As with other providers, there are a lot of promises made to customers from Netnut. As a proxy reviewer, I want to investigate and reveal to you the real nature of the service, including how they perform as tested by me.
Netnut is one of the proxy services that focuses more on enterprise users and the proxy big spender. It has products across multiple markets ranging from proxy to web scraping API.
The focus of this Netnut review is on their proxies and most especially their residential proxies which have proven to be one of the highly powered solutions, especially for big businesses and enterprise customers.
An Overview of Netnut
The Netnut service is considered a top-tier provider, focusing on customers with big bucks to spend on proxies. Its first product in the proxy market was the static residential proxies which was novel at that time (2019). Since then, it has grown to add a large rotating residential proxy network and a mobile proxy service too.
The service is based in Israel and is a subsidiary of Alarum Ltd. the service has one of the largest pools of IP addresses and also offers extensive location support. Its performance based on previous usage has also been good. In this Netnut review, I will reveal to you our recent findings in different aspects, including performance.
| Parameter | Feature |
| IP Type | Residential/Mobile/Datacenter |
| Price Charged | Bandwidth |
| Price Sample | 20GB – $300 (Monthly) |
| Pool Of IPs | 52+ million |
| Proxy Protocol | HTTP(S)+Socks5 |
| IP Rotation |
|
| Filtering/Targeting | Countries & US city-state selection |
| Authentication | IP Whitelisting |
| Speed | Fast |
| Free Trial | 7 days |
| Refund Policy | No |
| Support | Live Chat、Social Media Platforms、Contact Form、Email and Detailed FAQ |
| Jurisdiction Location | Israel |
Proxy Types
Before we go deep into the reveal, I will first describe the proxies they offer and the best use case for those proxies. Also discussed here is how well these products compete with other top providers to help you make a choice.
Residential Proxies
The Netnut residential proxies are rotating residential proxies and can be said to be one of the largest in the market. The network has over 52 million IPs in its pool sourced from over 200 locations across the globe. This service does not just allow you to choose IPs from specific countries, you can also configure it to get IPs from specific states and cities from across the globe. There basically two modes when dealing with this — rotating and static.
For the rotating, an IP is theoretically assigned to you after every request. This is the mode you should use for your web scraping tasks and anything in between such as SEO, market research, and ad verification, among others. The sticky ports, on the other hand, can maintain the same IP for a period of time, less than 30 minutes. This is great for light-scale session management tasks like account management — good for use with social media automation bots.
The pricing for these proxies makes them the proxies for the big players. The pricing is based on bandwidth and the minimum you can spend is $300 in their starter plan. This gives you 20GB at a $15 cost per GB. This is expensive compared to other competing top providers. Bright Data does not impose any minimum monetary commitment as it has a pay-as-you-go option and it charges $10 per GB. Smartproxy even goes cheaper at a cost per GB of $8.5.
Static Residential Proxies
When Netnut made its debut into the residential proxy network, it was with these proxies and it was a novel introduction as they were the first to offer static residential proxies. Unlike in the case of their rotating residential proxies, these IPs are under their control and the IPs are static for as long as you pay for them. There are over one million IPs in their static residential proxies. The location support for this is also extensive.
These proxies can be described as hybrid proxies as they are hosted on datacenter infrastructure, giving you the speed level of datacenter proxies but the IPs are residential IPs that are undetectable. The proxies are best used for account management and session management tasks. The IPs work on all websites. There are fewer blocks compared to their rotating proxies and the speed is faster too. However, you get fewer IPs.
In terms of pricing, this one is also expensive. The pricing starts from $350. This comes with 20GB at $17.5, making it even more expensive than their rotating residential proxies.
Mobile Proxies
The Netnut mobile proxies are rotating proxies with over 250K IPs in the pool for this. If your task has experienced blocks even after using residential proxies, then only mobile proxies can help you out. Social media networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and LinkedIn are some of the most difficult sites to scrape as they have systems in place to detect and block proxies.
