This article compares two of the most well-known proxy services. Two rival businesses are Bright Data (previously Luminati) and Smartproxy.
Bright Data has been a prominent player in the industry since 2014. In comparison, Smartproxy is a very new business that was launched in 2018. Nevertheless, the website has gathered a sizable user base.
Bottom Line Upfront: Bright Data provides more customization and possibilities at a premium price. On the other hand, Smartproxy offers cost-effective solutions to meet the demands of a wider variety of customers. Here’s the deal: you can consider Smartproxy and see if it satisfies most of your needs, or you can get the Bright Data if budget is not a concern.
Comparing Smartproxy vs Bright Data: What Are The Offerings?
Scraping APIs and tools
Look at what Smartproxy and Bright Data have to offer in terms of services for a quick comparison:
- An e-commerce scraping API is included with both.
- A free proxy add-on for Chrome is included with both.
- Both social media and web scraping APIs are provided.
- Both solutions offer website unblocking and SERP Scraping API.
Users of Smartproxy have access to a No-Code Scraper API. In contrast, Brightdata boasts 73+ pre-built javascript functions in their web scraper IDE tool, as stated on their own website.
With every subscription level, Smartproxy provides a number of features, including its own X Browser and its Firefox add-on.
Datacenter Proxies
There are dedicated and shared datacenter proxies for both Bright Data and Smartproxy. Even though Smartproxy has over 500,000 IPs globally spread across 400 subnets, Brightdata asserts ownership of over 770,000 IPs from data centers. Aside from that, they both support SOCKS5 and HTTP(S) and have an unlimited number of concurrent threads and sessions.
Residential Proxies
A far larger variety of proxies is available from Bright Data. Compared to Smartproxy’s 40 million, its pool of residential proxies is 72 million. Having said that, there is hardly any discernible variation between the two brands’ unique IPs. Both have nearly the same success rate.
What makes a difference is the response time. Smartproxy claims a response time of 0.61 seconds on their official website, although Bright data provides conflicting confirmation that it is closer to 1 second.
According to the information on their respective websites, both of them have IP addresses available in all countries.
Performance
Smartproxy and Bright Data are both well-established names in the business when it comes to performance. Using metrics like pool size, response time, locations, and IP rotations, we’ll evaluate the two proxy service providers side by side.
Bright Data’s residential proxy pool contains 72 million IPs, according to a blog post on the official Smartproxy website. Meanwhile, Smartproxy offers 55 million home IP addresses. According to the blog post, the number of unique IP addresses used by both systems is practically identical. Thus, the speed at which your requests are processed will be nearly identical as well.
Next, we will discuss the reaction time. Smartproxy boasts an impressively fast response time of 0.61 seconds. Bright Data, on the other hand, claims to be slightly slower than Smartproxy, with a response time of approximately 1 second.
Smartproxy and Bright Data both boast a global coverage of 195 countries. One more ASN targeting feature from Bright Data is the ability to filter the location by city, state, and country.
Furthermore, Smartproxy provides a variety of sticky sessions: one, ten, or thirty minutes. When it comes to IP rotation, Bright Data has the upper hand because of all the customization choices it provides.
RECOMMENDED GUIDE: Smarproxy Review
User Experience
Smartproxy could be the way to go if you’re short on time or just don’t want to wax poetic. To make things easier for you, Smartproxy reduces the amount of customization you get.
Take the residential proxy tab as an example; it contains subtabs for every element, such as pricing, traffic use, subscription management, and more. There is also a separate screen for more generalized information.
Conversely, Bright Data offers more customization options, although its user interface can be a bit complex. Understanding all of its features and capabilities will require additional time and effort.
For example, users may require some programming expertise to fully leverage the many application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by the proxy manager software, which may require a download.
In conclusion, Smartproxy and Bright Data are not the same. Compared to other proxy servers, Smartproxy is more user-friendly and may be ideal for those with little to no experience with programming. Conversely, Bright Data is worth considering if you require more customization.
RECOMMENDED GUIDE: Bright Data Review
Customer Service
Unlike Bright Data, whose live chat is reserved for premium members only, Smartproxy’s executives are available 24/7 to help customers through their website. In addition to the principles, there is a frequently asked questions section with illustrations. Also, Smartproxy has video tutorials, so it’s much easier to follow.
In addition, if you need more in-depth assistance, you can submit an email ticket and wait for a response from one of their executives. Excellent pre-sale assistance is also available, and you can even discover a dedicated Telegram group for it.
The way Bright Data handles customer care is quite similar. In order to facilitate live chat for their clients, they have Telegram and Whatsapp channels. An email ticketing system is also available for support at Bright Data.
All things considered, the customer service departments of Smartproxy and Bright Data are equally fast. Trust Pilot reviews, however, show that Smartproxy offers superior pre-sale help.
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Pricing
To obtain the best value for your money, check out Smartproxy and Bright Data price options.
For regular users, Smartproxy offers a more affordable residential proxy pricing plan that starts at $4/GB for Residential Proxies and 0.52/1k requests for web scraping API. With Smartproxy, residential proxies are also pay-as-you-go, which simplifies and lowers costs for users. All things considered, Smartproxy offers value-based pricing.
Additionally, Bright Data offers pay-as-you-go subscriptions. For cost savings, switch to commitment-based plans. Monthly payments are due for the advanced plan ($1000), the advanced + plan ($2000), and the beginning plan ($500). Annual plans frequently offer discounts despite the fact that this may seem costly.
It may not be as easy as it seems. Users who buy proxies from ISPs, for example, will have to pay for both the IP count and the amount of bandwidth they consume. More money will be required to “unlock” further services like reducing traffic usage constraints.
In conclusion, Smartproxy has an easier price structure. Check out Bright Data, though, if you’re after more customization options and something more permanent.
Also, Read:
- Best Twitter Proxy Provider
- Best Instagram Proxy Provider
- Best Amazon Proxy Provider
- Best Facebook Proxy Provider
Final Thought – The Winner: Smartproxy vs. Bright Data
It is now time to reach a decision after examining both proxy services.
Smartproxy is the best proxy service for regular use. Its user-friendly interface compensates for its limited personalization choices. Their pricing is quite reasonable, like 911Proxy, considering the pricing offered by other proxy services like Oxylabs.
Smartproxy does have a smaller pool of residential proxies; however, this may be limiting for some users. In addition, we found that Smartproxy does not provide many personalization options. Those who prioritize personalization over convenience will find Bright Data to be the best choice.
