Written by: Daniel Wabuge
Updated: September, 11, 2024
Are you looking for a proxy provider that guarantees true anonymity online? Smartproxy is one such vendor. It offers high connection rates, fast speeds, and flexible pricing plans.
Find out why it’s an ideal choice for web scraping in this Smartproxy review.
Highlights
Any time you use the internet, you leave digital footprints behind. So, anything you do online is traceable back to you.
One way to cover your tracks is by using a proxy service. It acts as a middle-man that hides your identity when browsing the web.
There are many providers on the market, both free and paid. However, most fail to honor their promise of safeguarding your privacy.
Smartproxy, however, is a top-notch proxy services vendor. Established in 2018, it’s a fast, secure, and reliable solution for privacy protection on the web.
It came about as a cheaper and easy-to-use alternative to enterprise-only vendors, GeoSerf and Bright Data (formerly Luminati).
Smartproxy has a global network of servers and a pool of over 65 million IPs. It allows you to geotarget locations from the country, state, and city levels.
The company offers affordable pricing plans, including a Pay As You Go package. There’s also a 3-day free trial to test its residential proxies, and a 7-day free trial for scraper solutions. Or, users can choose a 14-day money-back option.
Some of the proxies you can pick from include:
The service is super easy to use, thanks to the intuitive Smartproxy dashboard. There’s a well-documented knowledge base to guide you through as well.
In case you get stuck, support agents are on standby 24/7. However, I doubt you’ll ever need their assistance.
The solution primarily targets professional data miners, markers, SEO experts, and others alike. But the flexible pricing starting from $2.2/GB makes it a good pick for beginners.
Judging by the tons of positive Smartproxy reviews, it’s one of a kind. So here, I’ll examine it based on:
The question is: is it worth the hype?
Keep reading to find out.
First, let’s take a look at what the service has in store.
Smartproxy’s features are as follows:
Residential proxies are Smartproxy’s flagship product for accessing the internet undetected. It comprises over 55 million IPs available in 195 countries worldwide.
The mentioned pool of addresses belongs to real household device users. And you can target different countries down to the city level.
You can launch unlimited connections with just a few clicks. Since the proxies don’t share subnetworks, you face less risk of getting banned.
It has a 99,47% success rate of connecting to the internet. The average <0.5s seconds response time makes running bulk tasks a bliss.
Smartproxy’s residential proxies support rotating and sticky sessions. The first option allows automatically changing IPs for each connection.
The second one maintains the same address for a pre-configured duration. You can currently set three different timeframes – 1, 10, and 30 minutes.
There are two authentication methods available:
When you get a residential proxy plan on Smartproxy, you can choose between the HTTP(s) or SOCKS5 protocol.
If geotargeting is not of importance, go with shared and dedicated datacenter proxies. They’re faster and ideal for handling data mining tasks with scale.
The service has a pool of over 500,000 IPs. These are available worldwide and aren’t associated with user devices.
Smartproxy’s datacenter proxies also support rotational and sticky sessions. That way, you can perform tasks without the fear of getting banned.
User:pass is the only supported method of authentication. It’s secure and gives you total access to all Smartproxy gateway servers.
Datacenter proxies are a shared service, which should naturally make it affordable. True to that, datacenter proxies start from $0.09/IP.
SOCKS5 protocol is supported as well. Still, it’s fast, secure, and reliable.
General information on scrapers:
Social Media Scraping API allows to get structured social media data at any scale without worrying about proxies or blocks.
SERP Scraping API is a programmable tool for gathering information from search engines. It combines the power of a proxy and web crawler to deliver real-time data.
As for the pricing, it will set you back at least $0.08 for 1,000 requests. Despite the steep cost, you get unlimited connections and unrestricted traffic usage.
The Smartproxy API for ecommerce enables you to collect market intelligence about your competitors online. You can monitor product prices, customer data, traffic sources, etc.
eCommerce Scraping API starts from $1.2 for 1,000 requests.
Smartproxy understands how difficult it can be to collect data from the internet. That’s why it offers a Web Scraping API” to make your life easier.
It has a powerful crawler that can pull information from any website. Furthermore, it can snoop JavaScript-heavy web pages with ease.
Some of its applications include but aren’t limited to:
This API is powered by Smartproxy’s residential service with 40+ million IPs. It includes proxy rotation to boost the success rate of information gathering.
Smartproxy’s tools are also worth smiling about. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Smartproxy supports various integrations that extend the solution’s usability beyond the available functions.
They include:
Usage monitoring is another feature that’s full of praise on Smartproxy user reviews. It comes in handy for tracking your resource consumption in real-time.
You can check traffic and the total requests made to the network. Furthermore, It’s easy to filter the results based on daily, weekly, and monthly intervals.
You can also access detailed analytics by setting a custom time frame. Unfortunately, exporting the data is currently not possible.
Smartproxy has a clean dashboard that’s user-friendly and makes configuring tasks simple. It’s an upgraded version with newer features and initiative tools.
The navigation menu is accessible from the left side of your display. You can launch the tasks you need to get the job done from here.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to hide it on large-screen devices like computers. This takes away around 10% of your screen’s real estate.