However, with the help of mobile proxies, you remain unnoticed and by extension, unblockable. As with the other proxy offerings above, the service is not for small proxy users as this one is even more expensive.
The minimum monetary commitment for this is $400 and this comes with 20GB, putting the cost per GB at $20. This pricing when compared to competitors can be said to be relatively OK as far as the cost per GB is concerned — but the competitors do not have a high monetary commitment like this one.
Datacenter Proxies
This service also offers a datacenter proxies. But they are not the regular datacenter proxies you know of. These ones are rotating datacenter proxies. You are given access to a shared pool of over 150K datacenter IPs. These IPs were gotten from different countries, still giving you the geo selection option for accessing geo-targeted content. One thing you will come to like about this service compared to the others is that the minimum monetary requirement is lower.
With $100 you can get started with this. $100 will give you 100GB at a cost of $1 per GB. Aside from having a small pool of IPs, these proxies use datacenter IPs that are easily detected by web services. For this reason, you should only use them to scrape websites that do not have a strong anti-spam system.
The popular websites on the Internet today do have anti-spam systems that will block them. If your site is not among the top 100 popular sites in the world, there are chances you can use these proxies on them without getting detected.
Residential Proxy Features
From now on in this review, the focus will be on their residential proxies. In this section, let's take a look at some of the good features of Netnut residential proxies.
Large Proxy Pool Size with Good Location Coverage
The Netnut residential proxy network is powered by a large pool of IP addresses. As of the time of writing this article, it has over 52 million IP addresses in its pool. This makes it one of the largest residential proxy networks in the market.
It also gives it the capability to handle more requests and provide its users with unique IPs compared to providers that have fewer IPs in the pool. This is not surprising though, as it serves enterprise customers and needs to have millions of IPs to serve them.
Aside from the large size of its pool, another impressive feature is its location coverage and geo-location targeting support. This network has IPs in all countries and you can choose a specific country to get IPs from. For some selected countries, there is also support to choose IPs from specific states and cities.
Rotating & Sticky Ports Available
Netnut rotating residential proxies have diverse usage and this is because of its support for both rotating and sticky ports. The rotating proxies will change your IP address every request, thereby making it difficult for your target to link all of your requests to a single IP address. This is the setup that makes it possible for you to scrape all kinds of websites without getting blocked.
Interestingly, it also offers sticky ports for sticky sessions. For the sticky ports, they maintain the same IP address and by extension, sessions for a period of time before switching IP and terminating the session. This kind of port should be used for tasks that require you to maintain sessions such as account management. Netnut does have good session control and allows you to choose the time duration you will want to maintain sessions.
DiviNetwork Powered
Their static residential proxies are powered by DiviNetworks which helps give them direct connectivity to Internet Service Providers (ISPs). With this connectivity, they are not only given access to IPs but also ensure a one-hop connectivity which makes their network fast.
While this is meant majorly for their static residential proxies, their rotating residential proxies also make use of the network to give its users better session control which provides their users with better session management than most other residential proxies in the market.
Proxy List Generator Support
Another feature you see in this provider and not in many other providers is support for a proxy list generator. Traditionally, rotating residential proxies will only provide you with one endpoint — it is this endpoint that IPs are dynamically assigned to. In situations where you need multiple endpoints, many providers will fail you.
However, Netnut and a few others like Smartproxy are among the providers that offer a proxy list generator. With this, you can generate as many proxy endpoints as you like. And each endpoint will have its own IP address with rotation capabilities.
The interesting part of this is that you are not charged extra. This is a nice-to-have feature, especially for tasks that require you to configure multiple proxy endpoints. Take, for example, sneaker copping, if you need to cop multiple pairs, you are better off generating multiple proxy endpoints and then concurrently cop than waiting for one to successfully cop before switching IP to cop the next pair.
