Webshare Review

Founded in 2018, Webshare describes itself as a California-based company with a team in the San Francisco Bay Area. Oxylabs acquired Webshare in 2022. Webshare continues to operate as a separate self-service platform. Its ordinary offer spans datacenter proxies, server-hosted ISP addresses sold as Static Residential, and a rotating pool supplied by residential devices.

The static families each have Shared, Private and Dedicated levels. Webshare's Private label means limited sharing; Dedicated provides exclusive customer allocation. These are different pools, so moving between levels changes the addresses supplied. That makes the choice more consequential than adding a feature to an existing list.

The platform combines a permanent free entry plan with paid list controls, multiple product families and programmable account management. It is particularly interesting for teams that want to maintain proxy access as part of an application, while retaining a dashboard for inspection and manual changes.

Static subscriptions combine an address quantity with a traffic allowance and optional features. Rotating Residential is purchased as a traffic subscription. The 7 ordinary configurations support IPv4, HTTP and SOCKS5 over TCP, including access to HTTPS destinations; UDP is unsupported.

Webshare documents a starting allowance of 500 simultaneous requests for paid use, with higher concurrency sold separately. The concurrency guide describes an account limit, so it should not be multiplied by the number of plans. Buying a larger list or choosing Dedicated does not by itself establish a larger connection allowance.

YouTube Proxies is a separate custom offer arranged through Sales. Each customer receives a stable HTTP endpoint with username/password access. Webshare manages address allocation and rotation, including a waiting period before reusing an IP. Its yt-dlp documentation uses session identifiers to request different addresses for individual downloads. The offer is aimed at bulk video and audio collection, with IP turnover and reuse handled by the provider. Its operating terms are specific to the custom plan.

The permanent Free Plan supplies 10 Shared Datacenter proxies and 1 GB per month without a payment card. Geography is assigned randomly. Refresh, replacements, sub-users and paid add-ons are outside that free configuration.

It is a useful entry into the shared datacenter service, but it does not sample the ISP or Residential networks or the Private and Dedicated allocations. Webshare separately advertises a 100 GB trial for YouTube Proxies through Sales; whether that custom trial is free is not stated.

Ordinary plans are purchased through the dashboard and delivered as a proxy list or through the Residential endpoint generator. Different product families can coexist in an account, but 2 allocation levels of the same family cannot. Moving from Shared to Private or Dedicated edits the existing family plan and draws a replacement list from another pool.

That prevents a simple parallel comparison of 2 datacenter tiers inside the same account. It also means an allocation upgrade can disrupt an application that expects the old addresses to survive the change.

Account or payment checks can intervene. Webshare may request identity verification through Stripe Identity, company and use-case information, or payment evidence. These are conditional checks, rather than a document requirement for every signup.

The dashboard brings together family-specific lists, downloads, authentication, usage statistics and replacement settings. Paid accounts include 3 sub-users with separate credentials and controls for proxy access, bandwidth and concurrency. That gives applications or teams their own access settings without distributing the main proxy credentials everywhere.

Static list maintenance is a substantive part of the product. Paid static plans include 10 manual proxy replacements each month. Replacement requests can use country, ASN or IP-range filters, with 1 filter type at a time. Auto-Replace handles unhealthy or unavailable addresses without consuming that manual allowance.

Recurring Replacements is a paid whole-list refresh feature, with intervals ranging from 5 minutes to monthly and a custom option. A Rotating Proxy Endpoint, by contrast, chooses among addresses already in the list. Both can be used together. Backbone provides a stable connection hostname when replacements change the assigned exits, reducing the need to keep distributing newly downloaded lists to applications.

The REST API extends beyond retrieving proxy addresses. It covers subscription configuration, available assets, pricing, replacements, authentication, sub-users, billing and activity data. This makes Webshare a more persuasive option when proxy administration needs to be scripted. Its API call limits are separate from the proxy connection allowance.

Username/password and source-IP authorization are available for ordinary services. The documented default is 1 authorized origin IP; additional authorizations are a paid option. An origin IP can be authorized on only 1 account and 1 plan at a time. Sub-users can have separate credentials and authorizations, which is relevant when access must be divided between applications.

The Help Center explains the product choices, connection modes, replacements, billing and troubleshooting, while the API reference covers the corresponding account operations. Screenshots and walkthroughs support manual setup; request examples support scripting.

Billing is in USD. Current payment guidance supports cards, including Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay where available. It excludes PayPal and cryptocurrency. Invoices can be downloaded and supplied with company billing details.

Different plan families share a renewal date, while bandwidth and optional features remain configured separately. Traffic allowances reset every 30 days and do not roll over, including under yearly subscriptions. Reaching a finite plan's allowance stops proxy operation until the allowance is renewed or the plan is changed.

Disabling automatic renewal preserves access until the paid term ends. The cancellation guide describes a different action: an immediate downgrade to the Free Plan, with unused time and bandwidth converted to account credit. The Terms use a later effective-date formulation, so the cancellation action should not be treated as interchangeable with disabling renewal.

Credits do not expire and can be used for later purchases or renewals, but they are non-refundable. A plan change that creates credit therefore leaves that value with Webshare rather than returning it as cash.

Refund requests require support approval and must be made within 48 hours of purchase. Eligibility also depends on usage and quantity:

The subscription must use fewer than 1,000 proxies. These conditions leave little room for a substantial paid performance test before refund eligibility is lost.

An issued refund downgrades the subscription to the Free Plan, removes existing credits and deletes the active payment method. This is a material consideration for an account already holding credit from earlier plan changes. The custom YouTube offer has no separately established refund terms.

The Unlimited option for static plans has a fair-use threshold. The policy provides at least 10 TB before throttling, with a larger allowance depending on subscription spend. Beyond that threshold, it permits progressively lower speeds, down to 10 Kbps. Unlimited therefore needs to be assessed against the workload's sustained traffic, not treated as a promise of unchanged throughput for any volume.

Service restrictions prohibit abuse, spam, piracy/P2P, unauthorized sensitive-data collection and security attacks. Resale or redistribution requires written consent. Residential has provider-side website blocks and sensitive-category rate limits. Financial targets can trigger verification, and ports 25, 110, 465 and 587 are blocked.

Support is available through email and the Help Center contact widget, with 24/7 availability advertised. A public status page and incident notifications provide a separate route for following outages. Compliance, abuse and legal inquiries have their own contacts.

High-Priority Network is a traffic feature, so it should not be mistaken for priority handling of support requests.

The free Webshare Proxy Extension is a Chrome client for an existing Webshare account. It connects and disconnects browser proxy access, filters available proxies by country and links back to dashboard functions. It is a convenient companion for manual browsing through an account's proxies, with access determined by the subscription already held.