Proxy Comparisons - Proxyway

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: A Comparison

Adam Dubois — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 09:56:12 +0000

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: A Comparison

GoLogin and Multilogin are probably the best-known antidetect browsers in the industry. The tools are used to manage multiple social media accounts, create stealth profiles, run several ad accounts, and even for web scraping. But are they both equally good? Let’s find that out.

Summary

Multilogin and GoLogin are both great antidetect browsers for multi-account browsing. They come with a nice collection of features, consistent browser fingerprints, and support for multiple operating systems. In addition, they have a polished user interface and live customer service.

In short, Multilogin is among the first in the field, so expect better performance, excellent documentation, out-of-the-box features, and… a higher price. GoLogin, on the other hand, also performs well, and offers more in-built proxy choices at an affordable price.

Here’s a table of the aspects we compared:

	Multilogin	GoLogin
Variety of services	★★★★★	★★★★☆
Performance	★★★★★	★★★★☆
User experience	★★★★☆	★★★★★
Customer service	★★★★★	★★★☆☆
Price	★★★☆☆	★★★★★
	Visit Multilogin	Visit GoLogin

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: A Quick Overview

Here’s a brief comparison between the two tools:

	Multilogin	GoLogin
Country	Estonia	US
Founded	2015	2019
Operating systems	Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, cloud
Starting price	€29/month (or €19 if paid yearly) for 10 profiles	$49/month (or $24 if paid yearly) for 100 profiles
Payment methods	Credit card, PayPal, cryptocurrencies	Debit or credit card, PayPal, cryptocurrencies
Integrated proxies	✅ (free and paid proxies)	✅ (free and paid proxies)
Trial	❌	7 days or Forever Free account with 3 profiles
Reviews (August 2024)	G2 – ⭐4.4 Trustpilot – ⭐ 4.5	G2 – ⭐4.7 Trustpilot – ⭐ 4.5

Multilogin – an Estonian company – is a veteran in the antidetect browser market. GoLogin – founded in the US – is much younger but has managed to come a long way since its release.

The companies only sell antidetect browsers. While multi-accounting was the primary use case for quite some time, both competitors shifted their focus to web scraping as well.

Multilogin and GoLogin target businesses of all sizes. They offer plans at cheaper entry rates and scale up to support large teams. Multilogin costs more, though its entry price is more favorable.

A major difference between the two is how the providers vet their customers. Multilogin takes a step forward here and expects transparency from its users – you’ll need to pass a stringent know-your-customer procedure. GoLogin, on the other hand, doesn’t require anything from you – just register, and you’re good to go. But this raises some questions about ethical browsing.

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: Features

GoLogin: packed with all the necessities for multiple account management.

The provider stands out by offering three types of free in-built proxies. You can get 500 MB of residential and mobile proxy traffic as well as 6 GB of datacenter proxies. It’s possible to buy additional traffic at affordable rates ($3/GB for residential and mobile or $2/GB for datacenter proxies). These proxies come from up to 80 countries (depending on the proxy type). You can also use your own proxy servers. GoLogin supports HTTP, SOCKS4, and SOCKS5 protocols and includes a free Tor network option.

GoLogin allows you to create a template with default settings for bulk profile management and automatically apply preset configurations like language, screen resolution, and operating system. However, the proxy, timezone, and user-agent options must be configured manually for each profile.

You can share profiles with others by granting different permissions, such as edit, manage, or view. You can also easily change the fingerprint of each profile, which is useful when cloning profiles with the same configurations.

Another distinguishing feature of GoLogin is the ability to launch a profile using a mobile browser by selecting Android as the operating system. This way, you’ll appear as though you’re visiting from a mobile device.

GoLogin is available as both a cloud web version and a local application. The cloud version runs a browser on GoLogin’s server, while the local app uses Orbita (a customized Chromium engine) as the browser. Both are synchronized, so changes in one appear in the other.

The provider also includes an API compatible with Selenium and Puppeteer headless libraries for automating actions like filling forms, logging in, or taking screenshots.

GoLogin offers several additional features like pre-installed extensions and profile encryption. Finally, you can import and export cookies via third-party Chrome extensions or collect cookies from specific URLs with Cookie Robot.

Multilogin: many features out of the box.

Multilogin offers two antidetect browser versions: Multilogin X and Multilogin 6, with X being the default for new users. Multilogin X features a major architecture upgrade and an API-first approach compared to Multilogin 6. The latter will be phased out by 2025.

	Multilogin X	Multilogin 6
Interface	– Desktop app – Web interface	– Desktop app
Profile management	– Quick profiles – Option to restore deleted profiles	– Quick profiles
API	– All features available as API endpoints – Extensive documentation – Higher rate limits	– Limited API endpoints – Mediocre documentation – Lower rate limits
Workflow management	– Option to manage several projects with a single account – More collaborator roles	– One project per one account
Proxy	– Built-in NodeMaven residential proxies	–

Both versions allow you to create multiple profiles with unique fingerprints. You can manage them with other users through team roles, customize permissions, and transfer profiles. The provider also regularly updates its browsers to keep pace with Chrome’s frequent version releases.

Multilogin is one of a few providers that maintains two custom web browsers with different engines. You can choose between a Chromium-based browser called Mimic or Stealthfox, which uses Firefox as its backend.

Like its competition, Multilogin offers free and paid proxies. You can get from 1GB to 10GB of free residential proxy traffic (depending on the plan), or choose a paid proxy plan that starts from €85 for 12GB (€7.08/GB). However, there’s no option to select other types of proxies; if that’s necessary, you can always use your own proxies. The provider supports HTTP and SOCKS5 protocols.

Additional features include an API that integrates with Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer, human-like typing emulation, Firefox and Chrome extension support, cookie import/export functionality, and a CookieRobot for automated cookie collection. Multilogin offers local and cloud storage options for profiles and encrypts user data on its servers.

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: Price

Both antidetect browsers use a subscription-based pricing model with monthly auto-renewal and a discounted yearly plan.

