5 Best Smartproxy Alternatives in 2026 (Decodo Rivals)

Smartproxy no longer exists as a brand. In 2025 the company renamed itself Decodo, moved to a new domain, and kept everything else running: the same 125M+ residential pool, the same plans, the same dashboard that won it a loyal mid-market following. Nothing broke. Nobody lost an account.

A rebrand is still a moment. Invoices arrive under a new name, documentation moves, and many users still type "smart proxy" into a search bar and land somewhere unfamiliar. That moment is exactly when teams re-check the market. The market has changed since most Smartproxy users last compared it. This guide covers the five best Smartproxy alternatives in 2026, built for the question the rebrand raises: is the provider you picked years ago still the right fit today? The five below cover both escape routes, cheaper and simpler on one side, bigger and stronger on the other.

One thing worth stating plainly: this is not a takedown. Decodo has won Proxyway's Best Value award four years running and G2's Best Usability in 2025. The case for switching rests on fit, not quality. The honest comparison below treats it that way.

Smartproxy is now Decodo: the short version

Before comparing Smartproxy competitors, here is what the rebrand actually changed, in one table.

For existing customers the move was mostly cosmetic: logins carried over, endpoints kept working, and documentation moved behind redirects. In short: same company, bigger pool, broader tooling, identical billing model. Smartproxy pricing carried over largely intact, which means the reasons users compare Smartproxy alternatives carried over too.

The mid-market squeeze pushing users toward Smartproxy competitors

Bandwidth that expires every month

Decodo runs on monthly subscriptions: whatever bandwidth you do not use when the cycle resets is gone. For steady, predictable workloads this is a non-issue. For the irregular ones (a scraping sprint one month, near silence the next) it is a quiet tax. You either overbuy and forfeit the remainder, or underbuy and pay overage rates mid-project. Leave 8GB unused on a 25GB plan and roughly $28 evaporates at entry rates, every cycle. Providers with non-expiring, pay-as-you-go bandwidth remove that calculation entirely. That single billing difference drives more switching than any speed benchmark.

A 2GB entry plan you outgrow in a week

The smallest residential plan carries 2GB at roughly $3.50/GB. As an on-ramp it is friendly. As a working tier it is tiny: a modest e-commerce monitoring job can consume 2GB in days, at which point you are choosing between the next tier up and an overage rate. The decision usually arrives mid-scrape, which is the worst time to make it. Reviewers keep reaching the same conclusion: the entry price is approachable, the entry allowance is not.

Scale pricing that stops being budget-friendly

Decodo's Best Value reputation is earned at the tiers where most reviews are written. Push past roughly 50GB per month and 2026 comparisons note the totals climbing out of budget territory. Independent write-ups call the pricing too costly for individuals, startups, and small businesses at sustained volume. The platform still delivers (sub-0.3-second average response times and 99.99% uptime are excellent numbers), but the value story weakens exactly where usage gets serious.

What earned each Smartproxy alternative its spot

Every provider below had to answer at least one side of that squeeze, and none could fail the basics. The four filters, and why each one matters:

Benchmark data throughout comes from Proxyway's independent testing, G2 and Trustpilot reviews, and each provider's published rates.

1. FleetProxy (the pay-as-you-go Smartproxy alternative)

Why people switch here

The billing model is the whole argument. FleetProxy sells residential traffic pay-as-you-go. Purchased gigabytes sit in the dashboard until consumed, with no monthly reset, no contract, and no minimum spend. The two Decodo frustrations covered above (expiring bandwidth and the 2GB entry tier) simply do not exist here. A team that scrapes in bursts buys 20GB once and draws it down over a quarter. Bandwidth purchased in July is still valid the following January.

Coverage does not narrow when you switch. The platform spans rotating residential, static ISP (from $3.50/IP), datacenter IPv4, datacenter IPv6, mobile LTE (4G/5G), and SOCKS5, so every proxy type a Decodo account used has a direct equivalent. Setup takes minutes: the API ships ready-to-use cURL, Python, JavaScript, and Go examples. The pricing page lists every rate publicly.

