Smartproxy VS BrightData: Which One is Right for You?

In this comparison article, we are considering two of the most famous proxy providers in the market and we’ll cover all the pros and cons of Smartproxy vs Bright Data. This should hopefully help you choose between the two, if you’re looking for a proxy provider and want a rundown of their features.

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: Bright Data vs Smartproxy – 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 but more control and customization.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Proxy Provider

Regardless of the proxy platform you choose, here are some important considerations when making your selection:

• Number of proxy IPs and geographical locations
• Price
• Other tools (such as web scrapers and data insights)
• Uptimes and response times
• How technically minded you are (do you need simple interfaces or are you advanced?)
• Do you need mobile proxies?
• How much do you rely on customer support?
• Do they have pay as you go or month to month tiers?
• How much data do you think you’ll need?

All of these are important points to know in advance, so consider gathering this data before making your proxy provider selection.

Comparing Top Features of Both Platforms

Before getting into each individual feature of the platforms, here is a comparison table for anyone wanting a quick rundown. 

Next, we’ll cover the biggest features and services one by one, comparing Bright Data vs Smartproxy so you can decide which provider best meets your needs. Overall, both platforms have a lot of similar benefits and functions, so it may come down to the little things that make or break your decision. 

Residential Proxies: Head-to-Head Comparison

Here’s the overview of residential proxies for each platform: 

Smartproxy:

• 99% uptime
• Unlimited threads and concurrent sessions
• Response time is <0.5s
• HTTP(S) and SOCKS5
• Live statistics
• Targeting by country, state, city, ZIP and ASN
• 55M+ residential proxy IPs and 195+ global locations

Bright Data: 

• Sticky and rotating sessions
• 99.95% rate of success
• HTTP(S) and SOCKS5
• Free Geo-location targeting and precise targeting options
• 0.7 response time
• 72M+ residential IPs in 195 countries

There are a lot of similarities between these two options in terms of their residential proxies and the accompanying features. They both have high uptimes, precise parameters for targeting, the same number of global locations, and other similar factors. The biggest difference between the two is that Bright Data has substantially more residential IPs and Smartproxy has slightly faster response times. 

Datacenter Proxies: A Battle of Speed and Scale

Smartproxy: 

• 500K+ proxies
• 99.99% uptime
• Average speed is <0.3s
• Rotating and static IPs
• High download speed retention
• Unlimited connections and threads
• Shared and dedicated datacenter proxies

Bright Data: 

• Datacenter proxy network of 770,000 IPs
• Both shared and dedicated IPs
• Response time of 0.24s
• Free geo-location targeting
• 99.99% uptime
• Can pay per IP or bandwidth usage

Bright Data, as well as Smartproxy, have their own dedicated as well as shared data center proxies. Bright Data 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: Who Does It Better?

For quicker comparison, let’s look at the services offered by both 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. Bright Data, 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.                                                                                                          

Pricing Plans

The plans for each service heavily differ depending on the kind of proxies you need, if you choose monthly versus annual fees, if you need enterprise solutions, the list goes on and on. Rather than inundate you with every possible pricing tier available, here’s a basic rundown of ranges and tiers for Smartproxy vs Bright Data. 

Smartproxy: 

• Residential proxies range from $7.00 USD monthly to $700 USD monthly. The more GB you want, the more expensive the monthly fees. 
• Static residential proxies range from $35 USD monthly for 10 IPs to $700 USD monthly. There are also lots of price variations if you choose to pay per IP or GB, so do a bit of research before you decide what fits you best.
• Mobile proxies range from $8.00 USD per month to $400.
• Datacenter proxies range from $30 USD per month to $600 per month. You can also pay per IP, GB, or dedicated options.
• Site unblocker plans range from $28 USD per month to $700. You can also choose to pay per request instead.

Overall, the pricing options have wide and somewhat confusing variations and web scraping tools, enterprise tiers, and other features have their own pricing plans too. Also, there are often significant introductory discounts and deals. However, be aware that renewal pricing will be substantially more so try to plan for that in advance so you’re not surprised when the time comes. 

If you only plan to use the service for a limited time, ask about cancellation and auto renewal dates, if applicable. Sometimes users try to cancel before renewal only to find out they missed the required date and suddenly they’re stuck in another payment cycle. That said, pay as you go tiers can be a helpful solution for this. 

Bright Data: 

• Residential proxies range from a pay-as-you-go option of $8.4 per GB all the way up to $1999 per month. Mobile proxies have the same prices.
• Datacenter proxies range from $14 USD per month to 900.
• ISP proxies range from $18 USD per month to $1300.

The general structure of pricing models seem to be a bit simpler than Smartproxy, but there are lots of other plans available, such as paying for scraping automations or data insights. 

Overall, Smartproxy is less expensive, but it depends on what plan you want, how many GB or IPs you need, and other variables. 

User Experience: Simplicity vs. Customization

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 less 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 Metrics: Speed, Reliability, and Reach

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.

