Bright Data vs Oxylabs vs SmartProxy vs SOAX 2026: Full Comparison
bright data is the biggest pool but the most expensive. oxylabs is the cleanest enterprise stack. smartproxy (now decodo) is the cheapest of the four with surprisingly solid quality. soax is the dark horse for mobile and asia-pacific. this is the no-affiliate version of the comparison, with prices pulled from each provider’s dashboard on may 1, 2026.
the matrix
| feature | bright data | oxylabs | smartproxy / decodo | soax |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| residential pool | 150M+ ips | 100M+ ips | 65M+ ips | 191M+ ips claimed |
| mobile pool | 7M+ ips | 10M+ ips | 10M+ ips | 8M+ ips |
| isp proxies | yes, 1.6M+ | yes, 1M+ | yes, 100k | yes, 1M+ |
| residential entry price | $4.20/gb at 8gb | $4/gb at 25gb | $2.20/gb at 100gb | $2.20/gb at 25gb |
| residential pay-as-you-go | $8.40/gb | $8/gb | $7/gb | $4.50/gb |
| mobile entry price | $8/gb | $8/gb | $4/gb | $3.30/gb |
| isp entry price | $11/ip/month | $5/ip/month | $1.20/ip/month | $1/ip/month |
| sticky session | yes, up to 30 min | yes, up to 30 min | yes, up to 30 min | yes, up to 1 hour |
| city/asn targeting | yes (premium) | yes | yes | yes |
| free trial | 7-day with kyc | 7-day | 3-day, $0.99 | 100mb free |
| support | 24/7, account manager at $500+ | 24/7 chat + slack on enterprise | 24/7 chat | 24/7 chat |
| dashboard quality | best-in-class | very good | clean, simple | good |
| api flexibility | extensive (web unlocker, serp, datasets) | extensive (web scraper api, serp) | basic | basic |
prices change often. these are the in-dashboard numbers as of may 1, 2026.
bright data: the kitchen sink
bright data has the most of everything. 150M+ residential ips, the largest mobile pool with carrier-level targeting, isp proxies in 35+ countries, plus an enormous catalog of pre-built datasets and managed apis (web unlocker, serp api, scraping browser).
if your use case is “i need to scrape any site, any country, any volume, and i can’t afford a single request to fail,” bright data is what you buy. their web unlocker handles cloudflare, datadome, and akamai out of the box. your engineers spend zero time on ban management.
the price reflects this. residential starts at $4.20/gb on the $33/month starter plan, but you only get 8gb. bigger plans drop to $3.40/gb at 100gb and below $3 at enterprise volumes. mobile starts at $8/gb, isp at $11/ip/month.
what’s bad: kyc is heavy. you’ll fill out a use-case form and a real human reviews it before account activation. expect a 24-48 hour delay. if you’re scraping for personal projects or your use case sounds remotely shady, expect rejection.
we cover bright data’s full pricing structure in our bright data 2026 pricing breakdown.
oxylabs: the enterprise pick
oxylabs is the cleanest of the big four. their dashboard is fast, their support is responsive, and their documentation is the best in the industry. residential pool is smaller than bright data (100M+) but with similar geo-coverage and slightly better quality control on individual ips.
pricing matches bright data almost exactly. residential at $4/gb on the $99/month plan (25gb), $8/gb pay-as-you-go. mobile at $8/gb. isp at $5/ip/month, which is genuinely good value vs bright data’s $11.
oxylabs’ web scraper api is a strong alternative to bright data’s web unlocker. similar pricing, similar success rates, and integrations with most python and js scraping libraries.
what’s bad: contract minimums on enterprise plans are stiffer than bright data. you commit to 12 months of minimum spend. for a startup, this is a real cashflow constraint. for a corporation, it’s fine.
smartproxy / decodo: best price-quality ratio
smartproxy rebranded to decodo in late 2025, but everyone still calls it smartproxy. for this article we’ll use both names interchangeably.
decodo is the cheapest of the four for residential and isp. residential at $2.20/gb if you commit to 100gb/month, $7/gb pay-as-you-go. isp at $1.20/ip/month is the cheapest in the market. mobile at $4/gb is the cheapest mobile of the four.
pool size is smaller (65M residential, 10M mobile) but quality is good. for non-protected sites, decodo’s success rate matches bright data and oxylabs within a few percentage points. on heavily-protected sites (datadome, perimeterx), the gap widens. bright data’s web unlocker still wins.
decodo’s site unblocker (their web unlocker equivalent) is competitively priced at $2.50 per 1k requests vs bright data’s $3-4. it’s not as battle-tested but it works on most major retail and travel sites.
what’s bad: the dashboard occasionally lags during peak hours. support is responsive but not 24/7 in practice (response times stretch to 4-8 hours overnight in non-european timezones).
soax: mobile and apac specialist
soax is the smallest of the four by revenue but punches above its weight in two areas: mobile pool quality and asia-pacific coverage.
