SOAX Review 2026: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

Search for a SOAX review and you'll find SOAX residential priced at $3.60, $4 and $9 per gigabyte, often with a $1.99 trial attached. Most of those figures describe plans SOAX has since retired.

SOAX rebuilt its platform in mid-2026, and the rate card works differently now. We priced everything below from SOAX's own pricing page and terms, so the prices match SOAX's site today.

The SOAX review score, and what holds it back

8 out of 10. On network quality alone it would score higher. Residential success stayed above 99.7% in every region tested, and responses were quick in the US and Europe.

What pulls the score down is the commercial wrapper: credits that expire, a price tied to a country list SOAX only partly publishes, and refund terms that cover billing errors and service failures rather than a change of mind. None of it is hidden. All of it is easy to miss.

Why does every SOAX review quote a different price?

Because the country is now part of the price. SOAX residential proxy pricing runs on credits worth $1 of usage each, and every gigabyte costs a different number of credits depending on your plan and the geo tier of the country you target.

Read across any row and Tier 1 costs about 2.5 times Tier 3. Read down any column and Enterprise costs under a fifth of Sandbox. Put together, the same gigabyte of SOAX proxy traffic costs anywhere from $5.00 down to $0.35, a 14x spread, and Enterprise volume bands go lower still.

That's the real difference from the Bright Data, Oxylabs and Decodo rate cards we've broken down, which fold country targeting into one per-gigabyte price. SOAX makes the country part of the bill.

The only four countries SOAX names

Here's the awkward part: SOAX publishes the tier system without publishing the tiers.

Its pricing page names four countries. The United States and Germany sit in Tier 1, India in Tier 2 and the Philippines in Tier 3, and the tiers are explained only as reflecting the cost of serving each market. One independent review adds the UK and Japan to Tier 1 and Brazil to Tier 2, which helps, but that's a reviewer's reading rather than SOAX's list.

If you buy geo-targeting proxies for Turkey, Vietnam or Nigeria, nothing SOAX publishes tells you your rate. For a provider that prices by where an address geolocates, that's a strange gap. Ask support for the tier before you top up.

What's the cheapest way to test SOAX?

A free Sandbox account and a small top-up, not the $200 Builder plan.

Several review sites still list a $1.99 three-day trial. As of October 2026 it doesn't appear on SOAX's pricing, residential or mobile pages, and the pricing FAQ answers the free trial question with a flat no.

When your credits land, run the addresses through a proxy checker before trusting the dashboard. Given the refund terms, a cheap test on your own targets is your best protection.

Credits expire, and that changes your real rate

Credits added on Sandbox or a monthly plan expire 60 days after they're added, and annual plans stretch that to 12 months. Renewing, upgrading or cancelling doesn't move the expiry date on credits you already hold.

That makes the rate card a best case. What you pay depends on how much of each allocation you burn:

• Builder's 200 credits buy about 67 GB of Tier 1 traffic, or about 167 GB in Tier 3.
• Use 30 GB of US traffic on Builder and you've spent $90 of a $200 plan. Your effective rate is $6.67 per gigabyte, not $3.00.
• Below 40 GB a month of Tier 1 traffic, Sandbox top-ups at $5.00/GB cost less than Builder. In Tier 3 the break-even is 100 GB.
• Seasonal work loses the most. Price monitoring that peaks in November and goes quiet in January lets credits lapse through every quiet stretch.

One thing SOAX gets right: unless you have an approved postpaid agreement, usage stops when your balance hits zero. You won't get a surprise overage invoice.

Mobile traffic costs the same as residential

We charge more for carrier IPs than for residential, with the carrier line we sell at $3.40/GB against $2.65. SOAX doesn't charge that premium at all. Its mobile page prices traffic off the same card, showing Builder's Tier 1 rate at $3.00/GB, identical to residential.

The catch is depth. Independent testers called SOAX's mobile pool among the smaller ones they've measured, and EU mobile success dipped to 96.45% while every other region stayed above 98.9%.

How deep the SOAX pool runs, country by country

SOAX advertises over 191 million residential and mobile IPs across 195+ countries. Nobody can verify a figure like that, and the testers who benchmarked SOAX called advertised pool sizes marketing for exactly that reason.

What testing can show is how often a request lands on an address it hasn't seen before. We call that the fresh-IP rate, and it says more about depth in your country than any headline number.

SOAX residential proxies hold up well: in the US, more than half of requests got a fresh address. Australia is thin, and it ran the smallest test of all yet still turned up the fewest new IPs.

Mobile is where the table earns its place. India returned 48 fresh carrier IPs per 100 requests, more than the US, so SOAX suits Indian traffic unusually well. UK and Brazilian mobile came in at 6 and 5, which means you'll see the same addresses back often.

How SOAX performed in April 2026 testing

Well. Residential success ranged from 99.72% in Brazil to 99.92% in the US, with 99.78% globally. The average response on a small 6 KB page was 0.89 seconds globally, 0.55 in the US and 0.49 in the UK.

Two caveats change how you should read that.

Heavy pages are slower. The same network averaged 3.26 seconds on a 2 MB page globally, and 4.37 seconds in the US.

Protected targets are slower too. A separate test against a Cloudflare server in the US measured 2.52 seconds and called it a fairly poor result, roughly three times the benchmark average. A plain test page shows a network's best case, and a Cloudflare-protected site looks more like real scraping. If your targets sit behind Cloudflare, plan around the slower number.

Sticky sessions, and why the one-star reviews mention them

SOAX holds 4.8 out of 5 on G2 from 66 reviews and 3.4 on Trustpilot from 149. The Trustpilot score hides a split: 88% of reviews give five stars, 9% give one, and only about 3% land in between.

