SOAX Review 2026: Honest Pros, Cons and Pricing
SOAX Review 2026: Honest Pros, Cons and Pricing
SOAX is a Ukraine-founded proxy network that has been operating since 2019. the company markets itself primarily at businesses doing data collection, ad verification, and price intelligence at scale. they sit in the mid-market tier, positioned above budget resellers like Proxy-Cheap but below the institutional pricing of Bright Data. as of mid-2026, they claim a pool of over 195 million residential and mobile IPs across 195+ countries, which puts them in the conversation alongside the largest providers in the space.
my experience with SOAX spans several months of use across two separate projects: a price comparison scraper targeting Southeast Asian e-commerce, and mobile-IP rotation for social platform testing. the headline verdict is straightforward. if you need clean mobile IPs with real carrier attribution, SOAX earns its price premium. if you are doing bulk residential scraping where raw volume and cost per GB matter more than IP quality, you will find cheaper options that perform comparably.
this review covers what the product actually does, where it delivers, where it frustrates, and who it is genuinely built for. i have tried to avoid extrapolating from marketing copy. where i cite a specific feature, i have tested or verified it against their official documentation.
what SOAX actually does
SOAX provides four proxy types: residential, mobile, datacenter, and ISP (static residential). the core product is the residential and mobile pool, which runs on a peer-to-peer model where end-user devices act as exit nodes. this is the same architecture used by Oxylabs, Bright Data, and Smartproxy. what differentiates SOAX is the emphasis on mobile, where they claim attribution to specific carriers, not just country-level allocation.
connections are made via HTTP/HTTPS or SOCKS5, authenticated with username/password. the endpoint format follows a standard gateway model: you hit a SOAX endpoint and the session parameters are encoded in the username string. rotation can be set to per-request (new IP every connection) or sticky sessions lasting 1 to 60 minutes depending on the plan tier. you can specify country, state, city, or ASN in the username string, which is cleaner than managing separate endpoint lists.
their dashboard is functional and not much more than that. you get usage graphs, sub-account management, and an API for programmatic credential generation. there is no built-in proxy tester or response code analytics, which means you are relying on your own tooling to diagnose whether a session is degraded. for operators building on multi-account setups or browser automation, this means your antidetect browser or scraping framework needs to handle retry logic independently.
the datacenter and ISP pools are smaller and feel like add-ons rather than core products. ISP proxies are priced higher than datacenter but lower than residential, and they offer fixed IP addresses tied to residential ASNs. useful for situations where you need both longevity and a clean ASN fingerprint.
pricing
as of May 2026, SOAX pricing is consumption-based. residential proxies are structured around monthly plans with a GB allowance, and you pay overage if you exceed the allocation. the entry-level plan starts around $99/month for approximately 15 GB of residential traffic, which works out to roughly $6.60/GB. mid-tier plans reduce that to approximately $3.50-$4.50/GB at 100 GB+ commitments. mobile proxies run approximately 20-30% higher than residential at equivalent volume tiers.
ISP proxies are priced differently, closer to a per-IP/per-month model, starting around $2.70 per IP/month at low volumes with discounts at scale. datacenter proxies are the cheapest entry point at well under $1/GB but lack the IP quality of the other pools.
there is no free trial in the traditional sense. SOAX offers a pay-as-you-go starter option at a higher per-GB rate, which lets you test without committing to a monthly plan. unused GB does not roll over on monthly plans, which is a meaningful gotcha if your usage is seasonal or project-based. all prices are in USD and billing is handled directly; i have not seen a reseller pricing tier advertised publicly. check the SOAX pricing page before committing since these figures change with promotions.
what works
mobile IP quality is genuinely differentiated. in my Southeast Asia testing, SOAX mobile IPs consistently returned carrier-attributed headers and resolved to the correct ASN (Singtel, AIS, Telkomsel depending on targeting). competing providers i tested in the same period returned IPs nominally tagged as mobile but resolving to datacenter ASNs on third-party IP intelligence tools. for use cases where carrier detection matters, this is a real advantage. if you are running tests against platforms that fingerprint mobile versus residential traffic differently, SOAX mobile holds up better.
city-level and ASN targeting works reliably. most residential proxy providers offer country targeting with city as a best-effort overlay. SOAX city targeting has been consistent in my tests. for ad verification work where you need to verify geo-restricted creatives at the metro level, this matters. ASN targeting lets you select specific internet service providers within a country, which is useful for content delivery testing.
session control is flexible enough for most use cases. the sticky session duration options (ranging from a few minutes to an hour) cover the majority of scraping and account management scenarios. per-request rotation is genuine, not just endpoint-level rotation recycling a small pool.
