What each provider actually gives you to test with
20 Aug 2026 · 4 min read
Point in time. The figures below were read on 15 Aug 2026 and are not updated after publication. For current numbers see the comparison table.
On this page (4)
Thirteen of the 27 providers we track offer a trial. Nine state that they offer none. Five do not say either way. And the refund windows behind them run from 24 hours to 30 days, which matters more than the trial does when the trial is 500 megabytes.
What each one actually gives you
Read from each provider's own pages on 15 August 2026:
| Provider | Trial | Refund window |
|---|---|---|
| Webshare | 10 addresses, free, no time limit | Within 30 days |
| Decodo | 3 days, free | Within 14 days |
| NodeMaven | 500 MB | Within 7 days |
| Rayobyte | Free datacenter trial | Within 2 days |
| Evomi | 1 day | Money-back guarantee, terms on their policy page |
| Infatica | $1.99 for 3 days | Within 24 hours |
| SOAX | $1.99 for 3 days | Within 3 days, under 1 GB used |
| Froxy | $1.99 | Case by case |
| Proxy-Cheap | 7 days, $1.99 | Published, terms not on the pricing pages |
| Geonode | $7 for 7 days | Within 3 days |
| PrivateProxy | 3 days | Within 3 days |
| Bright Data | 7 days, business accounts | Case by case |
| Oxylabs | 7 days, business accounts | Case by case |
Only three of those are free in the ordinary sense: Webshare, Decodo and NodeMaven. Everything else is either a small purchase or gated behind a business account, and a business account means a verification step before you can test anything at all.
The nine that state they offer no trial: DataImpulse, IPBurger, IPRoyal, PacketStream, Proxy-Empire, Proxy-Seller, ProxyScrape, Shifter and Storm Proxies. For those, the refund window is the trial, and 24 of 27 providers publish one.
Read the condition, not the number
The refund column is where the real terms live, and one clause is worth calling out because it is easy to miss.
SOAX: within 3 days, under 1 GB used. A refund window with a usage cap is a different product from a refund window without one. If your test needs 5 GB to mean anything, that window closed before you started.
Two more patterns in that column:
- "Case by case" appears three times, on Bright Data, Oxylabs and Froxy. That is not a refund policy, it is the absence of one written down, and it is a reasonable thing for an enterprise vendor to say and a risky thing for a small buyer to rely on.
- Infatica's 24 hours is the shortest window we found. It is enough to test connectivity and not enough to test a scrape job across a working day.
What to actually measure
A trial is not for confirming the provider works. It is for finding out whether it works on your targets, which is the one thing no comparison table can tell you, including ours.
- Success rate, per target site, not averaged. A provider can look fine across ten sites and fail on the one you care about. Averages hide exactly the failure that would have changed your decision.
- Response time on your real pages, not on an IP-echo endpoint. Those two numbers are unrelated.
- Whether sessions hold. If your work needs the same address for ten minutes, test ten minutes, not one request.
- How much data the run consumed. This is the sleeper. The number you record here decides which pricing tier you should be buying on, and it is easy to be out by 50x.
Point 4 is why a 500 MB trial is more useful than it sounds and a 1-day trial is less. Traffic buys you a measurement. Time only buys you a measurement if you are ready to spend it the day it starts.
Spending a small allowance well
If the trial is 500 MB and your pages are heavy, you have a few hundred requests. Do not spread them.
Pick your three hardest targets, send a hundred requests to each at the concurrency you plan to run, and keep the rest in reserve for the one that surprises you. Block images and other assets unless you need them, which on our measurements can be the difference between 500 requests and 30.
And start the clock deliberately. A 3-day trial that begins when you click signup, on a Friday, is a 1-day trial.
The trial and refund terms for all 27 providers are in the comparison table, each with the date we read it, and how we check covers what we do when a provider does not publish one at all. Five of them do not, and that is recorded as unknown rather than as a no.
Questions
Which proxy providers offer a free trial?
Of the 27 we track on 15 August 2026, 13 offer some kind of trial. Only three are free rather than paid: Decodo gives 3 days, NodeMaven gives 500 MB, and Webshare gives 10 addresses free with no time limit. The rest are paid trials from $1.99 to $7.
Do proxy free trials require a credit card?
Most paid trials do, since they are a small purchase rather than a trial. The three genuinely free options still ask you to create an account. Bright Data and Oxylabs restrict their 7-day trials to business accounts, which means a verification step before you can test anything.
What is a normal proxy refund window?
24 hours to 30 days across the providers we track, with several stating case by case. Webshare's 30 days is the longest, Infatica's 24 hours the shortest, and SOAX caps its 3-day window at 1 GB used, which is the clause that catches people.
How much traffic do I need to test a proxy provider properly?
Enough to hit your real targets at real concurrency, which is usually more than a trial gives you. NodeMaven's 500 MB is roughly one to ten thousand pages depending on whether you render them. Plan the test around the allowance rather than the other way round.
What should I measure during a proxy trial?
Success rate per target site, not averaged across targets. Response time on the pages you actually need. Whether sessions hold as long as you need them. And how much data the run consumed, because that number decides which pricing tier you should buy.
Can I test a provider that offers no trial?
Buy the smallest plan and treat the refund window as the trial. Nine providers state they offer no trial, and most of those still publish a refund policy. Read the conditions first: some are voided by usage.