Smartproxy Review 2026: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Most providers in this category give you marketing claims and ask you to trust them. Decodo has the opposite problem. It's been independently benchmarked so many times, by so many testers, that the question stops being whether it's good and becomes where the benchmarks stop helping.

That's what this Smartproxy review is for. The performance data is strong and we'll go through it properly, but the useful part of any smartproxy review at this point is the detail sitting underneath a very good scorecard.

Smartproxy review verdict

8.5 out of 10. On residential proxies, Decodo performs at enterprise level for mid-market money, and independent testing backs that up rather than the vendor's own page. The gaps are specific rather than general: traffic expires monthly, the ISP product is less residential than the label suggests, and pricing uses three different billing models across the catalogue.

Smartproxy review: what the independent benchmarks measured

Proxyway has tested this network repeatedly, most recently across 2026, and the results are unusually consistent. Here's what was measured rather than claimed.

Pool depth holds up under scrutiny too, which is rarer than it should be. A 21-day test pushing 1.2 million requests surfaced more than 832,000 unique IPs, and a later run found over 1.15 million unique addresses through the global gateway alone. Proxyway's own summary is that the pool size and infrastructure performance matched enterprise providers like Oxylabs.

Regional consistency is the quieter strength. Success rates held at 99.32% in the US, 99.63% in the UK, 99.90% across the EU, 99.84% in Brazil, 99.86% in India and 99.81% in Australia. Plenty of networks look excellent globally and fall apart in one region. This one doesn't.

The ISP finding the benchmarks bury

This is the detail worth paying for, and the reason this Smartproxy review exists rather than just pointing at a benchmark table. ISP proxies exist because they combine consumer ISP registration with server-grade stability, and the registration is the entire reason anyone pays a premium for them. If four in ten addresses don't read as residential, you're buying the stability without all of the trust.

Context matters, though, and we'd rather give it than leave the number hanging. The test drew proxies from 22 unique subnets belonging to two major internet service providers, and all were correctly geolocated. Nothing here suggests anything misleading, and a 100% success rate over seven days is genuinely excellent. It simply means the residential signal on this product is weaker than the name implies, and if that signal is what you're buying, test it on your own targets before committing.

One related gap, flagged by other reviewers: Decodo has no active per-IP fraud scoring the way NodeMaven does. Pool cleanliness comes from scale diluting burned addresses rather than from filtering them out before they reach you.

Smartproxy to Decodo, briefly

The rebrand happened on 22 April 2025, and it was a name change rather than anything structural: same Lithuanian company, same infrastructure, same IP pool, same accounts. Searches for smart proxy, Smartproxy and Decodo all land on the same business now, and anyone reading smartproxy reviews is reading about this one. Existing customers were migrated automatically without having to do anything.

The practical consequence is that older write-ups quote prices and pool figures that have since moved. Any Decodo review or Smartproxy review published before mid-2025 should be treated as historical, and we covered the current numbers in detail in our Smartproxy pricing breakdown.

What you actually get

• Residential proxy network. 115M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ locations, with continent, country, state, city, ZIP and ASN targeting included rather than surcharged, and sticky sessions up to 30 minutes.
• Mobile. 10M+ carrier IPs drawn from 700+ carriers across 160 countries, benchmarked at 99.75% success.
• Datacenter. Shared and dedicated options, though single-user dedicated addresses are US-only, which catches out buyers needing them elsewhere.
• ISP, static residential. Shared and dedicated static IPs from premium ASNs, with the caveat covered above.
• Site Unblocker and scraping APIs. A managed endpoint that rotates proxy type, handles fingerprints and JavaScript rendering, and retries on failure, plus dedicated APIs for SERP, social and e-commerce data.

The dashboard deserves its reputation. G2 gave it a Best Usability award in 2025, and reviewers consistently describe setup as fast even for people without a technical background. Both SOCKS5 and HTTP(S) work across every product line.

Smartproxy review: the dashboard, walked through

The interface is the reason a lot of people stay, and it's the thing G2 singled out with a Best Usability award in 2025.

Setup follows the same path for every product: choose the proxy type, pick your location down to city or ASN, set rotation to per-request or sticky, then generate either an endpoint or a credential pair. Most people are making their first successful request inside ten minutes, and reviewers without technical backgrounds report the same.

The parts worth knowing about sit one level down. Usage analytics break traffic out by product and sub-user, which matters when several people or projects share one account. Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox cover quick manual work without touching the dashboard at all. The public API handles everything the dashboard does, so proxy management can live in code rather than a browser tab. SOCKS5 and HTTP(S) are both available on every line.

The friction is narrow but real. Web Scraping API pricing hides behind a JavaScript slider rather than a published table, which makes forecasting harder than it needs to be. ISP and mobile lines don't accept cryptocurrency, and Stripe isn't supported at all, which several G2 reviewers mention as an annoyance rather than a blocker.

Smartproxy pricing in short

Residential runs $3.75/GB on the smallest plan down to $2.75/GB at 100GB, with pay as you go at $4/GB, which costs more per gigabyte than every subscription tier. ISP starts at $0.27 per IP for traffic-based access, datacenter at $0.02 per IP, and mobile at $2.25/GB. Everything is quoted before VAT.

