IPRoyal vs NetNut: Which Proxy Provider to Choose in 2026?

Key takeaways:

• NetNut and its parent company, Alarum Technologies, were recently involved in the FBI's and Google's investigation into malicious networks.

• NetNut's reputation and operational power significantly decreased after the FBI seized its main domains.

• IPRoyal is a reputable NetNut alternative, offering 68 millions of proxy servers and 5 proxy types.

• NetNut's residential proxies have a better price-per-GB ratio, but its payment plans are monthly subscriptions only.

• IPRoyal offers more flexible payment plans that don’t require a subscription and has an API for YouTube scraping.

In July, 2026, NetNut's services were targeted by Google, the FBI, and a group of partners. Their proxy network was linked to a malicious botnet called Popa, used for credential stuffing, ad fraud, unauthorized surveillance, and other illegal activities.

However, NetNut's services reappeared under a new website. Before that, this proxy provider managed an extensive proxy network, similarly large to IPRoyal's. After these massive changes, we decided to compare both providers to see what the current situation is.

If you’re wondering whether these proxy services suit your needs, our IPRoyal vs NetNut comparison will help you choose. Or maybe you will opt for the more affordable MarsProxies services.

IPRoyal vs NetNut: Quick comparison

The following comparison is based on the very latest data from IPRoyal and the new NetNut website, accurate as of September 24, 2026.

IPRoyal vs NetNut: Pricing

NetNut has a lower residential proxy price-per-GB ratio, but has a fixed per-month subscription. In contrast, IPRoyal offers more flexible and budget-friendly pricing.

If you are seeking more alternatives with different prices, stop by our MarsProxies vs. IPRoyal comparison.

IPRoyal vs NetNut: Performance

Both services offer proxy types optimized for scraping and APIs to enhance data extraction. Here’s how they compare in terms of speed, reliability, and connection quality.

Which provider is better for web scraping?

Firstly, we must point out that NetNut’s scraping capabilities may have been affected by recent legal troubles. However, they still offer residential proxy services, mobile and ISP proxies, and APIs to support data collection.

IPRoyal has a wide 195-country coverage and a video scraping API. They also offer proxy types for large-scale web scraping and a free proxy tester to verify quality.

SERP

NeNut offers a SERP API. It handles IP address rotation, solves CAPTCHA challenges, parses the data, and returns it in JSON format.

IPRoyal does not offer a dedicated SERP API. However, they have a verifiable 195-country coverage. At this very moment, it is impossible to verify how many countries NetNut’s proxies remain operational in.

We’d like to see NetNut add test plans to ensure their proxies suit SERP scraping needs. This can be achieved with IPRoyal’s 1GB residential proxy and 24-hour ISP proxy plans.

Ecommerce

The capacity to scrape challenging sources is essential for e-commerce website scraping. Both NetNut and IPRoyal offer sophisticated tools for that.

IPRoyal offers Web Unblocker, which they state can even bypass Cloudflare protection. Similarly, NetNut offers an Unblocker API that bypasses CAPTCHA and automatically retries blocked HTTP requests.

Social media

Static IP addresses are essential for tasks with social media. At IPRoyal, you can keep the same proxy IP address for up to 7 days. NetNut also offers sticky IPs. On their website, they state that you can “keep a stable IP for the length of a session,” so it’s hard to verify the exact duration of an unchanging IP address.

Price monitoring

Price monitoring requires scraping more than a few websites, which needs a substantial IP address pool. Currently, NetNut manages millions of IPs but does not disclose the exact network size. Before its legal issues, NetNut claimed to manage over 1 million ISP IPs, optimized for high speed and stability.

IPRoyal has a 68-million IP address pool. Its residential proxy network consists of 64 million IPs that come from real users. This proxy type is the best for price monitoring and scraping protected data overall. If you want to learn more, check out our list of the 10 best residential proxy providers.

Large-scale scraping

This is where the two services significantly differ. NetNut offers 3 APIs, including a high-volume LLM scraper. Meanwhile, IPRoyal has wide country coverage and a massive residential proxy network.

Scraping APIs are typically more convenient. They take care of IP rotation, proxy failover, and bot evasion. IPRoyal offers a video scraping API for YouTube, so whichever service is best depends on your needs.

IPRoyal vs NetNut vs MarsProxies

IPRoyal vs. NetNut is a comparison between two proxy services with extensive networks. But you can also compare MarsProxies vs. NetNut and IPRoyal because we also offer the same proxy types.

Similarly to IPRoyal, our residential proxy traffic never expires. But what sets us apart is our budget-friendly entry price. IPRoyal charges $7/GB for residential proxy traffic. Meanwhile, 1GB of MarsProxies residential proxy traffic costs only $4.99.

We also offer more customer support options, including an active Discord server. All three providers offer 24/7 live chat support, but NetNut’s support sometimes responds in over an hour. While IPRoyal’s agents respond significantly faster, we’re glad to say our response time is just as quick.

Final verdict

We cannot omit from our verdict that NetNut took a heavy blow for being related to a malicious botnet. Otherwise, we can confirm that it offers residential, mobile, datacenter, and ISP proxies, all major proxy types.

All of NetNut’s plans require a monthly subscription, and the unused gigabytes do not roll over to the next month. IPRoyal offers more flexible plans and 24-hour plans so that you can test its service before committing. Its residential traffic does not expire, allowing you to use it at your convenience.

To summarize the IPRoyal vs. NetNut comparison, IPRoyal is a better choice. It has a spotless reputation and more flexible plans. On the other hand, NetNut offers more APIs, so the choice between the two also depends on your exact requirements.

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