GoLogin’s cheapest plan starts at $49 monthly ($24 if paid yearly). Plans vary by the number of browser profiles, profile-sharing options, team collaboration seats, and cloud launches. They range from 100 to 10,000 profiles and up to 40 cloud launches.

GoLogin also offers a Forever Free plan that includes three profiles and most of the features, except sharing and team collaboration). If you want to test the latter, there’s a 7-day free trial.

Multilogin offers Starter and Solo plans at €29 or €79 per month, respectively, but they lock away many features. The other plan costs €159, or you can contact the support and negotiate a custom deal.

Multilogin’s plans mainly differ in the number of browser profiles, team collaboration options, and automation functionality. You can get 10, 100, or 300 browser profiles with an option to request for more. There is no free trial, but you can ask for a refund.

Even though Multilogin has a lower entry price, it locks the main features and comes with fewer profiles. So, in the end, GoLogin is the cheaper option. Here’s a table to show how much you’ll have to pay (without a yearly discount) for a different number of profiles:

	Multilogin	GoLogin
10	€29/month	–
100	€79/month	$49/month
300	€159/month	$99/month
1000	custom	$199/month

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: Performance

In short, both providers showed great results during our tests and had a consistent fingerprint when the operating systems matched. We tested the tools using Pixelscan and CreepJS.

GoLogin’s tests ran in 2023 on a Windows computer with automatically generated browser fingerprints, using 1) two residential proxy providers with sticky IPs and 2) GoLogin’s free datacenter proxies.

The provider passed Pixelscan checks with Windows profiles and performed well with CreepJS despite some technical issues and inconsistent user agent strings in the latest Orbita version.

GoLogin performed better with Linux-mimicking profiles because GoLogin’s cloud servers run on Linux-based systems. All the other profiles shared one thing: they couldn’t completely pass CreepJS’ trash challenge, citing the system and fonts as suspicious. Overall, GoLogin scored above average on CreepJS.

GoLogin’s score (2023):

	Pixelscan check	CreepJS score (108)	CreepJS score (109)
Profile 1 (Windows)	✅	68.5%	63%
Profile 2 (Windows)	✅	68.5%	63%
Profile 3 (Windows, GoLogin free US proxy)	✅	68.5%	63%
Profile 4 (Windows)	✅	68.5%	63%
Profile 5 (Windows)	✅	68.5%	63%
Profile 6 (Linux)	❌	71.5%	66%
Profile 7 (macOS)	❌	68.5%	63%
Profile 8 (macOS M1)	❌	68.5%	63%
Profile 9 (Android)	❌	71.5%	66%

We tested Multilogin on a Mac with default fingerprints and two residential proxy providers. The tests were run in 2022.

Multilogin passed Pixelscan checks. Like GoLogin, it only failed when the operating systems didn’t match. But this is typical for antidetect browsers. The provider nailed the CreepJS test and reached almost 80%. Multilogin managed to tackle key challenges like manipulating browser data.

Multilogin’s score (2022):

	Pixelscan check	CreepJS score
Profile 1 (Chrome, macOS)	✅	72.5%
Profile 2 (Chrome, macOS)	✅	75.5%
Profile 3 (Chrome, macOS)	✅	72.5%
Profile 4 (Firefox, macOS)	✅	75.5%
Profile 5 (Firefox, macOS)	✅	75.5%
Profile 6 (Firefox, macOS)	✅	75.5%
Profile 7 (Chrome, Windows)	❌	41.5%
Profile 8 (Firefox, Windows)	❌	75.5%
Profile 9 (Chrome, Android)	❌	26%

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: User Experience

Let’s begin with the registration and subscription management. Both GoLogin and Multilogin have a pretty straightforward process. You simply go to their websites, or in the case of GoLogin, you can also use the app and register. The only difference is that Multilogin asks you to complete a know-your-customer procedure.

The providers have another thing in common – an intuitive user interface. They have minimalist dashboards and easy profile management that allows you to organize profiles. Since both tools are paid, there are no prompts that would distract your attention. However, GoLogin has a slightly better user interface; Multilogin lacks features like visible profile launch times.

In terms of documentation, Multilogin has nailed it. It provides extensive documentation and a YouTube channel with tutorials and expert interviews. The resources are kept up-to-date and cover both Multilogin 6 and X. GoLogin, on the other hand, has a mediocre documentation hub and a blog covering various aspects of the service. There’s also a YouTube channel with tutorials on tool integration and usage.

GoLogin vs. Multilogin: Customer Service

You can contact GoLogin’s customer support via live chat, email, phone, Messenger, and Telegram. Live chat is available 24/7, with a response time of around 30 minutes.

Our experience with live chat was mixed: the first response came in 15 minutes, but subsequent replies were slow, taking 10 minutes or more. Email support was problematic as well – the messages didn’t go through. While the live chat was slower compared to Multilogin, the support team effectively resolved technical issues.

We had no issues with Multilogin’s customer support. You can reach the team via live chat or email. Live chat is available Monday to Friday, with 24/7 English support and limited hours for Chinese and Russian-speaking agents. I received a detailed email response in about three hours and resolved an issue through chat within five minutes.

The Bottom Line

When comparing GoLogin and Multilogin, the decision depends on your specific needs and budget.

GoLogin offers an attractive package for those looking to get started or operate on a tighter budget. Its intuitive interface, local API, and automation capabilities make it a solid choice for beginners and advanced users. You can use its free plan or choose between three different plans, though it has some compromises, like slower load speeds.

On the other hand, Multilogin stands as the more premium option, known for its reliability and robust customer support. If your use case requires high performance and stability, and you don’t mind paying for it, Multilogin is hard to beat. However, don’t expect many features if you’re an individual user and need only 10 profiles.

Adam Dubois

Proxy geek and developer.

September 12, 2024

The post GoLogin vs. Multilogin: A Comparison appeared first on Proxyway.

Storm Proxies vs. Smartproxy: Performance & Feature Comparison

Chris Becker — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 12:22:09 +0000

Storm Proxies vs. Smartproxy: Performance & Feature Comparison

Storm Proxies and Smartproxy are two popular vendors of rotating proxies. They both target hustlers and small businesses, offering simple services for an affordable price. But which would be a better pick for you?

The quick answer is: unless you’re running very simple projects and absolutely need unlimited traffic, it’s probably Smartproxy. Why? Let’s find out.

Storm Proxies vs Smartproxy: General Information

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Jurisdiction	Unknown	International
Founded	2016	2018
Target audience	Small businesses	Small to mid businesses
Awards	Fastest proxies (2019)	Best Customer Support (2020) Best Value Provider (2021-2024)
Trustpilot score	2.2	4.6

Storm Proxies and Smartproxy provide little company information, such as their country of origin. Despite this, we know that Storm Proxies was established a few years earlier and that it’s a popular provider in the US. Smartproxy claims to be a collection of international professionals. Might be so.

Both providers target hustlers and small businesses. So, if you’re a sneaker cook, social media account manager, or small-time scraper, they should be right up your alley. Smartproxy has the ability to supply bigger customers as well, since they do offer more features and tools.

We like Smartproxy, which is obvious looking at the awards we’ve given it. Storm Proxies has won one too, but that was in 2019. Since then, it’s had a hard time competing with other top residential proxy providers.

Storm Proxies vs Smartproxy: Services

Several options for rotating proxies on both sides.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Datacenter proxies	Shared, dedicated	Shared, dedicated
Residential proxies	Rotating	Rotating
ISP proxies	✖	Shared, dedicated
Mobile proxies	✖	✓
Proxy APIs	✖	Search Engine Proxies
Web scraping tools	✖	Social Media Scraping API, SERP Scraping API, eCommerce SCRAPING API, Web Scraping API
Other tools	✖	X browser, browser extension, Site Unblocker, Proxy Checker
Special plans	Sneakers, social media, tickets	✖

Storm Proxies sells three kinds of proxies: dedicated datacenter, rotating residential, and a mix of datacenter & residential IPs called backconnect proxies. The third type supports rotation every request, so it’s best for web scraping. There are also specialized plans for sneaker cooks, social media managers, and ticket scalpers. Just note that the sneaker proxies rotate every 5 minutes (too often) while the social media proxies use datacenter IPs (not working well these days).

Smartproxy has no specialized plans, but sells all types of proxies. It offers dedicated and shared datacenter proxies, and the latter can be either static or rotating. Smartproxy also has residential proxies. In addition, Smartproxy offers ISP and mobile IPs. The variety of proxy types allows more flexibility for a wider range of tasks.

Smartproxy can also offer more supporting tools. Its browser extension simplifies work with proxies on a browser, and X Browser works as a multi-profile web browser for managing multiple accounts (Instagram, eBay, etc.). Smartproxy also has several scraping APIs for data extraction from various sources, and a Site Unblocker – a proxy-like solution built to access various websites and scrape their public data. All these tools add value to the proxies at no additional cost.

Pricing

Both providers are affordable. But Storm Proxies costs less for low-scale use and doesn’t limit traffic.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Model	IPs (dedicated datacenter) Threads (backconnect) Ports (residential)	Traffic (datacenter, residential, ISP, mobile, Site Unblocker) IPs (datacenter, ISP) Requests (proxy-based APIs)
Period	Monthly	Monthly, pay as you go
Unlockables	✖	✖
Trial/refund	24-hr refund	3-day refund (residential and mobile proxies); 14-day money-back guarantee (ISP, datacenter proxies, Site Unblocker, proxy-based APIs)
Starts from	$14 for 10 threads	$7 for 1 GB

Storm Proxies and Smartproxy can be both considered value providers. However, while Smartproxy is very affordable compared to premium proxy sellers, it can’t really compare with Storm Proxies for small, one-off tasks. This stands especially true if you’re doing low-intensity web scraping that requires a lot of traffic, or simply browsing using proxies. However, Smartproxy’s features allow for more use cases while still remaining affordable and user friendly.

We’d normally include a price comparison table here, but it’s impossible when the providers have different pricing models. Unless you get the search proxies, Smartproxy usually charges by traffic, with a few exceptions. Storm Proxies, on the other hand, uses threads, ports, or IPs. By getting a smaller plan, you’ll be mostly sacrificing scalability. Here, it’s important to mention that Smartproxy allows paying as you go with most plans – you can try out the service without commitment before purchasing a plan.

Rotating Residential Proxies

Smartproxy performs better, has a much larger and higher quality IP pool.

Rotating residential proxies are Smartproxy’s main product. Storm Proxies highlights its backconnect proxies which combine datacenter and residential IPs. That’s what we had the chance to test.

Features

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Advertised monthly IPs	700,000	55,000,000
Locations	Global mix	195+ locations worldwide
Filtering	US EU US + EU Global	Global Country City ASN OS
Session control	Every request Sticky sessions (3, 5, 15 mins)	Every request Sticky sessions (up to 30 mins)
Parallel requests	Limited by plan	Unlimited
Protocols	HTTP(S)	HTTP(S), SOCKS5
Authentication	Whitelisted IPs	Credentials, whitelisted IPs
Sub-users	✖	✔

Smartproxy beats Storm Proxies in features by a fair margin. You not only get a much bigger IP pool, but also more locations which you can actually target. Storm Proxies isn’t very good for working with hyper-localized content – continent level filtering just isn’t enough. Smartproxy has an upper hand here, since it has much better targeting options.

Storm Proxies also supports fewer authentication methods, and no sub-users. This makes sense considering that the plans target individual hustlers. Smartproxy limits sub-users, unless you buy a specialized and more expensive plan for resellers.

Pool Size

It’s slightly more difficult to give a representative description of the providers’ pool size – we haven’t tested Storm Proxies since 2021, as the service hadn’t had any major upgrades. Smartproxy was tested every year, and the latest tests and benchmarks can be found in Proxy Market Research. However, here’s a comparison table after 1M connection requests.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Advertised numbers (residential IPs)	700,000	55,000,000
Unique IPs	84,563*	799,605

* Storm Proxies were tested in 2021. Current numbers might be different.

