Decodo Review

Decodo is the new name of Smartproxy, a provider operating since 2018. The 2025 rebrand changed the public identity, not the history of the service. The business is run by UAB “Data troops,” a Lithuanian company based in Vilnius.

What began as a recognizable residential proxy brand has become a much larger access platform. Decodo now runs four main proxy families—Residential, Mobile, ISP, and Datacenter—and divides the infrastructure-based products into traffic-priced pools, shared static lists, and dedicated IP lists. Alongside those networks, it sells managed web-access and scraping tools for customers that do not want to handle proxy rotation, browser fingerprints, retries, or page rendering themselves.

This range is not merely a collection of differently named plans. The services cover genuinely different forms of access: peer devices for residential and mobile traffic, ISP-registered addresses for longer-lived identities, datacenter capacity, and managed request processing for difficult websites. A customer can therefore expand from raw proxy access to a higher-level data product without moving to another company.

Decodo also publishes a sourcing policy for its peer-based networks. It says residential and mobile exit nodes come through providers and wholesalers whose application users must be informed, provide consent, and receive a reward. That does not independently verify every address in the pool, but it gives the company a stated standard for how those networks should be assembled.

Decodo's catalog looks complicated because ISP and Datacenter access appear in three forms each. In practice, the portfolio is built around four networks. Residential and Mobile are large peer pools. ISP and Datacenter can be accessed through a traffic-priced gateway, a shared static list, or an exclusively assigned list. This is an important part of Decodo's appeal: customers are not pushed into one billing or allocation model simply because they need a particular IP type.

The common technical base is strong. All services support IPv4, HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5, credentials, and source-IP allowlisting. Rotation is not confined to residential IPs: the ISP and Datacenter gateways can rotate per request or hold a session, while the static products retain the same addresses. Decodo has therefore built a portfolio that ranges from disposable IP access to long-lived identities without forcing customers to learn a completely different platform.

Residential and Mobile offer PAYG and monthly traffic plans. ISP Pay/GB starts with a 1 GB monthly allowance and Datacenter Pay/GB with 10 GB. Static products are billed by address, sometimes with a separate traffic tier. Additional traffic, thread capacity and automatic refreshes can incur extra charges on shared Pay/IP plans.

Decodo offers a three-day trial with 100 MB of traffic on Residential, Mobile, ISP Pay/GB, ISP Pay/IP, Datacenter Pay/GB, and Datacenter Pay/IP subscriptions. The two Pay/IP trials include 10 addresses. PAYG purchases and both Dedicated services are excluded, and each eligible product can be tried once per account.

The trial requires payment details and may place a temporary payment pre-authorization. It turns into the selected paid subscription unless cancelled before the three days end. Non-JavaScript proxy traffic is limited to 10 requests per second during the trial.

The most important condition is the relationship between the trial and the refund policy: using a trial removes the 14-day refund option for a later purchase of the same service. The trial therefore provides a small amount of traffic for checking access and setup, but it is also the customer's only pre-purchase protection for that product.

Most Decodo products are purchased and activated through a self-service account. Pool services provide credentials and gateway endpoints, while static products also populate My IP List and allow the assigned addresses to be copied or downloaded as CSV or TXT. Access can be authenticated with a username and password or approved source IPs.

The delivery method changes with the product without changing the account environment. Residential and Mobile users generate endpoints and session parameters; Pay/GB customers use gateway ports for rotating or static sessions; Pay/IP and Dedicated customers manage address lists. This consistency matters in a catalog of this size because customers do not need a separate panel for each network family.

Identity verification is selective rather than universal. Decodo may request a compliance review, and access to certain restricted targets is available only to verified paid Residential accounts. Individuals can be asked for an identity document and selfie, while organizations may need to provide registration details, their use case, and intended targets.

The dashboard is one of Decodo's strongest features. It combines purchases and plan changes, billing history, invoices, Wallet and auto-top-up controls, credentials, source-IP allowlists, endpoint generation, static IP lists, API keys, and webhooks. Usage reporting can be broken down by traffic, requests, targets, countries, users, and IPs. Proxy statistics update every 10–15 minutes and can be retained for up to 180 days.

Team workspaces support Owner, Admin, Billing, User, and combined Billing/User roles. This makes Decodo suitable for organizations in which technical staff need proxy access while finance or administrators retain control over payments and account settings. Webhooks add event reporting for upcoming and failed payments, auto-top-ups, traffic thresholds, trials, and account suspension.

The Public API is useful but does not mirror the entire dashboard. Residential receives the deepest coverage, including endpoints, sub-users, allocations, subscriptions, traffic, and allowlists. Mobile exposes traffic and target statistics. ISP and Datacenter products cannot be managed through the published API. Decodo therefore provides strong account tooling, but companies seeking one API for every proxy family will encounter a clear boundary.

