Bright Data and Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) are the two most-searched residential proxy providers in 2026, and picking between them wrong will cost you either money or success rate. this comparison breaks down Bright Data vs Decodo on pricing, pool size, success rates, and developer experience so you can stop second-guessing and start scraping.
What Each Provider Actually Is
Bright Data is the enterprise incumbent. 150M+ residential IPs, a full product suite (residential, datacenter, ISP, mobile, SERP API, scraping browser, web unlocker), and pricing that reflects it. it’s the reference implementation that every other proxy vendor benchmarks against.
Decodo rebranded from Smartproxy in 2025 and is the credible mid-tier alternative. 65M+ residential IPs, cleaner UX, and a significantly lower price floor. if you’ve been following the Bright Data vs Oxylabs vs SmartProxy vs SOAX 2026: Full Comparison pillar, Decodo sits firmly in the “best value” quadrant of that four-way breakdown.
Pricing Comparison
Residential proxy pricing in 2026 is quoted per GB with volume discounts kicking in at different thresholds. here’s where both providers land at common usage tiers:
| Plan / Volume | Bright Data | Decodo |
|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | $8.40/GB | $7.00/GB |
| 20 GB/mo | $6.00/GB | $4.00/GB |
| 50 GB/mo | $4.20/GB | $3.00/GB |
| 100 GB/mo | $3.00/GB | $2.50/GB |
| 500 GB/mo | $2.00/GB | $1.80/GB |
| Dedicated ISP (per IP/mo) | $1.80 | $1.40 |
Decodo undercuts Bright Data by 30-40% across most tiers. the gap narrows at enterprise volumes (500 GB+), where Bright Data’s custom pricing becomes competitive. for teams running under 200 GB/month without a negotiated contract, Decodo wins on cost every time.
ISP proxies are a different calculation. both providers have expanded static residential (ISP) pools aggressively this year, and the per-IP monthly model is increasingly popular for account management and long-session tasks. see how the mid-tier market handles this same tradeoff in the Oxylabs vs IPRoyal 2026: Mid-Tier Residential Proxy Showdown.
Performance and Success Rates
Raw pool size is not the same as quality. the metrics that actually matter for scraping workloads:
- success rate on hard targets (Amazon, LinkedIn, Google SERP): Bright Data’s Web Unlocker consistently hits 95-99% on these. Decodo’s residential pool hits 88-94% without additional retry logic.
- IP freshness: Bright Data rotates more aggressively and has better ISP diversity across tier-1 countries. Decodo’s pool skews heavily US and EU, which is fine for most use cases.
- response latency: Decodo is faster for simple residential rotation (avg 1.1s vs 1.4s) because the routing layer is leaner. Bright Data’s managed products (SERP API, Web Unlocker) add 200-400ms of overhead for their AI fingerprint layer.
- geo coverage: Bright Data covers 195 countries, Decodo covers 195 countries on paper but the density outside US/EU/APAC drops sharply.
For high-volume commodity scraping (e-commerce prices, public listings, job boards), Decodo’s success rates are sufficient and the cost savings compound fast. for anti-bot-heavy targets like LinkedIn or Glassdoor, Bright Data’s Web Unlocker pays for itself in reduced infrastructure and retry overhead.
Developer Experience and Integration
Both providers support HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 with username:password authentication. the connection format is standard:
import httpx
proxies = {
"http://": "http://user-country-US:pass@gate.decodo.com:10001",
"https://": "http://user-country-US:pass@gate.decodo.com:10001",
}
resp = httpx.get("https://example.com", proxies=proxies, timeout=30)Bright Data uses the same pattern with brd-customer-{id}-zone-{zone} username syntax, which is more verbose but enables zone-level configuration without touching the dashboard.
where the products diverge meaningfully for engineers:
- Bright Data has a Scraping Browser (Playwright/Puppeteer compatible) and Web Unlocker API that handle fingerprinting, CAPTCHA solving, and JS rendering as managed services.
- Decodo has no equivalent managed layer. you own your own headless browser infrastructure.
- Bright Data’s proxy manager is open-source and self-hostable for teams that want on-prem routing.
- Decodo’s dashboard is cleaner and the sub-user/team management is easier for non-technical stakeholders.
if you’re building a scraping stack from scratch and want to understand where the boutique alternatives position relative to managed infrastructure, the SOAX vs Massive vs Evomi 2026: Boutique Residential Proxies Tested review covers the middle ground Decodo is competing against.
When Cost Matters More Than Features
Teams with tight budgets and simpler targets should also benchmark against the budget tier before committing. Decodo competes favorably with cheap providers on quality, but if your targets are low-friction and volume is modest, the Webshare vs Proxy-Cheap 2026: Cheap Proxies Real-World Test shows how far the low end has come.
the practical decision tree is:
- do you need managed unblocking (CAPTCHA, JS rendering, AI fingerprinting)? use Bright Data.
- are you scraping tier-1 sites at scale with your own browser infrastructure? test both, Decodo’s cost savings often outweigh the ~5% success rate gap.
- are you doing account management or long-session tasks? ISP proxies from either provider, Decodo wins on price.
- are you on a month-to-month budget under $300/mo? Decodo’s entry plans are the clearest choice.
Bottom Line
Bright Data is the right choice when you need managed anti-bot infrastructure or are hitting enterprise-grade targets where a 5% success rate difference costs more than the price premium. for everything else, Decodo delivers 85-90% of the performance at 60-70% of the cost, and the rebrand from Smartproxy hasn’t changed the fundamentals that made it competitive. DRT will keep updating these comparisons as pricing and pool quality shift through 2026 — both providers adjust rates quarterly and the gap does move.