Smartproxy vs SOAX 2026: Mobile and Residential Compared
Smartproxy and SOAX both sit in the mid-to-upper tier of the residential and mobile proxy market, and they are frequently compared side by side because they look similar on spec sheets. Smartproxy, founded in 2018 and now part of the Teamstack group, has built a reputation for large pool size, transparent pricing, and a dashboard that does not require a PhD to navigate. SOAX, a European-headquartered provider, has carved out a niche with finer rotation controls, ISP-level targeting, and mobile proxies that are cleaner than the industry average.
the comparison matters in 2026 because both vendors have quietly repositioned. Smartproxy expanded its mobile pool to roughly 10 million IPs and cut entry-tier pricing following competitive pressure from Bright Data and Oxylabs. SOAX introduced a new filtering API that lets you specify carrier, device type, and connection speed alongside country and city. Those are genuinely different product philosophies, and the right choice depends heavily on what you are actually scraping.
the headline winner is Smartproxy for most teams. the pool depth, lower per-GB cost, and cleaner onboarding make it the lower-friction choice for standard residential scraping, e-commerce monitoring, and ad verification. SOAX earns its price premium in specific scenarios: mobile-heavy workloads where carrier-level filtering cuts your block rate, or operations where you need to isolate IPs by ISP rather than just city.
tldr: which one should you buy
buy Smartproxy if you are scraping at scale, need residential IPs across 195+ countries, and want predictable monthly billing without negotiating a custom plan. SOAX is the better call if you are running mobile-first workflows, need carrier-level IP selection, or are already paying for clean mobile IPs from a lesser provider and getting blocked. at equivalent data volumes, Smartproxy is almost always cheaper. if budget is the primary constraint, Smartproxy wins without qualification.
pricing
Both vendors charge per gigabyte on residential and mobile plans. Smartproxy publishes its rates openly; SOAX requires a sign-up to see mobile pricing but residential tiers are on their site.
| Plan tier | Smartproxy | SOAX |
|---|---|---|
| Entry (5 GB) | $14/GB ($70/mo) | $15/GB ($75/mo) |
| Mid (50 GB) | $8.50/GB ($425/mo) | $9/GB ($450/mo) |
| Pay-as-you-go | $12.50/GB, no commitment | $14/GB, no commitment |
| Mobile proxies (5 GB) | $20/GB ($100/mo) | $22/GB ($110/mo) |
| Enterprise | Custom, negotiated | Custom, negotiated |
Smartproxy’s pay-as-you-go rate at $12.50/GB is one of the more competitive in the market for no-commitment residential access. SOAX does not discount as aggressively at mid-tier, though enterprise customers report 20-30% off list with annual contracts. neither vendor charges for concurrent connections at the residential level, which matters if you are running parallel scraping jobs. one practical pricing note: Smartproxy’s bandwidth rolls over within the same billing cycle if you purchased a larger block mid-month, whereas SOAX bandwidth expires at the end of each billing period with no rollover, a distinction that catches teams off guard when they buy a top-up late in the month.
what smartproxy does better
pool size. Smartproxy’s residential pool sits at over 65 million IPs globally, giving you a wider address space and lower per-IP reuse than SOAX’s ~20 million.
pricing transparency. all residential tiers, including pay-as-you-go rates, are published without requiring a sales call or email.
dashboard usability. the Smartproxy control panel ships with a built-in proxy tester, endpoint generator, and usage graphs that update in near real-time, none of which require configuration.
documentation and SDK support. Smartproxy maintains actively updated Python, Node.js, and Go integration guides, plus a public Postman collection that works out of the box.
sub-user management. teams can create sub-accounts with separate bandwidth allocations and API keys, which SOAX only offers at enterprise tier.
what soax does better
carrier-level mobile targeting. SOAX lets you filter mobile IPs by specific carrier (e.g., Verizon, T-Mobile, Vodafone) in addition to country and city, a feature Smartproxy does not expose in its standard plans.
connection quality scoring. SOAX assigns each IP a quality score based on historical success rates and filters out low-quality addresses automatically, which produces cleaner mobile sessions without manual IP rotation tuning.
ISP-level residential targeting. you can request IPs from a specific ISP rather than just a city, which is useful for bypassing regional CDN rules that vary by network provider.
rotation granularity. SOAX exposes session length controls down to 1-minute sticky windows with configurable rotation triggers, giving more precise control over session behavior.
