This may shock many, but as YouTube is a pool of excessive information, many major countries, offices, and schools have banned complete or partial usage of YouTube. To combat this problem, you can use a proxy to watch videos and access necessary information.
There are many proxies in the market and to make it easy to pick for you, I’ve tested and included the best ones for YouTube.
Webshare is an HTTP/SOCKS5 proxy powerhouse with over 30 million IPs spanning 190+ countries. You can register without a credit card and have 10 proxies for a free-forever test ride capped at 1 GB per month.
You can choose among three types of proxies at Webshare: proxy servers, static residential, and residential. Proxy servers (datacenter proxies) come with 99.97% uptime and is the most affordable of the group. You can choose between shared (2+ users), private (up to two), and dedicated IPs. These are the ones you get with the free tier, which I have tested briefly. Static residential is best if you don’t want to worry about data consumption, since it offers unlimited bandwidth. Lastly, residential proxies fit business use cases that need to mimic real-world users.
All Webshare plans feature IP/password authentication, IP rotation, backbone connectivity, and API integration. Plus, you get the user dashboard for monitoring usage and proxy management.
I have signed up for its free plan (Proxy Servers) and tested a few proxies. You can check the proxy list I got with the free plan in the following screenshot.
Though free proxies normally struggle at speed, YouTube videos were at normal speed. This assures a superior experience if anyone moves to their paid tier. In addition to greater speeds, Webshare paid tiers allow one-click proxy replacement should you face blocks.
Webshare has a Chrome extension that provides the simplest way to connect to different proxy servers.
I recommend that you take the Webshare free plan and see for yourself. After the free limit, you can pick the premium plan to have greater bandwidth.
Bright Data
It has been featured on sites like Yahoo and Business Leader, Bright Data is a proxy service that has bagged multiple awards, such as G2 Industry Leader 2023, Best Data Collection Tools 2022, and Best Proxy Ecosystem 2021.
Some of the many wonderful features of this server provider include the following:
- 99.99% network uptime with over 72 million IPs from 195 countries
- Unlimited IP customization options from any part of the world
- GDPR and CCPA privacy compliant
- 24/7 best-in-industry support
- Super-fast output
Bright Data comes with a free proxy manager as well that can help you accelerate your project with innovation.
Oxylabs
Oxylabs has a premium proxy network of over 100 million residential IPs covering 190+ locations for flawless YouTube performance. Expect minimum blocks and quick connections, and the ability to access YouTube from practically anywhere on the planet.
While individuals can certainly use it, Oxylabs is better suited for agencies and business use cases. For instance, you can verify video content worldwide. And there is free geo-targeting (based on continent, country, state, city, zip code, and ASN) to get location-specific YouTube content.
Oxylabs also features automated rotation with session control. It allows sticky sessions where you can keep the same IP for up to 30 minutes or let it rotate with every request.
You can also track usage statistics, including data consumption, time, and the number of requests, and export this data as a CSV file.
In addition to this, businesses can rely on Oxylabs web scraper API to harvest YouTube audio and video data. This fetches up to 700 YouTube search results per query, including videos, channels, and playlists. Besides, you can batch-download high-quality videos and audio directly to any S3-compatible cloud storage. What’s more, you have AI-compatible video transcription in 150+ languages and YouTube metadata.
Smartproxy
You can utilize high-quality residential proxies from Smartproxy to stream YouTube content with a 99.47% success rate and industry-leading proxy speed.
It comes with the following:
- Low avg response time
- HTTPS addresses
- Easy proxy setup
- More than 65 million rotating IPs
- Traffic usage statistics
- Mobile and desktop device IPs
Smartproxy also offers social media scraping APIs which are developer-friendly and highly recommended accessing the data programmatically.
Get a 50% discount using the RESI50 code.
IPRoyal
Rated 4.4/5 on Trustpilot, IPRoyal is one of the most renowned residential proxies available. It extends its service to over 195 countries worldwide and comes with more than 2 million ethically sourced unique IPs that can be employed on legal websites.