Smartproxy gave us a lot more unique IP addresses. And even though Storm Proxies claims to refresh the IP pool every week, its proxy network is still pretty small.

Success Rate

We targeted Cloudflare’s US server. It’s an unbiased target that shows how well the proxy server works. Again, Storm Proxies were last tested in 2021, and Smartproxy in 2024.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy	Market average
Success rate	68.11%	99.68%	98.34%

Smartproxy had an amazing success rate, which shows that its proxy server works very well. On the other hand, nearly every third request made using Storm Proxies’ IPs failed.

Here are some results with real targets, using our own web scraping script. We ran 6,000 requests each:

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy	Other providers
Amazon	37.35%	97.98%	80.45%
Booking	68.12%	98.08%	93.45%
Craigslist	62.01%	95.82%	91.69%
Facebook	48.31%	97.13%	90.60%
Google	9.56%	83.34%	81.19%
Instagram	43.54%	98.31%	94.15%

Smartproxy had few issues accessing the targets. Storm Proxies struggled. It seems that the combination of a small IP pool, unlimited bandwidth, and mediocre proxy server performance doesn’t work well against protected websites.

Response Time

Once again, our target was located in the US.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy	Other providers
Response time (avg.)	2.66 s	0.54 s	1.27s

Smartproxy’s IPs were super fast in the US – more than twice as fast as Storm Proxies. Performance in other locations might differ, depending on where the providers have their load balancing servers.

Load Test

We ran 500 connection requests per second to see how well the proxy servers handle load.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Success rate	18.24%	99.68%
Response time (avg.)	2.8 s	0.54 s

Smartproxy had no issues dealing with this much load. We had to limit the number of requests to Storm Proxies due to plan limits (400 requests/s). But even then, it killed the proxy server.

Server Stability

We ran a test to measure stability. The table below shows how much the proxy servers fluctuate during regular use (standard deviation), and how often they were above the instability threshold (3x standard deviation) throughout three weeks of constant monitoring:

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Standard deviation	6%	1.02%
Stability	97.73%	98.48%

Even though Storm Proxies looks very stable, its success rate during regular use fluctuates by around 6%. That’s a lot. Smartproxy is both more consistent and predictable.

User Experience

Both providers are easy to use. Smartproxy has extra tools for resellers and controlling proxies on a browser.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
Self-service	✔	✔
Setup difficulty	Easy	Easy
Dashboard	Authentication Renew plans Contact support	Usage stats Authentication Renew plans Contact support
API	✖	✔
Management tools	✖	Browser extension, Proxy Checker

These are proxy providers for the average Joe, so they’re easy to pick up. There are no complicated doo-dahs and hoops that you’d get with Bright Data. Here, you tick a few boxes, copy a list of gateway addresses, and that’s that.

The dashboards are easy to understand, as well. Smartproxy provides helpful tutorials to get around the dashboard, and Storm Proxies is simple enough as is. The latter won’t give you usage stats, but why bother when your traffic’s not getting metered?

Smartproxy has some more tricks up its sleeve. You can use its extension to quickly set up proxies on the web browser. Or, if you’re managing multiple sub-users, there’s a neat API to save you from going to the dashboard every time. More options, more possibilities.

Customer Support

Slow support and conflicting documentation don’t reflect very well on Storm Proxies, while customer service is Smartproxy’s forte.

	Storm Proxies	Smartproxy
24/7	✖	✔
Languages	English	English Chinese
Live chat	✖	✔
Account manager	✖	✔
Response time	4 hours	Less than 1 min via chat
Documentation	Basic	Extensive

This is where Storm Proxies hurts. You only get email support, and it’s pretty slow. Our experience is roughly four hours for a reply; Storm Proxies advertises two and a half hours as the average – as if that was something to brag about.

Now Smartproxy – that’s a completely different category. Its support agents answer within several minutes at most, via live chat, all day round. Bigger clients get their own dedicated account manager, too.

Storm Proxies does a better job with documentation. Things are explained well, and most frequent issues covered. However, it lacks configuration instructions, and many articles are pretty outdated: when the website says one thing, and the documentation another, which one should you believe? Now there’s a dilemma you (or at least we) didn’t want to have.

Once again, Smarproxy one-ups its opponent. You’ll find a detailed FAQ, configuration instructions, tech documentation, and even tips to help you use the proxies more efficiently.

Storm Proxies vs Smartproxy: Conclusion

So, which proxy provider should you choose?

Storm Proxies can be a good choice if you need the unlimited traffic to scrape unprotected websites. It isn’t the best provider for sneakers, social media, or tasks that require precise location targeting. Still, if you don’t need much, Storm Proxies can be a fine entry-level provider.

Smartproxy is better at every aspect, save for the price. If paying slightly more isn’t a deal-breaker, go with this provider. You won’t be disappointed.

Chris Becker

Proxy reviewer and tester.

June 11, 2021

The post Storm Proxies vs. Smartproxy: Performance & Feature Comparison appeared first on Proxyway.

Smartproxy vs. Bright Data: A Comparison

Adam Dubois — Mon, 25 May 2020 13:40:26 +0000

Smartproxy vs. Bright Data: A Comparison

Smartproxy and Bright Data are some of the largest proxy providers in the market. Let’s see how the two compare, and which would be a better choice for you.

Summary

Smartproxy and Bright Data are both excellent proxy providers. They have a variety of tools for data collection, large proxy pools whose infrastructure barely ever fails, and a polished user experience.

Overall, Bright Data offers more variety, whether we’re talking about features or customizability options. You’ll be able to get anything and fine-tune it for your needs – at the price of complexity and premium rates. On the other hand, Smartproxy delivers features that most customers need, wrapping them up in a convenient and cheaper package.

My advice is: consider if Smartproxy’s functionality meets your requirements. If so, you’ll be able to get a similar quality service for significantly less. If not, choose Bright Data – you will pay more, but there’s no other service as complete.

