Smartproxy Review

The best balance between features and price.

Great residential proxies, affordable pricing plans, and fantastic 24/7 customer support make Smartproxy an attractive choice for most proxy tasks.

Rating 9.2 / 10

Use this code Proxyway to get 20% discount.

Visit Smartproxy

Smartproxy is an international proxy provider established in 2018. It offers two rotating proxy networks, dedicated datacenter proxies, and several web scraping tools.

I consider Smartproxy to be a general-purpose mid-range provider. This means two things: 1) it tries to cover all use cases, from web scraping to sneaker copping and social media management; 2) it charges prices that are at or slightly below the industry average – cheaper than the premium providers but still requiring some commitment. 

Does this make Smartproxy mediocre? Not exactly. Instead, it manages to hit a sweet spot where the services remain accessible but ensure much of the same experience as Bright Data or Oxylabs. And by saying that I mean it: the provider displayed some of the best results in our tests, both in performance and pool size. 

Smartproxy tries to further sweeten the deal by working hard on user experience. It has detailed documentation, convenient proxy management tools, and some of the best customer service on the market. You also get free apps like an antidetect browser or a visual web scraper. All in all, the complete package is so good that we gave the company the Best Value Provider award. 

So is Smartproxy perfect, then? Also no. It fails to cover services like mobile and ISP proxies, which have become favorites in certain niches. And the products it does offer may lack advanced features like ASN targeting for residential proxies, or more locations in the case of datacenter IPs. But for many use cases, Smartproxy really is one of the best choices you can make. 

In this review, I’ll try to show you what exactly makes Smartproxy such a catch.

Pros
  • Fast and reliable proxies
  • Great value
  • Useful tools
  • 24/7 customer service
Cons
  • No ISP proxies
  • Datacenter IPs lack locations
Key Features
  • Proxy networks: Datacenter, residential, mobile
  • Web scrapers: 4 web scraping APIs, no-code scraper
  • Locations: Worldwide
  • Audience: SMBs to enterprises
  • Extras: proxy management API, browser extension, antidetect browser
  • Support: 24/7 via live chat or email
  • Payment options: PayPal, credit card, Bitcoin
  • Trial: 3-day refund

Provider Background

Smartproxy was founded in 2018 by “a group of four international entrepreneurs”. It started out in reaction to premium proxy providers like Luminati and GeoSurf, which were only accessible to business customers and had cumbersome onboarding procedures. 

The company first resold addresses from others. Nowadays, it has a diverse pool that combines proxies from various sources. According to Smartproxy, they’re carefully vetted, but the provider doesn’t go into much detail about the topic. 

Smartproxy built its business on residential and rotating datacenter proxies. At the time, they managed to fill a gap between premium providers and cheap yet mediocre services like Storm Proxies. The IPs performed well while costing less than the high-end counterparts. It also helped that Smartproxy heavily invested into customer experience: quality documentation, responsive support, and user-friendly interface. 

This, along with some targeted marketing efforts, allowed Smartproxy to quickly sweep up many of the sneakerheads, Instagram managers, and small-time scrapers that were looking for affordable residential addresses. While its website is still heavily oriented towards these audiences, the company has been gradually expanding its reach. 

Today, Smartproxy can be considered one of the largest proxy providers, probably the third after Bright Data and Oxylabs. Rotating proxies remain the backbone of its service, but there are now more products to choose from (like dedicated proxies and a web scraper), with plans to introduce mobile and ISP proxies in the future.

Smartproxy Proxy Networks

Datacenter

Residential

ISP

Mobile

(rotating, dedicated)

Smartproxy’s main product is its rotating proxy networks. You can choose from datacenter or residential addresses. Both let you access large pools of IPs through gateway servers.

If you’d prefer proxies that are static and not shared (rotating IPs are always shared), Smartproxy also offers dedicated datacenter addresses. These IPs come from the US and enjoy the usual benefits of dedicated addresses, namely unlimited traffic and concurrent connection requests.

Residential Proxies

A large pool of IPs from real people’s devices.

Rotating residential proxies is Smartproxy’s flagship service made for accessing strict websites. It comprises a pool of 40 million monthly IPs borrowed from real people’s devices. To give you some context, this is among the larger proxy networks on the market, at least looking at advertised numbers.

Features

IPs: 40,000,000 monthly 

Locations: 195 countries with country, state, and city-level targeting

Rotation: Every request, 1, 10, 30 mins

Concurrency: Unlimited

Protocols: HTTP(S)

Authentication: Credentials, IP whitelisting

The service supports granular filtering options: you can get IPs from any country, state, or city. The rotation options include not only every connection request but also 1, 10, and 30 minute thresholds. It’s convenient compared to services like PacketStream, where your only option for sticky sessions is to keep the same IP as long as it remains available.

