Webshare is a proxy provider based in Silicon Valley with 80M+ residential IPs across 195 countries, 400K+ datacenter IPs, and 99.7% uptime. All plans include both HTTP and SOCKS5 endpoints with no extra charge. They have a free tier (10 proxies, 1GB bandwidth) and paid plans starting at $2.99/month.
Why SOCKS5 instead of a VPN for scripts
ProtonVPN does not offer SOCKS5 proxy access and has explicitly stated they never will. Their reasoning: SOCKS5 doesn't encrypt traffic, so it conflicts with their privacy-first mission. But for scripting, that's not the point.
A SOCKS5 proxy is useful in scripts because:
- It works at the socket level, handling any protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, whatever)
- It's trivially configured per-request in Python, Node, curl, etc. - no system-wide VPN tunnel required
- Multiple scripts can use different exit IPs simultaneously
- No need to route your entire machine's traffic through a tunnel
- Faster than VPN for high-volume requests (no encryption overhead on the proxy layer - HTTPS still encrypts end-to-end)
- Supports username/password auth, making it easy to embed in automation
A VPN like ProtonVPN encrypts all traffic from your device to the VPN server. That's great for privacy when browsing, but overkill and awkward for scripts that need to rotate IPs, target specific geolocations, or run in parallel with different exit nodes.
SOCKS5 in Python
Install the SOCKS support:
pip install requests[socks]
Basic usage:
import requests
proxies = {
"http": "socks5://username:password@p.webshare.io:80",
"https": "socks5://username:password@p.webshare.io:80"
}
response = requests.get(
"https://httpbin.org/ip",
proxies=proxies,
timeout=10
)
print(response.json())
For aiohttp (async):
import aiohttp
proxy = "socks5://username:password@p.webshare.io:80"
async with aiohttp.ClientSession() as session:
async with session.get("https://httpbin.org/ip", proxy=proxy) as resp:
print(await resp.json())
With curl:
curl -x socks5://username:password@p.webshare.io:80 https://httpbin.org/ip
Webshare vs ProtonVPN for scripting
| Feature | Webshare | ProtonVPN |
|---|---|---|
| SOCKS5 support | Yes, all plans | No (explicitly unsupported) |
| Per-request proxy config | Yes | No (system-wide tunnel) |
| IP rotation | Yes, automatic or on-demand | No (single exit IP per session) |
| Geo-targeting | 195 countries, city-level | ~110 countries, server-level |
| Concurrent exit IPs | Unlimited (one per proxy) | 1 per connection |
| Encryption | None (rely on HTTPS end-to-end) | Full tunnel encryption |
| Free tier | 10 IPs, 1GB/month | Yes (limited servers) |
| Best for | Web scraping, API calls, bots | Privacy, browsing, streaming |
| Pricing | From $2.99/mo (100 datacenter) | From $4.99/mo (VPN) |
When to use what
Use ProtonVPN when you want privacy for general browsing, streaming geo-restricted content, or protecting traffic on public WiFi. It encrypts everything, which is the point.
Use Webshare (or similar SOCKS5 proxy) when you need programmatic control over exit IPs in automation scripts - scraping, API testing from specific geolocations, running multiple concurrent sessions with different IPs, or bypassing rate limits across distributed requests.
Webshare product types
- Datacenter proxies - cheapest ($2.99/mo for 100 IPs), fast, but easier to detect/block
- Static residential proxies - ISP IPs (Comcast, AT&T), look like real users, from $6/mo
- Rotating residential proxies - 80M+ IPs that rotate automatically, from $3.50/mo (billed per GB at ~$1.4/GB)
For scripting, rotating residential is the most useful if you're hitting sites that actively block datacenter IPs. Static residential works when you need a consistent IP that still looks like a real user.