Here’s a quick table of the aspects we compared:

	Smartproxy	Bright Data
Variety of services	★★★☆☆	★★★★★
Proxy pool size	★★★★★	★★★★★
Proxy features	★★★☆☆	★★★★★
Performance	★★★★★	★★★★★
User experience	★★★★★	★★★☆☆
Customer service	★★★★★	★★★★☆
Price	★★★☆☆	★☆☆☆☆
	Visit Smartproxy	Visit Bright Data

Smartproxy vs Bright Data (Luminati): General Information

	Smartproxy	Bright Data
Jurisdiction	International	Israel
Founded	2018	2014
Services	Proxy networks Web scraping APIs Antidetect browser	Proxy networks Web scraping APIs Datasets Bright Insights
Target audience	Small to mid-sized businesses	Small to large businesses
Awards	Best Value Provider (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)	Best Tools for Data Collection (2022) Most Innovative Provider (2023) Best Platform for Proxies (2024)
Trustpilot score	4.6	4.6

Over the years, Smartproxy grew into a respectable mid-market proxy provider with a team spread across the globe. Bright Data is Israel-based has been around for longer, and is one of the longest-standing proxy providers around.

Both providers sell access to multiple proxy networks and proxy-based APIs for data collection. Other than that, Smartproxy offers a complementary antidetect browser, while Bright Data sells pre-scraped data sets.

Smartproxy started by targeting hustlers and small businesses. However, over the years Smartproxy became more well-rounded, offering more tools and an even better service. Now, it could be considered a mid-level provider with approachable pricing plans and premium features. Bright Data, also tries to cover a wide range of customers. But in the end, it focuses on a highly technical audience working at enterprises.

We like Smartproxy and don’t hide it: it’s won an award every year, mostly for the value it provides for the money spent. Bright Data excels in its proxy management and data collection tools.

What Exactly Can These Providers Offer You?

Smartproxy

Proxy networks	Web scraping tools	Other tools
Datacenter (shared, static, rotating) Residential ISP (dedicated, rotating) Mobile	Web Scraping API SERP Scraping API E-Commerce Scraping API Social Media Scraping API Site Unblocker	X-Browser

Smartproxy offers all types of proxy types, although they started with static and rotating datacenter and residential IPs. Now, in addition to proxies, the provider has a plethora of other tools.

Smartproxy can sell you four web scraping APIs. A ready-to-use Web Scraping API can scrape any website with a 100% success rate, and return results in HTML. SERP Scraping API, Social Media Scraping API, and E-commerce Scraping API are designed to scrape only particular categories, but they can structure the results in JSON.

Smartproxy has also introduced another tool – Site Unblocker. It’s an automated proxy-based scraping solution that imitates human behavior when extracting web data. It guarantees a 100% success rate, as it avoids CAPTCHAs and anti-bot measures.

Smartproxy’s final product is an antidetect browser called X-Browser. It comes for free with a residential, ISP, or mobile proxy subscription. The browser allows the creation of unrelated profiles for tasks that require different identities (such as managing multiple accounts).

Bright Data

Proxy networks	Web scraping tools	Other services
Datacenter (static, rotating) ISP (static, rotating) Residential Mobile Web Unlocker	Scraping Browser Web Scraping API SERP API Web Scraper IDE Web Unlocker	Datasets Bright Insights

Bright Data can provide you with any type of proxy server available. You can further choose different configurations. For example, you can get datacenter or ISP proxies in dedicated lists, shared lists, or rotating proxy pools.

In addition, Bright Data has its share of proxy-based APIs. Web Unlocker integrates as a proxy network, but it has an additional layer of web scraping logic on top. This ensures 100% success when collecting data from problematic websites. Another tool, SERP API, targets specifically search engines – it both scrapes and structures data from all major search platforms like Google and Bing.

Bright Data’s no-code tool, Web Scraper IDE, is template-based. You can access a vast collection of pre-made web scrapers or request to build new ones. The provider also lets you get into their innards through a cloud-based development environment, so that you can adjust the template as needed.

And if you want to get data without investing time or development resources, Bright Data lets you buy data sets for various websites. You can also get e-commerce intelligence with Bright Insights.

Which Provider Controls a Larger Proxy Network?

Bright Data, though both have some of the largest proxy pools in the market.

Judging solely from advertised numbers, Bright Data’s proxy network is markedly larger: 72 vs 55 million residential IPs, and 1.6 million vs 500,000 rotating datacenter proxies. Mobile IP pools are similar, but Smartproxy takes the lead with 10 million addresses, and Bright Data follows with 7 million.

However, when we tested their residential proxy networks in practice, the difference was by no means large. Both providers returned hundreds of thousands of addresses, beating most mid-range and premium competitors. Despite slightly falling behind overall, Smartproxy even had more IPs in European locations like Germany.

Whose Proxies Have More Features?

Bright Data’s – it’s one area where the provider can’t be beat.

Smartproxy has a utilitarian approach to functionality – it tries to offer those features that the majority of users care about. And it mostly works. Residential proxies are the provider’s strongest service overall; the datacenter proxy networks are competent as well, as long as you’re fine with the location coverage they provide. However, in recent years, Smartproxy significantly expanded its feature list, making the provider more diverse and suitable for more use cases.

Bright Data is different – it aims to offer everything. Want to select proxies from a particular internet service provider? Yes, of course. Connect using the SOCKS5 protocol? That can be arranged. Or maybe residential proxies dedicated to your personal use? Also possible. As we’ll see, the main restriction with Bright Data isn’t a lack of something but whether you can afford it. No wonder Bright Data is one of the top choices for enterprise – its flexibility and high technical detail cater to even the most demanding customers.

Which Provider Performs Better?

Both providers displayed market-leading performance, but Smartproxy took the lead.

We thoroughly benchmarked the providers’ residential proxy networks for 2024 Proxy Market Research. You’d think that a premium company like Bright Data would show better results over a mid-ranger like Smartproxy, but that wasn’t the case.

In reality, both residential proxy networks performed very well. When connecting to Cloudflare’s server (small size, low distance, no blocks), over 98% of the requests were completed successfully, which shows that their infrastructure rarely fails.

