Decodo is Smartproxy: what you are comparing against
If you are searching for a Decodo alternative, it helps to know what you are actually comparing against. Decodo is the Lithuanian provider that operated as Smartproxy from 2018 until the rebrand in April 2025. The engineering, infrastructure, gateways and accounts carried over unchanged; the name, domain and product packaging did not.
The rebrand came with a deliberate repositioning from proxy vendor to web data platform. Alongside residential proxies, Decodo sells static residential (ISP), shared and dedicated datacenter, and rotating mobile proxies, plus Site Unblocker and a family of scraping APIs for general web, SERP, e-commerce and social targets. More recently it has shipped an AI parser and an MCP server so agent frameworks can call its scraping stack directly. That breadth is the point of the product, and it is the first thing to weigh before you replace it.
Nefo is still the simpler product on purpose, but it is no longer limited to just residential and mobile. It now sells residential proxies as prepaid bandwidth, static residential ISP IPs rented for 7 to 360 days, 4G/5G mobile ports on real carrier modems, shared rotating or sticky datacenter proxies, dedicated static IP proxies, IP Vault addresses you can keep, servers, and Marketplace APIs. There is still no scraping API, no unblocker, and no managed parsing layer. Whether that is a downgrade or a simplification depends entirely on which parts of Decodo you actually use.
When you should stay with Decodo
Decodo has a genuinely strong self-serve product. The dashboard is one of the better ones in this market, support is staffed around the clock, documentation is thorough, and its residential network reviews consistently well across independent benchmarks and public review sites. The company publishes an ethical sourcing position for its residential pool, which matters if procurement or legal ask questions before you sign.
The clearest reason to stay is scope. If your pipeline calls Site Unblocker, a SERP or e-commerce scraping endpoint, or the MCP server, you are buying managed unblocking and parsing, not raw egress. Swapping in any plain proxy provider means rebuilding that logic yourself: header and fingerprint handling, retries, CAPTCHA strategy, and parsers per target. That work is real and often costs more than the bandwidth saved.
- You use Decodo's scraping APIs, Site Unblocker, AI parser or MCP server, not just proxy endpoints
- You want static residential (ISP) IPs alongside residential from one vendor and one invoice, and need something Nefo's ISP range does not cover, such as a country outside its 24
- Your monthly volume is steady and predictable, so a committed subscription rate genuinely works out cheaper
- You want a single vendor with formal procurement, SLAs and enterprise onboarding
Decodo subscriptions vs prepaid non-expiring bandwidth
This is the structural difference, and it is the one that shows up in most Decodo switching conversations. Decodo's default is a monthly auto-renewing subscription. You choose a traffic tier, it renews on the same day each month, and unused traffic does not carry into the next cycle when a plan renews or is downgraded — it does carry over when you upgrade mid-cycle. Decodo also offers a pay-as-you-go path funded through its Wallet, but the subscription tiers are the mainline product and the route to lower per-GB rates.
That model is well suited to steady, forecastable consumption. Commit to volume, get a better rate, treat proxy traffic as a fixed monthly line item. It works against you when usage is lumpy: a quiet month, a paused project, a scraper that broke on day three, or seasonal work that runs hard for six weeks and then stops. In those cases you pay for traffic the calendar removes.
Nefo inverts it. Bandwidth is bought outright in prepaid packages starting at 5GB, and flexible plans are non-expiring — the balance sits in the account until traffic consumes it. There is no renewal date, nothing to cancel before a cycle closes, and no penalty for a month where you scrape nothing. The per-GB rate still falls with volume, but it falls by how much you buy, not by what you promise to use every month.
What carries over when you switch from Decodo
If you strip away the platform, the two residential products are closer than most comparison pages admit. Both cover a broad country footprint, both do sub-country targeting, both support sticky sessions measured in hours rather than minutes, and both speak the protocols a normal HTTP client already knows. A migration at this layer is mostly a change of hostname, port and credential format.
The Nefo side of that, specifically: HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 with username and password or IP allowlist authentication; 227 countries; state or region and city targeting in most countries; ASN and ISP targeting paired with a country; rotating sessions that change IP per request, and sticky sessions configurable from one minute up to about 24 hours per credential. Credentials are generated free from the dashboard and only traffic consumes bandwidth, so you can create one credential per project, per geo or per session profile without cost.
