Smartproxy VS BrightData: Which One is Right for You?
Smartproxy vs Bright Data: An Introduction
In this comparison article, we are considering two of the most famous proxy providers in the market. On one side, we have Bright Data (formerly Luminati), and on the other,there is Smartproxy.
Bright Data has been around since 2014 and is considered to be a big name in the industry. Meanwhile, Smartproxy opened its business in 2018, which makes it relatively new. However, in a short span, the service managed to acquire a sizable consumer base.
Now we come to the main question: Smartproxy VS BrightData – which one should you choose?
To save you some time, here’s a quick overview –
Bright data provides greater customization and choices at premium rates. On the other hand, Smartproxy meets the demands of a wider array of customers at convenient rates. So, here’s the thing – consider Smartproxy and check whether it meets most of your needs, or you can go with Bright Data with a steeper cost.
Now it’s time to take a deeper dive into both services.
Smartproxy vs. Bright Data: What do they offer?
To start with, we will compare a few of the major services offered by Smartproxy and Bright Data:
Residential Proxies
Categorically, Bright Data has a much wider range of proxies to offer. It has a pool of 72 million residential proxies, while Smartproxy has only 40 million. However, the difference in unique IPs for both brands is negligible. Even the success rate is almost similar for both.
The response time is what creates the difference. According to Smartproxy’s official website, its response speed is 0.61 seconds, while Bright data ambiguously confirms its response speed to be around 1 second.
Both of them have their IPs available in all the countries, as per the details on their official websites.
Datacenter Proxies
Bright Data, as well as Smartproxy, have their own dedicated as well as shared data center proxies. Brightdata claims to own more than 770,000 data center IPs as compared to that of Smartproxy, with more than 500,000 IPs around the world with 400 subnets. Other than that, both come with HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 IP types, with unlimited concurrent sessions and threads.
Scraping APIs and tools
For quicker comparison, let’s look at the services offered by Smartproxy and Bright Data:
– Both the providers come with a website unblocker as well as SERP Scraping API.
– Both offer social media as well as web scraping API.
– Both come with a free proxy extension for Chrome.
– Both come with a dedicated e-commerce scraping API
Smartproxy comes with a No-Code Scraper API for its users. Brightdata, on the other hand, has a web scraper IDE tool that comes with 73+ ready-made javascript functions, as per their own website.
Among others, Smartproxy also offers its own X Browser with each subscription plan, apart from its extension for Firefox.
Smartproxy vs Bright Data: Pricing Plans
To ensure that you get your money’s worth, let’s look at the pricing plans of Smartproxy and Bright Data.
For users with general requirements, Smartproxy has a better pricing plan that starts from 7.5 USD. And if you shell out 50 USD, you can get a web scraping API. Further, Smartproxy also comes with a pay-as-you-go option for residential proxies, making it easier and budget-friendly for the users. Overall, we can say that Smartproxy offers a a value-based pricing model.
Meanwhile, Bright Data also offers pay-as-you-go plans. And these plans get cheaper if you switch to commitment-based plans. For example, the starter plan needs a minimum purchase of USD 500 per month, the advanced plan needs USD 1000 worth of purchase per month, and that of the advanced + plan is USD 2000. Now, this might sound like a lot of money, but the annual plans usually have discounts.
But it’s not as simple as it sounds. For instance, users purchasing ISP proxies will have to pay for the number of IPs as well as for the traffic usage. To “unlock” additional features like removing traffic usage limits, you will have to shell out more.
To sum it up, Smartproxy comes with a simpler pricing model. However, if you want a higher level of customization and long-term plans, you might want to have a look at Bright Data’s plans.
User Experience
If you don’t have much time or if you don’t want to get into details, then Smartproxy might be the right solution for you. With Smartproxy, you get lesser customization, which, in turn, gives you a more user-friendly experience.
For instance, you can open the residential proxy tab, and it will have separate sub-tabs for every detail – like pricing, traffic usage, subscription management, and more. This is in addition to a dedicated screen for general information.
Meanwhile, Bright Data provides greater customization with a somewhat complicated user interface. It will definitely need any user to invest more time and effort in learning about its different functions and areas of service.
For instance, users need to download the proxy manager software in order to control the different proxies and might need prior programming knowledge to get the best out of its different APIs.
To sum up this section, we can say that Smartproxy and Bright Data are quite different. Smartproxy is more suited to general use and can be great for people who have no or limited knowledge of programming. Meanwhile, if you need greater customization, we recommend looking at Bright Data.
Performance
Coming to performance, both Smartproxy and Bright Data are standard companies in the industry. In this section, we will compare both proxy service providers based on their pool size, response time, locations, and IP rotations.
As per a blog post on the official Smartproxy website, Bright Data has 72 million IPs in its residential proxy pool. Meanwhile, Smartproxy has 55 million residential IPs. The blog post claims that both services have a negligible difference in the number of unique IP addresses, which means the speed of processing your requests will almost be the same.
This brings us to the response time. As per the same blog post, Smartproxy has a response time of 0.61 seconds, which is quite fast. Meanwhile, Bright Data claims to have a response time of about 1 second, which makes it slightly slower than Smartproxy.
Coming to global reach, both Smartproxy and Bright Data mark their presence in 195 countries. You can filter the location by city, state, and country, which Bright Data offering an additional ASN targeting option.
Further, Smartproxy offers sticky sessions that range – you can choose from one, 10, or 30 minutes. Now, here, Bright Data has an edge as it offers more customization options for IP rotation.
Customer Service
Smartproxy offers 24/7 customer support via live chat on their website, which is tended to by their executives, while Bright Data only offers this to their premium members. You can also refer to the well-illustrated FAQs section as well as the guidelines. What’s more is that Smartproxy provides video instructions, making it easier for users to follow.
Further, for more elaborate support, you can use their email ticket and wait for the executives to get back to you. You will also find great pre-sale support, and they even have a Telegram channel for it.
Bright Data has a similar approach to their customer service. They have Telegram as well as Whatsapp channels to enable live chat for their customers. Bright Data, too, has an email ticketing system for support.
Overall, we can say that both Smartproxy and Bright Data have prompt customer support. However, as per customer reviews on Trust Pilot highlight that Smartproxy has better pre-sale support.
Smartproxy vs Bright Data: The Verdict
After looking at both proxy services, it’s time for a verdict.
In general, Smartproxy wins the race when it comes to general use. While it might have fewer customizations, Smartproxy compensates for it with a user-friendly interface. Plus, you get a standard proxy service at a rather reasonable price.
On the flip side, Smartproxy has a smaller IP pool of residential proxies, which some might find limiting. Further, as mentioned earlier, Smartproxy has limited customization options. So those who prefer better customization over user-friendliness should consider getting Bright Data instead.