Furthermore, both proxy networks were fast. Smartproxy’s average to random locations was 0.75 seconds, while Bright Data connected in 1.18 seconds on average. In popular locations like the US or UK, their performance was similar and some of the fastest in the market. Overall, Smartproxy has notably one of the fastest response times on the market.

*1 million connection requests over 18 days, random locations*
	Smartproxy	Bright Data
Avg. success rate	99.68%	98.96%
Avg. response time	0.54s	1.12s

Which Has a Better User Experience?

Smartproxy is easier to use, though it offers fewer customization options.

User experience is one of Smartproxy’s differentiating areas. The provider invests a lot of effort into making it comfortable and simple to grasp. You’ll find onboarding guides, plenty of explanations, and straightforward onboarding flows to generate proxy servers based on your needs.

Smartproxy treats its products as separate islands: each has its own tab with subscription, usage information, setup instructions, and proxy management APIs. This simplifies the experience if you’re using one or two products but complicates things if you’ve bought multiple different subscriptions at once.

Bright Data is more problematic: its management tools are well thought out and form a system that transcends one service. While there is a lot of information to help you make sense of things, it still requires a commitment to learn new concepts and unlock the system’s full potential.

For example, the provider uses something called Zones. They combine sub-users and pricing plans. This means you can have multiple active plans for one service and see them together with other plans on one screen. Or that Bright Data’s usage statistics allow viewing all zones in one graph. But it also increases the management complexity. This applies to Bright Data’s proxy management API, as well – it’s very powerful but also overwrought.

The same goes for proxy setup. Bright Data generates dynamic code samples and offers pre-sets and advanced toggles, such as where to resolve DNS. At the same time, you can’t even customize the rotation interval without using extra software (Bright Data’s proxy manager).

When it comes to subscription management, both providers have it good. You can subscribe to their services by yourself, add money onto the platforms without necessarily buying a plan, cancel a subscription, and download invoices using the dashboard.

And the Customer Service?

Smartproxy’s customer service is the best in the market.

We’ve awarded Smartproxy several times for its customer service. It remains great. You can use live chat, and a real person will answer you within seconds at any time of day. You can send a ticket. Or interact with an account manager.

If you’re looking for written help, Smartproxy has a rich body of documentation with quick-start guides, integration instructions, and an FAQ. It’s ballooned with the years and has become a little scattered, but you can still find answers to most questions on your own.

Bright Data has no live chat, except for premium plans or critical issues. There’s a ticketing system that responds within an hour and account managers to help you within business hours. In the past, we heard some uncharitable anecdotes about the quality of Bright Data’s service, but it seems to have become a bigger priority.

Like Smartproxy, the provider has a large body of information you can tap into. There’s an FAQ, integration instructions, webinars, video guides, and whatnot. Very comprehensive.

Overall, neither provider should let you down. We’re giving this to Smartproxy because we’ve had (and heard about) consistently great experiences with its customer service.

What about the Price?

Smartproxy is significantly cheaper, especially if you enable Bright Data’s advanced features.

Smartproxy uses a subscription-based pricing model or you can opt to pay as you go for some services. The provider’s pricing structure is straightforward, in that there’s one major criterion to follow. Its rotating proxy plans charge for traffic, static proxies – IPs, and scraping APIs count successful requests. Larger plans unlock more sub-users and whitelisted IP slots but not much else.

You can pay as you go for residential and mobile proxies only, though. Despite that, the entry plans aren’t expensive: they range between $7.5 for dedicated datacenter IPs to $50 for a web scraping API. The rates are also pretty good: though Smartproxy can’t compete with cheap providers like Dataimpulse, it costs less than premium companies like Oxylabs and Bright Data. They also scale well.

Bright Data uses a flexible pricing model: most of its services allow paying-as-you-go, and once you scale up, you can switch to cheaper, commitment-based plans. This works in your favor if you have small needs or want to combine multiple services. Here, too, the rotating proxy plans charge for traffic and scraping tool count requests. But that’s only on the surface.

Once you dig deeper, you find out how complex Bright Data’s pricing can be. For example, the static datacenter or ISP proxies, while sold by IPs, also count your traffic expenditure. You can remove the limits, but it’ll cost extra. So will the ability to target several domains. Or, in the case of residential and mobile proxies, to filter by city or ASN.

There are many little opt-ins that inflate the price. Expensive even without any of them, it becomes even more so if you enable a feature Bright Data treats as premium. The problem is that some of them (like unlimited bandwidth for static datacenter IPs) are an industry standard, so you either overpay or get a gimped experience.

So, compared to Smartproxy, Bright Data will cost you significantly more. Here’s a table showing how much residential traffic different amounts of money would get you with each provider:

*Gigabytes of residential traffic you can buy.*
	Smartproxy	Bright Data
$15	2.5 GB	1.79 GB
$100	18.1 GB	11.9 GB
$300	61.2 GB	35.71 GB
$500	111.1 GB	77.82 GB
$1,000	250 GB	176.37 GB

Adam Dubois

Proxy geek and developer.

June 18, 2024

The post Smartproxy vs. Bright Data: A Comparison appeared first on Proxyway.

Oxylabs vs. Bright Data: Which Is the Best?

Adam Dubois — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 13:36:27 +0000

Oxylabs vs. Bright Data: Which Is the Best?

Oxylabs and Bright Data are the largest (and probably most advanced) proxy providers today. They target well-off business clients and constantly compete for the top dog position. Each has advantages over the other, but which one is the overall better provider? Let’s find out.

Summary

Oxylabs and Bright Data are both excellent choices. Their proxy networks are large, full of features, and exhibit similar market-leading performance. In addition, you can get multiple proxy-based products to simplify your web scraping.

Overall, choosing Oxylabs would give you the same or better performance, proxy pool, and a lower price. Going with Bright Data would give you more customizability and access to services that Oxylabs doesn’t have: namely, a Web Scraper IDE and market intelligence insights.

