Residential proxy market in 2026: the 5 providers setting new standards

Smartproxy's emergence as one of the top residential proxy providers in 2026, with its ability to collect information and authenticate advertisements, marks a significant shift in the residential proxy market. This development has significant implications for website owners, as it indicates a growing reliance on residential proxies to gather data and track online activity. With more companies using residential proxies to collect information, website owners can expect to see an increase in proxy traffic on their sites, which may affect their analytics and security measures. To adapt to this change, website owners can take several steps: firstly, they should monitor their website's traffic patterns to identify and filter out proxy traffic; secondly, they should review and update their llms.txt files to ensure they are accurately tracking and managing AI bot traffic; and thirdly, they should consider implementing additional security measures, such as CAPTCHAs or rate limiting, to prevent potential abuse of their sites by proxy users.