Oxylabs vs. Smartproxy: Features, Performance & Pricing [2024]

Oxylabs and Smartproxy are two major players in the proxy service industry. Both vendors offer an extensive array of proxy types, and various plans to suit different budgets and requirements.  Oxylabs and Smartproxy invest in advanced technology to ensure high uptime and speed of proxy solutions. These attributes make them go-to choices for many proxy service users.

This article examines the key aspects of Oxylabs and Smartproxy web scraping services, providing insights into their advantages and shortcomings, and overall value proposition. This analysis will offer guidance in selecting the right proxy server solution for you specific needs.  

Company backgrounds

Smartproxy

Smartproxy is a web data collection platform, allowing businesses and individuals to access and gather publicly available web data. Their offerings include a wide range of proxies like datacenter, residential, mobile and ISP, as well as scraping APIs and no-code scrapers. 

Oxylabs

Oxylabs began its operations in the proxy industry by offering datacenter proxies before expanding into other varieties such as residential proxies, along with developing web scraping solutions like APIs. 

Comparing the backgrounds of Smartproxy and Oxylabs 

Market position of both companies

In preparing to compare the market positions of Smartproxy and Oxylabs, we’ve collected user reviews and ratings from reputable B2B review platforms including G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra. The following table presents this aggregated data, showcasing the number of reviews each company has received, the average rating obtained from customers, and the size of the companies as indicated by their employee count. This quantitative data serves as a reliable indicator of both companies’ market presence.

Types of proxies offered and  features

Smartproxy

Proxy network: 

Residential: The residential proxy network includes  55 million IPs from both desktop and mobile devices with HTTP(s) and SOCKS5 protocol support. You can select the IPs according to specific regions such as country, city, zip code or even by mobile network provider. Additionally, there is availability to target all 50 states within the US. You have the option to change IPs with each request or maintain the same IP for a duration of up to 30 minutes. The residential endpoint offers three choices for session duration, allowing selections of 1, 10, or 30 minutes for the session length. Should there be no requests within a 60-second interval, the system is programmed to automatically switch to a new IP address. 

Datacenter: The datacenter proxy pool includes 400, 000 private and 100,000 shared datacenter IP addresses, which are sourced from US and European data centers. Smartproxy provides two pricing structures for datacenter proxies: a pay-per-IP option and a pay-per-GB option. The pay-per-IP model features dedicated proxies from selected global locations and allows customers to specify their desired traffic volume, with charges applied according to the number of IPs and used bandwidth. The pay-per-GB model provides access to a shared global IP pool, with costs incurred based on the amount of bandwidth consumed. Both models support the option of either rotating or static sessions.

Mobile: 10 million 3G/4G/5G  mobile proxies, including over 700 mobile carriers and covering both iOS and Android systems. Mobile proxies support OS filtering options, allowing users to select and use mobile IPs that are specifically associated with a certain operating system. You can select mobile proxy IP addresses that are associated with a specific city.

Static residential proxies (ISP):  The ISP pool provides IP addresses located in the United States, Hong Kong, France, and Canada with country-level targeting. ISP proxies are compatible with tools that support HTTP(S) proxy configuration. 

Scrapers:

Only requests that successfully generate results are counted as complete. If a request is unsuccessful, it is not counted, and there is no charge for it. Smartproxy provides 3,000 free requests per month for each of their scraping APIs.

No-Code Scraper: Users can select the data they intend to scrape by clicking on the elements within a page. 

Scraping APIs: Smartproxy offer a variety of web scraping APIs including social media scraping, SERP scraping and eCommerce scraping,  and web scraping API. The Web Scraping API is designed to retrieve data from both static and dynamic websites and provides the results as unparsed HTML. E-Commerce and SERP scraping APIs include both a scraper and a parser, and deliver results in JSON or HTML format. 

Social media scraping API allows users to make synchronous or asynchronous requests to the target social media platform. In synchronous requests, the client waits for the server to respond to a request before making the next request. Asynchronous requests allow clients to make a request and then continue with other operations without waiting for the response.

Oxylabs 

Proxy network

Residential: Oxylabs offer regular and next-generation residential proxies with different capabilities and offerings. The pricing model for Next-Gen Residential proxies is based on the amount of traffic, where charges are applied only for the requests that are successfully fulfilled during data collection. Next-Gen Residential proxies provide features such as automatic fingerprint generator (creates a unique fingerprint for each request), browser-specific combinations to mimic real-user behavior,  and auto-retry system (retry a request if it initially fails).

Mobile: Residential and mobile proxies provide the option to choose a proxy location using geographical coordinates. The mobile proxy pool includes shared IP addresses. When you make a request using a mobile proxy IP, it becomes dedicated to your use for the duration of that session.

Datacenter (shared & dedicated): 20K shared datacenter IPs from six countries, and 2 million private IP addresses with city and state targeting. 

ISP & rotating ISP: There are 100,000 static IPs and 360,000 rotating static IPs available from 20 different locations. Out of the rotating IPs, 270,000 are sourced from the US pool.

Scrapers

Oxylabs provides specialized web scraper APIs tailored for various specific applications, such as scraping search engine results pages (SERP), eCommerce platforms, and real estate listings. Each API is designed to effectively gather data relevant to its particular domain. SERP scraper API supports coordinate-level targeting. You can configure it to extract localized SERP data as they would appear in a specific geographical location. 

Oxylabs’ Custom Parser, which is a complementary feature of their Scraper APIs, enables users to create their own parsing rules to transform raw HTML into structured data. This functionality allows the extraction of organized data in JSON format from any chosen target, catering to specific data structuring needs.

Pricing and plans 

Smartproxy

• Free trial & refund: Provides a 3-day 100MB trial for $1 for residential proxies. Offers 14-day money-back option for all proxies and scraping APIs.If you’re registering on behalf of a company, you might qualify for a free trial period.
• Pay-as-you-go: Smartproxy offers a pay as you go option for residential and mobile proxies. The pay-as-you-go option can only be utilized via Smart Wallet, which is Smartproxy’s electronic wallet designed for straightforward storage and management of funds, simplifying the payment process.

Oxylabs

• Free trial: Companies that have successfully verified their registration and ownership details can take advantage of a 7-day free trial.  Individuals, on the other hand, are offered a 3-day money-back guarantee upon registration.
• Pay-as-you-go: Applies to both residential and mobile proxies, with residential proxies priced at $10 per GB and mobile proxies at $30 per GB. 
• Refund: Issued only for self-service products, excluding any pay-as-you-go plans, which are not eligible for refunds. 

User experience and support

Smartproxy 

Overall, the customer feedback is positive, highlighting satisfaction with Smartproxy’s services, particularly their customer support and reliability.​​ This table highlights the most commonly cited pros and cons of Smartproxy services (based on 40 reviews), as reported by users on G2.

Oxylabs 

The most frequently mentioned positive aspect is the reliability and success rate of the proxies.  This table highlights the most commonly cited pros and cons of  Oxylabs services (based on 58 reviews), as reported by users on G2. 

Transparency statement

AIMultiple serves numerous emerging tech companies, including Oxylabs and  Smartproxy.

Further reading

• An In-Depth Look at Oxylabs’ Proxies
• An In-Depth Look at Smartproxy’s Web Scraping Solutions
• Bright Data Proxies: An Overview, Features, and Pricing

For guidance to choose the right residential proxy service, check out data-driven list of proxy providers, and reach out to us: