Fusion Proxy vs Oxylabs: plans, connections and switching

Will you use the monthly credit balance?

Oxylabs’ current pricing page describes a monthly subscription whose credits can be spent across products. It lists a $30 Starter plan and a residential rate of $6 per GB at that level. If the entire balance goes to residential traffic, that corresponds to up to 5 GB. Spending some of the balance on another product changes the amount available for proxies. The page also explains that unused credits normally expire at the end of the billing cycle, with an upgrade-related exception.

Compare this with your actual purchase pattern. A team running collection every day may use a subscription predictably, while a short research project may have long gaps between runs. Fusion Proxy lists prepaid residential traffic without expiry and volume-dependent rates. Estimate the cash you would purchase, the traffic you expect to consume and the balance remaining afterward. Keep taxes and any separate service charges in the calculation. The useful comparison is the bill for the work you plan, including the services that work requires.

Sources: Oxylabs residential subscription pricing and credits · Fusion Proxy pricing

Which Oxylabs product is the job using?

Check the current endpoint and the response your application receives. A proxy connection forwards requests from your client. A scraping service may also fetch pages, render JavaScript or return extracted fields. Oxylabs lists several proxy and data-access products, so an invoice headed with the provider’s name does not by itself identify what needs replacing. Ask the person maintaining the integration to name the product and the output format.

Fusion Proxy’s residential connection is intended for an application that performs those page and extraction tasks itself. If you already maintain that application, trying another proxy can be straightforward. If the existing integration receives finished data, replacing the connection layer alone will leave work unfinished. Write down what produces the fields, what stores the results and what retries failed pages. Keep the current Oxylabs product where it continues to solve a requirement efficiently, and test Fusion Proxy on a separate connection-based job before planning a larger change.

Sources: Oxylabs product catalog · Fusion Proxy residential specifications

Do you need an assigned IP between visits?

Treat a recurring business account or a firewall allowlist as a different requirement from a list of independent public pages. For the former, the important question can be whether the same address remains assigned over the paid period. For the latter, changing residential exits between requests may be convenient. Put this requirement in the comparison before looking at the price per gigabyte.

Fusion Proxy’s ISP product provides a dedicated static IPv4 address for a renewable 30-day period, with bandwidth included. Oxylabs documents dedicated ISP access through assigned ports, separately from session-ID control used by other products. Compare the specific static products and their order conditions, rather than assuming that every product carrying the word residential behaves the same. During a trial, restart the client and reconnect later to inspect the address again. Also check what happens at renewal and who owns the allowlist update if an allocation changes. These are concrete operating questions for either supplier.

Sources: Fusion Proxy ISP specifications · Oxylabs session-control documentation

Translate session settings before copying the endpoint

Oxylabs’ session documentation describes a sessid parameter in its authentication format. That syntax belongs to the Oxylabs connection. When testing another provider, generate a new endpoint with the intended settings instead of reusing a provider-specific username string. Keep a plain record of the required country, protocol and session duration so the behavior can be reproduced without copying credentials into notes.

Fusion Proxy documents residential sticky sessions from 1 to 120 minutes. Test the full visit within the selected duration: sign in to an account you manage, open the necessary pages and complete the action. Keep cookies and browser storage in the same profile. A disconnected household exit can interrupt a session, so check how your application resumes before using it for a step that is hard to repeat. For an address needed across many separate visits, compare a static allocation. A session timer and a paid static IP solve different connection requirements.

Sources: Oxylabs session-control documentation · Fusion Proxy residential specifications

Test the market settings your reports depend on

For each report, list the requested country and any finer location requirement. Add the language, delivery postcode and account state used by the destination site. A store can apply those saved preferences even when the connection comes from a different IP. Testing only an IP lookup would miss that difference and could leave a price report mixing several markets.

Fusion Proxy’s standard residential settings include country, state and city selection. For Oxylabs, check the targeting options on the product you currently use rather than applying a setting from a different service. Run the same small page list through both configurations and keep the displayed currency, delivery region and page timestamp with the result. If the request requires a particular network or a very narrow area, confirm availability before buying a larger allowance. Ask support about the exact product and target location; a broad global coverage figure does not answer that smaller question for a scheduled run.

