Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, is a Lithuania-based proxy and scraping solutions provider that rebranded in 2024 to reflect what it describes as an evolution from proxy infrastructure into a complete data access and automation platform. The product range now spans five proxy types, multiple scraping APIs, AI tools, and free utilities.
I went through the full registration flow, ordered a proxy, explored the dashboard at both stages, and tested the live chat support with real questions. Here is the full picture.
Decodo Pros and Cons
- Residential proxies from $2/GB with a free 3-day trial requiring no upfront payment
- 125M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ locations
- 99.99% uptime and sub-0.2s average speed published on homepage
- Five proxy product types plus scraping APIs and AI tools in one platform
- 14-day money-back option
- Free trial available on residential, mobile, datacenter, static ISP, and site unblocker
- Decodo Wallet for pay-as-you-go spending without monthly commitment
- Team access with three permissioned roles: admin, billing, and user
- Sub-user support across most proxy products
- Web Scraping API Playground built into the dashboard for pre-purchase testing
- Integration with n8n, MCP server, LangChain, and other AI automation tools
- Free Chrome extension, Firefox add-on, and proxy checker included
- Discord and GitHub communities accessible directly from the Help section
- Pay-as-you-go pricing is fixed with no volume discounts; custom pricing is only available on larger plans via the sales team
- Free trial traffic is limited to 100MB, which is enough to validate connectivity but not meaningful for performance benchmarking
Decodo’s broad product range, 14-day money-back option, and free trials across all proxy types make it one of the most accessible platforms to evaluate risk-free. Head over to Decodo to start your free trial on any proxy product before committing to a plan.
Rating Breakdown
To evaluate Decodo, I applied our proxy review methodology, a structured framework used across all reviews to ensure scores are consistent, fair, and based on real first-hand experience rather than marketing claims.
Here is how Decodo scored across every key parameter.
| Parameter | Score | Why This Score |
| Prices | 9.0/10 | Residential from $2/GB, datacenter from $0.02/IP, and static ISP from $0.27/IP are all competitive. Free trials with no upfront payment across all proxy types is a meaningful low-risk entry. |
| Proxy Pool & Coverage | 9.2/10 | 125M+ ethically sourced IPs across 195+ locations, covering residential, mobile, ISP, and datacenter. Granular targeting at the country, state, city, ZIP code, and ASN level. |
| Performance & Reliability | 9.3/10 | Sub-0.2s average speed and 99.99% uptime published on the homepage. Residential success rate of 99.86% and static ISP at 99.99% uptime are specific, product-level figures. |
| Ease of Use | 9.4/10 | Clean registration with Google and GitHub sign-in. The two-state dashboard (pre-purchase product explorer, post-purchase operational view) is logically designed. The free trial flow requires zero payment upfront. |
| Support | 9.5/10 | Codie the AI answered the pool question accurately. Vincent joined within 30 seconds of the transfer request, confirmed sticky session details, and addressed the pay-as-you-go question clearly. |
| Overall | 9.3/10 | Decodo delivers competitive pricing, a broad product catalog, a well-designed dashboard, and the fastest human support response tested so far. |
Decodo Prices & Plans
Decodo offers two purchase paths for all products: a direct plan purchase, or topping up the Decodo Wallet first and spending from the balance.
The wallet approach enables genuine pay-as-you-go usage without a monthly commitment.
