IPRoyal vs. Smartproxy (Decodo) – An In-depth Feature Comparison

IPRoyal and Smartproxy (Decodo) are proxy market leaders, offering reliable and feature-packed services. Individuals and businesses use their proxy servers to protect them online and enable use cases like SEO monitoring, ad verification, and web scraping.

Comparing IPRoyal vs Smartproxy requires an in-depth look into their proxy type offerings, pricing, and performance. With relevant aspects in mind, you can decide whether you need the supplementary features of Smartproxy (Decodo) or the value-to-performance of IProyal.

Note: All data collected in March 2026 from the official company websites and bestproxyfinder.com.

Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo in April 2025. The proxy services and infrastructure remain largely the same. We’ll refer to Smartproxy and Decodo interchangeably in this comparison.

IPRoyal vs Smartproxy: Overview

Both proxy providers have a selection of proxies and scraper APIs, but Smartproxy is more oriented toward web scraping solutions. On the other hand, IPRoyal places greater emphasis on the quality and value of its proxy infrastructure.

Residential Proxies

Rotating residential proxies are the flagship product of both companies. Whether you go with IPRoyal or Smartproxy, you’ll get access to ethically-sourced residential IPs from over 195 locations worldwide.

Both companies support country, city, and state-level targeting, as well as sticky and rotating sessions. No matter which service you choose, you can authenticate your proxies with whitelisted IPs or username:password authentication.

Another similarity is the protocol support. Both providers support HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 connections. Safe to say that most typical use cases will be similar with both providers, except for the differences below.

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IPRoyal Residential Proxies

IPRoyal’s residential proxy servers stand out for their flexibility. They are commonly used with the pay-as-you-go pricing model or with subscription plans, allowing users to order as many GB without contracts, monthly minimums, expiration, or any other limits.

IPRoyal combines non-expiring traffic with generous bulk discounts, making it a cost-efficient approach for users. It also offers an auto-top-up feature, ensuring you don’t run out of traffic when you need it most.

IPRoyal stands out in terms of session control. The service allows you to change your IP for each request or keep it anywhere from 1 second to up to 7 days. Such precise session control is quite rare in the industry, but it doesn’t mean IPRoyal stands down in other aspects.

IPRoyal’s proxy pool comprises over 32 million IPs and spans all continents. While other providers boast their pool size, it’s rarely important to typical users. The IP quality is what’s important, and IPRoyal can attest to that.

Smartproxy Residential Proxies

Smartproxy claims its residential proxy network comprises over 115 million IP addresses worldwide. It’s one of the largest proxy pools on the market, considering the advertised numbers.

The residential proxy service is plan-based, with a pay-as-you-go option. Choosing a monthly plan reduces the price per GB, especially once you order more traffic. However, unused traffic is transferred only if you upgrade your plan.

As long as you have sufficient traffic, you can make unlimited connection requests. IPs can be rotated per request or kept for 1, 10, or 30 minutes, which is decent but far less flexible than IPRoyal’s precise session control.

Datacenter Proxies

Whether you go with IPRoyal or Smartproxy’s dedicated datacenter proxies, you can expect 99.99% uptime, API support, unlimited bandwidth and threads, and SOCKS5 support.

While both companies cover the basics well, Smartproxy stands out by offering dedicated and shared datacenter proxies. However, IPRoyal includes dedicated datacenter IPs for really competitive prices.

IPRoyal Datacenter Proxies

IPRoyal’s datacenter network covers over sixty countries worldwide. All datacenter IPs are static and dedicated, ensuring you’re the sole owner of the bandwidth allocated to you.

The service follows a monthly-plan model, allowing you to buy datacenter proxies for 30, 60, or 90 days with zero bandwidth limits. You can order even a single proxy for as low as $1.57 per month. The longer the plan duration and the more IPs ordered, the cheaper the proxies.