Here’s a quick table of the aspects we compared:

	Oxylabs	Bright Data
Variety of services	★★★★☆	★★★★★
Proxy pool size	★★★★★	★★★★★
Proxy features	★★★★☆	★★★★★
Performance	★★★★★	★★★★★
User experience	★★★☆☆	★★★☆☆
Customer service	★★★★★	★★★★☆
Price	★★☆☆☆	★☆☆☆☆
	Visit Oxylabs	Visit Bright Data

Oxylabs vs Bright Data (Luminati): Overview

	Oxylabs	Bright Data
Jurisdiction	Lithuania	Israel
Founded	2015	2014
Services	Proxy networks Web scraping APIs Datasets	Proxy networks Web scraping APIs Datasets Bright Insights
Target audience	Small to large businesses	Small to large businesses
Price range	Premium	Premium
Awards	Best Overall Provider (2022) Best Proxy Performance (2023) Best Proxies for Enterprise (2024)	Best Tools for Data Collection (2022) Most Innovative Provider (2023) Best Platform for Proxies (2024)
Trustpilot score (June 2024)	4.6	4.6

Oxylabs and Bright Data were founded at similar times; Oxylabs hails from Lithuania, while Bright Data’s home is Israel.

The providers mainly sell proxy networks. But for these past few years, they’ve been giving increasing attention to proxy-based web scraping tools, such as APIs, and offering complete pre-scraped datasets. Bright Data even positions itself as a web data collection platform.

Both Oxylabs and Bright Data try to cover the whole market spectrum by offering flexible commitment (pay-as-you-go, micro plans). In reality, both providers favor larger businesses as they bring more revenue.

Both providers show great care to their business practices – they screen customers and have mechanisms to ensure ethical proxy acquisition and use. You can read (or watch) our interviews with Oxylabs and Bright Data to learn more.

We’ve been awarding Oxylabs for several years in a row for its exceptional service and performance. Bright Data has received multiple awards as well, mostly celebrating its stack of proxy management tools.

What Exactly Can These Providers Offer You?

Oxylabs

Proxy networks	Web scraping tools	Other tools
Datacenter (static, rotating) ISP (static, rotating) Residential Mobile Web Unblocker	Web Scraper API SERP Scraper API E-Commerce Scraper API	Complete datasets

Oxylabs can offer you every type of proxy network available. You can get IPs from a data center, peer-to-peer proxies connected to Wi-Fi routers or SIM cards, and datacenter addresses registered under consumer internet services (ISP proxies).

Where possible, you can choose proxies in multiple formats. If you need datacenter or ISP proxies, the providers let you buy lists of static addresses; or, you can access a pool of rotating IPs instead. This brings a lot of flexibility.

You can also get three proxy-based APIs for web scraping. Web Scraper API returns the HTML of any website, but it doesn’t parse results. SERP Scraper API and E-Commerce Scraper API can structure their namesake website groups in JSON (and sometimes CSV) for easier processing. Additionally, you can purchase datasets to get a collection of structured data.

Finally, Web Unblocker is a proxy network with a web scraping layer on top. It functions as a remote web scraper that integrates as a proxy server. It can overcome website protection mechanisms, CAPTCHAs, and retry failed requests to return data with a 100% success rate. The difference from the web scraping APIs is that this service integrates only as a proxy server.

Bright Data

Proxy networks	Web scraping tools	Other services
Datacenter (static, rotating) ISP (static, rotating) Residential Mobile Web Unlocker	Web Scraper IDE SERP API Web Scraping API Scraping Browser	Datasets Bright Insights

Like Oxylabs, Bright Data can provide you with any type of proxy server available. Once again, you can choose from several formats like static IP lists or a rotating proxy pool.

Bright Data also has its share of proxy-based APIs. Web Unlocker is a counterpart of Oxylabs Web Unblocker, in that it comes as a proxy server and can access any protected website. Another tool, Scraper API is specifically designed for work with search engines – it can scrape and structure data from all major search platforms like Google and Bing.

One area where Bright Data has the upper hand is Web Scraper IDE. It combines ready-made website code templates and JavaScript functions, mainly focusing on developers. However, if you don’t want to meddle with pre-made codes, you can contact the provider with your target page, and it will handle data extraction on your behalf. The scraper is designed for the most popular e-commerce, social media, business, travel, and real estate websites.

Like Oxylabs, Bright Data allows you to buy pre-scraped data sets. Moreover, the provider offers Bright Insights – e-commerce intelligence – that can be of help to various vendors.

Which Provider Controls a Larger Proxy Network?

It’s a close call but Oxylabs takes the crown.

Looking at advertised numbers alone, Oxylabs controls some of the largest proxy networks in the world. It has 2 million datacenter addresses, 20 million mobile IPs, and over 100 million monthly residential IPs. These numbers are no joke.

That said, Bright Data is no slouch either. With 72 million monthly addresses, its residential proxy network is one of the largest in the market, and the provider controls respectable amounts of mobile and datacenter proxies (7M and 770K respectively.)

When we tested their residential and mobile proxy networks in practice, both providers had hundreds of thousands of unique IPs, beating smaller competitors in countries like the US ten times or more. Compared to one another, Bright Data returned slightly more residential proxies but was convincingly beaten in terms of mobile IPs.

Whose Proxies Have More Features?

As premium providers, Oxylabs and Bright Data are very generous in the feature department. With either option, you’ll be able to:

Use proxies in any country or city in the world.
Target individual countries, cities, ASNs, ZIP codes, and coordinates. Bright Data also allows targeting specific operating systems.
Rotate each proxy type on every connection request or create sticky sessions.
Establish as many parallel connection requests as you like.
Use the HTTP(S) or SOCKS5 protocols.

Of course, you won’t always have access to all these features at once – it depends on the service. For example, Oxylabs doesn’t support SOCKS5 with its datacenter proxies, and some of its services don’t support city or ASN-level filtering. Overall, Bright Data makes more of the functionality consistently available, so it takes a slight edge.

