Various proxy service providers provide residential proxies on the market, and these numerous possibilities will bewilder you. They provide identical features and cater to the same demographic in many instances. However, significant distinctions between them might influence your purchasing choice for the better.
Oxylabs and Smartproxy are the leading home proxy service providers on the market. These companies are at the top of the proxy recommended list. This post was intended for you if you are indecisive about choosing an option.
This post will compare Oxylabs and Smartproxy in various ways, including IP pool size, location coverage, geo-targeting, etc. So, let us begin.
Oxylabs Overview
Oxylabs is one of the top proxy suppliers that helps firms gain business intelligence data, providing premium proxies and enterprise-level assistance. Oxylabs allow organizations to manage the needed data and locate information in all the appropriate places. From our perspective, Oxylabs staff has decades of personal expertise in site scraping; they know their work exceptionally well.
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Oxylabs is the world’s leading provider of premium proxies and data scraping solutions for large-scale online data extraction.
Pros and Cons List of Oxylabs
The Pros
- Resources for proxy servers that are reliable and stable
- Dedicated account manager
- 24/7 customer support
- Success rates are high
- Filtering by ASN and country
- Real-time data collection tool
- Overall best performance
- Compatibility with HTTPS, HTTP, and SOCKS5
The Cons
- Provide more pricing options
- The entry threshold is high
Oxylabs customers may maintain robust data collecting infrastructures that support their operations owing to millions of premium data centers and residential IPs. They also offer sophisticated solutions such as Next-Gen Residential Proxies, which leverage AI and ML to capture data with a 100 percent success rate — regardless of the target’s complexity.
SmartProxy Overview
As a premium proxy provider for your IP addresses with unlimited concurrent connections, Smartproxy provides a service comparable to many of its premium rivals at a lower price.
There are several proxy kinds, and Smartproxy provides four of them. Residential and data center networks are the most frequent. Smartproxy also offers Search Engine proxies, a comprehensive scraping API that incorporates a proxy network, web scraper, and data parser, in addition to other varieties.
Best offer on SmartProxy
It offers an excellent price-to-features ratio, so you receive a tremendous amount of value. In addition, each plan provides access to the free tools required to manage proxy duties. X Browser, a multi-profile anti-detection management tool, and Smart Scraper, a code-free data harvesting tool, are examples.
Pros and Cons List of Smartproxy
The Pros
- Large proxy pool
- Affordable prices
- Useful apps and browser extensions
The Cons
- SOCKS5 not available
- No Mobile proxies
Smartproxy is a good alternative if you want a user-friendly data access solution and effective proxy administration capabilities. With it, you can compete equally with more prominent organizations that gather vast data and more technically adept rivals.
Comparison at a glance
- Products & Services: Oxylabs
- Ease of Use: Oxylabs
- Session management & IP Rotation: Oxylabs
- Location coverage & geo-targeting: Oxylabs
- IP Pool Size and Source: Oxylabs
- Pricing Options: Tie
- Overall: Oxylabs
Oxylabs Vs. Smartproxy – Features Comparison
1. Ease of Use:
Oxylabs –
Purchase an Oxylabs subscription, log onto your new account, and you’re transported to the company’s online dashboard, its one-stop proxy administration center. There’s more to understand and do here than with most competitors, but for a good reason: as I’ve seen, Oxylabs offers so many more features than just about everybody else.
For instance, when starting, you’re invited to establish one or more sub-users to assist manage your projects. This isn’t just about authentication through a username and password, though: you can also elect to restrict the traffic a given sub-user may consume, a helpful method to manage your bandwidth allowance.
It’s similar everywhere on the dashboard; Oxylabs isn’t doing anything strenuous; it’s simply offering you more choices we seldom see elsewhere. While regular proxy lists only arrive in plain text, Oxylabs may provide them in JSON. And a Statistics page informs you how your projects are doing in tremendous detail, including target websites, bandwidth utilized, requests, mistakes, and more.
A knowledge base provides all you need to know, from the dashboard fundamentals to more sophisticated features to help customize the service for your particular requirements.
If you need more, Oxylabs provides live chat 24/7 (I received helpful replies within a few minutes), and you can submit a ticket, send an email, or speak to your account manager. Others claim to offer ‘premium’ assistance, but Oxylabs indeed provides it, and it’s fantastic to have that level of resource accessible when you’re handling a heavy-duty proxy project.
SmartProxy –
By registering with Smartproxy, you can access its web-based “smart dashboard,” where you may monitor and control your items.
I began at the Authentication area, which enabled us to choose how proxy access would be granted. Smartproxy defaults to username:password authentication, but it also supports allow-listed IPs (possibly more convenient since Smartproxy knows your requests are valid merely because they originate from your IP address).
Smartproxy’s cheaper subscriptions only permit extremely shortlists. Its Micro option, for instance, only allows a single allow-listed IP address. The Smartproxy Endpoint Generator builds a proxy list using your credentials and other chosen variables (location, rotating or sticky session type, endpoint, port, or HTTP output format). Please copy and paste this into your favorite program, or save it as a CSV or TXT file and import it.
Smartproxy also provides bespoke applications to help you get the most out of your proxies. X Browser is a multi-session browser for Windows and Mac that allows for creating numerous Chrome profiles, each with a unique fingerprint. Once configured, you may start new Chrome windows for those profiles, each with a unique IP, with a single click.
