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Great proxies, affordable pricing plans, and fantastic 24/7 customer support make Smartproxy an attractive choice for most tasks.

Try Smartproxy Residential Proxies for free.

Smartproxy often appears among the top choices in our proxy lists. Historically, it was a stripped down version of the premium providers like Oxylabs and Bright Data – similarly performant but missing a feature here and there.

In 2024, Smartproxy is able to stand head-to-head with them, while still managing to compete with cheaper services like IPRoyal. This is no small feat, and one of the main reasons why the company received our Best Value Provider award, three years in a row.

In this review, I’ll try to show what makes Smartproxy one of the best proxy services today – and whether you should choose it over the competition. Let’s go!

Smartproxy Slashes Residential Proxy Prices by Up to 25%

Smartproxy Makes Its Mobile Proxies Up to 53% Cheaper

Smartproxy Cuts Mobile Proxy Prices, Adds Pay as You Go

Datacenter (shared, dedicated, rotating)ISP (rotating)ResidentialMobileProxy API (Site Unblocker)

General-purpose, SERP, e-commerce, and social media APIsNo-Code Scraper

Smartproxy was founded in 2018 by “a group of four international entrepreneurs”. It started out in reaction to premium proxy providers like Luminati (now Bright Data) and GeoSurf, which were only accessible to business customers and had cumbersome onboarding procedures. 

The company first resold addresses from others. Nowadays, it has a diverse pool that combines proxies from various sources. According to Smartproxy, they’re carefully vetted, but the provider doesn’t go into much detail about the topic. 

Smartproxy built its business on residential and rotating datacenter proxies. At the time, they managed to fill a gap between premium providers and cheap yet mediocre services like Storm Proxies. The IPs performed well while costing less than the high-end counterparts. It also helped that Smartproxy heavily invested into customer experience: quality documentation, responsive support, and user-friendly interface. 

This, along with some targeted marketing efforts, allowed Smartproxy to quickly sweep up many of the sneakerheads, Instagram managers, and small-time scrapers that were looking for affordable residential addresses. While its website is still heavily oriented towards these audiences, the company has been gradually expanding its reach. 

Today, Smartproxy can be considered one of the largest proxy providers, probably the third after Bright Data and Oxylabs. Rotating proxies remain the backbone of its service, but there are now more products to choose from, including several web scrapers.

Datacenter proxies are Smartproxy’s entry option. They’re made for cost-efficient web scraping when your target doesn’t care about IP reputation or precise location targeting. 

Smartproxy offers three datacenter products: 

The three proxy networks are pretty distinct in terms of features.

Smartproxy’s dedicated proxies – like most dedicated datacenter proxies – give you pretty much unlimited access to the IPs. They’re also the only proxy type to support full SOCKS5 – including the UDP protocol. However, there are two big caveats: the proxies don’t rotate and the only available location is the US, with no option to specify particular cities.

The 100,000-strong rotating proxy network gives you a lot of disposable IPs that you can simplify rotate away. Its choice of locations includes multiple major European countries like Germany and the UK. If necessary, you can keep the same IP for 30 minutes.

Smartproxy’s shared proxies bring even more locations, namely Australia and Israel. They come in a list by default, but you also get an endpoint that automatically rotates the proxies for you. It’s possible to choose where exactly you want the IPs to be located when buying a plan. (For instance, 56 proxies in the US, 32 in Australia, and the remaining 12 in Germany.)

All three options use a subscription-based pricing model that automatically renews every month. The rotating proxies charge for traffic use, dedicated proxies – IPs, while the shared proxies combine both formats.

Smartproxy offers a broad range of pricing plans. Their entry threshold is small, but the plans scale to thousands of IPs and terabytes of traffic. Naturally, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets.

If your rotating plan outgrows its traffic allowance, Smartproxy provides an option to top up without moving on to the next tier. There’s one gotcha: the price for a gigabyte always remains at its most expensive rate of $0.7. All shared plans start with 50 GBs of traffic, but it’s very cheap to get more: a gigabyte literally costs fractions of a cent.

In a broader context, Smartproxy’s prices look good. It charges less than most premium competitors until enterprise levels of scale, no matter which option you consider.

#1: Infrastructure performance (rotating proxies)

We ran 50,000 connection requests using Smartproxy’s US-filtered rotating proxies. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.

