Rating Breakdown
Usability 9.5/10Worth 6.9/10Velocity NaN/10Efficiency 10/10
Execs
- Finest-in-class success charge and response time
- Helpful browser extension
- Low pay-as-you-go costs
- Excessive-quality IP pool
- Low cost cell proxy plans
Cons
- Costly high-data residential plans
- No city-level concentrating on with ISP and datacenter proxies
Decodo (previously Smartproxy) is among the most well-established gamers within the proxy server house, and it’s simple to see why. It offers you steady and quick efficiency, an unlimited and high-quality pool of proxies and loads of options that can assist you attain your objectives.
I’d suggest Decodo to anybody fascinated by utilizing a proxy server, however with its low pay-as-you-go costs and beginner-friendly instruments, it’s particularly enticing for smaller companies and new customers. (Enterprise clients will likely be higher off with Oxylabs; you’ll be able to learn our overview right here.) It has the bottom pay-as-you-go worth of any residential proxy server on the market, beginning at $3.50 per GB, although bulk knowledge packages are costlier than most opponents. Decodo’s pricing on cell, ISP and datacenter proxies have been additionally aggressive — simply not the very most cost-effective on the market.
As somebody who was new to proxy servers once I began reviewing them, I additionally appreciated Decodo’s usability options. It’s one of many few proxies I examined that has a browser extension — useful for checking your knowledge utilization at a look or including web sites to a bypass record to exclude out of your proxy server. And once I did run into points, Decodo’s AI chatbot was really fairly useful. I primarily targeted on Decodo’s residential proxy servers for this overview, however I’ll additionally get into its cell, ISP and datacenter providers under.
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Price
Decodo obtained a middling rating for worth in our proxy server analysis. It’s tied with Webshare and Rayobyte for the most affordable pay-as-you-go plan of any proxy I noticed, however all of its bulk knowledge packages are on the costly aspect. Right here’s how the value breaks down throughout its residential and cell proxy server plans:
| Plan | Residential (per GB) | Cellular (per GB) |
|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | $3.50 | $4.00 |
| 2GB | $6.00 | $3.75 |
| 8GB | $5.50 | $3.50 |
| 25GB | $5.20 | $3.25 |
| 50GB | $4.90 | $3.00 |
| 100GB | $4.50 | $2.75 |
| 250GB | $4.00 | $2.50 |
| 500GB | $3.50 | $2.25 |
| 1000GB | $3.00 | Customized |
Not like most residential proxies, the value really goes up if you purchase in bulk in comparison with one gigabyte at a time. This makes it an particularly enticing possibility for somebody who desires to, say, use a sneaker bot to buy limited-edition footwear with out being detected. As an alternative of overpaying for 500GB of information to get the $3.50-per-GB worth, you’ll be able to simply add extra everytime you see a pair you want.
The draw back to that’s it might get actually annoying to continually add one gig at a time to your account, particularly if you happen to’re doing issues like bulk net scraping or search engine optimization monitoring. Nonetheless, Decodo’s costs for its 25-250GB plan are aggressive, even if you happen to’ll pay greater than you’d by the gig. The desk under exhibits how Decodo compares to among the different in style residential proxy servers. Take note, totally different proxy servers supply totally different knowledge packages, so it’s not all the time a exactly apples-to-apples comparability.
| Plan | Decodo (per GB) | Oxylabs (per GB) | Webshare (per GB) | Infatica (per GB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | $3.50 | $4.00 | $3.50 | $4.00 |
| 25GB | $5.20 | $3.87 (13GB) | $2.60 | $3.84 |
| 50GB | $4.90 | $3.75 (40GB) | $2.45 | None |
| 100GB | $4.50 | $3.49 (86GB) | $2.25 | $3.60 |
| 250GB | $4.00 | $2.75 (318GB) | $2.00 | $2.90 (241GB) |
| 500GB | $3.50 | None | $1.75 | $2.70 |
| 1000GB | $3.00 | $2.00 | $1.50 | $2.60 |
In relation to ISP and datacenter proxy servers, Decodo’s plans are extra competitively priced. Most proxies cost by the IP deal with for these plans as a substitute of by knowledge utilization. Decodo’s datacenter proxy costs begin at $1.35 per devoted IP for a bundle of 200 and go as much as $1.85 for 3.
