Decodo vs SOAX: 2026 Head-to-Head Comparison
I get asked which residential proxy vendor to buy more than almost any other question on this site, and Decodo and SOAX are the two names that come up most often after Bright Data and Oxylabs get ruled out on price. Both sell residential, mobile, datacenter, and ISP (static residential) proxies. Both target the same buyer: someone scraping search results, checking prices across regions, running ad verification, or managing more accounts than one clean IP can support. Neither is a bad choice, which is exactly why the comparison matters.
Decodo used to be Smartproxy. The company rebranded in 2024 and kept the same infrastructure, dashboard lineage, and pay-as-you-go pricing philosophy under a new name. SOAX built its business around granular geo-targeting and sticky session control from the start, and it shows in how the dashboard is organized. If you’re choosing based on raw price per GB at low volume, SOAX usually edges it. If you want the more polished self-serve dashboard and slightly better documentation, Decodo tends to win. For anything requiring city- or ISP-level targeting precision, SOAX pulls ahead.
This comparison is based on published pricing, documented features, and how each vendor’s proxies have behaved in my own scraping and account-management work over the past year. I’ll flag anywhere the numbers are vendor-advertised rather than independently audited, because proxy pool sizes are one of the least verifiable claims in this industry and you should treat every vendor’s stated IP count as a marketing figure, not a lab result.
TL;DR comparison table
| Decodo | SOAX | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Pay-as-you-go from roughly $7/GB (residential), volume discounts to ~$4/GB at 50GB+ | Subscription plans from ~$99/month (residential), per-GB rate drops to ~$4.60/GB on higher tiers |
| Free trial | Limited trial/refund window on some plans | Short paid trial (historically under $2) plus refund window |
| Proxy types | Residential, mobile, datacenter, ISP/static residential, Web Scraping API, SERP API | Residential, mobile, ISP, datacenter, Web Unblocker, Scraper API |
| Geo targeting | Country and city level, 100+ countries | Country, region, city, and ISP level, 100+ countries |
| Session control | Rotating and sticky sessions up to 30 min | Rotating and sticky sessions, granular duration control |
| Support | 24/7 live chat, dedicated account managers on higher tiers | 24/7 live chat, Telegram support channel |
| Best for | Teams wanting a clean dashboard and predictable pay-as-you-go billing | Operators who need precise geo/ISP targeting and flexible session length |
Pricing shifts often on both sites, so treat these as directional and check Decodo’s own pricing page and SOAX’s pricing page before you buy.
Decodo at a glance
Decodo is the rebranded continuation of Smartproxy, one of the longer-running names in the residential proxy space. The rebrand in 2024 changed the logo and domain but not the core product: a pay-as-you-go and subscription hybrid pricing model, a dashboard that’s genuinely easy to hand to a non-technical teammate, and API access that plugs into most scraping frameworks without much friction.
The lineup covers residential proxies (rotating and sticky), mobile proxies pulled from real carrier networks, datacenter proxies for high-volume low-stakes traffic, and static residential (ISP) proxies for tasks that need one IP to persist across a session for hours or days. Decodo also ships a Web Scraping API and a SERP API, which matters if you’d rather not manage proxy rotation and headless browser fingerprinting yourself.
Where Decodo stands out for me operationally is documentation quality and support response time. I’ve filed support tickets during off-hours in Singapore and gotten a useful reply within minutes, which isn’t universal in this industry. I’ve written up the full breakdown in my Decodo review if you want the granular pricing tiers and setup walkthrough.
SOAX at a glance
SOAX built its reputation on targeting precision. Where a lot of residential proxy vendors stop at country or city, SOAX lets you filter by ISP as well, which is genuinely useful if you’re testing how a page renders for users on a specific mobile carrier or regional broadband provider. The dashboard leans more toward power users, with sliders and dropdowns for session duration, sticky IP length, and rotation frequency that give more manual control than Decodo’s more streamlined UI.
SOAX’s product range mirrors Decodo’s: residential, mobile, ISP, and datacenter proxies, plus a Web Unblocker product aimed at sites with aggressive anti-bot defenses and a Scraper API for structured data extraction. Pricing runs primarily on subscription tiers rather than Decodo’s straight pay-as-you-go model, though SOAX also offers pay-as-you-go options on some plans. If your usage is spiky month to month, read the fine print on whether unused GB roll over, because that detail changes the effective price more than the headline rate does.
I go deeper on SOAX’s tier structure and session controls in the SOAX review.
Head-to-head
IP pool size
Both vendors advertise pools in the tens of millions for residential IPs, sourced through SDK-integrated apps and partner networks, the same general acquisition model Bright Data and Oxylabs use. SOAX has historically marketed a larger headline number for residential IPs than Decodo. Take both figures as directional. Pool size claims aren’t independently audited by any third party I’m aware of, and what actually matters for your use case is how many usable, unflagged IPs you get in the specific country and ASN you’re targeting, not the global total. In my testing, both vendors deliver comparable usable pool depth in major markets like the US, UK, and Germany. Coverage thins out for both once you get into smaller countries.
Rotation control
SOAX gives you finer-grained control here. You can set sticky session duration in minute increments and choose rotation-per-request versus time-based rotation from the same interface. Decodo supports the same core modes, rotating per request or sticky for a set window, but the controls are simpler and less exposed in the UI, which is fine if you don’t need to fine-tune and mildly annoying if you do. For scraping jobs where session consistency matters, like maintaining a shopping cart across multiple requests, both handle it, but SOAX’s controls are more transparent about what’s actually happening under the hood.
Geo coverage
Both claim 100+ countries. SOAX’s ISP-level targeting is the differentiator, useful specifically for ad verification and testing carrier-specific page rendering. Decodo covers country and city level solidly but doesn’t expose ISP filtering as a first-class option in the same way. If your work is generic geo-scraping (price checks, SERP monitoring across regions), this difference won’t matter. If you’re doing ad verification work where the specific carrier or ISP the ad renders on is the whole point, SOAX has the edge.