For example, going with the 90-day plan reduces the cost per proxy to $1.39. The self-service is set up in such a way that users can acquire new IPs and add more to their orders right away.

Smartproxy Datacenter Proxies

Smartproxy has shared and dedicated datacenter proxies. The shared proxy network consists of over 100,000 IPs in only 18 countries. You can choose to pay per IP or GB, with both options supporting rotation if needed.

The dedicated datacenter proxy service consists only of US static proxies. Like with most proxy providers, such plans are priced per IP and provide unlimited bandwidth. When ordering the proxies, you can choose between HTTP and SOCKS5.

Prices start at $5.55 per month for a minimum of 3 sequential dedicated datacenter IPs. The price per IP lowers when you order more proxies.

IPRoyal vs Smartproxy: Performance and Reliability

Most testing shows a negligible difference of a few percentage points in success rates, response time, and uptime. Data from Best Proxy Finder shows SmartProxy’s success rate at 99%, and some APIs even 100%. Tests on IPRoyal’s servers confirm their claims of success rates of at least 97%.

The average download speed of the SmartProxy network is around 30 MPS, while upload consistently reaches 18 MPS. IPRoyal’s high-end servers show higher download (32 MPS) and upload (27 Mbps) speeds for their high-end servers.

The uptime of both providers is reliably stable, with reports close to 99% efficiency. More importantly, uptime status is transparently displayed by both providers and can be verified to stay consistent.

If we take the performance-to-price ratio of both providers, IPRoyal is the more efficient Choice. With $1.75 per GB for residential proxies, it delivers much of the same, if not a bit faster, performance than Smartproxy.

Supplementary tools offered by Decodo might change the value calculation, for example, by reducing IP bans in certain tasks. However, they also cost additionally, so IPRoyal’s offerings should be evaluated with the corresponding tools you have self-developed or purchased from third parties.

In the end, the performance and reliability differences between Decodo and IPRoyal vary by use case. The best data you can get is by testing both providers yourself for your setup.

Ease of Use

Both providers have a similarly user-friendly dashboard, self-service, and a pretty straightforward sign-up process. IPRoyal’s dashboard is more straightforward for proxy use, while Smartproxy contains various additional tools.

IPRoyal Dashboard and Setup

As long as you have a valid email address, you can register with IPRoyal. You can also use the sign-up with Google or LinkedIn options. Once you verify your email, you can fully use the dashboard.

If you represent a company, there’s a separate section to create team access with role-based permissions, centralized billing, and other features. Otherwise, the dashboard is made to help you purchase datacenter, residential, ISP, and mobile proxies right away without much hassle.

With instant delivery, you can use the proxies minutes after ordering them. You’ll also find plenty of useful content, a quick-start guide, and the Help Center to start using the service as fast as possible.

Smartproxy Dashboard and Setup

If you want to create an account on Smartproxy, you’ll have to use your email or sign up with the Google and GitHub options. Once the email is verified, you can start purchasing proxies and other tools.

The dashboard is split into two main tabs, one for residential, datacenter, ISP, or mobile proxy purchases, and the other for their web scraping API. The latter encompasses various proxy-related services, although to use these services fully, you’ll need to jump around between tabs quite frequently.

Helpful resources like a quick-start, integration guides, and support contacts are as easily accessible as in IPRoyal’s dashboard. If not for the additional tab, the general usability of both dashboards is similar.

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Customer Support

Both IPRoyal and Smartproxy have their customer service available 24/7 via live chat or email. They offer API documentation, quick-start guides, FAQs, and integration guides for major automation tools, browsers, and software.

IPRoyal Support

IPRoyal’s hands-on support provides quick and competent responses. Support agents are available at any time of the day or night to help customers get the answers and solutions they need. You can contact them via email or live chat, and a Discord option is also available.

And if you’re a larger client, you’ll get a dedicated account manager. The company offers multiple support tools for free, including a Windows-based proxy tester to test proxy lists for selecting the fastest ones, and Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox-based browser extensions .

