Best Decodo (Smartproxy) Alternatives in 2026

Decodo — rebranded from Smartproxy in April 2025, part of the Tesonet/Oxylabs group — is a value-tier proxy network with scraping APIs layered on top for categories like SERP, e-commerce, web, and social. It's a genuinely good entry point if a large, configurable proxy pool at a lower price than the enterprise players is what you need. But "proxy-first" means you're often building your own scraper on top, billed per GB of bandwidth, with anti-bot success that trails the market's benchmark leaders. This guide covers the best alternatives in 2026: what each does well, where it falls short, and when to pick it instead.

Is Decodo actually the wrong tool?

Stay with Decodo (Smartproxy until its April 2025 rebrand, part of the same Tesonet group as Oxylabs) if you want enterprise-grade infrastructure at a published mid-market price. Its Web Scraping API has the most detailed rate card in this comparison: Free (2,000 standard requests), Starter $19 (38,000 standard, 25,000 with JavaScript, 19,000 premium, 12,000 premium with JavaScript, 10 requests a second), Professional $49 (163,000 / 75,000 / 54,000 / 39,000, 25 rps), Business $99 (707,000 / 165,000 / 116,000 / 82,000, 50 rps). Residential proxies are $4 per GB pay-as-you-go or $3.75 to $2.75 per GB on 3 to 100 GB plans. Look at alternatives when:

• You buy raw proxies and are billed by the GB. A residential GB is a GB whether the pages in it were useful or blocked. Scraper APIs, Decodo's included, bill per request instead; a platform API bills per successful call.
• The trial is too small to test with. 100 MB for three days on proxies, or 2,000 standard requests on the API, is a smoke test, not an evaluation. Bright Data gives 5,000 records a month; ZenRows 5,000 credits a month; Crawlora 2,000 credits a month, all recurring.
• Rate limits bind before credits do. 10 requests a second on Starter, 25 on Professional, 50 on Business. Bright Data advertises unlimited concurrency on paid scraper plans.
• Your targets are known platforms. Decodo's premium-plus-JavaScript request on an Amazon page is still HTML to parse; a documented endpoint is not.
• Auto-renewal is a concern. Decodo subscriptions renew monthly by default; read the terms if you are running a one-off project.

What to look for in a Decodo alternative

• Per-1,000 price at your proxy class and rendering: Decodo $0.30 to $0.50 standard, $0.60 to $0.75 standard with JavaScript, $0.85 to $1.00 premium, $1.20 to $1.50 premium with JavaScript; Bright Data $1.50 flat pay-as-you-go ($1.30 on Scale); Oxylabs $0.25 to $1.35 by plan and target; Crawlora a fixed weight per endpoint.
• Residential $/GB if you buy proxies: Decodo $4 PAYG, $3.75 to $2.75 on plans; Bright Data $4 promotional PAYG ($8 list); Oxylabs from $6.
• Rate limits or concurrency: Decodo 10 / 25 / 50 rps; Bright Data unlimited on paid scraper plans; generic APIs publish per-tier concurrency.
• Trial size: Decodo 100 MB / 3 days (proxies) or 2,000 requests (API); Bright Data 5,000 records a month; Crawlora 2,000 credits a month.
• Billing unit: bandwidth (proxies), requests (scraper APIs), or successful endpoint calls (Crawlora)?
• Renewal terms: monthly auto-renew by default on Decodo; check how peers handle a one-month project.

The best Decodo alternatives in 2026

1. Crawlora — no proxy class to pick, no GB to count

Decodo's rate card asks you to choose standard or premium proxies and whether to render, per request, and prices each combination. A structured platform API makes that choice per endpoint and publishes one credit weight. Google Search, Google Maps, Amazon, TikTok, Zillow and the rest of the catalog return documented JSON, billed only on success, with the proxy and rendering decisions already made behind the endpoint.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/google/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword": "web scraping api", "language": "en", "country": "us", "limit": 10}'

{
  "code": 200,
  "msg": "OK",
  "data": {
    "result": [
      { "position": 1, "title": "Example result", "website_name": "Example", "link": "https://example.com/", "Snippet": "Snippet text shown under the result." }
    ]
  }
}

When to choose it: your targets are known platforms. See Crawlora vs Decodo. It is not a proxy network; if you run your own crawlers, Decodo's $4 per GB is a fair price to keep.

