Last updated: July 2026
How TopProxyLab Makes Money
TopProxyLab is a free, independent resource for proxy service reviews. We earn revenue through affiliate commissions — when you click a link to a provider on our site and make a purchase, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. This costs you nothing extra.
This is how we fund the project: purchasing proxy subscriptions for testing, maintaining the website, and investing in testing tools and infrastructure.
Do Affiliate Relationships Influence Our Rankings?
- Every provider is tested using our standardized methodology (see: How We Review Proxy Services) before any commercial relationship is considered. A provider with a generous affiliate commission but poor test results will rank below a provider with no affiliate program but strong performance.
- We include providers that have no affiliate program. If a service performs well in our tests, it earns its place regardless of whether we can monetize it.
- Negative findings are always published. In our Oxylabs review, we reported free trial proxies with Fraud Scores of 50–100 on Scamalytics. In our IPRoyal review, we documented IPs already flagged on Spamhaus. These findings were published despite active affiliate relationships.
- Ratings follow a transparent formula: R = (Expert Assessment × 80%) + (User Rating × 20%). Expert scores are based on measurable data – speed, fraud scores, blacklist hits, support response time, and value for money.
Sponsored Placements & Featured Providers
In addition to our standard rankings, we offer providers the option to purchase featured placement within our ranking tables. When this happens, the rules below apply without exception.
- The provider is clearly marked with a visual status badge such as “Editor’s Choice”, “Top Pick”, “Best Value”, “Best for Mobile”, “Best for Scraping”, “Enterprise Choice”, “Hot Deal”, “Free Trial” or similar, and may appear at the top of a ranking table regardless of their numerical score.
- The numerical rating itself is never altered. A provider with a 3.5 rating will continue to display 3.5 stars even when featured at the top of a list. The score column always reflects our actual test results.
- The position number shown on a card (#1, #2, #3…) reflects the card’s physical position on the page — it is not an independent quality ranking. A sponsored placement can occupy position #1 while still displaying its real, unadjusted star rating.
- Featured providers must still pass our minimum quality threshold. We do not accept paid placement from services that scored below 3.0 in our internal testing or that failed our basic safety checks (open proxy fraud, severe blacklist saturation, undisclosed data leaks).
- All review content for featured providers — pros, cons, test results, prices, and screenshots — is written by our editorial team using the same methodology as non-featured providers. Sponsorship does not buy positive review text.
- Outbound links from featured cards use
rel="sponsored"in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines. - If a featured provider’s quality declines after a placement starts (e.g., support response degrades, IPs become heavily blacklisted), the placement is suspended and the badge removed, even if the campaign is paid in advance.
If you prefer to see only score-based ordering without featured placements, you can refer to the numerical rating shown on each card — that number is our untouched test result.
Status Badges vs. the “Sponsored” Tag
It’s important to understand that we use two separate and independent signals on ranking cards, and they answer two different questions.
- Status badges (Editor’s Choice, Top Pick, Best Value, Best for Mobile, Best for Scraping, Enterprise Choice, Hot Deal, Free Trial) reflect our editorial opinion about a specific strength of the provider — price, mobile proxy quality, scraping performance, and so on. These are assigned based on our test results and can be given to providers with or without any commercial relationship.
- The “Sponsored” tag is a separate, dedicated marker that appears near the provider’s name whenever a placement has been paid for. It exists specifically and only to disclose that fact — nothing else. Hovering over the tag shows a short explanation, and clicking it brings you to this page.
These two signals can appear on the same card at the same time. A provider can genuinely be our “Top Pick” for a given use case and have paid for its position in the table — one does not cancel out the other, and we show both so you have the full picture rather than having to guess.
Which Links Are Affiliate Links?
Links labeled “Try Now,” “Visit Site,” or direct links to provider websites within reviews and ranking tables are typically affiliate links. Internal links to our own content (blog posts, methodology page, other reviews) are not affiliate links.
Cards marked with a status badge such as “Featured”, “Editor’s Choice” or similar may or may not be paid placements — status badges reflect editorial assessment and are not by themselves a disclosure of payment. The dedicated “Sponsored” tag described above is what specifically indicates that a position was purchased. If a card carries the “Sponsored” tag, its outbound links are also marked with rel="sponsored" in the page code.
Our Testing Independence
We purchase all proxy services with our own funds. We do not accept free accounts, complimentary subscriptions, or any other form of compensation in exchange for reviews or favorable rankings.
All testing is conducted by Max K. using the methodology described at /how-we-review-proxy-services.
Questions or Concerns?
If you believe any review on TopProxyLab is inaccurate or biased, contact us directly at admin@toproxylab.com. We investigate every concern and will update or correct content where warranted.
Max K., Founder & Lead Reviewer, TopProxyLab