Proxy Products
1. Residential Proxies (Rotating)
| Plan | Traffic | Price per GB | Total Price (Monthly) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay As You Go | 1 GB+ | $4.00 | $4.00/GB |
| Starter | 3 GB | $3.75 | $11.25 |
| Small | 10 GB | $3.50 | $35.00 |
| Growth | 50 GB | $3.00 | $150.00 |
| Pro | 100 GB | $2.75 | $275.00 |
| Scale | 250 GB | $2.50 | $625.00 |
| Enterprise | 1,000 GB | $2.00 | $2,000.00 |
2. Static Residential (ISP) Proxies
| Plan (Quantity) | Price Per IP | Total Price (Monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| 3 IPs | $3.33 | $9.99 |
| 10 IPs | $2.90 | $29.00 |
| 20 IPs | $2.80 | $56.00 |
| 50 IPs | $2.70 | $135.00 |
| 100 IPs | $2.60 | $260.00 |
3. Dedicated Datacenter Proxies
| Plan (Quantity) | Price Per IP | Total Price (Monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| 10 IPs | $0.47 | $4.70 |
| 50 IPs | $0.40 | $20.00 |
| 100 IPs | $0.35 | $35.00 |
| 500 IPs | $0.33 | $165.00 |
| 1000 IPs | $0.32 | $320.00 |
Scraping APIs
Unified pricing for Web, eCommerce, and SERP Scraping APIs. Charges are per 1,000 successful requests.
| Plan | Monthly Price | Standard Proxies | Standard + JS | Premium Proxies | Rate Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | $0.00 | 2,000 reqs | 1,000 reqs | 1,000 reqs | 10 req/s |
| Lite | $19.00 | 38,000 reqs | 25,000 reqs | 19,000 reqs | 10 req/s |
| Basic | $49.00 | 163,000 reqs | 75,000 reqs | 54,000 reqs | 25 req/s |
| Standard | $99.00 | 707,000 reqs | 165,000 reqs | 116,000 reqs | 50 req/s |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
* Prices shown represent the volume of requests included for the specific proxy type within that plan’s budget.
Residential Proxy Plans
For residential proxies, plans are structured by data volume with eight tiers from 3GB up to 1,000GB.
The 25GB plan is marked Most Popular, with a 15% saving built in. A Pay As You Go option and a “Need more?” enterprise path are also shown on the pricing page.
The free trial gives 100MB of residential proxy traffic for 3 days. It requires card verification but charges $0.00 upfront. After 3 days, the chosen plan activates automatically unless canceled. This is clearly communicated with a Timeline in the checkout panel showing the trial start date and the billing date.
Payment Methods
The checkout accepts:
- Visa, Mastercard, and American Express
- PayPal
- Google Pay
- Apple Pay
- Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payments
- Decodo Wallet (balance from prior top-ups)
The Wallet section inside My Subscriptions shows the current balance, a top-up slider, quick-add buttons for $10, $50, and $100, and a bonus note.
Topping up $100, for example, includes a $1 bonus. All wallet transactions are tracked in the Transactions tab.
Decodo Features
- Rotating and sticky sessions on residential and mobile proxies
- Maximum sticky session duration of 24 hours (1,440 minutes)
- Country, state, city, ZIP code, and ASN-level geo-targeting
- HTTP/S and SOCKS5 protocol support
- Sub-user management across most proxy products
- Decodo Wallet for pay-as-you-go spending
- Web Scraping API Playground with cURL, Node, and Python output
- JavaScript rendering toggle in the scraping playground
- AI Parser for converting HTML to structured JSON
- MCP Server for connecting AI agents and LLMs to live web data
- Integrations with n8n, LangChain, CrewAI, and other AI tools
- Chrome Proxy Extension and Firefox Add-on available free
- Free Proxy Checker tool
- 14-day money-back option
Performance
Decodo publishes product-specific performance figures rather than a single headline number, which makes meaningful comparison easier.
| Product | Published Figure |
| Average speed | Under 0.2s (homepage) |
| Uptime | 99.99% |
| Residential success rate | 99.86% |
| Residential response time | Under 0.6s |
| Static ISP uptime | 99.99% |
| Static ISP response time | Under 0.2s |
| Datacenter success rate | 99.98% |
| Datacenter response time | Under 0.3s |
| Residential IP pool | 125M+ |
| Mobile IP pool | 10M+ |
| Country coverage | 195+ |
The homepage leads with the sub-0.2s average speed figure and 99.99% uptime before anything else, which signals these are the numbers Decodo stands behind as headline claims. The product-level breakdown inside the dashboard and pricing pages adds more granularity per proxy type.