2. Bright Data — one flat number and no rate limit

Bright Data prices its Web Scraper API and Web Unlocker at $1.50 per 1,000 pay-as-you-go, or $499 a month for roughly 384,000 with additional units at $1.30 per 1,000, with 5,000 free a month, no card, pay only for success and unlimited concurrency on paid plans. That is above Decodo's standard rate and roughly level with its premium-plus-JavaScript rate, so the comparison turns on how much of your traffic needs premium proxies. Residential is $4 per GB pay-as-you-go at the current promotion, the same as Decodo's, with $499, $999 and $1,999 monthly plans for 141, 332 and 798 GB. See Bright Data alternatives.

When to choose it: rate limits are your bottleneck, or you want a single per-record price and the largest pool.

3. Oxylabs — the larger sibling

Oxylabs shares Decodo's parent and sells the enterprise version: Web Scraper API from $49 a month (Micro, up to 98,000 results at $0.50 to $1.35 per 1,000) through $99 and $999 to Custom+ from $0.25 per 1,000, residential from $6 per GB, with 24/7 support and an account manager on every plan. You pay more per GB for the account management. See Oxylabs alternatives.

When to choose it: you want a named contact and enterprise procurement, and $49 to $99 a month is fine as a floor.

4. Zyte — anti-bot as the product

Zyte prices per request by target difficulty and leads independent unblocking benchmarks, which suits custom Scrapy crawlers on hard sites. See Zyte alternatives.

5. ZenRows, ScrapingBee, Scrape.do — generic APIs with recurring free tiers

For arbitrary URLs at small scale, ZenRows (5,000 free credits a month, from $16), ScrapingBee (from $19) and Scrape.do (1,000 free calls a month, from $29) compete directly with Decodo's $19 Starter, with published credit ladders instead of proxy classes. See ZenRows alternatives, ScrapingBee alternatives and Scrape.do alternatives.

6. Apify, and Crawlee or Scrapy with your own proxies

Apify trades infrastructure for prebuilt Actors, scheduling and storage. Crawlee and Scrapy are free frameworks that still need a proxy source; Decodo's $4 per GB is a reasonable one to pair them with.

Decodo's pricing, in plain terms

• Web Scraping API Free: 2,000 standard requests (1,000 with JavaScript, 1,000 premium, 667 premium with JavaScript), 10 requests a second.
• Starter $19: 38,000 standard / 25,000 standard with JavaScript / 19,000 premium / 12,000 premium with JavaScript, 10 rps.
• Professional $49: 163,000 / 75,000 / 54,000 / 39,000, 25 rps. Business $99: 707,000 / 165,000 / 116,000 / 82,000, 50 rps.
• Per 1,000 requests: $0.30 to $0.50 standard; $0.60 to $0.75 standard with JavaScript; $0.85 to $1.00 premium; $1.20 to $1.50 premium with JavaScript. 14-day money-back guarantee.
• Residential proxies: $4 per GB pay-as-you-go (1 GB minimum); plans $3.75 (3 GB), $3.50 (10 GB), $3.25 (25 GB), $3.00 (50 GB), $2.75 (100 GB) per GB. Trial: 100 MB for 3 days.
• Subscriptions auto-renew monthly.

The table is the most transparent in the enterprise group, and it shows the same 4x spread every generic API has: a premium rendered request costs four to five times a standard one. Crawlora's model for supported platforms is one fixed credit weight per endpoint, billed only on success, with the proxy class chosen behind the endpoint.

Decodo vs Crawlora: feature by feature

How to choose

1. Decide whether you are buying bandwidth, requests or results. Raw proxies bill the first, scraper APIs the second, a platform API the third; only the third excludes blocked pages by definition.
2. Estimate your premium-plus-rendering share. Above roughly half, Bright Data's flat $1.50 is competitive with Decodo's $1.20 to $1.50 and removes the rate limit.
3. If your targets are known platforms, a structured API removes the proxy-class decision entirely.
4. If you need a real evaluation window, note Decodo's trial is 100 MB or 2,000 requests, and plan to pay $19 to test properly, or use a vendor with a recurring free tier.
5. For a one-month project, check the auto-renewal terms before you start.

No proxy class to choose, no GB to meter

Documented endpoints, normalized JSON, proxies and rendering chosen behind the endpoint, billed only on success. 2,000 free credits a month, no card.

Try the PlaygroundCrawlora vs Decodo

Next steps

Check the platform catalog for your targets and the API docs for each endpoint's credit weight. For arbitrary URLs, the Free Web Scraper shows what a generic fetch returns with no signup.

Sources

Related reading

• Bright Data Alternatives — when the widest proxy network and enterprise scale are the actual requirement.
• Apify Alternatives — when an actor marketplace is or isn't the right shape.
• ScraperAPI Alternatives — when a generic scraper is the right fit.
• Is Web Scraping Legal in 2026? — the legal basics before you collect at scale.