The best Smartproxy (Decodo) alternative for residential proxies

Smartproxy, now rebranded as Decodo, is one of the most popular proxy providers on the market. Named best proxy provider by Proxyway for three consecutive years, Decodo offers 115M+ residential IPs across 195+ countries with a strong balance of performance, price, and ease of use. Their residential proxies start at $2/GB — significantly cheaper than Bright Data or Oxylabs.

So why switch? The main limitations are that all residential proxy plans are per-GB only — there's no unlimited bandwidth option for heavy workloads, the 3-day free trial includes only 100MB of traffic — barely enough to test a single scraping workflow, minimum monthly commitments start higher than many small teams need, and while affordable at $2/GB, costs still scale linearly with usage — 100GB costs $200, 500GB costs $1,000.

For teams that need predictable monthly costs on bandwidth-heavy projects, a per-GB model creates budget anxiety regardless of the rate.

Unlimited bandwidth plans. This is the biggest difference. Decodo charges per GB on every plan — if you use more data, you pay more. TrueProxies offers fixed-price unlimited bandwidth plans starting at $3.26/hour. Run continuous scraping, monitoring, or data collection without watching your GB meter. For heavy workloads, this eliminates cost unpredictability entirely.

Lower per-GB rates. Even on a per-GB comparison, TrueProxies starts at $1.64/GB versus Decodo's $2/GB — 18% cheaper. At higher volumes, TrueProxies' rates drop further while Decodo's volume discounts are less aggressive.

More flexible billing. TrueProxies offers hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly plans. Decodo requires either a monthly subscription or pay-as-you-go (which still involves a monthly billing cycle). If you need proxies for a 2-hour scraping job, TrueProxies lets you pay for exactly that.

More generous free trial. TrueProxies provides a self-service free trial with no credit card required. Decodo's free trial gives you 100MB for 3 days — enough for maybe a dozen web pages. TrueProxies gives you enough room to properly test your workflow before committing.

Larger IP pool and wider country coverage. Decodo operates 115M+ residential IPs across 195+ countries. TrueProxies has 50M+ IPs across 150+ countries. For projects needing maximum geographic diversity or targeting smaller countries, Decodo has a wider network.

Scraping tools beyond proxies. Decodo offers a complete scraping toolkit — SERP API, Social Media Scraping API, eCommerce API, and Site Unblocker that handles CAPTCHAs automatically. If you want structured data without writing scraping logic, Decodo provides tools TrueProxies doesn't offer.

Browser extensions. Decodo provides Chrome and Firefox extensions for quick proxy switching during manual browsing or testing. Useful for non-technical users who prefer a visual interface over API configuration.

Established reputation. Named best proxy provider by Proxyway for three consecutive years, Decodo has a strong track record with ratings of 4.7 on Trustpilot and 4.6 on G2. For teams that rely on third-party validation when selecting vendors, this track record carries weight.

TrueProxies makes more sense if you run bandwidth-heavy workloads where per-GB costs add up — continuous scraping, large-scale monitoring, or data collection jobs where total traffic is unpredictable. The unlimited bandwidth plans solve a problem that Decodo's pricing model can't address.

TrueProxies also works better for teams that want flexible billing without monthly commitments, need a more generous free trial to properly evaluate performance, or prefer a simpler product focused on proxy infrastructure without the complexity of a full scraping platform.

If you need scraper APIs, CAPTCHA-solving tools, or browser extensions alongside your proxies, Decodo remains a strong choice.