As is often the case with residential proxies, the service is limited only by your traffic allowance. As long as you have some, you can make as many connection requests as you like. Missing are SOCKS5 support and ASN targeting, but these proxies should be more than enough for most tasks.

Pricing

Format: Pay as you go, monthly subscription

Model: Traffic allowance

Starting price: $12.5 for 1 GB

Upsells: More sub-users / whitelisted IPs

Smartproxy’s residential proxies used to have the highest starting price out of the provider’s three proxy networks, but now you can pay as you go. It’s not cheap compared to the providers like PacketStream but beats most premium and mid-range alternatives. So, these residential IPs can be a viable choice for small projects that need quality addresses. 

To avoid getting stuck between pricing tiers, Smartproxy allows topping up each plan at the same rate per gigabyte. This is limited to 80% of the plan’s worth, at which point it makes sense to simply buy a bigger plan. 

The proxies can be a solid option for large projects, as well. Smartproxy scales very competitively into hundreds of gigabytes, and some premium options fail to catch up even at a terabyte of data.

Performance

Avg. success rate: 99.47%

Avg. response time: 0.61 s

Factual pool size: Very large

% of residential IPs: over 95%

We last tested Smartproxy’s residential proxies in August 2022, with country gateway results from early spring when we ran the annual Proxy Market Research.

They were among the best performers, whether in pool size, success rate, or response time. In terms of overall performance, they rival Bright Data and Oxylabs, which form the highest tier of providers.

Throughout the testing period, we received a large number of unique IPs, both using the global gateway and particular country pools. For example, 300,000 connection requests via the US gateway gave us over 160 thousand addresses, while providers like IPRoyal or RSocks had around 10,000. Even in locations like Canada and Australia we managed to get over 18,000 IPs when many others struggled to muster a few thousand.

While testing the proxy infrastructure, we successfully connected over 99% of the time. The response time was around several times lower compared to most mid-range and cheap competitors. 

The results translated well to real-world targets like Google and Amazon: Smartproxy retained a ~96% success rate, with very fast response times across the board.

Rotating Datacenter Proxies

Affordable service for simple web scraping.

Rotating datacenter proxies are Smartproxy’s entry-level option. They’re made for cost-efficient web scraping when your target doesn’t care about IP reputation or precise location targeting. Their pool consists of 100,000 addresses – you get full access via a gateway server.

Features

Number of IPs: 100,000

Locations: IPs in random US, EU, or both locations

Rotation: Every request, 30 mins

Concurrency: Unlimited

Protocols: HTTP(S)

Authentication: Credentials

You can use these proxies with few limitations other than traffic. This separates Smartproxy from providers like Storm Proxies that base their pricing on threads or ports. Coupled with the fact that the IPs can rotate on every connection request (alternatively, every 30 minutes), it means you’ll be able to scrape fast.

However, the location targeting options are pretty basic. While you can filter proxies by US, European, or random addresses, there’s no way to select a particular state, city – or, in the case of European addresses, country.

Pricing

Format: Monthly subscription

Model: Traffic allowance

Starting price: $30 for 50 GB

Upsells: More sub-users / whitelisted IPs

The plans start from $30 for 50 GBs of data. The entry threshold is pretty high, but it translates to only $0.7/GB. In comparison, NetNut starts from $20, but you’d have to pay hundreds to reach the same rate per gigabyte. It’s a similar case with Oxylabs. So it’s safe to say that the pricing is highly affordable. 

You can top up without getting a new plan, but that will cost you more per gigabyte than the going price (always $0.7/GB).

Dedicated Datacenter Proxies

American IPs you alone use during the subscription period.

These are datacenter proxies you don’t have to share with others. They take the form of IP lists where you buy access to a limited number of proxy servers. Such proxies work great for projects that require full control over the IP address or predictable usage history. They’re also the only option in Smartproxy’s line-up that doesn’t meter traffic use.

Features
Number of IPs: 400,000

Format: IP list

Locations: US

Rotation: Unavailable

Concurrency: Unlimited

Traffic: Unlimited

Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5

Authentication: Credentials

The dedicated proxies currently all come from the US. Smartproxy claims it controls 400,000 IP addresses, so they should be able to scale well. At the moment, you can’t target particular states or cities.

Like many other dedicated datacenter services, this one has no limits on bandwidth or the number of connection requests you can make at once. Furthermore, the proxies are static, as you get direct access to the proxy server. You can keep the same IPs indefinitely or replace them during the next billing period; at this time, there’s no way to change individual addresses.