Performance Verdict
The published figures are specific and product-differentiated, which is more useful than a single aggregate claim. The sub-0.2s speed for static ISP proxies is among the fastest published figures across the platforms I have tested.
Free trials across all product types are the most direct way to validate performance against your specific targets before scaling.
Ease of Use
I evaluated four stages: the homepage, the registration flow, the pre-purchase dashboard, and the post-purchase dashboard.
1. Registration
Decodo leads with “AI-Ready Proxy & Scraping Solutions” against a dark background with green accent lines.
Clicking “Start for free” opens the registration page.
The right panel offers two social sign-in options at the top:
- Sign up with Google
- Sign up with GitHub
The manual form below collects Email and Password only, with a checkbox to accept the License Agreement and Privacy Policy, and a Continue button. There is no use-case dropdown or onboarding survey at this stage.
After registering, the dashboard opens immediately, but a yellow banner appears at the top: “Verify your email to purchase and use our solutions. Resend verification.”
Email verification does not block access to the dashboard, but it does block purchasing until completed.
2. The Pre-Purchase Dashboard
After registering, the dashboard opens to an overview page with two tabs across the top: “Proxies” and “Web Scraping API.” This is where you purchase your first product.
The Proxies tab is organized into three purchase models:
- Pay per GB: Residential proxies (from $3.00/GB, Free Trial), Mobile proxies (from $2.25/GB, Free Trial), Datacenter proxies (from $0.38/GB, Free Trial), and Static Residential ISP proxies (from $1.30/GB, Free Trial). Each card lists three key features and a “Go to pricing” button.
- Pay per IP: Datacenter Proxies Pay/IP (from $0.02/IP, Free Trial) and Static Residential ISP proxies Pay/IP (from $0.27/IP, Free Trial).
- Pay per dedicated IP: Dedicated Datacenter Proxies (from $1.15/IP) and Dedicated Static Residential ISP proxies (from $2.00/IP).
A Free Tools section at the bottom shows the Proxy Extension and Proxy Checker with Download buttons. A Site Unblocker section follows with Pay/GB and Pay/Req options.
The right column surfaces Resources links: Latest releases, Documentation, Quick start guides, Integration guide, and API documentation. A Community section below links to Discord and GitHub.
To order, you click “Go to pricing” on the relevant product card. This takes you to the product’s pricing page inside the dashboard, where you select a plan volume, see the order summary on the right, and can choose between “Continue to checkout” and “Start with a trial.”
The trial tooltip confirms: “Start a free trial and get 100MB for 3 days. After your trial ends, your chosen plan will activate automatically.”
Clicking “Start with a trial” moves to a three-step checkout: Choose plan, Payment method, Order Confirmation. The Payment method screen shows “Pay with Link” via Stripe, or a manual card entry form with full name, country, address, and email fields.
The order summary on the right shows the trial plan, the price per GB, free tools included, total, and a Trial Information timeline confirming the trial starts today, and the plan activates in 3 days.
3. The Post-Purchase Dashboard
Once a proxy product is active, the dashboard changes to reflect operational status. The main view switches to “Welcome to Decodo Dashboard!” with two tabs: My subscriptions and Explore products.
Under My subscriptions, each active plan appears as a card showing:
- Plan size and status (ACTIVE badge in green)
- GB used out of total allocation
- Next payment countdown in days
- A traffic graph for the last 7 days (download and upload separately)
- A “Detailed statistics” link
An ID Verification prompt appeared on my Residential plan card: “Verify your ID and unblock popular target groups.”
This is optional but unlocks access to platforms that Decodo restricts by default. The “Start verification” button opens the ID process.
The left sidebar changes after purchase to show which products are active with a green indicator dot next to them. The sidebar also expands to show subcategories: under Residential, you see sub-items for configuration and stats. The bottom of the sidebar shows “All Systems Operational” as a persistent status indicator.
The Explore products tab functions as a product catalog with filtering by Feature or Use case. Each product card shows its spec highlights, most popular use cases as tags, starting price, and a “Go to pricing” button.
