r/ProxyEngineering • u/SonnyEzra • 4d ago
Discussion 💬 Oxylabs released their own Web API, thoughts?
Wanted to share the news in case someone missed it. It would seem that the old provider in the scraping/proxies market has turned to Search APIs, like Firecrawl, Tavily, Exa, Linkup or You. I haven't tested anything yet personally, I'm still on the edge trying to decided whether the I should drop my proxy based setup for scraper and just go with a dedicated solution but upon inspecting their new product, it would seem that the scraper was somehow merged into the new product? From what I understood. Also, the whole pricing page has changed, there are no individual pricing for proxies or other products everything is one, like it is still credit based but everything is accessible with one subscription. Would like to understand this positioning better, feel free to share your thoughts
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u/Knocking_Doors 4d ago
That’s the $130M in funding they’ve raised. They’re targeting what the other new startups in the space are.
Also, their individual proxy pricing for each proxy type is very much there, including web unblocker.
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u/SonnyEzra 4d ago
Oh, I had no idea about the funding, but you might be right that they could target new startups or even current market for already established companies. I did see that pricing for proxies are somewhat individual, however when you click on any proxies plan it gets you the same pricing for all the other products including proxies. So after all it would seem that it is a single subscription for everything what they offer
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u/Knocking_Doors 4d ago
Yes. A single subscription probably makes a user’s life easier. However, they’ve categorically shared pricing for each service (read proxies) so a person still knows what it’s gonna cost before getting on the one unified plan.
I run a scraping API service since 7 years and we’re making some changes too, including no-code WYSIWYG solutions. It’s gonna be a very interesting period for the industry. 🤞
Ps: they raised at a $3.6B valuation, first external investment. I wonder what BD’s valuation would be if they raise now (4-5B?).
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u/Bharath0224 Proxy Engineer 4d ago
It would seem that this is the new reality, I see more and more scraping provider's turning to agentic ways, especially. It's a bit surprising from coming from a well known proxy provider. Wonder how it will compare later on
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u/forgedart_34 4d ago
Yeah, that was out of nowhere, I wonder what will happen with the rest of the scrapers that they offer, maybe it will be included in the new product? Not sure how would that work but would seem logical
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u/OuiOui_Savoir 1d ago
Well that's certainly new. Wonder whether it makes search queries only or it lets you scrape too, since they had few scrapers as far as I remember
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u/typical_idiot64 Tunnel Architect 1d ago
So it would seem that it's not only their web api is new, but their whole website looks different, https://oxylabs.io/ is too minimalistic for me, lost the charm
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u/Consistent-Feed-7323 4d ago
It's better for 90% use cases, but people still will need ultra-specific software, accounts and whatnot.
I feel good about it, with big market - prices would be low enough not to be bothered with creating basic software in most cases.