The web data and proxy industry moves fast, with new providers entering the market every year. Even so, a handful of names have earned a lasting reputation as leaders in the space. Decodo — formerly known as Smartproxy — is one of them, offering a large proxy network and a full web scraping toolkit built for developers and data teams. In this review, we take a closer look at what Decodo offers and see how it stacks up against other well-known providers in the proxy industry.
Our Rating: 4.7 / 5
| Provider | Starting Price | Network Size | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo | ~$2/GB (residential) | 115M+ IPs, 195+ locations | Balanced performance and price |
| Bright Data | Premium / enterprise | Largest network in the industry | Large-scale enterprise operations |
| Oxylabs | Premium / enterprise | Large, enterprise-grade network | Enterprise & compliance-heavy use cases |
| IPRoyal | Budget-friendly | Smaller pool | Solo developers & small projects |
| Decodo Enterprise | Custom / volume pricing | Same 115M+ pool, dedicated support | High-volume teams |
Decodo runs one of the larger proxy networks in the industry, with a residential pool of more than 115 million IPs spanning 195+ locations worldwide, including city, state, and ZIP-code-level targeting in key markets. The company reports a 99.92% success rate on its residential proxies, and says all of its residential IPs are sourced through transparent, opt-in programs rather than bundled quietly into free apps.
Since rebranding from Smartproxy in April 2025, Decodo has expanded well beyond simple IP rotation. Its all-in-one Web Scraping API now bundles more than 100 prebuilt scraping templates with an AI Parser that automatically cleans and structures the data it collects, plus a Site Unblocker tool built to get past CAPTCHAs and other anti-bot defenses. Teams that used to stitch several tools together can now cover most of that in one subscription.
Residential proxies start from around $2 per GB, with datacenter, ISP, and mobile options priced separately depending on the use case. A Pay-As-You-Go option sits alongside the subscription plans, so smaller projects aren't forced into a large upfront commitment, and a 3-day free trial lets you test the network before paying anything.
| Feature | Decodo | Bright Data | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Budget-to-mid range | Premium | Premium |
| Residential IP pool | 115M+ | Largest in the industry | Very large |
| Ease of setup | Beginner-friendly dashboard | Steeper learning curve | Steeper learning curve |
| Support | 24/7 live chat, all plans | Dedicated AM (enterprise) | Dedicated AM (enterprise) |
Against the largest enterprise-focused providers, Decodo is generally easier to get started with: sign-up is self-service, the dashboard is built for developers with drop-in code for Python, Node.js, Go, PHP, and Java, and support runs 24/7 over live chat rather than exclusively through an account manager. For teams that want a large, reliable network without an enterprise sales process, that's a real advantage.
Decodo isn't the cheapest option on the market, and its pricing model — separate rates for residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile traffic, with different billing methods depending on the product — takes a little getting used to when comparing plans side by side. Budget-focused providers with a narrower feature set can still undercut it on price per GB at low volumes.
Decodo's flagship product routes traffic through real residential IP addresses, so requests look like they're coming from an actual home connection rather than a data center. That makes residential proxies the hardest type to block, and the most commonly used option for web scraping, price monitoring, and ad verification.
For projects that need speed and a stable IP across many requests, datacenter proxies offer high-bandwidth, lower-cost connections, while ISP proxies pair a static IP with the credibility of a residential address — useful for account management, sneaker bots, and long sessions where switching IPs mid-task would raise a flag.
Mobile proxies route traffic through real 4G/5G carrier IPs, which is especially useful for testing or managing mobile apps and social accounts, since carrier-grade IPs are far less likely to get flagged than a typical datacenter address.
Rather than building and maintaining a custom scraper, Decodo's Web Scraping API handles proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and CAPTCHA-solving in a single request, and the AI Parser turns the raw HTML it collects into structured, ready-to-use data.
New users can test Decodo's residential proxies with a 3-day free trial, and paid plans come with a 3-day money-back guarantee if the service doesn't fit your workflow — worth using before committing to a larger plan.
Beyond fixed monthly subscriptions, Decodo offers Pay-As-You-Go pricing for teams with unpredictable or seasonal traffic, so you're not paying for bandwidth you don't use. Providers in this space regularly run limited-time discounts for new sign-ups, so it's worth checking Decodo's current pricing page before you buy.
The table below builds on the comparison above, looking specifically at how Decodo, Bright Data, and Oxylabs handle new users.
| Feature | Decodo | Bright Data | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Budget-to-mid range | Premium | Premium |
| Residential IP pool | 115M+ | Largest in the industry | Very large |
| Ease of setup | Beginner-friendly dashboard | Steeper learning curve | Steeper learning curve |
| Support | 24/7 live chat, all plans | Dedicated AM (enterprise) | Dedicated AM (enterprise) |
| Free trial for new users | 3-day free trial | Contact sales | Contact sales |
No single proxy provider is the right fit for everyone. Bright Data and Oxylabs are worth considering if you need the largest possible network and don't mind an enterprise sales process; a budget-only provider is worth a look if price per GB is your one and only concern. For most small-to-midsize teams that want a large, reliable network without an enterprise contract, Decodo lands in a strong middle ground.
Decodo's infrastructure is ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified, and the company says its residential IPs are sourced through transparent, opt-in programs — a distinction that matters more each year as data-protection rules tighten around the world. Decodo has also been recognized by G2 as one of the standout security products in its category.
Beyond the dashboard, Decodo publishes extensive documentation, a Knowledge Hub, and a YouTube channel with setup walkthroughs, alongside ready-to-use code snippets in the most common languages — all aimed at getting a working integration running in minutes rather than hours.
Support runs 24/7 through live chat, backed by a searchable knowledge base for common setup questions. Business and enterprise plans add a dedicated account manager for more hands-on help.
Between the 3-day free trial and the money-back guarantee on paid plans, there's a reasonably low-risk way to confirm Decodo's network performs well on your specific targets before paying for a full month or year.
Demand for proxies and web data keeps climbing, driven largely by AI training and research pipelines that need large volumes of public web data. At the same time, websites keep tightening their anti-bot defenses, pushing providers to bundle unblocking and scraping tools directly into their proxy products instead of leaving customers to build that layer themselves.
Decodo's shift from a proxy-only product to a broader web data platform — proxies, scraping, and parsing under one subscription — points at where the company is headed: fewer standalone tools, and more of the pipeline handled end-to-end.
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) has built a large, ethically-sourced proxy network and backed it with a genuinely useful set of scraping and unblocking tools, at pricing that's more accessible than the biggest enterprise-only providers. It won't be the cheapest option for every use case, and its pricing structure takes a bit of reading to fully understand, but for teams that want a reliable network without an enterprise sales process, it's a strong pick.
If you want to see how Decodo performs on your own targets, the easiest way to find out is to start the free trial and test it against the sites you actually need data from. Visit Decodo's official site to get started.