The honest gaps run the other way too. Nefo does sell static residential ISP IPs (dedicated, 24 countries, 7 to 360 days from $1.76 for 7 days), so check that your country and volume are covered. Fixed datacenter static IPs and IP Vault addresses are further options. Nothing in Nefo replaces a managed unblocker.
- Carries over: HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5, user:pass or IP allowlist auth, country targeting, state and city targeting, ASN targeting, rotating and long sticky sessions, static residential ISP IPs
- Changes: gateway host and port, session and geo syntax in the username string, dashboard and usage reporting
- Not available on Nefo: Site Unblocker, scraping APIs, AI parsing, MCP integration
Mobile proxies: Decodo's pool vs Nefo's rented ports
Both providers sell mobile, but they are not the same product and comparing them on price per unit is meaningless. Decodo's mobile offering is a rotating pool of 3G/4G/5G IPs with filtering across carriers and locations, metered like the rest of its traffic — you draw from a shared mobile pool and pay for what you move.
Nefo rents a port on a real carrier modem instead. One live rotating 4G/5G IP sits on that port, you hold it or change it on demand, and it is rented by duration from hours up to 30 days rather than by gigabyte, with US state- and carrier-level targeting available. That suits work where the IP itself is the asset and needs to stay the same for the length of an account session or a monitoring run, and where traffic volume is hard to predict in advance.
The trade is straightforward: a pool gives you breadth and per-request variety, a rented port gives you control and a fixed cost regardless of how much you push through it. Teams that need many mobile identities in parallel are usually better served by a pool; teams that need one stable mobile identity they can rotate on command are better served by a port.
How to switch from Decodo or split traffic safely
Nobody should cut over a production scraper on faith. The practical approach is to buy the smallest prepaid amount, point one worker or one target at Nefo while everything else stays on Decodo, and compare success rate, latency and blocks on the sites you actually care about — not on a generic benchmark. A 5GB entry package costs $4.50 ($0.90/GB), which is enough to answer the question honestly before anything migrates.
Because the Nefo balance does not expire, a split setup is stable rather than a race against a renewal date. Many teams end up staying split on purpose: Decodo for the targets where its unblocker and scraping APIs earn their keep, Nefo for high-volume plain residential egress and for the months when a project pauses. Usage is visible per credential in the dashboard and exportable as CSV, so you can attribute spend per project on both sides.
If you do intend a full move, time it around Decodo's billing cycle. Traffic left in a cycle stays usable until the cycle ends after you cancel, so cancelling early in a month wastes what you have already paid for; running the balance down first and cancelling near the end does not.
- Start with a 5GB prepaid top-up and one non-critical target, not a full cutover
- Compare on your own target sites, measuring success rate, latency and block patterns
- Keep Decodo for anything using Site Unblocker or scraping APIs
- Cancel a Decodo subscription near the end of a cycle so pre-paid traffic is not left behind
- Choose Nefo where usage is uneven, seasonal or project-shaped rather than steady
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo in April 2025. It is the same Lithuanian business, founded in 2018, with the same infrastructure, gateways and accounts. Only the brand, domain and some packaging changed, so reviews published under the Smartproxy name still describe the same network.
It is if you want raw proxies without a monthly reset. Nefo bandwidth is prepaid from 5 GB and does not expire, with 227 countries and sticky sessions up to about 24 hours. It is not a fit if you rely on Decodo's Site Unblocker, scraping APIs, AI parser or MCP server.
No. Nefo sells proxy bandwidth, mobile ports, static IPs, IP Vault, servers and Marketplace APIs, but no managed unblocking, prebuilt scrapers, AI parsing or MCP server. If your code calls those Decodo endpoints, you would rebuild that handling yourself.
Under Decodo's monthly subscription, unused traffic does not roll into the next cycle when a plan renews or is downgraded, but it carries over when you upgrade mid-cycle. After cancelling, remaining traffic stays usable until the cycle ends, so spend it down before you cancel.
Usually only the proxy string. Both providers use credentials over HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 (Nefo also supports an IP allowlist), so you swap the host, port and credential. Geo and session syntax in the username differs by provider, and anything built on Decodo's scraping API responses needs more than a string swap.
Teams with steady monthly volume that a committed subscription rewards, teams that want residential, ISP lines and platform tooling from one vendor, and anyone whose pipeline depends on managed unblocking or agent tooling. Nefo suits uneven usage and small starts; see pricing.