Verdict – Oxylabs Wins
2. Session Management and IP Rotation System:
The two services are rotating proxies, but how often does each service change the IP address of its users? If you want to retain a session on a platform, it is best to keep the same IP address; otherwise, you will be identified as a bot if you change your IP address. After submitting hundreds of millions of queries to the two service providers, I saw that less than sixty percent of the IPs were unique.
Oxylabs –
Oxylabs has the most effective IP rotation solutions for rotating residential proxies. They support proxy servers that change their IP address after each request. This is ideal for applications requiring frequent IP changes to conceal an IP footprint, such as web scraping. Additionally, the services provide session proxies that keep an IP address for some time before changing it. Their service allows you to continue sessions for up to 30 minutes. The time is up to you, and their session management system is perhaps the finest on the market.
SmartProxy –
In terms of IP rotation and session management, Smartproxy proxies are among the most effective. Like the preceding one, this service utilizes proxies with a high rate of IP address rotation that change with each request. In the case of session ports, time-based rotation is also supported. Three supported periods is one minute, ten minutes, and thirty minutes.
Verdict – Oxylabs Wins
3. Location Coverage and Geo-Targeting:
The internet is becoming more localized, and it is no longer sufficient to utilize just high-quality IP addresses; the geolocation of the IP address will influence whether it can be used to access particular material. How do these two service providers compare? In general, the geographical coverage of the two carriers is outstanding, but let’s examine the specifics.
Oxylabs –
Oxylabs is an outstanding company. It supports all nations around the globe, as well as all states and the majority of cities. In light of this, they endorse not just country-level targeting but also state-level and city-level targeting. This makes them ideal for activities requiring state- and city-specific targeting.
SmartProxy –
Smartproxy provides excellent location coverage. According to the information on its website, it has proxies from more than 195 countries, which suggests that it supports all nations. However, only eight cities are supported in terms of municipal assistance. This implies that whereas nation-level targeting may offer IPs from every country, city-level targeting is only available for eight cities worldwide. This is not an issue for most proxy users unless you want IPs from certain towns.
Verdict – Oxylab Wins (Close Win)
4. IP Pool Size and Source:
The size of a proxy pool is one characteristic that residential proxy users consider. While few people care about the origin of the IPs they use, the source is significant since it tells if the provider is ethical or immoral.
The IP pool sizes of proxy services are mentioned, which is something you should be aware of. The number of active IP addresses in their pool is far lower, and we have no way of knowing the truth.
Oxylabs –
Using the claimed amount of IP addresses in a home proxy pool, Oxylabs has the most significant residential proxy pool on the market, with more than 100 million IP addresses. It’s IPs are obtained using P2P networks. However, it has been shown that Oxylabs engages in unethical tactics. It was revealed that the Oxylabs proxy network is powered by embedded scripts in popular apps that turn the devices of users who installed the software without their knowledge into proxy server infrastructure.
SmartProxy –
Smartproxy is the lowest proxy pool on the list, yet still among the biggest on the market. Currently, Smartproxy has a collection of approximately 40 million IP addresses. Its IPs are obtained from P2P networks as well. There are rumors that Smartproxy utilizes the IP pools of other premium providers.
Verdict – Oxylabs Wins
Oxylabs Vs. SmartProxy: Pricing Comparison
First of all, I would like to clarify that the pricing plans of both platforms are 100% worth it. They both offer a range of services, and their pricing varies on their services. Check out these screenshots for an overview of them and their complete plans from their official websites.
In the case of Oxylabs, if you register on behalf of a business, you may be eligible for a 7-day free trial when company registration and ownership are verified. Please ensure that you have the authority to represent your firm and sign contracts in its name. Their staff will contact you after the trial to discuss the findings. Also, they offer a 3-day money-back guarantee. On the other hand, SmartProxy does not provide a free trial but offers a 3-day money-back guarantee.
As you can see, the pricing plans of SmartProxy are cheaper than Oxylabs. The clear winner here is SmartProxy when it comes to pricing. However, Oxylabs offer better features and a free trial if you meet the requirements making their user experience better and helping build a little more trust in their services. So, I will call this a tie.
Verdict – Tie
Final Verdict – Oxylabs Wins
Oxylabs and SmartProxy are both leading proxy providers in the market. Both offer a great product with a lot of features. However, there are some critical differences between the two that you should consider when choosing a proxy provider.
Here’s a quick overview of the critical differences between Oxylabs and SmartProxy –
- Oxylabs offers a much larger pool of IP addresses than SmartProxy.
- Oxylabs has a more sophisticated proxy management system, making it easier to control your proxies and ensure they work correctly.
- Oxylabs’ pricing is more flexible, allowing you to choose the perfect package for your needs.
So, which proxy provider is right for you? If you need the highest level of control and security, then Oxylabs is the better choice.
FAQs
What is a proxy?
A proxy is an intermediary between your computer and the internet. It lets you send and receive data online while hiding your IP address. This way, you can browse the web anonymously and safely.
Why do I need a proxy?
There are many reasons why you might need a proxy. For example, if you want to keep your identity and location private when browsing the web, a proxy can help. Proxies can also allow you to bypass restrictions and access blocked websites.
What types of proxies do Oxylabs offer?
They offer a variety of proxies, including residential, mobile, and data center brokers. Each type has unique advantages, so you can choose the one that best fits your needs.