Bright Data has 72 million IPs in its residential proxy pool. Meanwhile, Smartproxy has 55 million residential IPs. 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. With Smartproxy, they have a slight edge in speeds for residential proxies, but Bright Data is ever so slightly faster with their datacenter proxies. Either way, both are fast and responsive so even if you choose the slower option, it won’t be very noticeable. They are also both some of the fastest providers on the market, so it’s hard to go wrong with either one. 

Coming to global reach, both Smartproxy and Bright Data mark their presence in 195 countries. You can filter the location by city, state, country, and ASN.

As for session stickiness, Smartproxy datacenter sessions can last up to 30 minutes or residential proxy sessions can go for up to 24 hours. Bright Data doesn’t have time limited sessions, instead they can have configurable auto-rotation per request or per session.

Customer Support: Which Provider Has Your Back?

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 TrustPilot highlight that Smartproxy has better pre-sale support. They also have more easily accessible support that you can initiate much faster.

Smartproxy vs. Bright Data: The Final Verdict

After looking at both proxy services, it’s time for a verdict on Smartproxy vs Bright data.

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 and good standard customer support. That said, prepare yourself for a bit of research when selecting your tier and plan. It can get complicated quickly, especially if you add things like web scraper tools.

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, as they have a lot more granular and controllable options. They also have a more simplified pricing structure.

Frequently Asked Questions: Everything You Need to Know About Proxies

Here are some commonly asked questions regarding proxies that users may find helpful when selecting their service. 

• What is a residential IP? 

When learning about proxies, first, it’s helpful to define a residential IP address (internet protocol address). These are basically IPs that are linked with actual devices such as computers, smartphones, etc. These addresses are registered in public databases and were assigned by actual ISPs (Internet Service Providers), which allows websites to determine the location and ISP network of the device. Proxy services provide their customers with use of these types of IP addresses, allowing them to use this alternate IP instead of their real one.

• What is a residential proxy?

A residential proxy is basically a server that intermediates between websites and users. They utilize actual IP addresses that have been assigned to actual people by their ISP. By using this valid but alternate IP address, you can protect your true IP identity and location, increasing your privacy. Because you’re using a genuine IP, anti-bot solutions will have more difficulty detecting you too, as you’ll be hard to differentiate between a regular web user.

You also have geo-targeting capabilities, which means you can select where you want your proxy server to connect to by choosing the specific region, city, country, and even zip code. These residential IPs have improved legitimacy and reputation than datacenter IPs, and the networks can have up to millions of these IP addresses. The more IPs the service has, the more options for you as a user. Also, the more locations the service has, the more options you have in terms of choosing where your traffic appears to be coming from. 

• What is a datacenter proxy?

Datacenter proxies work similarly to residential proxies, however, these IP addresses are not actually affiliated to ISPs. Instead, these proxies are usually purchased in bulk and they often come from cloud service providers. They may also be used by a multitude of users at the same time. 

Each time you connect online you’ll have a new and unique IP, so your online identity is frequently changing, keeping your web traffic private. Some pros to datacenter proxies are that they are usually cheaper, faster, and more accessible. Cons are that they can be flagged as not being legitimate because they don’t have an affiliated real ISP. This means they are easier to detect by anti-bot technology and may be banned more often than residential proxies. 

• What is a mobile proxy provider? 

This is when a service provides access to mobile proxy servers. It is able to function through a mobile proxy network so that web traffic can be directed through it. This traffic is routed through mobile networks that can be spread all over the globe. This makes it look like your web traffic is coming from a different region or country. Because these proxies have to come from actual mobile devices, sourcing them is a bit trickier for providers. Because of this, they tend to be more expensive than residential proxies. 

• What is web scraping?

Web scraping is a way to get large quantities of data from a website. Often, this data is collected in unstructured HTML and is later converted into its structured form. This lets users extract data from sites without having to manually copy it, saving time and energy. Converting this data into its structured form can be a bit time consuming, however, as it must be organized by pattern and other specifics.  

One way to make this process easier is by using an API (Application Programming Interface). This custom service works like a bridge between multiple software or servers, creating connections quickly. It’s basically a set of tools and rules that let software easily communicate between each other, which is a method that some developers use to let programs interact with one another.

API scraper tools are ideal, when available, as they work similarly to regular web scrapers but more simply and quickly. They can pull structured data from a site that is already organized into a cleaner format for review, instead of having to do it yourself.

Be aware, however, that not all sites provide an API as they may not want third parties to interact with their data, such as for privacy and security reasons. In those cases, simple web scraping is the only method for extracting data, which may violate terms of service or simply be more complicated and time consuming. 

Many proxy services, like Bright Data and Smartproxy, have specialized API or web scraping tools. They can have optimizations for data scraping for: 

• Social media
• SERP (search engine results page)
• eCommerce
• Web and browsing scraping

If you need to perform web scraping frequently, look into the specific tools that your proxy provider can offer. This can help you choose the most fitting platform for your data pulling needs.