But that’s not the case when using the platform on mobile devices. There, it has a navigation drawer that neatly hides all features you’re not currently using.
Moreover, the dashboard is well-organized and only takes a few minutes to get familiar with.
Spoiler alert!
There’s no doubt that the upgraded dashboard is intuitive. Somehow, though, I find the older interface to be more user-friendly.
Smartproxy has detailed online documentation with hundreds of helpful guides. There are different categories that cover the platform’s features.
There’s also a search function for filtering the content using specific keywords. You can also launch it quickly using the combination of CTRL+K on your computer keyboard.
All articles are well-written using simple language that’s easy to read and follow. The majority have screenshots and videos to better explain different instructions.
However, sometimes, things fail to work.
Should that happen, Smartproxy’s support agents are ready to help 24/7. You can reach them via both live chat and email.
They’re super friendly and fast and provide practical solutions to your problems.
Smartproxy’s pricing plans are structured as follows:
Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) From $8.50/GBThis is an entry-level plan for users who don’t want to commit to subscriptions. It offers limited traffic, and it’s only available on residential plans. | Residential From $14/monthUnlike PAYG, this is a standard package that’s renewable monthly. It offers 2GB of traffic, a single user: pass account and whitelisting for one IP. You can also purchase more traffic for $7/GB. Other extras include 55+ million real device IPs, unlimited connections, and geotargeting. |
Datacenter From $30/monthYou get 50GB traffic alongside one user: pass account. Additional data will cost you $0.60/GB. Other than that, you get unlimited connections, 500,000+ rotating IPs, and sticky sessions support. | Dedicated Datacenter From $40/monthThe package offers 20 dedicated IPs, unlimited traffic, and SOCKS5/HTTPS protocol support. Additional addresses start from $2.0/IP. |
Smartproxy has a 14-day money-back guarantee across all plans. If the service doesn’t impress, just request for refund within the given timeframe.
Now, let me give you a glimpse of how Smartproxy works. As I said before, the dashboard is clean and easy to use.
Every tool you need is accessible from the main menu on the screen’s left side. Some of the tabs include:
There’s a monitoring panel for tracking your usage as well. It displays stats for traffic consumption and total requests you’ve made.
Smartproxy’s proxy setup is as easy as pie.
Note:
The above illustration is for configuring residential proxies. Some steps may differ with other products. If you get stuck, check out the company’s knowledge base or contact support.
It’s no doubt that Smartproxy’s services are among the best on the market. But there are other companies worthy of your attention.
Here’s the comparison:
Smartproxy vs Bright Data
Bright Data is one of the biggest names in the industry. It offers premium proxy services for data mining agencies and enterprises.
In comparison, Smartproxy targets all users with affordable plans. Regardless of pricing, it provides exceptional products without sacrificing quality.
Both companies offer residential and datacenter proxy services. These come packed with static and rotating IPs.
And it doesn’t stop there.
The company’s pool of over 70 million residential IPs is almost double that of its competitor. Moreover, Smartproxy’s 500,000 datacenter addresses are no match for Bright Data’s pool of 1.6 million.
Smartproxy provides more tools to boost your productivity than its peer. These include Chrome/Firefox extensions, an address generator, X Browser, and more.
The vendor also has dedicated integrations like sneaker bots, social media management apps, scrapers, etc.
Both companies provide robust APIs for automating data-gathering tasks. However, Bright Data lacks pre-built templates.
Smartproxy’s PAYG price of $8.5/GB is $6.5 cheaper than its competitor’s. Moreover, Bright Data’s subscription starting cost of $500/month is five times higher.
Altogether, these vendors have excellent services, but Smartproxy is obviously cheaper.
Oxylabs is another great alternative that gives Smartproxy a run for its money. It offers a long list of proxies at competitive prices.
Its stand-apart features include:
Oxylabs has next-generation proxies powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. They use algorithms that provide human-like browsing for enhanced web scraping success rate.
In contrast, Smartproxy’s product offerings are nothing out of the ordinary. The company provides the usual residential, datacenter, and dedicated datacenter proxy services.
Of the two vendors, Oxylabs is the one with the larger pool IP pool, with over 100 million. It sources them from premium providers to ensure they’re of high quality.
Smartproxy’s IP collection is less than half the size of its competitor. Still, it delivers outstanding results for handling tasks of any size.
The two companies provide similar APIs for accelerating your productivity, such as:
Apart from the above, Smartproxy has a smart API that requires zero coding skills. Additionally, it has an impressive list of integrations like sneaker bots, SEO tools, and proxy managers.
Oxylab’s starting price of $100/month is $20 higher than its rival’s lowest subscription offering. Besides, Smartproxy’s $8.5/GB PAYG package is the real deal for cash-strapped users.
Smartproxy is an affordable, feature-rich proxy platform. It offers quality services backed up by round-the-clock support.
It provides a simple and intuitive dashboard that’s novice-friendly. Besides that, you can also check out its documentation-rich knowledge base for help articles.
Advanced users can always use its API to scale data mining tasks. And beginners can take advantage of pre-configured templates.
I hope this Smartproxy review has outlined everything you need to make the right decision.
If you’re still in doubt, I suggest you give the service a try. After all, it has a 3-day worry-free refund policy.