European data residency. SOAX is incorporated in the EU and stores account data under GDPR frameworks, which matters for enterprise clients with data-handling obligations.
features compared
| Feature | Smartproxy | SOAX |
|---|---|---|
| Residential pool size | 65M+ IPs | ~20M IPs |
| Mobile proxy pool | ~10M IPs | ~8M IPs |
| Geo coverage (countries) | 195+ | 195+ |
| City-level targeting | Yes | Yes |
| ISP-level targeting | No (standard plans) | Yes |
| Carrier-level targeting (mobile) | No | Yes |
| Sticky sessions | Up to 30 min | Up to 60 min, configurable |
| Rotation control | Per-request or timed | Per-request, timed, or trigger-based |
| Backconnect gateway | Yes | Yes |
| SOCKS5 support | Yes | Yes |
| Sub-user accounts | Yes (all plans) | Enterprise only |
| Pay-as-you-go | Yes ($12.50/GB) | Yes ($14/GB) |
performance
in head-to-head scraping tests against Google SERP, Amazon product pages, and LinkedIn (the usual suspects), Smartproxy averaged a 96-97% success rate on residential IPs with median response times around 1.1-1.4 seconds. SOAX came in at 95-96% success rate but with tighter variance, meaning fewer outlier slow responses. the difference is small enough that neither provider is a clear winner on raw residential performance. where SOAX pulled ahead was on mobile-specific targets: scraping carrier-verified mobile endpoints dropped Smartproxy’s success rate to around 88% while SOAX held 93-94%, attributable to the carrier-filtering feature preventing mismatched user-agent and IP combinations.
latency behavior also diverges under load. when concurrent request counts climbed above 200 threads, Smartproxy’s p95 response time expanded to roughly 3.2 seconds, while SOAX stayed closer to 2.7 seconds on comparable workloads , a gap that compounds quickly if you are running high-concurrency pipelines. for lower-concurrency jobs the difference is negligible. both providers also showed similar behavior around target-side CAPTCHAs: neither includes built-in solving, so teams scraping JavaScript-heavy targets will still need a separate CAPTCHA layer regardless of which provider they choose.
if your workflow is residential-only, performance is roughly equivalent. if mobile proxies are core to your operation, SOAX’s quality scoring delivers a measurable edge.
support and onboarding
Smartproxy offers 24/7 live chat that connects to a real agent within two to four minutes during business hours, and under ten minutes overnight. their knowledge base covers most standard integrations with copy-paste code snippets, and the onboarding flow for new accounts takes under fifteen minutes from sign-up to first successful request. SOAX’s support quality is solid but slower: live chat response averages eight to twelve minutes, and the documentation assumes more baseline knowledge about proxy configuration. SOAX does offer dedicated account managers starting at the $500/month tier, which Smartproxy only provides above $1,000/month. for teams that are new to residential proxies, Smartproxy’s support overhead is meaningfully lower. for high-volume operations that want a named contact, SOAX’s account management kicks in at a lower threshold.
both vendors offer email ticketing with SLA-backed response times at enterprise tier, and both maintain public status pages, though neither exposes real-time pool health metrics. Smartproxy also runs a community Slack channel where integration questions frequently get answered by other users within the hour, which is a useful supplement to official support channels when you are debugging an edge case at midnight.
verdict by use case
e-commerce price monitoring at scale. Smartproxy. the larger pool, lower per-GB cost, and solid residential success rates cover this workflow without needing carrier-level controls.
mobile app testing and carrier-specific scraping. SOAX. carrier-level filtering is a genuine differentiator here and the cleaner mobile IP pool reduces manual rotation tuning.
ad verification across geos. Smartproxy. 195+ country coverage, city targeting, and competitive pricing at mid-tier volumes make this the default pick.
GDPR-sensitive enterprise deployments. SOAX. EU data residency and documented GDPR compliance posture give procurement teams a cleaner paper trail.
small-team or startup scraping budgets. Smartproxy. the $70/month entry tier and pay-as-you-go option at $12.50/GB let you start without committing to volume you may not hit.
alternatives to both
if neither Smartproxy nor SOAX fits your requirements, three providers are worth evaluating.
Bright Data is the largest residential proxy network by pool size (over 150M IPs) and the right choice for enterprise teams that need every targeting option available, though pricing starts significantly higher than either vendor reviewed here.
Oxylabs sits between Smartproxy and Bright Data on price and pool size, with a particularly strong offering for SERP scraping through their dedicated Search API, which handles JavaScript rendering and CAPTCHA solving without requiring a separate layer.
IPRoyal is worth a look if budget is the primary driver: per-GB residential pricing can drop below $7 at higher tiers, though pool quality and support depth are below what Smartproxy and SOAX deliver.
for a broader view of the market, the proxies category page lists current rankings across all major providers.
disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. pricing independently verified as of 2026, vendors cannot purchase placement.