A “Pick by your target” panel on the right lets you send a test request if you know your target but are unsure which proxy type to use.
4. Proxy Management
After going through the purchase flow and getting familiar with the dashboard layout, I wanted to see what managing a proxy actually looks like on Decodo day to day.
Specifically, I was interested in how configuration works, what the team access options are, how spending is controlled, and how easy it is to track usage over time.
Getting your proxy set up:
Each product has its own configuration widget accessible from the sidebar. For residential proxies, the widget asks you to pick your location, session behavior, and protocol, then generates a complete proxy list with code samples in cURL, Python, Node, PHP, Go, and Java.
The gateway address is gate.decodo.com:7000 for standard residential requests, and the documentation Quick Start page shows this alongside authentication and session type guidance from the moment you open it.
You do not need to hunt through pages of documentation to get a working connection string.
Controlling who has access:
Decodo handles access at two levels, and the distinction matters for teams. At the dashboard level, three roles cover most scenarios:
- Admin: full platform access
- Billing: manages payments and subscriptions only
- User: product access without billing or member management
At the proxy level, most products support sub-users with individual traffic limits set at the plan level.
If you need more sub-user slots than your plan includes, additional ones are available at $10 each. This is a practical structure for agencies or teams managing multiple clients or projects from a single account.
Managing your spend with the Wallet:
The Wallet tab inside My Subscriptions gives you a top-up slider, quick-add buttons at $10, $50, and $100, and a small bonus on larger top-ups. All activity is logged in a Transactions tab.
Once funded, the Wallet balance can be used instead of a recurring subscription, which means you can spend as you go without a monthly commitment.
One detail worth noting is that the Wallet cannot be used to start a free trial. That is flagged directly on the Wallet page, so there is no confusion at checkout.
Testing with the Web Scraping API Playground:
Before purchasing a scraping plan, the API Playground lets you send live test requests using a target template, a search URL, and your chosen proxy pool.
Standard covers 8 countries, Premium covers 193. JavaScript rendering is toggled on by default, and the generated request code appears in cURL, Node, or Python on the right side of the screen.
The playground is capped at 10 requests per day before a plan is active, which is enough to confirm the API works against your intended target. Once you have run a test, the code output is ready to drop into your script.
Tracking how much you have used:
Once you are running traffic, the dashboard gives you a clear picture of where it is going.
The home view shows a quick graph per active product covering the last 7 days, split by download and upload. Clicking Detailed statistics takes you deeper.
From there, you can filter by:
- Sub-user
- Date range (24 hours, week, month, or fully custom)
- Country
- Domain
- Connection protocol
If you need to pull usage data into your own reporting stack, the Public API handles that too. The endpoint is linked directly from the Help section, so you do not have to hunt for it.
Proxy management verdict:
- Setup widgets generate working, multi-language code samples without requiring external documentation
- Three-tier team roles and sub-user limits with $10 expansion slots cover most team structures
- The Wallet enables pay-as-you-go spending with no monthly commitment, and the trial restriction is clearly flagged
- The API Playground lets you validate your target before committing to a scraping plan
- Usage tracking with custom date ranges and domain-level filtering is thorough enough for ongoing operational monitoring
Overall Ease of Use Verdict
Decodo delivers one of the cleaner onboarding experiences reviewed. Registration takes under two minutes, the free trial requires no upfront payment, and the two-state dashboard transitions smoothly from product discovery to operational management after purchase.
The checkout Timeline panel that explains exactly when the trial starts and when billing activates is a small but meaningful detail that removes ambiguity.
The ID verification requirement to unlock popular targets is the one step that breaks the otherwise frictionless flow.
Level of Support
Decodo offers 24/7 support via live chat and email. Before reaching for the chat, though, there is a self-service layer inside the dashboard worth knowing about.