Efficiency
To guage Decodo’s efficiency, I relied closely on Proxyway’s 2025 Research report, which yearly sends out over 1,000,000 requests to prime proxy servers to measure issues like success charge, response time and IP high quality. I additionally signed up for Decodo’s residential proxy service myself and related to it whereas I labored for 2 days to see the way it carried out underneath real-world situations.
General, Decodo obtained my highest efficiency rating of any proxy server. It has a uncommon mixture of always-on success charge and ultra-low response time, and it helps you to select from greater than 195 areas on your proxy server. Within the US, you’ll be able to even choose particular ZIP codes that you really want your visitors to route by means of.
Proxy pool and high quality
Decodo advertises 115 million proxy servers in its pool, which is behind solely Oxylabs (175 million), SOAX (155 million) and Brilliant Knowledge (150 million). This huge variety of proxies is crucial to keep away from anti-bot detection for actions like net scraping. However the uncooked quantity isn’t the one factor that issues — you additionally want these IPs to be high-quality.
Decodo gives greater than 195 areas to select from in its proxy pool.
Proxyway makes use of an business normal referred to as IPQualityScore (IPQS), which is often utilized in fraud prevention, danger evaluation and risk detection. This tells you not simply what number of servers a proxy firm has at its disposal, but in addition what number of of these IP addresses are prone to be flagged as fraudulent.
By this measure, Decodo ranked second globally and first within the US for IPv4 addresses. Some proxy providers have a bigger share of IPv6 addresses, of which there are exponentially greater than IPv4. However solely about 40% of top websites at the moment help IPv6, so that you’re extra prone to run into compatibility points with proxies that rely closely on the newer normal. Decodo’s pool solely consists of 16.6% IPv6 addresses.
In keeping with Proxyway’s report, fraud scores over 90% are prone to be flagged as “high-risk customers prone to interact in malicious habits.” Decodo nonetheless has a world pool made up of principally 90+ IPQS scores, however that’s par for the course with proxy providers. It’s nonetheless within the prime three globally for IP high quality (which means it has one of many lowest proportions of high-risk customers), and primary for the US particularly.
Proxyway’s fraud rating evaluation discovered that Decodo had the second-highest share of addresses under 75% in its world pool.
Success charge and response time
Decodo’s proxy servers are capable of full its duties a overwhelming majority of the time, and so they do it quicker than another firm. In keeping with the Proxyway report, Decodo had an infrastructure success charge of 99.86%, which was simply narrowly behind Oxylabs at 99.90%. Whether or not you’re utilizing a proxy server for net scraping, shopping for restricted version gadgets or knowledge aggregation, you could be sure that Decodo will perform your duties efficiently virtually each time (principally 999 out of 1,000).
It additionally does them as rapidly as you’ll be able to anticipate from a proxy server. Decodo has a median response time of 0.63 seconds — lower than one-third the delay of final place Rayobyte.
That’s nonetheless about 50 instances slower than the average internet connection in the US with no proxy, however once more, all issues are relative with proxy providers, and it’s extremely unlikely anybody will likely be utilizing a proxy for issues that require low latency like videoconferencing or on-line gaming. (For these actions, a VPN is a significantly better possibility, although it comes with its personal caveats. You may study extra concerning the distinction between the 2 in our guide.)
Decodo had the bottom common response instances in its residential world pool of any in style proxy service.
Options and usefulness
Decodo comes with all the customization choices we seemed for in a proxy service, after which some.
By default, Decodo’s proxies rotate with each connection request, which implies you’re continually getting a brand new IP deal with each time you wish to perform a process. However you too can select to ascertain a “sticky” connection for any time interval you select, as much as 24 hours. That was a better stage of customization than virtually another proxy service I examined.
Decodo permits for each rotating and sticky classes, with durations as much as 24 hours accessible.
Decodo additionally doesn’t restrict the variety of requests you may make concurrently, permitting you to maintain as many going as your {hardware} is ready to carry out. It additionally helps all the key protocols: HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5.