Residential Proxy Performance
In this section of the article, the focus will be on performance results. We tested their proxies on a VPS based in Los Angeles. Some of the tests carried out include success rate, IP unique rate, and response time test.
Proxy IP Geo Test
Most residential proxies will claim to support geo-targeting. But what you don’t know is that geo-targeting especially for web scraping is only as effective as the number of pools the proxy service has for such a location. If a service has only 200 IPs in a country, while it might claim to support that location, the number of IPs is not useful for at any reasonable scale.
So in this section of the performance test, we want to see how the 52 million IPs are distributed among geo-locations. The information here will reveal whether Netnut is a good service for scraping geo-targeted content. Below is a chart showing the popular countries in the Netnut IP pool.
As you can see from the above, about 4.46% of their 52 million IPs are from the United States. This number is over 2.3 million IPs. Other countries it has a good number of IPs from include India, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and UAE. In each of the aforementioned countries, the minimum number of IPs they have is over 400K with India even contributing over 1 million IPs too.
Other popular countries not captured here have various sizeable amounts of between 100K to 300K. If your target is a less popular country in the IM world, then you will need to speak to their support to find out the size of their pool for that country.
Proxy Success Rate Test
The Netnut service claims to provide a success rate of 99% on their website. This, if true is unmatched in the proxy market. However, this is just a claim that does not turn out to be true in most cases. So, we tested the proxy success rate by sending 300 concurrent requests multiple times to some popular tests.
By sending this number of concurrent requests, we are not only testing the success rate, but we are also testing how it reacts to too many requests since it claims to allow unlimited concurrent requests. Below is the result of the test.
As you can see from the above, Netnut has an average success rate of 85.7% as tested by us, not the 99% they claim. But also remember we sent 300 concurrent requests and this might be why our own is lower. Either way, this success rate is good even though it is not the best out there.
If you look at the chart well, you will notice that the sites are from multiple niches (social media, search engine, and e-commerce) and it all works for them. This is to tell you you can use their proxies on most websites on the Internet without getting blocked.
Response Time Test
The response time is the time it takes to get a response back after sending a web request. Most of the providers will want you to believe you will get a response back in less than one second. However, the reality for most of them is different as some can even take as long as 3 seconds to return a response. Below is the average response time for some of the popular residential proxies including Netnut.
From the above, you can see that the average response time of Netnut is 1.42 seconds. This is not one of the fastest out there as some providers such as Bright Data, Nimbleway, Smartproxy, Soax, and Oxylabs return a response in less than a second. However, at 1.42 seconds, it can still be said to be good for a residential proxy service considering some known providers even take over 3 seconds to respond.
Generally, if you are looking for the fastest residential proxy network, Netnut won’t make it to the list. But if you are looking for providers with speed that is good enough for most tasks, then Netnut will be a good candidate.
Unique IP Test
One of the main use cases of Netnut residential proxies is web scraping. Interestingly, for web scraping, you need as many unique IPs as you a to exceed request limits. And for a service like Netnut that has its target on enterprise customers with large scraping tasks, this is even more important.
So how does it large pool of over 52 million translate to unique IPs during IP rotation? We tested it alongside other providers to see how it performs in comparison to other providers. Below is a chart showing the result of the test.
As can be seen from above, 13.91% is the duplicate rate which makes it a very good value. This means out of every 100 web requests sent, only an average of 14 requests will get an already assigned IP reassigned. This is good considering 500K web requests were sent.
There are other providers that have a smaller duplicate rate than Netnut, but the difference can be said to be negligible. With this duplicate rate, you can be sure you won’t hit the request limits set by websites that will lead to a block.
How to Use Netnut.io
When it comes to the ease of usage, I do have missed feelings. The Netnut service was set up as an ethical provider that is compliant with local laws. Its focus is also on enterprises and that is the scale it operates. The number one hurdle you will have to face if you decide to go with this provider is its KYC. KYC is manual and every single user is mandated to go through the process. Aside from the KYC procedure, every other thing is straightforward.
