AstroProxy is a lesser-known proxy provider that offers residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies tailor-made for social media marketing and account management. Founded in 2018, the company may lack the reputation of premium vendors but makes up for it with competitive pricing, abundant features, and decent performance.
Overview
AstroProxy sells proxies explicitly targeting multiple account managers in social media, ecommerce, and other industries involving automation. As such, the service focuses less on large-scale web scraping and more on stealthy personal usage.
The proxies aim to facilitate managing multiple accounts without triggering platform restrictions. Their main features include:
- Proxy types: Residential, datacenter, mobile
- Locations: 100+ countries
- Granular targeting: Country, city, ASN, carrier
- IP rotation: Adjustable frequency and triggers
- Sticky sessions
- VPN access
AstroProxy offers fewer locations than leading vendors but continues expanding its private proxy network. Prices range from $2.58 per GB for datacenter to $9.27 per GB for mobile proxies. You can buy as little as 100MB of traffic.
While the network struggles with heavy loads, it provides excellent success rates (~95-99%) and response times (2 s on average). The main downside is the limited pool size.
Below I expand on AstroProxy‘s background, features, performance, pricing, and support quality.
Background
AstroProxy comes from the creators of Airsocks, a mobile proxy provider for social media automation. It launched in 2018 to complement the older company‘s offer.
Over time, AstroProxy expanded into datacenter and residential proxies while Airsocks faded out. Today, AstroProxy focuses on providing proxies for:
- Multiple account managers in social media, ecommerce, gaming, etc.
- Traffic arbitrage specialists
- Gray-hat SEO agencies
It has official partnerships with automation services like Multilogin, Zennoposter, and AdsPower. The company also advertises its proxies on forums like BlackHatWorld.
User opinions on services like TrustPilot are positive overall. However, some criticize AstroProxy‘s small proxy pool. This likely stems from the provider building its own IP network.
As a result, AstroProxy cannot yet compete in size with vendors like Luminati or Smartproxy. However, the network expands quickly, adding 80+ countries in the first half of 2022.
Service Overview
AstroProxy takes an unusual approach to providing proxies. Instead of separating datacenter, residential, and mobile pools, you access all types the same way.
To use proxies, you create ports and fine-tune their settings individually.
Ports resemble Bright Data‘s zones. Each works as a separate proxy instance with custom rules.
When generating a port, you can pick:
- IP type – Datacenter, residential, mobile, or more granular options
- Location – Country, city, ASN
- Rotation settings – Frequency, triggers, sticky mode
- Traffic quota – 100MB+
- Access protocol – HTTP, SOCKS5
This system provides great flexibility. You can use various proxy types and settings through the same UI.
However, it also means using multiple IPs requires multiple ports. For 100 concurrent sticky sessions, you‘d need 100 ports.
All proxies rotate their IPs automatically. You control:
- Rotation frequency – After any chosen interval
- Triggers – On every request or new domain
Rotating residential proxies helps avoid detection when managing multiple accounts. AstroProxy also allows granular location targeting for extra stealth:
You can pick proxies from a specific:
- Country
- City
- Autonomous system (ASN)
- Carrier (for mobile)
Such flexible location options are rare even among top-tier vendors.
Another interesting feature is the VPN mode. It lets you route device traffic through AstroProxy‘s proxies:
The VPN may come in handy when proxying smartphone apps or games. It also adds an extra layer of anonymity.
Overall, AstroProxy provides an extensive toolbox for configuring proxies. The features cater specifically to account automation and management.
Pricing
AstroProxy positions itself cheaper than most competitors. Traffic starts at $0.52 per 100MB, with bulk discounts reaching 15%.
The mobile proxies are the main budget offering at $9.27 per GB. Here are the base rates:
| Price per GB | Datacenter | Residential | Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1GB | $2.58 | $5.15 | $9.27 |
Besides traffic, you pay a small fee per port (from $0.07) and 50% more for city-level targeting.
There are also options to:
- Buy unlimited traffic (pricing unclear)
- Pay as you go without monthly commitments
The cheapest pre-paid plan gets you 100MB of residential proxies for $0.52.