Overall, aside from limited locations, the service is fully featured. 

Pricing
Format: Monthly subscription

Model: IPs

Starting price: $7.5 for 3 IPs

Extras: Monthly IP refresh

The dedicated proxies are Smartproxy’s most accessible service. The plans start from $7.5, which makes the proxies accessible for everyone. This gets you get 3 IPs ($2.5/IP), which is a decent price per IP. In comparison, Bright Data’s basic configuration (with limited traffic and domains) would cost $1.5/IP, or more than twice this amount for similar specifications.

The bigger plans continue to scale well and remain more affordable than the premium competitors even at 1,000 IPs.

Performance
Avg. success rate: 91.84%Avg. response time: 1.79 sDownload speed: 115.57 Mbps

We tested 100 IPs. The proxies performed well, and we had few issues accessing strict websites like Amazon. The only targets that caused more challenges were Craigslist and Indeed, which means that some of the IPs had been blacklisted there. 

Their response time was fast (Amazon took 2.62 seconds to open on average), and the connection quality was enough to stream even 4K videos. Overall, these are good proxies.

smartproxy dedicated proxy target tests

Web Scrapers & Other Tools

Proxies aside, Smartproxy offers several other tools. The first two are meant for web scraping: either manually using your mouse or via a powerful API. The third is a web browser that allows creating multiple profiles with different fingerprints. 

SERP Scraping API

An API (and more) for scraping search engines (and more). 

As the name suggest, SERP Scraping API is a tool for collecting data from search engine results pages (SERPs). Like all similar APIs, it allows sending requests to Smartproxy’s endpoint and retrieving structured data 100% of the time. Smartproxy takes care of proxy rotation, web scraping logic, and data parsing on its end.

Features
Targets: All websites

Parsing: Google, Yahoo, Baidu, Bing, Yandex, Amazon, Wayfair, AliExpress

Integration: API, proxy

Output formats: HTML, JSON, CSV (limited)

Targeting options: Country, state, city, coordinates, mobile

Batch queries: Unavailable

SERP Scraping API is best suited for Google: it can parse all elements of web search and even other properties like Shopping and News. That said, it supports more search engines and even several e-commerce stores like Amazon. If you don’t need data parsing, SERP Scraping API accepts and attempts to scrape any URL.

The tool can integrate as an API or a proxy server. In any case, it returns results over open connection. Alternatively, it’s possible to use SERP Scraping API via templates on Smartproxy’s dashboard. While they only cover the search pages of Google and Amazon, you don’t need any coding experience and get to schedule delivery or get data in .CSV.

Finally, if you have an active SERP API subscription, Smart Scraper gains the ability to schedule requests. That seems to be the only extra feature for now – things like location targeting remain unavailable.

Pricing
Format: Monthly subscription

Model: Successful requests

Starting price: $100 for 35,000 requests

Trial: 3,000 connection requests over 3 days

SERP Scraping API starts from $100, which might be pretty steep for light users. However, its rate is competitive and beats most premium services. The plans scale well, and Smartproxy will have no issues working even with enterprise clients.

As with the provider’s proxy networks, you can top up the plan without upgrading. Curiously, it’s the only service that offers a trial instead of a refund.

Performance
Avg. success Rate: 100%Avg. response time: 7.89 s

With a timeout of 150 seconds, Smartproxy’s SERP Scraping API retrieved data from Google without fail. It took fewer than eight seconds on average, so even a much stricter timeout threshold wouldn’t have impacted the success rate much. The output was neatly parsed and included advanced SERP features like the local pack and carousel.

All in all, the tool’s performance was on par with premium services.

Smart Scraper

A browser extension for point-and-click data collection.

Smart Scraper is a free extension for Chrome-based browsers. At its basic form, the tool is available to anyone, even without a Smartproxy subscription. It allows you to select, structure, and download data from most web pages using only your mouse.

Working with Smart Scraper is easy. After you click a button called Start Scraping, the extension will start highlighting elements you hover on. Once you select the one you need, it will automatically extract all related elements and put them in a column. New click – new column. Once you’re done, you can name the columns and then download the data in either .JSON or .CSV.

smart scraper example

Using Smart Scraper on reddit.com

In its current form, Smart Scraper is both powerful and toy-like. On the one hand, it has no issues dealing with JavaScript-rich pages or downloading images. The built-in parser successfully handled complex websites like Amazon and Reddit, even though there were hiccups with Google. On the other hand, it has no ability to change locations, handle pagination or multi-step flows.

