes sticky sessions in the 30-120 minute range, noticeably shorter than Oxylabs' or Decodo's 24-hour ceilings. That's plenty for most multi-page flows, but test it directly against your longest checkout-style or form-heavy task before committing production agent traffic to it. It's also a lean, self-serve operation with no dedicated Playwright or Selenium GitHub repo the way Oxylabs and Decodo publish — you're working from docs, not a runnable reference project. For a budget-conscious team whose longest agent task fits comfortably inside two hours, it's a strong economical choice.

IPRoyal

Pros: 7-day sticky sessions, non-expiring bandwidth, true pay-as-you-go Cons: Thinner tool-specific documentation, no ASN/ZIP targeting, $7.35/GB entry

IPRoyal solves one specific problem better than anyone else here: an agent task that needs to hold state for a genuinely long stretch, or that runs on a start-stop schedule rather than a predictable cadence.

Sticky sessions run up to 7 days, the longest published ceiling in this guide by a wide margin, controlled by a lifetime parameter you can set down to the second, and — like Proxidize and DataImpulse — traffic never expires. For an agent project that pauses for weeks between runs, or a task that genuinely needs to keep the same identity across an extended multi-day workflow, that combination is hard to match. It documents Playwright and Puppeteer proxy configuration with code samples across seven languages.

Where it falls behind for this specific use case is integration depth and geo-precision: its own tool-specific guides are thinner than Oxylabs' or Decodo's maintained GitHub repositories — expect general proxy-configuration documentation rather than a framework-specific example project you can clone directly. There's no published ASN or ZIP targeting, coarser than several competitors here. And at $7.35/GB pay-as-you-go, it's among the priciest entry rates in this guide. If a multi-day session is the actual requirement, IPRoyal is worth the premium and the documentation gap; for a typical multi-step task measured in minutes rather than days, the options above it are a better fit.

SOAX

Pros: Free ASN/city/ISP targeting, one plan spans residential and mobile, scriptable session length Cons: 60-minute sticky ceiling, no official framework integration guide, $200/month floor

SOAX earns a place in this guide for a narrow reason — combined residential-and-mobile billing — but trails the field on the two things that matter most for browser automation specifically.

Free targeting down to country, region, city, ISP, and ASN is genuinely useful, and the standout feature is that one credit pool spans both residential and mobile traffic, convenient if an agent needs to alternate between desktop-like and mobile-like sessions without juggling two accounts. Session length is scriptable down to the second for fine-grained control within its own ceiling.

That ceiling is the problem: sticky sessions cap at 60 minutes, the shortest in this guide, which is tight for any multi-step task that runs long — a checkout-style flow with several redirects and waits can bump against that limit. There is also no official Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium integration guide published on SOAX's own documentation — what exists online is generic third-party tutorials rather than vendor-maintained code. The billing model compounds the mismatch: credits rather than true pay-as-you-go, with a $200/month floor, a poor fit for a small team running an experimental agent with genuinely bursty, hard-to-forecast usage. For mixed residential-and-mobile automation specifically it's a fair option; as a general-purpose pick for browser automation it's outclassed by every provider above it.

Quick comparison

The verdict

For a developer running browser-automation agents on a budget that can't be predicted three months out, Proxidize is the pick — a flat $1/GB with bandwidth that never expires absorbs the bursty, unpredictable usage pattern agent workloads actually have, and its official MCP server gives an agent framework a genuine programmatic control surface rather than a bare API to wrap yourself. It isn't the most exhaustively documented option on framework-specific integration, so confirm sticky-session behavior directly with their team if your longest task runs unusually long.

If integration depth is the deciding factor — working, maintained code for Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer you can clone straight into an agent framework — Oxylabs' public GitHub repository and documented 24-hour sticky sessions make it the strongest technical fit, provided you manage its idle-timeout trap and can absorb the price. Bright Data's Browser API is the closest thing to a purpose-built autonomous-agent product in this guide, at the highest cost. Decodo brings official Playwright and Selenium repos at a steadier, monthly-expiry price point. DataImpulse matches Proxidize's economics with broader tool documentation but a shorter session ceiling, IPRoyal's 7-day sessions suit an irregular or long-running agent schedule, and SOAX's combined residential-and-mobile billing is a real advantage only for automation that specifically needs both.

The through-line: for browser automation and AI agents, the provider that wins isn't the one with the biggest pool or the cheapest headline rate — it's the one whose session length actually survives your longest real task, whose integration guide is code you can run rather than a marketing claim, and whose pricing doesn't punish you for using bandwidth the way agents actually use it.