the API for credential generation is usable. sub-account and credential management via API means you can automate proxy allocation for multi-tenant or job-based architectures without manual dashboard intervention. the API is documented, not comprehensive, but covers the operations you actually need.
connection success rates on residential are above average. across my e-commerce scraping tests, SOAX residential delivered consistent connection success in the 95-97% range on targets that were actively filtering. this is not dramatically better than Oxylabs or Smartproxy at similar tiers, but it is ahead of several cheaper providers i have benchmarked.
what doesn’t
per-GB pricing is expensive relative to the market. at $6.60/GB on entry plans, SOAX is nearly double what Smartproxy charges at equivalent entry volume. for operators doing hundreds of GB per month, the mid-tier pricing becomes more competitive, but at low-to-mid volumes you are paying a meaningful premium. this is defensible if you need mobile IPs or very clean residential, but for commodity scraping it is hard to justify.
support quality drops off outside European business hours. SOAX’s core team appears to operate on a European schedule. i have submitted tickets during Singapore business hours (UTC+8 morning) and received responses the following European morning, which is effectively a 12-16 hour lag. for time-sensitive infrastructure issues this is frustrating. their live chat works faster but is not available 24/7.
no native APAC residential pool depth. the IP pool is globally distributed but APAC coverage, particularly for Southeast Asian countries, is thinner than in North America and Europe. this shows up as higher latency on APAC targets and more IP reuse, which can hurt success rates on targets with aggressive per-IP rate limiting. for Singapore-focused work i have found Singapore mobile proxies more reliable for local carrier IPs specifically.
no built-in IP health or quality metrics. the dashboard does not expose IP success rates, latency histograms, or block rate indicators. you are flying blind on IP quality until you surface the data from your own infrastructure. providers like Bright Data have begun offering per-IP health scoring; SOAX has not followed.
the datacenter pool is underwhelming. if you need cheap, fast datacenter proxies, SOAX is not the right choice. their datacenter inventory is limited and priced higher than dedicated datacenter providers. it reads as a feature checkbox rather than a serious product.
who should buy
SOAX makes the most sense for operators who specifically need mobile proxy quality. if you are running ad tech verification, testing mobile-first platforms, or doing account management where carrier fingerprinting is a real detection vector, the cleanliness of SOAX mobile IPs is worth the cost. similarly, if you need reliable city-level geo-targeting at scale, the combination of pool size and targeting granularity holds up.
it also fits teams doing moderate-volume e-commerce intelligence (under 200 GB/month) who prioritize connection reliability over raw cost efficiency. enterprise buyers who need SLA commitments and dedicated account management should get a quote on their enterprise tier, which is not publicly listed.
who should skip
operators running high-volume scrapers where cost per GB is the primary constraint should look elsewhere. at 500+ GB/month you can get comparable residential quality from Oxylabs or Smartproxy at materially lower cost. teams needing strong APAC coverage specifically, particularly Southeast Asian residential, will find the pool depth limiting compared to providers that have invested in regional acquisition. budget operators or individuals testing small projects should not start here, the entry pricing and minimum commitment structure is not designed for low-volume use.
alternatives to consider
Smartproxy is the most direct comparison. comparable residential pool, lower per-GB pricing, and a dashboard that includes more diagnostic tooling. the tradeoff is mobile IP quality, where SOAX is cleaner in my testing.
Oxylabs sits above SOAX in pool size and enterprise features, including IP quality scoring and a more developed API. pricing is higher but more negotiable at volume. the better choice if you are scaling past 500 GB/month and need SLA coverage. see the proxy provider comparison guide on this site for a direct side-by-side.
Bright Data (formerly Luminati) is the institutional option. largest pool, most features, highest price, and more aggressive compliance requirements around use case disclosure. worth evaluating if SOAX does not meet your scale or if you need their Web Unlocker and SERP API products alongside raw proxies. the full blog index has individual reviews of both.
for operators specifically focused on antidetect browser workflows, the antidetect browser review hub covers how different proxy types interact with browser fingerprinting tooling, which is relevant context for choosing between mobile, residential, and ISP pools.
verdict
SOAX is a legitimate, well-maintained proxy provider that earns its place in the mid-market. the mobile IP quality and geo-targeting are genuine differentiators, and the platform is stable enough for production use. the pricing makes it harder to recommend outside of the specific use cases it is optimized for, and the support lag in APAC hours is a real operational friction point. if your workflow maps to mobile proxies, city-level targeting, or moderate-volume residential scraping with reliability requirements, SOAX is worth a trial at their starter tier before committing to a monthly plan.
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 2026-05-19.