What you pay

Rotating residential runs $2.65/GB, sliding to $1.59/GB at 500GB. Static ISP starts at $3.50/IP, and datacenter and mobile tiers are published alongside. There is no tier to outgrow and no cycle to time purchases against, with 24/7 human support on every plan.

What holds it back

The residential pool is 30M+, roughly a quarter of Decodo's headline number. For most scraping, monitoring, and automation work, rotation quality matters more than pool size, and this is a non-issue. At extreme scale on heavily defended targets, the larger pools on this list offer more headroom. FleetProxy also has no equivalent of Decodo's All-In-One Scraping API or AI Parser: it is proxy infrastructure, not a managed scraping platform.

The right fit

Teams with irregular or bursty workloads that resent forfeiting unused bandwidth. Web scraping, SEO monitoring, price comparison, ad verification, and multi-account social media management.

2. Oxylabs (the premium step-up)

Why people switch here

Scale and success rate. Among Smartproxy alternatives, Oxylabs is the performance outlier. It runs one of the largest pools among residential proxy providers, and Proxyway's testing consistently places its speed and reliability at the top of the market. Teams hitting the hardest targets (heavily defended e-commerce sites, search engines at volume) step up here when Decodo's mid-market infrastructure starts showing its limits. The Web Unblocker and Scraper APIs also out-muscle Decodo's newer scraping tools at the enterprise end.

What you pay

Residential traffic costs $8/GB pay-as-you-go and $6/GB on the $30 Starter plan, falling to $2.50/GB only at the 1TB Corporate tier. The premium is real at low volumes: entry rates run more than double Decodo's.

What holds it back

The onboarding is enterprise-grade in both senses: a mandatory KYC questionnaire for every customer, trials reserved for verified companies, and pricing built to reward terabyte commitments. Residential proxies also block Google by default until verification completes, which matters for SERP work. Decodo users who valued the five-minute self-serve start will feel the difference immediately.

The right fit

Teams that outgrew mid-market performance and can justify premium rates with revenue-critical data pipelines.

3. NetNut (the stability specialist)

Why people switch here

Session stability puts NetNut on Smartproxy alternatives shortlists. Peer-to-peer residential pools rotate as consumer devices connect and disconnect, and long-session work (account management, checkout flows, logged-in scraping) suffers for it. NetNut's direct ISP sourcing keeps addresses online independently of any household device, so sessions hold. Teams running account-based workflows that pair proxies with multi-account browser setups tend to land here when drop-offs become the bottleneck.

What you pay

Residential starts around $3.45/GB on subscription plans, with datasets and ISP proxies priced separately. There is no self-serve free trial: testing runs through an enterprise trial on request.

What holds it back

The platform leans mid-market to enterprise, so the smallest budget-first jobs are not its focus. Bandwidth follows subscription cycles, and the polished self-serve experience Decodo is known for is thinner here.

The right fit

Teams whose failures come from session drops rather than blocks, and anyone scraping login-gated targets at steady volume. If your logs show mid-session disconnects more often than 403s, this is the switch that fixes them.

4. SOAX (the targeting specialist)

Why people switch here

Precision. Decodo offers ZIP-level targeting in the US, but SOAX extends fine-grained selection (city and carrier included) across its global pool. That matters for localized SEO checks, regional ad verification, and price monitoring, where the exact vantage point changes the data. Sticky sessions hold for up to 60 minutes, and the company actively filters abused or flagged IPs out of the pool, keeping block rates low on sensitive targets like banking and government sites.

What you pay

Residential plans start around $3.60/GB with bandwidth included per cycle, and custom enterprise pricing covers high volumes. Rates sit slightly above Decodo's entry tier and buy the extra targeting depth.

What holds it back

Subscription-only billing means the expiring-bandwidth problem follows you here. The dashboard is capable but busier than Decodo's award-winning interface, and the cheapest tiers carry modest allowances.

The right fit

Location-sensitive work: multi-city SERP tracking, regional ad verification, and compliance-conscious industries that need clean, ethically sourced IPs.

