Smartproxy Launches Mobile Proxies, Social Media Scraping API
In one bold and one expected move, the provider further solidifies its data collection infrastructure.
- Published: March 1, 2023
Mobile Proxies
The first product, mobile proxies, comprises a network of 10 million IPs connected to 3G, 4G, and 5G networks of mobile carriers. Unlike most similar services that are based on device farms, Smartproxy’s approach involves the smartphones of real people. This makes the service less predictable but much more scalable and not confined to one or several locales.
Smartproxy’s mobile proxy network covers over 130 locations worldwide and 700+ ASNs like Verizon, T-Mobile, and other popular mobile carriers. It offers the ability to specify a particular country and ASN.
The proxy servers rotate with each connection request, with an option to set a sticky session that lasts up to 30 minutes. There are no limits on parallel connection requests and threads, making the service a strong choice for large-scale data collection.
The pricing plans start from $50 for 2 GBs of data, reaching 300 GBs and more for enterprises. $25/GB is a lot compared to other proxy types, but Smartproxy fares well against all major competitors like Bright Data, Oxylabs, and SOAX.
| Micro | Starter | Regular | Advanced | Premium | Professional | Enterprise | |
| Price | $50 | $230 | $500 | $900 | $1,600 | $3,000 | $4,350 |
| Traffic | 2 GB | 10 GB | 25 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB | 200 GB | 300 GB |
| Price/GB | $25 | $23 | $20 | $18 | $16 | $15 | $14.5 |
Social Media Scraping API
The second product is a specialized social media scraper. It’s able to extract and structure data from Instagram and TikTok without fail.
The Instagram scraper has endpoints for posts, profiles, reels, and hashtags. You can scrape them using the unofficial GraphQL API, or get parsed data from a fully rendered HTML page. The TikTok scraper can fetch data from profiles and posts.
Similarly to the company’s other scrapers, the API allows specifying the content language and geolocation. At the same time, it’s Smartproxy’s only API with support for asynchronous requests: you can start a scraping job and fetch the output via webhook once it’s finished.
Social Media Scraping API bases its pricing on successful requests. Its subscription-based pricing plans start from $50 and scale to millions of requests for enterprise clients:
| Lite | Basic | Standard | Solid | Plus | Guru | |
| Price | $50 | $100 | $280 | $480 | $1,100 | $3,600 |
| Requests | 25,000 | 62,500 | 200,000 | 400,000 | 1 million | 4 million |
| /1k requests | $2 | $1.60 | $1.40 | $1.20 | $1.10 | $0.90 |
You can try Social Media Scraping API free for 3 days. The trial includes 3,000 requests.
Bottom Line
The addition of mobile proxies is a logical – if somewhat belated (the first hints came over a year ago) – move that further solidifies Smartproxy’s line-up. Supposing the provider maintains its usual level of quality, we can expect a premium product at a great value compared to the other major providers.
The release of a social media API, however, is a bold move, especially in light of the recent developments with Meta. If the risk pays off, Smartproxy is well positioned to capture the pent up demand for social media scrapers, as Facebook’s aggressive actions have significantly thinned out direct competition in the space.