#2: Download speed

We tested 10 rotating and 10 dedicated IPs using DigitalOcean’s 100 MB NYC benchmark.

#3: Performance with popular targets

We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US proxies and a non-headless Python scraper. Our computer was located in Germany. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.

Rotating residential proxies are Smartproxy’s flagship service made for accessing strict websites. It comprises a pool of 55 million monthly IPs borrowed from real people’s devices. To give you some context, this is among the larger proxy networks on the market, at least looking at advertised numbers.

SOCKS5:✅

The service supports granular filtering options: you can get IPs from any country, state, or city. The rotation options include not only every connection request but also 1, 10, and 30 minute thresholds. It’s convenient compared to services like PacketStream, where your only option for sticky sessions is to keep the same IP as long as it remains available.

As is often the case with residential proxies, the service is limited only by your traffic allowance. As long as you have some, you can make as many connection requests as you like. With the addition of SOCKS5 in May 2023, the product became complete, missing only the fringe-most of features like ASN or ZIP-code targeting. Note that the SOCKS5 support is mostly nominal for now: you can’t use the UDP protocol or non-web ports.

Smartproxy’s residential proxies used to have the highest starting price out of the provider’s three proxy networks, but now you can pay as you go. It’s not cheap compared to competitors like PacketStream but beats most premium and mid-range alternatives. So, these residential IPs can be a viable choice for small projects that need quality addresses. 

To avoid getting stuck between pricing tiers, Smartproxy allows topping up each plan at the same rate per gigabyte. This is limited to 80% of the plan’s worth, at which point it makes sense to simply buy a bigger plan. 

The proxies can be a solid option for large projects, as well. Smartproxy scales very competitively into hundreds of gigabytes, and some premium options fail to catch up even at a terabyte of data.

#1: Pool size & composition

We ran 1M requests over 21 days using the unfiltered pool, 500,000 requests over 14 days using the country pools, and 140,000 connection requests over 7 days using the Australian pool. We enriched IP data with the IP2Location database.

#2: Infrastructure performance

This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.

#3: Performance with popular targets

We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US-filtered proxies and a non-headless Python scraper. Our computer was located in Germany. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.

You can get Smartproxy’s mobile proxies by subscribing to a plan, which starts from $38 ($19/GB). A plan lasts for a month and updates automatically. Or, you can pay as you go at a fixed rate of $20/GB.

Like most similar products, this one charges for traffic, otherwise giving you full access to the proxy network.

Compared to the broader market, Smartproxy’s rates are below the average, and it manages to outprice most premium providers we’ve reviewed (such as Oxylabs and Bright Data). All in all, if you’re looking for a quality service, these proxies present a pretty good deal.

#1: Pool size & composition

We ran 280,000 requests over 14 days using the unfiltered pool and country pools, and 140,000 connection requests over 7 days using the Australian pool. We enriched IP data with the IP2Location database.

#2: Infrastructure performance

This benchmark shared the same parameters as the pool test. Our computer was located in Germany. We targeted a global CDN – it pinged a server nearest to the proxy IP and had a response size of several kilobytes.

#3: Performance with popular targets

We made ~2,600 connection requests to each target using US-filtered proxies and a non-headless Python scraper. Our computer was located in Germany. Note that your results may differ based on your web scraping setup.

The mobile proxies had few issues with challenging websites like Google and the photo-focused social media network. Their success rate was lowest with Walmart – mostly due to issues unrelated to IP quality. All in all, these are good proxies.

Proxy networks aside, Smartproxy offers four web scraping APIs. You can pass them an URL, and the APIs will return its contents without fail. You won’t have to worry about managing proxy networks or overcoming website protection mechanisms. 

Web Scraping API is Smartproxy’s general-purpose scraper – it can extract any page without structuring the output. The other three have parsers for specific website groups, namely search engines, e-commerce stores, and social media networks.

Targets: UniversalStructured data: Google, Amazon, Instagram, TikTok, RedditLocations: All countries (with coordinate-level targeting for Google)JavaScript rendering: ✅

Smartproxy’s scrapers are rich with features.  You can select any country, specify a device type, add custom headers, and pass on cookies with a session ID for multi-step scraping.

The general-purpose API accepts any URL you send it. Smartproxy’s specialized APIs use a parametrized request structure, meaning you can simply enter a search query, ASIN, or hashtag without forming URLs yourself. They also have target-specific parameters like domain language or co-ordinates for localized Google results.