Here’s a comparison table:

	Oxylabs				Bright Data
	Datacenter	ISP	Residential	Mobile	Datacenter	ISP	Residential	Mobile
IPs	22,000 (rotating)	Unknown	100 million	20 million	770,000 (rotating)	700,000	72 million	7 million
Type	Shared, dedicated		Shared		Shared, dedicated
Locations	188 countries	US & Europe	All countries		98 countries	35 countries	195 countries
Filtering	Country; state & city with dedicated	Country	Country, state, city, ASN, coordinates; ZIP code with residential		Country, city		Country, state, city, ASN, ZIP code, OS; coordinates with residential
Rotation	Every request, indefinite sessions	Every request, 5 hours	Every request, sticky sessions up to 30 mins		Every request, as long as available (customizable with Proxy Manager)
Threads	Unlimited
Protocols	HTTP	HTTP(S), SOCKS5			HTTP(S), SOCKS5
Authorization	Credentials, IP whitelisting

Which Provider Performs Better?

Both are excellent and rarely fail. That said, Oxylabs’ proxies run faster.

We mostly benchmarked the providers’ residential and mobile proxies. When connecting to Cloudflare’s server (small size, low distance, no blocks), over 97% of the requests completed successfully. This shows that the providers have excellent infrastructure that rarely fails.

The response time was also great with both competitors. Oxylabs was particularly fast – its residential proxies from various countries took less than 1 second to connect on average, and 0.5 seconds in Western Europe. Bright Data was slightly slower but also among the fastest providers we’ve tested. Mobile proxy response time was similar, though Oxylabs’ proxies were a tad faster.

Which Has Better Management Tools?

Oxylabs is simpler to use, though it does lack quality-of-life features and Bright Data’s unified approach.

We’re comparing premium providers and market leaders, so it’s safe to assume they’ve invested into tooling. And the assumption is generally true.

Let’s begin with the dashboards. Both providers have one, but their approach differs. Oxylabs takes the regular route: each of its services is compartmentalized into separate tabs where you can authorize access, view usage stats, and reach documentation. The only places that combine them are the Overview window and invoices. That said, the overall experience is neat and relatively straightforward, and the usage graphs give detailed enough statistics.

Bright Data, on the other hand, has designed a unified system for its services. It gives a better view of your interactions with the provider but also brings a lot of complexity. For example, the provider introduces a concept of Zones, which combine plans and sub-users. You can create multiple zones for the same or different service and have them all on the same page. It takes a while to get used to, but it’s not necessarily a bad user experience.

When it comes to actually managing proxies, neither option is perfect. Oxylabs has no widget, meaning that you’ll need to construct the gateway servers by yourself, using its detailed documentation. Bright Data does have one, though it’s very technically-minded, with dynamic code samples and technical terms. What’s more, Bright Data basically requires you to use extra software (its Proxy Manager) to enable important functionality, such as custom rotation options or SOCKS5.

The same goes for proxy management APIs. Bright Data’s approach tries to be all-encompassing, which looks impressive but also makes the API highly complex to understand. Oxylabs has separate APIs for its residential and datacenter services.

Both platforms have wallet functionality and support self-service for all products. It’s worth noting that Bright Data’s approach lets you subscribe to the entire platform and customize which services you aim to use, while with Oxylabs you’re subscribing to a product. A spending analysis offered by both providers is a nice touch, too.

And the Customer Service?

Both providers will treat you well.

Oxylabs has a live chat that works 24/7 and responds to all enquiries. Whenever we tried it, we received replies within several minutes with generally competent answers. Then, there’s a dedicated account manager which gets assigned to all customers who buy anything above the cheapest plans. This combination ensures a personalized experience and a fall-back mechanism once the account managers are offline.

The help materials are excellent as well. Oxylabs provides FAQs for each product, detailed documentation with integration instructions, and webinars for general education about web scraping topics.

Bright Data has no live chat, though it does offer a ticket system for critical issues, which usually ensures under-hour replies. Naturally, there’s an account manager too to help during business hours. The other contact methods include Slack, but it’s available for enterprise clients only.

Bright Data’s help docs are also very comprehensive, with answers and instructions both in text and video formats. You can find an FAQ, webinars, integration instructions, and video tutorials covering various topics.

What about the Price?

Bright Data is more expensive, especially if you enable premium features (that other providers offer out of the box).

Let’s not kid ourselves: these are premium providers. So whichever choice you make, the privilege will cost you.

The providers charge for their services either by IP address, traffic, or requests. The static proxy networks are priced by IP, the rotating proxy networks use traffic, and the APIs base their pricing on successful requests.

Despite offering premium service, both Oxylabs and Bright Data are in line with other providers – usually $2 or $3 more per GB compared to mid-range providers. It’s great that both providers offer flexible commitment (monthly/yearly subscriptions or pay as you go). The plans for Oxylabs start at $8/GB without commitment or $99 (13 GB traffic) for a monthly subscription. Bright Data’s rates start at $8.40 without commitment or $10 ($5.04/GB) with a subscription.

All Bright Data’s plans offer the option to pay as you go (except datasets and Bright Insights). This lets you start using them without a big initial investment. After easing in, you can transition to monthly or yearly plans that start from $300. Here, Oxylabs loses out – you can’t pay as you go for datacenter and ISP proxies, as well as proxy-based APIs.

However, while Oxylabs’ pricing structure is straightforward, Bright Data is deceptively complex. For example, its static datacenter proxies have limited bandwidth out of the box and are able to access only one domain. In the same vein, enabling city or ASN targeting for the residential addresses increases the price. The silver lining is that you can disable unnecessary features to make the pricing relatively palatable (but still expensive).

Here’s a table to show how much you’ll have to pay for different amounts of residential traffic:

	Oxylabs	Bright Data
1 GB	$8	$8.4
5 GB	$40	$42
20 GB	$155	$168
50 GB	$375	$420
100 GB	$700	$714
250 GB	$1750	$1575
500 GB	$2750	$2940
1 TB	$4000	Custom

Adam Dubois

Proxy geek and developer.

November 21, 2023

The post Oxylabs vs. Bright Data: Which Is the Best? appeared first on Proxyway.