AX/C/03 — AX/COMPARISONS
Published: Apr 18, 2026

Bright Data vs Oxylabs vs Smartproxy

Three top providers of residential / datacenter / mobile proxies. Price, IP pool size, success rate, support — head-to-head 2026.

Best for
Bright Data
Enterprise with high target volume and budget
Oxylabs
Companies needing dedicated support and SLA
Smartproxy
Mid-market, good cost/quality balance

Three market leaders in proxy 2026. Together they hold ~70% global market share. Each has its own specialty.

Bright Data (formerly Luminati)

Largest IP pool — 72M+ residential IPs, 7.5M datacenter, 7M mobile, 700k ISP. Global coverage 195 countries.

Pricing 2026: Residential from $8.4/GB (pay-as-you-go), tier-based from $5.5/GB above 1TB. Datacenter $0.6/GB. Mobile $26-40/GB.

Plus: broadest IP pool, good for niche-country geo-targeting. Fastest (low latency). Compliance docs for EU.

Minus: expensive, dashboard is complex, support slow for non-enterprise.

Oxylabs

Lithuanian player, second-largest pool — 100M+ residential, premium quality. Best customer support in the industry.

Pricing 2026: Residential from $8/GB, scale from $4/GB. Datacenter $0.65/GB. Mobile $22/GB.

Plus: dedicated account manager from $500/mo tier, scraping API for popular sites (zero parser maintenance), white-glove onboarding.

Minus: slightly smaller pool than Bright Data, comparable pricing. Better web UI but not much cheaper.

Smartproxy

Cheapest of the three, good quality. ~55M residential IPs, most from residential ISPs. Clean interface.

Pricing 2026: Residential from $7/GB, scale from $3.5/GB. Datacenter $0.4/GB. Mobile $14/GB (cheapest mobile).

Plus: lowest entry-level prices, simple dashboard, good for SMB and mid-market.

Minus: smaller pool than the top two, less geo coverage, support OK but not excellent.

Comparison table
FeatureBright DataOxylabsSmartproxy
Residential pool size72M+100M+~55M
Residential price entry$8.4/GB$8/GB$7/GB
Datacenter price$0.6/GB$0.65/GB$0.4/GB
Mobile price$26-40/GB$22/GB$14/GB
Geo coverage195 countries195+ countries~190 countries
Account managerEnterprise onlyFrom $500/monthEmail support
Scraping APIs (turnkey)Yes (Web Unlocker, SERP API)Yes (Real-Time Crawler)Yes (Site Unblocker)
Free trial7-day, $5 credit7-day, 100MB3-day, $0 risk
Verdict
Bright Data for enterprise — biggest IP pool, hardest geos, most tools. Oxylabs for companies wanting dedicated support and scraping APIs (less maintenance). Smartproxy for SMB and mid-market — 20-30% cheaper at 90% of the quality. In practice many clients hold contracts with 2 providers (failover + price negotiation leverage).