Smartproxy (Decodo) Alternative

What is Smartproxy (Decodo)?

Smartproxy, founded in 2018 and rebranded to Decodo in April 2025, is an enterprise proxy provider with over 65 million residential IPs across 195+ countries. The platform targets businesses requiring large-scale web scraping, ad verification, and market research capabilities.

Decodo offers residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies alongside specialized APIs for SERP scraping, social media, and e-commerce data collection. Their Site Unblocker feature automatically handles CAPTCHAs and anti-bot measures.

Decodo vs CorsProxy.io

Decodo and CorsProxy.io serve entirely different markets:

Target Use Case: Decodo is built for server-side web scraping operations requiring IP diversity. CorsProxy.io solves browser-based CORS restrictions for frontend applications.

Browser Support: Decodo proxies require server configuration or browser extensions. CorsProxy.io works natively in browsers with a URL change.

// Decodo requires proxy configuration
// Server-side only - cannot run in browser
import axios from 'axios';

const response = await axios.get(url, {
  proxy: {
    host: 'gate.decodo.com',
    port: 10001,
    auth: { username: 'user', password: 'pass' }
  }
});

// CorsProxy.io works directly in browsers
const response = await fetch(
  `https://corsproxy.io/?url=${encodeURIComponent(url)}`
);

Pricing Analysis

Decodo’s pricing favors high-volume enterprise users:

Use Case Alignment

Choose Decodo if:

• You’re running server-side scrapers
• You need millions of unique IPs
• You’re collecting data from protected sites
• You have enterprise-level budgets

Choose CorsProxy.io if:

• You’re fixing CORS errors in web apps
• You need browser-native solutions
• You want predictable, simple pricing
• You’re building frontend applications

The CORS Problem Decodo Can’t Solve

Browser CORS errors happen because browsers block JavaScript from making cross-origin requests without proper headers. No amount of IP rotation or proxy configuration fixes this—the browser itself enforces these restrictions.

CorsProxy.io specifically addresses this by:

1. Receiving your request at a CORS-enabled endpoint
2. Fetching the target resource server-side
3. Returning it with proper CORS headers

This browser-native approach is impossible with traditional proxy services like Decodo.