5. Webshare (the zero-commitment entry)

Why people switch here

Price, and the ability to verify before paying. Decodo's 3-day trial with 100MB is enough for a smoke test. Webshare's free tier renews monthly and includes most paid features, so a small automation job can run indefinitely without a bill. Paid plans then start below half of Decodo's entry rate, with a 30M+ pool across 195 countries and 99.7% measured uptime. For a solo developer, the free tier alone can carry a small project from prototype to production.

What you pay

Residential starts around $1.40/GB on paid tiers, ISP proxies from roughly $0.30 per proxy, all self-serve. The free tier stays free permanently.

What holds it back

The feature set is the lightest on this list: thinner targeting, no managed scraping layer, and mixed reviews on pool quality at the cheapest tiers. Heavy or defended workloads will outgrow it, and there is no non-expiring pay-as-you-go option.

The right fit

Individual developers and small teams testing whether budget infrastructure holds up before committing real spend anywhere.

Smartproxy alternatives by the numbers

Entry rates, billing models, and pool sizes across Decodo and all five alternatives, verified against provider pages in July 2026. For a wider view beyond these five, our full provider roundup compares ten.

Matching the Smartproxy alternative to your workload

Rankings of top proxy servers only help if they map to the reason you are switching, so match each Smartproxy alternative to the pressure you actually feel.

Choose FleetProxy if expiring bandwidth is the frustration: $2.65/GB pay-as-you-go credit that never resets, with every proxy type Decodo offered. Start your free trial.

Choose Oxylabs if you have outgrown mid-market performance and need the largest pool with top-of-market success rates.

Choose NetNut if session drops on account-based work are the bottleneck its ISP-sourced pool solves.

Choose SOAX if city-level and carrier-level targeting would change the quality of your data.

Choose Webshare if you want to test a cheaper setup completely free before spending anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Smartproxy the same as Decodo?

Ans: Yes. Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo in 2025, moving from smartproxy.com to decodo.com while keeping the same company, accounts, plans, and infrastructure. The residential pool has since grown to 125M+ IPs across 195+ locations. The product range expanded with an All-In-One Scraping API and AI Parser. Anyone searching for Decodo alternatives and Smartproxy alternatives in 2026 is describing the same comparison. An old smartproxy.com bookmark now lands on decodo.com, at the same account.

What is the best Smartproxy alternative in 2026?

Ans: FleetProxy is the best overall pick for most former Smartproxy users: $2.65/GB rotating residential with non-expiring bandwidth, no minimum plan, and instant self-serve activation, which removes the monthly-reset billing that drives most switching. Oxylabs is the strongest choice for premium performance at scale, and SOAX leads when granular geo-targeting matters most.

Does Decodo bandwidth expire?

Ans: Yes. Decodo sells residential traffic on monthly subscription cycles, and unused bandwidth does not roll over when the cycle resets. The smallest residential plan carries 2GB at roughly $3.50/GB. Users with irregular workloads who want purchased traffic to sit until consumed typically move to a non-expiring pay-as-you-go provider. It is the single most common reason cited for switching.

Is Decodo cheaper than Oxylabs?

Ans: At entry, clearly: Decodo's residential rate of roughly $3.50/GB sits well under Oxylabs' $8/GB pay-as-you-go and $6/GB Starter pricing. The comparison narrows at volume, where Oxylabs reaches $2.50/GB on its 1TB Corporate tier. Decodo also starts self-serve in minutes, while Oxylabs requires a KYC questionnaire from every customer, so the cheaper option is also the faster one to begin using.

Why did Smartproxy change its name to Decodo?

Ans: The company rebranded in 2025 to reflect a product range that had grown beyond proxies: alongside the residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile networks, Decodo now ships an All-In-One Scraping API, an AI Parser, and scraping templates. The name change was cosmetic for existing customers, since accounts, pricing, and infrastructure carried over unchanged.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Smartproxy?

Ans: Yes, at both billing models. Webshare starts around $1.40/GB with a permanent free tier of 10 proxies and 1GB per month. FleetProxy runs $2.65/GB with bandwidth that never expires, dropping to $1.59/GB at 500GB. That beats Decodo's entry rate while removing the monthly reset. At sustained high volume, comparing each provider's published curve against your actual usage matters more than the headline rate.