Help & Support and Documentation
Clicking Help & Support in the left sidebar opens a “Helpful sources” page inside the dashboard, organized into four sections:
- Quick start guide: Short setup instructions for proxies, the Web Scraping API, and tools
- Integration guides: Step-by-step instructions for browsers, operating systems, extensions, and proxy managers
- Technical issues: Troubleshooting guides and payment help
- API Documentation: Scraping API & Public API management documentation
A Decodo community panel sits to the right with links to Discord (for discussions, best practices, and discounts) and GitHub (for open-source code snippets and integration libraries).
The full Documentation hub is accessible via a tab in the sidebar and at a separate URL. It opens to an introduction page organized by product type, with a Quick Start card for every proxy category.
Each Quick Start covers authentication, proxy setup, location targeting, session type, protocol, code examples in cURL, Python, Node, PHP, Go, and Java, integration guides, usage statistics, restricted targets, and response codes.
The sidebar also includes an API Reference tab, a Changelog, and an “Ask AI” button for quick lookups.
This is one of the more complete documentation structures reviewed, with every product type having its own dedicated path rather than a shared generic guide.
The live chat widget is accessible from every page on the website and within the dashboard. I tested it directly.
Opening the Chat
Clicking the chat icon on the website opens a pre-chat form powered by LiveChat. The form collects three fields before starting:
- Your name
- Decodo account email
- A topic dropdown (I selected “Other questions”)
After submitting, Codie, the AI assistant, opens the conversation.
Codie’s Response
I asked: “How many residential IPs do you have in your pool, and how often is it refreshed?”
Codie responded immediately: “We have 115M+ residential IPs across 195+ locations. The pool is continuously refreshed as new devices join and leave naturally. There is no fixed refresh schedule.”
Accurate, clear, and honest about the absence of a fixed refresh cycle. A good first-line response.
Escalating to a Human
I asked: “Can I please speak with a human support agent?”
Codie responded: “Of course! Would you like me to transfer you to a human agent? You may need to wait for one to join.”
I confirmed the transfer. Vincent joined in under 30 seconds.
Vincent’s Responses
Vincent opened with: “Hello! I can confirm what our chatbot has said to be true, let me know how else I may assist you.”
I asked three questions in one message:
- Do you support both rotating and sticky sessions?
- What is the maximum sticky session duration?
- Are there custom or pay-as-you-go plans for lower volumes?
Vincent’s response:
“Yes! We support both connections. With our product, the maximum session duration would be 24 hours, or 1440 minutes. We do have pay-as-you-go, but the prices are fixed, I’m afraid. Custom pricing is available only on larger plans that are not visible on the checkout page, or the ones that prompt you to contact our sales team, just to be clear.”
Three questions, three direct answers. The clarification on custom pricing (available for larger volumes, not self-serve) is genuinely useful context that prevents buyers from expecting something the platform does not offer at standard tiers.
My Verdict on Support
Key observations:
- The pre-chat form is short and does not slow entry into the conversation
- Codie’s pool size answer was accurate and appropriately honest about refresh behavior
- Human escalation required a single confirmation and Vincent joined in under 30 seconds, the fastest human response time tested
- Vincent answered three separate questions in one reply without redirecting to documentation or hedging
- The pay-as-you-go clarification was precise and proactively prevented a potential misunderstanding
- The LiveChat platform shows “All Systems Operational” status in the sidebar, giving a useful real-time infrastructure signal without leaving the dashboard
Conclusion: Do We Recommend Decodo?
Yes, for a wide range of buyers from individual developers to larger data teams.
What stands out most is the support experience. Vincent joining in under 30 seconds after a single confirmation, and answering three questions directly without any deflection, is the kind of interaction that builds trust in a product you are considering running serious operations on.
The main trade-offs are the fixed pay-as-you-go pricing (no volume discount at lower tiers), the small trial allocation of 100MB, and the ID verification requirement to access popular target groups. None of these are dealbreakers, but they are worth knowing before you start.
For developers, scraping teams, data engineers, and businesses looking for a single platform that covers proxies, scraping APIs, and AI tooling under one roof, Decodo is a well-built option worth serious consideration.