There have been a couple of further options I actually appreciated as nicely. Decodo’s Website Unblocker lets customers extract knowledge from web sites with out constructing their very own customized net scraping software. It was additionally one of many few proxy providers that has a browser extension that permits you to monitor your utilization, add web sites to a bypass record or flip the proxy on or off.
Decodo’s useful browser extension works with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
I usually discovered Decodo to be essentially the most user-friendly proxy service of any of the dozen I examined. Most proxies require an honest quantity of technical know-how to arrange, however Decodo minimized the training curve with its huge trove of documentation and consumer guides. And when questions inevitably popped up, Decodo’s chat characteristic was really efficient in answering them — or at the very least guiding me towards the suitable troubleshooting web page.
It was additionally simpler to examine easy analytics about my utilization than most different proxies. Its principal dashboard confirmed how a lot knowledge I’d used at any given time, and it even translated that into how a lot of my finances that labored out to. All of that was simple to entry by means of Decodo’s browser extension, too. If I used to be managing a bigger mission, I might see how these little touches could possibly be a godsend, and I discovered myself lacking them on different proxies I examined.
Decodo’s proxy networks
I’ve targeted on Decodo’s residential proxy servers for this overview, as these are the commonest sorts for many use circumstances, however the firm gives the total suite of servers, together with cell, ISP and datacenter proxies. Right here’s what you’ll be able to anticipate from every kind of Decodo proxy server.
Cellular
Decodo has cell proxies in most nations around the globe, with an marketed pool of 10 million IP addresses — good for the third-largest of any proxy service. Like its residential proxy pool, you’ll be able to goal IPs by nation, state, metropolis, ASN (Autonomous System Quantity) or perhaps a machine’s working system.
It additionally had the best infrastructure success charge of any cell proxy at 99.94% and the quickest response time at 0.57 seconds, in keeping with Proxyway’s Market Analysis report. Decodo’s cell proxy server costs are additionally among the lowest I noticed, and considerably under its residential plans.
| Plan | Decodo (per GB) | Oxylabs (per GB) | Infatica (per GB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | $4.00 | $5.40 | $8.00 |
| 25GB | $3.25 | $4.92 (12GB) | $6.50 (20GB) |
| 50GB | $3.00 | $4.74 (38GB) | $6.00 (40GB) |
| 100GB | $2.75 | $4.50 (80GB) | $5.00 |
| 250GB | $2.50 | $3.60 (292GB) | $4.00 (200GB) |
| 500GB | $2.25 | $3.00 (600GB) | Customized |
Datacenter
Datacenter proxies are usually the most affordable kind yow will discover, and that holds true for Decodo’s, with costs beginning at simply $3.50 for 50GB and 100 shared IPs. Most datacenter proxies cost by the IP slightly than the GB, however Decodo gives each, together with the flexibility to pay per devoted IP.
Decodo says its datacenter proxy pool consists of greater than 100,000 shared and devoted datacenter servers. Its devoted datacenter proxies are all situated within the US, whereas its shared pool consists of 16 nations. The main draw back to Decodo’s datacenter proxies is you can solely goal complete nations, not particular cities.
ISP (static residential)
Decodo’s ISP, or static residential, proxy servers have an analogous pricing construction to its datacenter proxies. You may pay by the GB, by the devoted IP or by the shared IP and the GB. In Proxyway’s testing, it despatched 70,000 requests over every week and located that Decodo’s datacenter proxies have been recognized as residential 57%, which it described as an “OK end result.” You get what you pay for with ISP proxies, although — the upper share of visitors that’s flagged is offset by the decrease prices per GB.
The underside line
An excellent proxy service comes all the way down to its value per GB, the dimensions and high quality of its proxy pool, its success charge and response time and consumer expertise. On virtually all of these fronts, Decodo carried out extremely nicely.
There are a pair providers on the market with bigger proxy swimming pools, however none that would match the standard of Decodo’s residential IPs or its general efficiency. Mixed with its best-in-class documentation and usefulness instruments, Decodo is a simple choose for the perfect proxy for particular person customers.
My solely bone to select is the value. When you’re going to be paying for 1TB or extra at a time for a residential proxy service, you may probably save 1000’s of {dollars} a month by going with Oxylabs or Webshare, though each include their very own drawbacks like slower response time, decrease IP high quality and a worse consumer expertise.