X-Browser

A tool for creating multiple unrelated online profiles.

Another interesting tool is X-Browser. It allows creating multiple browser profiles with different fingerprints, so that websites can’t link those profiles to one another or your device. Such tools are called antidetect browsers, and they’re often used to manage multiple social media or ad accounts.

Unlike some other alternatives like Multilogin, X-Browser is mostly meant for individual use. It lacks collaborative features like profile sharing or user permissions. Otherwise, the tool is fully-featured.

One neat thing is that Smartproxy treats X-Browser as an add-on rather than a separate service. In other words, it comes for free with a residential proxy subscription. Considering that similar browsers can charge hundreds of dollars, and that X-Browser allows creating unlimited profiles, it’s a pretty good deal.

x browser promo

X-Browser in a nutshell.

How to Use Smartproxy

Smartproxy is one of the easier providers to use. It supports self-service, doesn’t take long to set up, and has user-friendly tools to help you work with proxies.

Self-Service

All of Smartproxy’s products can be bought through self-service. Smartproxy does have a KYC procedure, but you only need to interact with someone if you trigger the provider’s safeguards. Otherwise, it’s enough to answer some basic questions during registration.

Dashboard

Smartproxy’s dashboard includes all the necessary functionality to manage proxies yourself. You can:

  • add money to the Smartproxy wallet,
  • buy and upgrade plans,
  • authorize access to proxies,
  • set up the proxy server,
  • create sub-users,
  • track your traffic use,
  • and contact customer support.

Most of the controls are separated by service. For example, rotating datacenter and residential proxies have separate screens for monitoring data use and authorizing access.

There are introductory tutorials and guidance all around to help you get acquainted. However, it doesn’t feel overbearing.

Usage Tracking

Smartproxy provides visual graphs in the dashboard where you can see how much traffic or requests you’ve expended. You can filter the graphs by sub-user or date. The timeframes are 24 hours, week, month, or custom.

Alternatively, you can fetch traffic expenditure statistics using an API call.

Proxy Setup

The proxy setup is pretty straightforward:

  1. Create a user or whitelist an IP address.
  2. Use a convenient widget to filter the proxy servers you need. The widget asks you to choose your preferred authentication method, IP location, rotation time (every request, 1, 10, 30 minutes), and output format (endpoint:port or HTTP). 
  3. Select how many endpoints you want to generate. Endpoints are gateway addresses that you can use instead of regular proxy IPs. Once you’re done, you can copy the list to the clipboard, export it into .csv or .txt.

In the case of dedicated proxies, the procedure is even simpler: Step 2 gives you a list of addresses which you can copy to your software. There is no Step 3.

Overall, the setup procedure is well thought out. My only larger annoyance is that the widget doesn’t allow choosing from a list of sub-users. It only provides empty fields for entering a username and password by hand.

smartproxy setup explainer

The setup procedure as explained by Smartproxy.

API Access

Smartproxy offers a fleshed-out API for controlling proxies programmatically. The API is available for every user, not only resellers. Its functions include creating and managing sub-users, setting traffic limits, viewing usage reports and subscription status, and filtering available endpoints.  

To make your life easier, the API provides handy code examples in several major programming languages.

smartproxy API

The Smartproxy API.

Browser Extensions

If you need proxies on your web browser, Smartproxy provides browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. They work only with residential proxy plans. In the settings, you can choose a country, whether you want the proxies to be sticky or rotate, and authorize them either with a whitelisted IP or user:pass credentials. 

smartproxy extension on off

The Smartproxy extension on and off.

Documentation

Smartproxy has got the documentation part down. You’ll find a plethora of instructions covering various aspects of the service:

  • a detailed start guide that explains all the concepts and features,
  • an FAQ divided into multiple sections by topics,
  • integration guides for major bots and automation tools,
  • and configuration guides for web browsers and operating systems.

There’s also a separate hub for technical documentation with tips & tricks, code samples, and troubleshooting.

smartproxy documentation hub

The rich documentation hub.

For SERP Scraping API users, Smartproxy has an interactive playground to try out the service.

Customer Service

Smartproxy’s customer service is available round the clock via email or live chat. The main language is English, though the support can also speak Chinese – and, of course, other languages via Google Translate.

Whenever we’ve had to interact with the support agents, we received quick (think nearly instant) and competent responses. In 2020, we even gave Smartproxy an award to acknowledge its customer service. It remains excellent to this day and can be considered one of the provider’s strongest points.

Conclusion

Having read this far, I hope you can see where I was coming from in the introduction.

Smartproxy really has struck something great. The company has responsive customer support, performant proxies, and everything set up for convenient self-service.