It allows you to stick with 1 IP for as long as 24 hours, and you also get the option to change your IP instantly as well as hold unlimited concurrent sessions.
Their traffic never expires, and you’re backed with a 99.67% success rate every time you decide to use it.
IPRoyal has decently priced plans, and you can pay/cancel anytime without getting into a subscription system with them.
MarsProxies
MarsProxies’ fast and reliable proxy servers are ideal for streaming YouTube content without restrictions. This provider has over 550,000 clean IP addresses from 200 locations worldwide, which is enough to bypass geo-restrictions on YouTube.
Its residential proxies are ethically sourced and highly trustworthy, so you don’t have to worry about detections and bans. Moreover, they come with never-expiring traffic, meaning you can buy traffic today and use it tomorrow, the next month, or next year.
The exceptional speeds and 99.99% uptime of MarsProxies’ private data center and ISP proxies guarantee a fast and uninterrupted connection while streaming YouTube.
With sticky sessions, SOCKS5 support, unlimited bandwidth, and affordable prices, MarsProxies is a great option for all YouTube fans.
Froxy
Easily manage all your proxy activity from Froxy’s one-of-a-kind personal dashboard, which also gives you insights into traffic usage statistics and allows you to manage available packets.
The features are as cool as their name:
- Global proxy IP Coverage
- Works with HTTP and SOCKS connections
- Up to 1000 simultaneous connections at high speed
- Anonymous rotatable proxies
- Plans that suit your pocket
You can also use this service for price monitoring, web scraping, market research, SEO monitoring, and social listing.
GeoSurf
GeoSurf is a great option if you’re looking for a simple proxy server for your “simple” needs. It gives you the power to scrape and crawl any website without getting blocked or detected, all thanks to its reliable IPs.
It has a quick 5-minute integration, and you get premium support across 2000+ locations to help you get started on your block-free surfing journey.
Despite having a 3.7 million pool of IP addresses around the globe, they assure you of a secure, fast, and meddle-free YouTube streaming experience.
Shifter
Best known for its ultimate data toolkit, Shifter is a proxy service that makes data collection super easy, so if you’re looking to scale your business using a proxy, this could be your safest bet.
Obviously, it also does a great job of unlocking YouTube and other websites with the help of features like:
- Ultra-low Latencies
- Unlimited global coverage
- Data scraping tools
- Over 50 million IPs
- Unlimited sessions at blazing-fast speed
Besides, Shifter is developer-friendly, easy to configure, and comes with 99.99% uptime that won’t disappoint you.
It’s safe to say that I’ve only scratched the surface here, so I’d recommend having a proper look at their service to absorb all those helpful features fully.
Now that we’ve looked at the YouTube proxies that you can use, you’ll be better able to understand what they are and why they can be helpful as you are already conversant with their multiple features.
What is a YouTube Proxy, and Why Do You Need It?
As mentioned above, if you’re traveling to one such place, or you reside where you can’t access YouTube, the solution is to use a YouTube proxy.
A proxy is an online server that hides your user IP address to allow you to view a website that was blocked for you. In this case, it’ll allow you to stream YouTube content hassle-free without restrictions.
This means you can access all the content, including blocked ones, with a masked identity and an extra layer of added security. As simple as that!
Also read: Understanding Different Proxy Types [Residential, ISP, Datacenter and Mobile]
How to Unblock YouTube with Proxy?
Using a good proxy service allows you to unblock any site, including YouTube. It will usually involve entering the YouTube video URL in the address bar interface of the proxy service.
Final Words
While proxies are a great solution when you want to watch unlimited block-free YouTube content, it’s equally important only to use them for legal purposes.
The internet does carry a lot of “unsafe” elements with it, and in many cases, a block is placed for a good reason.
All in all, as long as you’re using proxy browsers for a genuine reason, you’re all good to go.