In addition, Smartproxy has built specialized scrapers for various properties of major targets. For example, there’s an endpoint optimized for Google ads, Amazon product pages, or TikTok hashtags.

All three tools integrate as an API or proxy server. The first method works over an open connection, or you can fetch results via webhook with an option to send batch requests.

If there’s anything missing, it’s page interactions and maybe more output formats like .CSV.

We last tested Smartproxy’s APIs in January 2023, for our research on web scraping APIs.

Test #1: Google

We made 10,800 requests to Google SERP pages over a week, one request per minute. This served both to test the API’s stability, as well as its ability to open Google.

Smartproxy’s SERP scraper performed flawlessly with Google: it returned nearly all of our requests, and enabling data parsing had no effect on the response time.

Test #2: Amazon

We made 1,000 requests to Amazon product pages with data parsing enabled.

Amazon posed no challenge as well. The scraper was even faster compared to Google, despite Amazon having much bigger page sizes.

Test #3: Photo-focused social media network

We made 500 requests to the website’s GraphQL endpoint and 500 more requests fully rendering pages with the headless parameter.

The results with social media were also perfect. One weak spot was response time with JavaScript rendering enabled – it slowed down the scraper significantly.

To register with Smartproxy, you’ll need to enter an email and password, select a use case from a provided list, and then verify your email address. Alternatively, you can sign up with your Google account.

Smartproxy does have a KYC procedure, but you only need to interact with someone if you trigger the provider’s safeguards. It’s possible to access the dashboard without verifying an email address, but you won’t be able to buy anything until you do.

Smartproxy’s dashboard includes all the necessary functionality to manage proxies yourself. You can:

Most of the controls are separated by service. There are sections for datacenter, residential proxies, and web scraping tools which lead to individual products. For example, to reach mobile proxies, I’d need to click on the Residential proxies drop-down and select them from the available options.

You can get a quick overview of your services on the dashboard’s main screen: see your current plan, top targets, and traffic use. However, it’s once again dedicated to one product at a time, requiring you to open different tabs for other services.

There are introductory tutorials and guidance all around to help you get acquainted. However, they don’t feel overbearing.

Smartproxy supports full self-service for each product. You can buy a plan in two ways. The first is by making a direct purchase with your credit card, PayPal, or another payment method. Alternatively, you can add money to the Smartproxy wallet first and then use it for purchases. This lets you pay as you go.

Before purchasing a plan, you can use Smartproxy’s Smart Plan Recommendation tool. It requires completing three steps: entering a target, selecting headless or non-headless scraping, and usage frequency. The dashboard then recommends a suitable plan. This tool is available for the residential proxies and scraping APIs.

Smartproxy has a separate Billing section where you can see payment history, download invoices, overview and modify all active plans. It’s also the place to top up your wallet balance.

The proxy setup is pretty straightforward:

Smartproxy also automatically generates code samples in cURL and multiple programming languages. You can copy-paste this into your web scraping script.

Overall, the setup procedure is well thought out. My only gripe is that you can’t set a custom password for a proxy user. The system generates them automatically.

In addition, Smartproxy offers a fleshed-out API for controlling its proxies programmatically. The API is available for every user, not only resellers. Its functions include creating and managing sub-users, setting traffic limits, viewing usage reports and subscription status, and filtering available endpoints. 

If you need proxies on your web browser, Smartproxy provides browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. In the settings, you can choose a country, whether you want the proxies to be sticky or rotate, and authorize them either with a whitelisted IP or user:pass credentials.

Smartproxy’s dashboard includes visual graphs where you can see how much traffic or requests you’ve expended. You can filter the graphs by sub-user or date, and they also display statistics for each target. The timeframes are 24 hours, week, month, or custom.

Alternatively, you can fetch traffic expenditure statistics using an API call.

Smartproxy has got the documentation part down. You’ll find a plethora of instructions covering various aspects of the service:

There’s also a separate hub for technical documentation with tips & tricks, code samples, and troubleshooting. Some of the content has become outdated, but the documentation is handled well in general.

For users of its scraping APIs, Smartproxy has an interactive playground to try out the service.

Smartproxy’s customer service is available round the clock via email or live chat. The main language is English, though the support can also speak Chinese – and, of course, other languages via Google Translate.