Two structural notes. Traffic expires monthly, so unused gigabytes are lost at the billing cutoff. The catalogue also uses three different billing models, traffic-based, unit-based and success-based, depending on the product, which makes cross-product budgeting harder than it should be. Our full pricing guide covers the trial and refund conditions, which are worth reading before you sign up.

Smartproxy review: where Decodo is genuinely weaker

• Unused traffic expires monthly rather than rolling over
• Only 57% of tested ISP addresses registered as residential
• No active per-IP fraud filtering before addresses are served
• Dedicated datacenter proxies are available in the US only
• ISP and mobile lines do not accept cryptocurrency, and Stripe is unsupported
• Web Scraping API pricing sits behind a slider rather than a published table
• Pay as you go costs more per gigabyte than the cheapest subscription

What users report

Sentiment is strong and consistent, which is not something we've been able to say about every provider in this review series. G2 sits at 4.6 across 648+ reviews, and Trustpilot figures published during 2026 range from 4.2 to 4.7 across roughly 2,000 reviews. Proxyway has given it the Best Value Provider award four years running, with one source counting five.

The praise clusters tightly around three things: IP quality, responsive support, and a dashboard people genuinely find easy to use. Reviewers repeatedly single out chat support as helpful and fast. The complaints are narrower, covering occasional outages disrupting jobs, pricing feeling steep on small projects, and the payment restrictions above.

Who this residential proxy network suits

We'd point you here if you run consistent residential workloads at mid to high volume, want performance that measures at enterprise level without enterprise onboarding, or value a dashboard your team can learn in an afternoon. For scraping and research automation, SEO monitoring and e-commerce intelligence, it's one of the easiest recommendations in the market.

We'd point you elsewhere if your usage is irregular enough that monthly expiry hurts, if you need dedicated datacenter IPs outside the US, if the residential signal on ISP addresses is central to your work, or if you need compliance documentation beyond what a mid-market provider carries.

The best Smartproxy alternatives

We sell proxies, so treat anything this Smartproxy review says about our own numbers as something to verify rather than accept.

On price and terms, our residential line starts at $2.65/GB against Decodo's $3.75, reaches $1.59/GB at 500GB, and the traffic never expires, which directly addresses the monthly-expiry gap. What we don't offer is a 115M pool, Site Unblocker, scraping APIs or that dashboard, and Decodo's benchmarked performance is better documented than ours. If tooling and measured performance matter more than per-gigabyte cost, buy Decodo.

Above Decodo sit the enterprise networks, scored in our write-up on Bright Data and the one on Oxylabs, both with larger pools and deeper compliance paperwork. Below it, IPRoyal offers non-expiring traffic at a lower entry point with weaker success rates on hard targets. For ISP addresses specifically, where the finding above matters most, our ten-provider ISP breakdown prices ten providers on one basket, and the market-wide ranking covers the wider field.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Smartproxy the same as Decodo?

Ans: Yes. Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo on 22 April 2025, keeping the same company, infrastructure, IP pool and customer accounts, with existing users migrated automatically. If you searched for a smartproxy review and landed on pages about Decodo, they describe the same service. Any pricing quoted in articles published before mid-2025 is out of date.

Is Decodo good in 2026?

Ans: Yes, and the independent data supports it rather than just the marketing. Proxyway benchmarking measured 99.92% global success at 0.53 seconds on residential, the second-fastest of thirteen providers tested, with datacenter at 99.94% and mobile at 99.75%. Pool size and infrastructure performance were found to match enterprise providers. The main weaknesses are monthly traffic expiry and a weaker residential signal on the ISP product.

How much does Decodo cost?

Ans: Smartproxy pricing under the Decodo name runs $3.75/GB on the 3GB residential plan, stepping down to $2.75/GB at 100GB, with pay as you go at $4/GB. ISP starts at $0.27 per IP on traffic-based access, datacenter at $0.02 per IP, and mobile at $2.25/GB. Every figure excludes VAT, and unused traffic expires at the end of each billing month.

Are Decodo's ISP proxies really residential?

Ans: Partly. Proxyway's testing found a 100% success rate and 0.22-second responses, but only 57% of the addresses registered as residential in the IP2Location database and 47% matched the expected ASN and organization. The proxies came from 22 subnets across two major internet service providers and were correctly geolocated. They perform reliably; the residential classification is just less consistent than the product name suggests.

Does Decodo have a free trial?

Ans: Yes, 100MB over three days on most eligible proxy products, with a payment method required and the plan activating automatically when the trial ends unless cancelled. Importantly, taking that trial makes you ineligible for the 14-day money-back guarantee, since the refund policy requires that no free trial was used. Pick one or the other rather than assuming you get both.

What are the best Smartproxy alternatives?

Ans: It depends what you want to change. For a bigger pool and compliance certifications, Bright Data and Oxylabs are the step up. For non-expiring traffic at a lower entry rate, FleetProxy starts at $2.65/GB and IPRoyal at $7/GB, both without monthly expiry. For active per-IP fraud filtering, which Decodo does not do, NodeMaven is the specialist. Match the alternative to the specific gap rather than the headline price.