AstroProxy accepts major credit cards, WebMoney, cryptocurrencies, and other localized payment options.
It also provides a wallet for storing balance and auto-renewing plans. You can enable automatic top-ups as traffic depletes.
Overall, the pricing is relatively affordable for small-scale usage. However, costs scale up quickly for heavy traffic and multiple IPs.
Performance
We ran a series of benchmarks to test AstroProxy‘s residential proxies:
Success Rate
AstroProxy provided excellent success rates throughout three days of testing:
- 98-99% to our own backends
- ~95% when accessing popular sites
This suggests most proxies remained operational and able to bypass Cloudflare‘s protections.
Speed
The average response time was 2.15 seconds globally. Performance varied by location:
- Russia: 0.95 s
- Europe: ~1 s
- United States: 3.4 s
While not the fastest proxies tested, the Russian and European IPs showed decent speeds.
Pool Size
This was AstroProxy‘s main shortcoming. Our tests accessed 56,096 unique IPs from a pool of 238k.
Many country-specific pools returned fewer than 500 IPs, with unique address rates below 3.5%.
Such a limited pool struggles with larger loads. It‘s only suitable for low-volume usage.
Load Resistance
We confirmed the suspicion by benchmarking AstroProxy while increasing traffic.
Using just 50 concurrent threads on each of 10 ports, the proxies began timing out under one minute.
We only managed a 1-2% success rate with 500 requests per second.
The infrastructure lacks resources to handle larger volumes. This makes AstroProxy unreliable for demanding workloads.
Overall, the network provides excellent quality for light personal usage. Performance and anonymity drop sharply with more intensive loads.
User Experience
AstroProxy offers an intuitive dashboard for managing proxies. You can:
- Add funds
- Create custom proxy ports
- View usage statistics
- Access API credentials
The interface focuses specifically on proxies rather than scraping solutions. As such, there are no integrations with data extraction tools.
You need to bring your own account manager or automation software. AstroProxy does provide advice for setting up proxies on popular platforms like Instagram and Twitter.
Usage Tracking
AstroProxy offers two options to monitor traffic consumption:
- Summary dashboard with basic metrics
- Advanced statistics under each port
The detailed logs provide most of the necessary data. You can check bandwidth use per website, whitelist IPs, set usage alerts, and more.
API Access
Developers can automate proxy management via AstroProxy‘s documented API:
- Add/retrieve funds
- Create, delete, modify ports
- Get proxy credentials
- Check usage statistics
The API capabilities are a great addition for developers. They allow managing large proxy fleets programmatically.
Localization
AstroProxy focuses on Russian-speaking clients. As such, parts of the dashboard only support Cyrillic scripts.
English translations are available but may contain confusing phrases or lack context.
Customer Support
As a young company, AstroProxy still has much room to improve its support quality. Response times are prompt, but accessibility remains limited:
| Review | |
|---|---|
| Channels | Email, Telegram, Social media |
| Availability | 9AM – 1AM Moscow time |
| Documentation | Basic guides for social media |
| Ticket resolution | < 2 minutes via Telegram |
The reliance on Telegram and Russian social networks makes support less accessible for Western clients. There is also no live chat on the website.
As AstroProxy expands globally, upgrading to 24/7 live chat and localized channels would help improve customer service.
The Bottom Line
AstroProxy is an emerging provider with significant potential for growth.
The proxy plans provide good value for social media marketing and give users tons of customization options. Proxy performance is more than adequate for personal use cases.
However, limited location targeting and lackluster customer support diminish AstroProxy‘s appeal. The poor scalability also prevents servicing larger customers.
As AstroProxy expands its infrastructure and support capabilities, it could easily compete with top proxy vendors across all verticals. For now, it remains an attractive service primarily for individuals and freelancers.
Recommended for:
- Multiple social media account managers
- Traffic arbitrageurs
- Low-scale usage
Alternatives
The main barriers for business adoption are the small proxy network and less than stellar support.
Clients who require reliable large-scale residential proxies are better off choosing established proxy vendors like Bright Data or Smartproxy.
They offer significantly larger IP pools, lower response times, quality customer service, and integration support.