The service provides a user dashboard from where you can purchase proxies and access your proxy credentials. Unlike some other providers, Netnut does have a sizeable pool in many countries and as such, geo-location targeting for these countries is efficient.
If you are not sure if they have a sizeable pool in the country you need IPs from, you are better off contacting them before going ahead. Both geo-targeting and IP rotation should be configured before getting the proxy credentials (proxy address, port, username, and password). If you like thought you can ditch username and password and use IP authentication instead.
Customer Support
Customer support is one aspect of a business a proxy service ready for business won’t joke with. And I have dealt with small providers that don’t joke with this. While the performance, pool size, and location support of Netnut are good, customer support can be terrible — judging by how their live chat support is designed and structured.
First, at the point I wanted to test their live chat support, the icon showed the status to be online with even the icon of at least 4 agents online.
However, the moment I sent a message, all the icons disappeared and I was left to go through a Q and A session with the bot asking for my email and other marketing details. To cut the story shut, my initial inquiry before the whole back and forth started was ignored.
Then the bot handed me to an imagery agent. Well, I waited for over 20 minutes before getting a response. I have had to use their email support and that took about 6 hours to get a response.
Source of IPs
The Netnut service does not own the residential IPs it leases out to its customers and this includes both its rotating and static residential proxies. However, the source of their static residential proxies is disclosed and the service is even proud of it (DiviNetworks). But for their rotating residential proxies, the Netnut service is not coming out to tell us the specific P2P network it is getting its IPs from.
From research, I am aware they use both their own P2P network and that of some of its partners. However, the specific details required for one to tell whether the service is actually as ethical as it claims are not made available. Being as it may, I can’t verify the claim that it is as ethical as it claims and as such, won’t put it in the list of transparent proxy providers that give details of their IP source.
Do We Recommend Netnut.io
The Netnut is a top-tier residential proxy network and even a pioneer in the static residential proxy market. For its rotating residential proxies, the size of the pool is big enough for enterprise-level scraping and other forms of automation. It has got a good location coverage and the performance is superb too.
My only major problem with this service is its expensive pricing starting from $300 and subtle telling small proxy providers we are not for them. Aside from this and its poor live chat feature, there aren’t any major issues. Just be ready to do KYC — that is compulsory for all big providers anyway.
Alternatives to Netnut.io
While the Netnut service is a good provider and offers some of the best residential proxies out there, you can tell it is still not the provider for everyone. If it does not meet your requirement you can choose from one of the alternatives I discussed briefly below.
Number one alternative to Netnut and quite affordable. This provider beats Netnut in a head-to-head comparison in areas such as pool size, location support, response time, success rate, and even unique IP rate. It also gives you as much control over your session as Netnut. However, it is cheap and affordable due to its pay-as-you-go pricing support which makes it pocket-friendly to small proxy users.
Recommended for its cost-effective nature. Smartproxy can also be said to be in the same class as Netnut in a good number of aspects. However, it is not just cheaper than Netnut, it is also cheaper than Bright Data and as such, is available to a variety of users from small to big-scale users.
It does come with a proxy list generator which generates an endless list of proxy endpoints for you. This is novel compared to most providers that will only provide you with an endpoint.
Recommended for its high success rate. This provider is not cheap — it will cost you a minimum of $99 to get started. However, it is more affordable compared to Netnut’s $300. But it is not here for its relative affordability but for its higher success rate which is made possible by constant monitoring of their pool to remove bad and dead IPs from their pool. This reduces connection errors and retries.
Our Expert's Review
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Scaping Performance - 8.9/10
8.9/10
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Proxy Network - 8.7/10
8.7/10
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Proxy Functions - 8.5/10
8.5/10
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Customer support - 7.9/10
7.9/10
Read other user reviews
I personally use NetNut from over a month and it's still doing good for webscraping and streaming.