Smartproxy Support

Smartproxy’s support team replies quickly via live chat or email. The support agents use a friendly tone, so it’s like talking to a friend for expert advice. You can also connect to other users via Discord or find valuable resources and tools by joining their GitHub.

Like IPRoyal, Smartproxy offers useful free tools, including a Chrome and Firefox extension, and a proxy checker. The company also offers multiple scraping APIs and other tools that are not included in the proxy subscription.

IPRoyal vs Smartproxy: Pricing Comparison

Pricing is one of the most important factors when choosing a proxy provider, as getting the best value for money isn’t easy with all projects. While both IPRoyal and Smartproxy offer pay-as-you-go options for their residential proxy servers, their pricing strategy is what sets them apart the most.

IPRoyal Pricing

IPRoyal’s rotating residential proxies are based on pay-as-you-go and subscription models. Coupled with affordable prices, the lack of monthly minimums and long-term contracts makes the service attractive for price-conscious users.

You can order as little as 1 GB for only $7 and reduce the cost to just $1.75 per GB if you order traffic in bulk. The pricing is below the industry average, so users of all budget brackets can afford it.

On top of that, the traffic you buy won’t expire after your billing period. What you buy is yours until you use it up completely. It allows you to buy more traffic and use it whenever you need it, today, tomorrow, the next month, year, etc.

IPRoyal’s datacenter proxy service comes in monthly plans, letting you choose between 30, 60, and 90-day subscriptions. You can order as many datacenter IP addresses as you want, starting from 1 IP for only $1.39 with the 90-day plan.

In terms of plan duration, only mobile proxy plans stand out. You can purchase them for as little as 24 hours. Currently, a single mobile proxy IP for a day costs $10.11.

IPRoyal accepts multiple payment methods, including PayPal, wire transfer, credit cards, iDEAL, Giropay, EPS, Bancontact, and over 25 cryptocurrencies.

Smartproxy Pricing

Smartproxy sells residential proxies via pay-as-you-go or subscription models. If you decide to pay as you go, you’ll have to pay a fixed $4 per GB. Unlike with IPRoyal, the price per GB won’t get lower once you order more traffic.

Subscription plans range from 3GB to 1000GB per month, with plans for regular and enterprise clients. Note that the traffic you purchase does not transfer to other months. So while buying more traffic gets you a better price, you must know exactly how much traffic you’ll need.

All Smartproxy’s datacenter proxies also use a subscription-based pricing model. The shared proxies allow you to pay per GB with traffic limits or pay per IP address purchased. Dedicated datacenter proxies come with a pay-per-IP model, with the minimum amount of 3 IPs costing $5.55 for a month.

Enterprise clients can get significantly better deals by ordering larger amounts of shared datacenter traffic or a higher number of dedicated datacenter IPs. A 14-day money-back guarantee is included in all Smartproxy plans. Yet, many customers complained on Trustpilot about not getting the refund they deserved.

Pros and Cons

IPRoyal Pros

• Non-expiring bandwidth plans
• Better value for irregular workloads
• Convenient for both sticky and rotating sessions

IPRoyal Cons

• Fewer supplementary scraping tools
• Smaller IP pool

Smartproxy (Decodo) Pros

• Large IP pool
• More scraping API tools
• Separate enterprise offers

Smartproxy (Decodo) Cons

• Expiring bandwidth plans
• Higher costs for irregular traffic projects

IPRoyal vs Smartproxy: Final Verdict

Both providers offer reliable and convenient proxy services for regular and enterprise clients. In the end, you should consider the budget and use-case requirements of your proxy projects.

• Choose IPRoyal for project-based workloads when non-expiring traffic and flexible pricing might save you money.
• Choose Smartproxy (Decodo) for working with difficult but consistent targets when you cannot develop your own API tools or rely on third-party solutions.

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