Decodo maintains an extensive English Help Center and API reference, together with a Chinese documentation section. Each proxy format has its own quick start and separate guidance for authentication, protocols, sessions, list management, locations, usage statistics, limits, and restricted targets.

That product-by-product organization is valuable because Decodo's services often look similar at first glance while following different rules for traffic, threads, refreshes, and fair use. The documentation gives those differences a permanent reference outside the checkout interface.

Setup guides cover Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, major browsers, proxy managers, antidetect browsers, and automation tools. Quick starts and dashboard generators provide examples for cURL, Python, Node.js, PHP, Go, and Java. There is also dedicated troubleshooting material for authentication, connections, location selection, and payments. For a platform with this many products and controls, the documentation is not an afterthought; it is part of what makes the service usable.

Self-service payments support cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, cryptocurrency, and prepaid Wallet credits. Wire transfers are reserved for Custom and Enterprise arrangements. Cryptocurrency cannot be used for ISP Pay/IP or Datacenter Pay/IP. Prices and Wallet balances are denominated in US dollars, with VAT and other applicable taxes added where required.

Monthly plans renew automatically until cancelled. Residential and Mobile PAYG accounts can use Wallet credits and automatically purchase another 1 GB when 90% of the active allowance has been consumed. Billing records and invoices remain available in the dashboard, and webhooks can warn account systems about upcoming charges or failed payments.

The range of payment and account controls fits Decodo's international self-service model. The part requiring attention is not how to pay, but which renewal and expiry rules belong to each product: PAYG traffic can last up to 12 months, while monthly allowances normally expire and static products renew by subscription.

Decodo offers a conditional refund on the first self-service purchase within each service type. The request must be sent through LiveChat within 14 calendar days and before usage exceeds either 20% of the plan or 1 GB, whichever limit is reached first.

The policy does not cover a product after its free trial has been used. It also excludes cryptocurrency payments, Enterprise plans, later payments for the same service type, expired Wallet credits, abuse, and breaches of the agreement. Approved refunds can take up to five business days. Eligible payments return to the original method where possible, while purchases made with Wallet credits return to the Wallet.

This is meaningful purchase protection for a first order, but the low usage ceiling makes it a short evaluation window rather than a general satisfaction guarantee. Customers must also choose between the free trial and later refund eligibility for the same service.

Decodo prohibits illegal, fraudulent, abusive, harmful, rights-infringing, disruptive, and unauthorized resale activity. Some target categories are restricted at the network level. Selected business, mailing, and streaming targets can be opened after identity verification, but only on paid Residential plans.

ISP and Datacenter SOCKS5 connections support TCP and UDP. Destination access is limited to ports 80, 443, 563, 8443, and 43, while mailing and messaging traffic is blocked. Customers in Russia and Belarus cannot use the service, and sanctions or export-control requirements may exclude other jurisdictions.

Plans advertised as unlimited remain governed by measurable fair-use rules. ISP and Datacenter Pay/IP subscriptions enter fair use after both 10 TB of total traffic and 25 GB per IP are exceeded. Dedicated ISP and Datacenter use the same 10 TB total threshold with 100 GB per IP. Crossing both thresholds reduces the subscription to 10 threads for the remainder of the billing period.

Product pages advertise 99.99% uptime, but the License Agreement does not turn that figure into a contractual uptime commitment with service credits. This distinction matters mainly to organizations that require a formal SLA rather than a public reliability claim.

Decodo provides 24/7 support through LiveChat and email. Standard customers also have the Help Center and public status page, which separates documented service incidents from individual support conversations. Custom and Enterprise arrangements can include an account manager.

The support structure matches the rest of the platform: routine setup is handled through documentation and round-the-clock channels, while larger accounts can add a named commercial contact. Decodo does not force ordinary self-service customers into a sales conversation before they can buy or operate the main proxy products.

Decodo's product range extends well beyond raw proxy credentials. Site Unblocker handles proxy selection and rotation, retries, browser fingerprints, CAPTCHAs, and JavaScript, then returns the result through a proxy-style endpoint or REST workflow. Web Scraping API adds browser execution and extraction templates, while Fast Search API returns normalized search results.

Video Downloader sends video or audio to customer storage, and High-Speed Proxies is a sales-led service for high-volume video traffic. These products show where Decodo has moved as a company: proxy networks remain the foundation, but customers can also buy completed access and extraction workflows instead of building everything around raw endpoints.

The company also provides 10 fixed shared Datacenter IPs through a Free Proxies plan. AI Parser, Chrome and Firefox proxy extensions, and Proxy Checker are free tools rather than separate paid networks.