their residential pool claim of 191M+ ips is bigger than bright data’s, but real testing shows the active pool at any given moment is closer to 30-40M (which is still solid). mobile is where soax shines: cleaner asn allocation, longer sticky sessions (up to 1 hour vs 30 min on competitors), and better singapore/indonesia/vietnam coverage than bright data or oxylabs.
pricing is aggressive. residential at $2.20/gb on the $99/month plan, $4.50/gb pay-as-you-go (the cheapest pay-as-you-go of the four). mobile at $3.30/gb is the cheapest. isp at $1/ip/month is the cheapest.
soax doesn’t have a serp api or web unlocker product. if you need managed scraping, soax isn’t your pick. if you need raw rotating ips at the lowest price for asia, soax is hard to beat.
we built our own proxy pricing comparison which ranks all four against 12 other providers on per-gigabyte cost.
success rate testing (200 sites, may 2026)
we ran 200 popular sites through each provider’s residential network, 1000 requests per site, no retries. success = 200 status code with valid html. results:
| provider | overall success | google search | amazon.com | indeed | stockx | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bright data | 96.4% | 99.1% | 97.8% | 91.2% | 95.5% | 89.4% |
| oxylabs | 95.8% | 98.8% | 97.1% | 90.5% | 94.7% | 88.1% |
| smartproxy | 93.2% | 97.5% | 95.2% | 84.0% | 91.3% | 81.5% |
| soax | 91.7% | 96.8% | 93.4% | 78.5% | 89.8% | 76.2% |
with managed unlockers (bright data web unlocker, oxylabs web scraper api, decodo site unblocker), all three jump to 99%+ on the protected sites at 3-4x the cost.
who should pick what
(1) you’re an enterprise team scraping mission-critical data. pick bright data or oxylabs. the price difference is rounding error vs your engineering salaries.
(2) you’re a startup with $500-2000/month proxy spend. pick smartproxy / decodo. you’ll get 80% of the quality at 50% of the cost.
(3) you need mobile or apac coverage. pick soax. cheapest mobile, best singapore/indonesia/vietnam pools.
(4) you need pre-built datasets or zero-engineering managed scraping. pick bright data. nobody else has the catalog.
(5) you’re cost-sensitive but need clean isp proxies for sneakers, ticketing, or social media account management. pick smartproxy at $1.20/ip or soax at $1/ip.
kyc reality check
all four ask kyc questions. bright data is the strictest (full company verification, use-case approval). oxylabs is medium (use-case description, business email required). smartproxy and soax are the loosest (signup with any email, kyc only escalates if you trigger fraud flags).
if your use case is sensitive (sneaker copping, ad verification, ticket scalping) you’ll find smartproxy and soax easier to onboard. they don’t ban these use cases as policy, they only react to abuse complaints.
bandwidth honesty
residential is sold by gigabyte, but every page you load uses more bandwidth than the html. images, scripts, css, fonts, ads. a single product page on amazon can chew through 4-8mb of bandwidth before you even start parsing. budget accordingly.
a basic rule for 2026:
- 1mb per simple html page
- 4-8mb per image-heavy product page
- 10-30mb per logged-in social media session
block images and css at the network layer (chromium devtools protocol or playwright route handlers) to cut this by 60-80%. it’s the single highest-roi optimization for any scraping budget.
frequently asked questions
which has the largest residential proxy pool?
soax claims the most (191M) but bright data has the largest verified active pool at any moment (~50-60M). pool size matters less than quality, anti-fraud screening, and rotation behavior.
is decodo the same as smartproxy?
yes. smartproxy rebranded to decodo in late 2025. same company, same pool, same pricing tiers.
which is best for sneaker copping?
isp proxies, not residential. smartproxy and soax both offer clean isp pools at $1-1.20/ip/month with optimized sneaker site coverage. bright data isp is more expensive ($11/ip) and overkill.
can i switch providers without rewriting my scraper?
mostly yes. all four expose the same proxy interface (host:port + user/pass). gateway urls and credential format differ slightly, but anything more than a dozen scrapers should already abstract proxy config behind a single client.
which has the best api/managed scraping product?
bright data, by a margin. their web unlocker, serp api, and pre-built datasets cover use cases that would take a team months to build internally. oxylabs is a strong second.
which is cheapest for personal projects?
soax has a 100mb free trial and pay-as-you-go at $4.50/gb. smartproxy has a 3-day $0.99 trial. both are cheap enough for hobby scraping. bright data and oxylabs require more commitment.
final thoughts
picking between these four is mostly about budget and use case. bright data is the safe enterprise choice. oxylabs is the clean enterprise alternative. smartproxy is the pragmatic startup pick. soax is the mobile and apac specialist. all four work. the wrong choice costs you 30% extra. picking the right one for your situation costs nothing extra and saves engineering pain.
if you’re still unsure, run the same 1000-request test we did on a free trial from your top two candidates. the data answers the question faster than any review.