Whenever we’ve had to interact with the support agents, we received quick (think nearly instant) and competent responses. In 2020, we even gave Smartproxy an award to acknowledge its customer service. It remains excellent to this day and can be considered one of the provider’s strongest points.

Having read this far, I hope you can see where I was coming from in the introduction.

Smartproxy really has struck something great. The company has responsive customer support, performant proxies, and everything set up for convenient self-service.

To be fair, compared to something like Bright Data or Oxylabs, it’s nothing special. But this is without considering Smartproxy’s final ace – it somehow manages to achieve all this while keeping prices very competitive.

Of course, not everything is perfect. Some corners had to be cut, and you may find services like Smartproxy’s dedicated proxies – or in some cases, its web scraping APIs – limited.

But that’s the whole point of Smartproxy: the company focuses on the functionality that is good enough for the majority of users at the expense of some nice-to-have or niche features. And it is damn good at that.

Based on my experience with Smartproxy, I can recommend it to anyone looking for a great proxy provider.

Oxylabs is like a premium version of Smartproxy. It controls a significantly larger IP pool, and you can get specialized APIs that simplify web scraping.

Read the review

Bright Data is another strong option with more features and powerful proxy management tools. It also sells proxy-based web scraping APIs and complete data sets.

Read the review

SOAX offers similar features and performance to Smartproxy. The proxy pool may be smaller and less diverse, but it comes at a slightly lower price point. 

Read the review

Want more? View the full list of the Smartproxy alternatives.

Recommended for:

Anyone looking for a great balance between features and price. 

Try Residential Proxies for free.

Try Residential Proxies for free.


			17 Responses		

Thanks for the review guys! Anyhow, I have a question about Smartproxy and their proxies for sneakers – their website says that they work with all major bots, including Yeezy, but what about their IPs? What’s the chance that I’ll constantly get an abused…

Vincent, residential proxies are shared, so there’s always a risk you’ll get an IP that’s been already blocked on your target website. This goes for any provider, not only Smartproxy. In theory you can get unused static residential proxies, but they’re h…

Would the micro plan be enough to let Nike Sneaker not run a large amount of tasks without having a drop in latency ?

James, each residential IP is like a unique server, so the number of sneaker tasks you run with different proxies will have no effect on network latency. Unless, of course, you run so many that your PC/VPS starts lagging! As you can see on this page, w…

I think about getting them for sneakers, but do you know if they work well with bots? For example AIO bot or the shit bot?

Greg, Smartproxy is compatible with sneaker bots. They also have integration instructions for most major bots (https://smartproxy.com/integrations). The Shit Bot isn’t on the list, but there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues with it.

Easy

Hey, the discount only is 20% now. thanks

Thanks for the heads up!

Hello. And Bye.

Please help me to check whether these IP is your company’s proxy IP. If so, I will buy your proxy.I have a lot of agency needs.73.124.158.247,45.50.52.81,72.184.6.215

Sorry zhang, we don’t have the ability to check that. You can try asking Smartproxy directly.

Hi Do you have UK proxy that support Iphone and can connect to website like Stripe? Thank you!

Hi Ly. According to its FAQ, Smartproxy might block Stripe. It’s best if you contact them and ask directly.

Hi, i keep getting deactivated whenever i try to verify my account.

Hi Jeff. You should contact the provider’s customer support. They should be able to help you solve the issue.

I recently had an experience with Smartproxy that I feel compelled to share. Despite my efforts to resolve an issue related to my last purchase, I was met with repeated diagnoses based on the same data without consideration for my side of the story. I want to make it clear: I have not misused the product in question since my purchase. Yet, the focus remained solely on their diagnostic tools, disregarding the possibility of flaws within their system.

I have decided not to pursue this matter further with Smartproxy. It’s disheartening to invest time in seeking a resolution only to be met with a lack of willingness to listen or adapt their responses. Therefore, I’ve chosen to cease using their services and have started engaging with another company. This decision comes after realizing there are unresolved billing issues, which, in my view, Smartproxy is not prepared to acknowledge.

I am sharing this review not out of spite but to inform others of my experience. It’s crucial for customers to be heard and for companies to be open to feedback, especially when it concerns potential flaws in their system. I will also be taking legal steps to ensure my rights are protected and plan to share my experience across various review platforms to provide a comprehensive account of my dissatisfaction with Smartproxy.

To anyone considering Smartproxy, I advise you to proceed with caution and ensure that your expectations align with the service and support they are prepared to offer.

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