To be fair, compared to something like Bright Data, Oxylabs, or Geosurf, it’s nothing special. But this is without considering Smartproxy’s final ace – it somehow manages to achieve all this while keeping prices very competitive.

Of course, not everything is perfect. Some corners had to be cut, and here you won’t find things like SOCKS proxies or ASN filtering.

But that’s the whole point of Smartproxy: the company focuses on the functionality that is good enough for the majority of users at the expense of some nice-to-have or niche features. And it is damn good at that.

Based on my experience with Smartproxy, I can recommend it to anyone looking for a great residential proxy provider.

Smartproxy Alternatives

9.2

Oxylabs

Oxylabs is like a premium version of Smartproxy. It controls a significantly larger IP pool, and you can get specialized APIs that simplify web scraping.

9.1

Bright Data

Bright Data is another strong option with more features and powerful proxy management tools. It also sells proxy-based web scraping APIs and even complete data sets.

8.4

PacketStream

The options above are expensive. Let’s go the other way. PacketStream offers some of the cheapest residential proxies on the market with rotation every request and sticky sessions.

Want more? View the full list of the Smartproxy alternatives.

16 comments

  1. Vincent on January 29, 2020 at 1:58 pm

    Thanks for the review guys! Anyhow, I have a question about Smartproxy and their proxies for sneakers – their website says that they work with all major bots, including Yeezy, but what about their IPs? What’s the chance that I’ll constantly get an abused one and won’t be able to cop?

    • Adam Dubois on January 30, 2020 at 9:51 am

      Vincent, residential proxies are shared, so there’s always a risk you’ll get an IP that’s been already blocked on your target website. This goes for any provider, not only Smartproxy. In theory you can get unused static residential proxies, but they’re hard to find and will likely cost more.

      Considering that Smartproxy has one of the larger residential proxy networks, the chances of getting a used IP out are not that high. I’d gladly take them. Besides, you can set up multiple tasks for your sneaker bot to further reduce the risk. So, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.

      Happy copping!

      • JAMES A MOSES on February 9, 2020 at 5:37 pm

        Would the micro plan be enough to let Nike Sneaker not run a large amount of tasks without having a drop in latency ?

        • Adam Dubois on February 10, 2020 at 11:36 am

          James, each residential IP is like a unique server, so the number of sneaker tasks you run with different proxies will have no effect on network latency. Unless, of course, you run so many that your PC/VPS starts lagging!

          As you can see on this page, we load tested Smartproxy (up to 500 tasks at a time from a single VPS) and it performed very well.

          Its micro plan also lets you use the whole network (for 5 Gb of traffic), which is enough for a couple of sneaker releases or more, depending on the number or tasks you run and your monitor frequency.

  2. SneakGreg on March 2, 2020 at 2:24 pm

    I think about getting them for sneakers, but do you know if they work well with bots? For example AIO bot or the shit bot?

    • Adam Dubois on March 3, 2020 at 9:31 am

      Greg, Smartproxy is compatible with sneaker bots. They also have integration instructions for most major bots (https://smartproxy.com/integrations). The Shit Bot isn’t on the list, but there shouldn’t be any compatibility issues with it.

  3. Nils on April 10, 2020 at 9:11 pm

    Easy

  4. hacker on August 10, 2020 at 8:34 am

    Hey, the discount only is 20% now. thanks

  5. Chris Becker on August 24, 2020 at 6:58 am

    Thanks for the heads up!

  6. Gregorydeedo on September 3, 2020 at 1:51 pm

    Hello. And Bye.

  7. zhang on September 30, 2020 at 11:47 am

    Please help me to check whether these IP is your company’s proxy IP. If so, I will buy your proxy.I have a lot of agency needs.73.124.158.247,45.50.52.81,72.184.6.215

  8. Chris Becker on October 1, 2020 at 1:54 pm

    Sorry zhang, we don’t have the ability to check that. You can try asking Smartproxy directly.

  9. Ly Luong on March 18, 2022 at 9:24 am

    Hi
    Do you have UK proxy that support Iphone and can connect to website like Stripe?
    Thank you!

    • Chris Becker on March 21, 2022 at 7:58 am

      Hi Ly. According to its FAQ, Smartproxy might block Stripe. It’s best if you contact them and ask directly.

  10. Jeff on November 6, 2022 at 12:05 pm

    Hi, i keep getting deactivated whenever i try to verify my account.

    • Chris Becker on November 7, 2022 at 8:48 am

      Hi Jeff. You should contact the provider’s customer support. They should be able to help you solve the issue.

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