Sources: Fusion Proxy residential specifications

Estimate traffic from a small production-like run

A browser may download images, fonts, scripts and background requests in addition to the visible page. A text-only HTTP request can transfer a very different amount of data. Keep these settings consistent when comparing two connections, and include retries in the measured usage. Otherwise a low traffic figure might simply mean that one test did less work.

As a calculation example, if a batch of 200 pages uses 80 MB, a similar batch of 5,000 pages would use about 2,000 MB before any additional retries or page changes. This is arithmetic for planning, not a measured result for either provider. Check the usage reported in each account after the trial and compare it with completed, usable records. If the project uses an Oxylabs API as well as proxies, include its credit consumption separately. That makes the monthly subscription comparison understandable and avoids charging the entire shared balance to one small proxy job.

Sources: Oxylabs residential subscription pricing and credits

Compare useful output and failed requests

Choose examples that exercise the parts your parser actually uses. For a catalog, include an item with variants, a missing product, pagination and a page with an optional field. For a site test, include a normal page and a route that deliberately returns an error. Define the expected result before you run the same list through each configuration.

Separate connection failures, destination responses and extraction errors in the log. A proxy timeout, a page rate limit and a changed HTML selector need different fixes. Keep the timestamp, requested market, status code and a redacted response example where appropriate. Review a few completed records manually and check that the fields are correct. Run the comparison with a modest request rate allowed by the destination; increasing concurrency before the basic example works adds ambiguity. Use the result to choose settings for that application, without presenting a small internal trial as a universal benchmark of either provider.

Make the new configuration understandable to the team

Before the switch, ask a colleague to run the minimal example from the saved instructions. The record should say which application uses the proxy, how to obtain its current credentials, what country and session settings are intended and where the output is stored. Leave passwords out of the instructions. Put the account owner and renewal responsibility in the handover as well.

An established Oxylabs subscription may cover several teams or products. Identify those uses before changing purchasing or account access, because one application’s migration may not justify cancelling a shared subscription. If Fusion Proxy is added for a separate job, keep its usage labeled in your own reporting so the cost can be attributed correctly. Agree on a short troubleshooting path: verify credentials, run an IP check, test a known page and inspect the application log. The aim is for the person operating the job to know what to check without reconstructing the original comparison.

Move the smallest complete job first

Pick a scheduled job that can be checked independently. Copy its configuration into a test environment, generate the new endpoint and use the same source list and parser. Compare the output row by row for a small sample. Keep identifiers and timestamps stable so that differences can be traced to a specific page rather than a changed export format.

When that test is satisfactory, move the complete job and review the next runs. Keep the previous connection configuration available for rollback, but prevent both jobs from writing to the same production output. Do not migrate a complicated collection API and every scheduled proxy job in the same change. After the new job is established, remove unused credentials and inspect both providers’ billing settings. An endpoint change does not transfer credits or cancel a subscription. If other jobs still use Oxylabs, keep their product access and budgets intact while documenting exactly which work has moved to Fusion Proxy.

Choose according to the work that stays with your team

Fusion Proxy can be a useful Oxylabs alternative when you already own the browser or collection code, need documented residential or static connection settings and prefer a separate prepaid traffic purchase for that work. Confirm the relevant location and output before increasing the order. Ask about the required application and session behavior if the right product is unclear.

Oxylabs can remain appropriate when its combined product access, existing implementation or account arrangement supports several tasks that your team would otherwise need to build or maintain. Include that work in the decision. It is also reasonable to keep a data API on one platform while testing a standalone proxy elsewhere. Finish the comparison with a short practical conclusion: which job moves, which product it will use, what the first order costs and how its output will be checked. That is more actionable than choosing one provider for every possible future task.

Sources: Oxylabs product catalog · Fusion Proxy residential specifications

Before and after a provider switch