Connection success rate
Both vendors publish success rate claims in the high 90s percent range, and in practice, on well-known, less-defended targets, both hit those numbers consistently in my usage. Where they diverge is on harder targets running Cloudflare or DataDome-class bot protection. Decodo’s Web Scraping API and SOAX’s Web Unblocker both exist specifically to solve this by handling headless rendering and fingerprint rotation server-side, and I’d reach for the dedicated unblocking product from either vendor before trying to brute-force a hard target through raw residential proxies alone.
Speed
Residential proxy speed is inherently variable since you’re routing through real consumer devices, not dedicated datacenter hardware. Neither vendor is going to touch datacenter-proxy latency, and neither claims to. In side-by-side timing tests for standard HTTP GET requests against non-hostile targets, Decodo and SOAX land within a similar range of each other, with occasional spikes on both sides tied to which specific exit node you land on for that request. If raw speed is your priority over IP diversity, both vendors’ datacenter proxy tiers will outperform their residential tiers by a wide margin, as you’d expect given how HTTP proxying works at the protocol level.
Pricing per GB
This is where the two diverge most clearly. Decodo’s pay-as-you-go residential pricing starts around $7/GB and drops with volume commitments, landing in the $4-5/GB range once you’re buying 50GB or more per month. SOAX runs mostly on subscription tiers, starting around $99/month for entry-level residential access, with the effective per-GB cost dropping toward $4.60/GB on its larger plans. If your usage is small and unpredictable, Decodo’s pure pay-as-you-go model avoids paying for a monthly commitment you might not use. If your usage is large and steady, SOAX’s subscription tiers can work out cheaper per GB. Run your own numbers against current pricing pages before committing either way, since both vendors adjust tiers periodically.
Session persistence
Both support sticky sessions, meaning the same exit IP stays assigned to you for a defined window instead of rotating every request. Decodo’s sticky sessions run up to roughly 30 minutes on residential proxies. SOAX offers similar maximum durations but with more granular control over the exact minute-by-minute duration you request. For workflows like maintaining a logged-in session, filling a multi-step form, or holding a cart through checkout, both are adequate. SOAX’s finer control is nice to have but rarely decisive unless you’re doing something unusual with session timing.
Concurrent connections
Concurrent connection limits scale with plan tier on both platforms rather than being a fixed number across the board. Higher-tier plans on both vendors support enough parallel threads to run meaningful scraping jobs without artificial bottlenecking. If you’re running large parallel scrape jobs, check the specific concurrency cap on the plan tier you’re buying rather than assuming entry-level plans on either vendor will support heavy parallelization, because they generally won’t.
Use-case verdicts
Web scraping and market research at scale. Decodo wins on cost predictability here. Pay-as-you-go billing means you’re not locked into a subscription tier that doesn’t match your actual monthly volume, and the Web Scraping API removes a lot of the anti-bot handling work. If you’re scraping product prices, SERPs, or public datasets on a schedule, Decodo’s pricing model fits better.
Multi-account management and social media operations. This is closer to a tie, but I lean SOAX for the ISP-level targeting, since matching a proxy’s carrier profile to the device profile you’re presenting matters more here than raw IP count. If you’re running this kind of operation, it’s worth reading how proxy selection interacts with browser fingerprinting more broadly, which is covered well over at multiaccountops.com’s blog.
Ad verification and ad tech QA. SOAX wins clearly. The ability to filter by specific ISP, not just country or city, is exactly what ad verification work needs, since you’re often trying to confirm an ad renders correctly for users on a particular carrier network in a particular region.
Crypto airdrop farming and wallet diversification. This one depends more on mobile proxy quality than residential, and both vendors’ mobile proxy pools perform comparably in my testing. I’d call it a tie on IP quality, but Decodo’s simpler dashboard makes it faster to spin up and tear down proxy configs if you’re rotating through a lot of wallet identities. For the operational side of managing wallet diversity and avoiding correlation, airdropfarming.org’s blog covers the practical workflow better than either vendor’s own docs do. Worth noting up front: using proxies to obscure your identity for KYC evasion or to create fraudulent duplicate identities crosses into territory covered by the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and equivalent laws elsewhere. This isn’t legal advice, just a flag that the DOJ’s own guidance on unauthorized access is worth reading if you’re unsure where the line sits for your jurisdiction.
Who should pick Decodo
Pick Decodo if you want predictable pay-as-you-go billing without a subscription commitment, you’re scraping standard web targets rather than needing ISP-level ad verification precision, and you value a dashboard and support experience that doesn’t require a learning curve. Teams handing proxy management to a less technical operator will generally find Decodo faster to onboard.
Who should pick SOAX
Pick SOAX if ISP-level or highly granular geo-targeting is a real requirement for your work, not a nice-to-have, or if your monthly usage is large and steady enough that subscription pricing beats pay-as-you-go on a per-GB basis. Power users who want manual control over rotation and session timing will appreciate the extra dashboard depth.
Verdict overall
Neither vendor is broken, overpriced, or unreliable enough to rule out. Decodo wins on billing flexibility and dashboard simplicity, SOAX wins on targeting precision and session control depth. If you’re doing general scraping and market research, start with Decodo’s pay-as-you-go tier and only move to a subscription once your volume is predictable. If your work depends on hitting a specific carrier or regional ISP, SOAX’s targeting granularity earns its subscription price. For a broader look at how proxy selection fits into the rest of a scraping or account-management stack, the rest of the proxyscraping.org blog covers adjacent tooling worth pairing with either vendor.
Written by Xavier Fok
disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-07-13.