Most one-star reviews complain about sessions, with IPs changing too quickly and, in one reviewer's words, "sticky sessions do not work." Others criticise support and account handling, including one described suspension and one complaint about inflated traffic charges.

That sits oddly next to 99.78% success until you look at how stickiness works. Independent testers list sessions of up to a week, as long as the IP stays available. Residential IPs are real household devices, and they drop off when the device does, so a long sticky session is a best effort rather than a promise.

If your work needs one identity for days, a dedicated IP fits better, such as an LTE address billed by the day. Our breakdown of when a rotating IP beats a static one covers the trade-off.

What SOAX won't let you do

Financial and government websites are off limits, and so are mailing ports such as port 25. Identity checks are optional until you pay with crypto or need restricted ports and domains, at which point SOAX verifies you through Sumsub with photo ID, proof of residence and camera access.

The clause to read twice is in SOAX's terms. If an account is suspended for breaching the acceptable use policy, its credits are forfeited immediately, whatever validity they have left. Check your targets against that policy before you top up, not after.

Should you buy SOAX?

It depends on how steady your traffic is. SOAX proxies reward predictable volume and penalise everything else.

Buy it if:

• Your monthly volume is steady enough to burn most of each credit allocation
• Your work sits in Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries, where Scale charges $1.15 and $0.60 per gigabyte
• You need Indian carrier IPs, where the measured mobile pool runs deepest
• You want mobile traffic at residential prices
• You need targeting by city, ISP or ASN as well as country

Skip it if:

• Your volume swings from month to month, since credits lapse after 60 days
• You want your money back if a test goes badly
• You need to budget for countries outside the four SOAX publishes a tier for
• You need one IP held for days rather than hours
• Your carrier work centres on the UK or Brazil

SOAX alternatives, matched to the problem

We sell proxies, so weigh what we say about our own line with that in mind.

• Credits that expire. Residential bandwidth that never expires is how FleetProxy sells its pool, from $2.65/GB down to $1.59 at 500 GB, with no monthly minimum. IPRoyal's traffic doesn't expire either, though independent testing put it at 74.63% success on Amazon, Google and Instagram.
• No way to try first. We hand out a 50 MB test on rotating products through live chat, enough to check success rates on your own targets before paying anything. ProxyEmpire sells a $1.97 paid trial, with no refund policy behind it.
• Tier maths you'd rather skip. Decodo scored 8.5 in our review, with 99.92% residential success at 0.53 seconds and no country tiers, though its monthly bandwidth expires with the cycle too.
• Cheaper carrier traffic. Rayobyte's repriced mobile runs about $0.50/GB, well under SOAX, though its residential line scored 6.8 out of 10 for IP quality.
• Enterprise contracts. Bright Data and Oxylabs are the step up, and our breakdowns of Bright Data's rate card and how Oxylabs bills show what that costs.

The bottom line on SOAX

This SOAX review comes down to fit. Under the terms SOAX introduced on 1 June 2026, it's a strong network sold on conditions that suit steady volume and penalise irregular use. Test it with a Sandbox top-up first, and if your workload is lumpy, check live pricing on bandwidth that doesn't expire.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SOAX legit and safe to use?

Ans: Yes. SOAX was founded in 2020, is incorporated in the UK and says it serves more than 10,000 customers. Independent testing in April 2026 measured 99.78% residential success globally. The risks are commercial rather than technical: payments are generally non-refundable, credits expire after 60 days, and credits are forfeited immediately if an account is suspended for breaching the acceptable use policy. Check your targets against that policy before paying.

How much does SOAX cost in 2026?

Ans: SOAX sells credit-based plans: a free Sandbox with no credits, Builder at $200 a month, Team at $500, Scale at $1,500 and Enterprise at $3,000, all plus VAT. Each gigabyte is charged by the geo tier of the target country, from $5.00 on Sandbox in Tier 1 down to $0.35 on Enterprise in Tier 3, before Enterprise volume bands. Older figures such as $3.60/GB or a $90 starter plan describe plans SOAX has retired.

Does SOAX have a free trial?

Ans: No. SOAX's pricing page says there is no free trial. The Sandbox plan is free and needs no card, but it includes no credits, so testing means buying a top-up, which one independent review puts at $25 minimum and is spent at Sandbox rates of $2.00 to $5.00 per gigabyte. The $1.99 three-day trial some reviews still mention no longer appears on SOAX's pricing or product pages.

Do SOAX credits expire?

Ans: Yes. Credits added on Sandbox or a monthly plan expire 60 days after they are added, and credits on annual plans expire after 12 months. Renewing, upgrading or cancelling does not change the expiry date of credits already in the account. Unused credits are not refunded, so a plan you under-use costs more per gigabyte than its published rate.

Can you get a refund from SOAX?

Ans: Rarely. SOAX's terms, effective 1 June 2026, treat plan fees, top-ups and credits as non-refundable outside mandatory consumer law. The main exceptions are billing errors reported within 30 days and confirmed, material service failures. Unused credits are not refunded on cancellation, and crypto payments are not refunded to the original wallet. An older help-center article describes a three-day window for unused bundles, so confirm with support before relying on it.

What are the best SOAX alternatives?

Ans: It depends on what pushes you away. Decodo benchmarks comparably, with 99.92% residential success, and does not price by country. Rayobyte charges about $0.50/GB for mobile. IPRoyal and other pay-as-you-go providers sell bandwidth that does not expire, which suits irregular workloads better than 60-day credits. Bright Data and Oxylabs are the step up for enterprise contracts and compliance paperwork.