The Best Decodo Alternative for Pay-As-You-Go Pricing

Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, lists residential proxies at $4.00 per GB pay-as-you-go, and its smallest subscription is

1.25 a month for 3 GB — an effective $3.75 per GB. QuantumProxies Residential Basic is
.00 per GB with a $5 one-off minimum and nothing that renews.

The verdict: QuantumProxies

QuantumProxies is the better buy. Decodo is one of the more reasonably priced established providers, which makes this the closest comparison we publish — and we still come out four times cheaper per gigabyte, with no monthly plan attached.

  • Four times cheaper to start:
    .00/GB against $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go.
  • A $5 one-off order instead of an
    1.25 monthly subscription.
  • Our cheapest rate, $0.80/GB, is well under Decodo's $2.75/GB floor.
  • Nothing renews. No plan to cancel, no monthly bandwidth allowance to waste.

QuantumProxies vs Decodo: what a gigabyte costs

What you actually payQuantumProxies Residential BasicDecodo
Entry price per GB
.00 / GB
$3.75 / GB
Minimum to start$5 (5 GB, no subscription)
1.25 (3 GB, smallest monthly subscription)
Pay-as-you-go without a planYesYes
Cheapest advertised rate$0.80 / GB$2.75 / GB
What that cheapest rate requiresA 1 TB purchase ($800). No monthly contract.a monthly subscription tier

Competitor prices verified 2026-07-29. Decodo figures are advertised list prices from its public pricing page, recorded in our residential proxy pricing index on the verification date shown above. Decodo's entry price is calculated from its smallest advertised subscription:

1.25 per month for 3 GB. QuantumProxies figures are from our live plan catalogue. All prices in USD, excluding VAT.

Decodo, which traded as Smartproxy before its rebrand, sits in the middle of this market: cheaper than the enterprise networks, more expensive than the value tier, with a polished dashboard and a genuinely low-friction signup. It is a reasonable product. It is also four times our price per gigabyte, and it wants you on a monthly plan to get there.

A 4x gap, and a subscription underneath it

Decodo's pay-as-you-go rate is $4.00 per gigabyte against our

.00. Its cheapest subscription is
1.25 a month for 3 GB, which works out to $3.75 per gigabyte and commits you to a recurring charge. Our entry order is $5 for 5 GB, once, with no renewal date. On 100 GB a month the difference between $4.00 and
.00 per GB is $300 — every month, for the same category of address.

The monthly allowance problem

Subscription bandwidth creates a quiet cost that never appears in a price comparison: the gigabytes you paid for and did not use. If your scraping volume varies — and for most teams it does — a monthly allowance means overpaying in the slow months and hitting a ceiling in the busy ones. Buying bandwidth outright removes the guesswork. You purchase what you need, when you need it, at the same

.00 rate.

What Decodo is genuinely better at

One thing clearly: risk-free evaluation. Decodo offers a 3-day free trial and a 14-day money-back window. We do not match that — our terms state that fees are non-refundable, and we would rather say so on this page than let you discover it at checkout. If being able to claim a refund after two weeks is what decides your purchase, Decodo offers something we do not.

But a $5 order is a smaller risk than a refund claim

Weigh it against what the risk actually is. Testing us costs $5 for 5 GB — less than a single month of Decodo's cheapest plan, and small enough that a refund process would not be worth anyone's time. You are not committing to a subscription you would need to remember to cancel, and you are not relying on a refund window to escape a bad fit. Run 5 GB against your real targets and you will know within an afternoon.

Decodo or Smartproxy: same company, same pricing

If you are comparing against Smartproxy, you are comparing against Decodo. It is the same company under a new name, and the product line, dashboard and pricing structure carried across the rebrand. Search demand still splits across both names, which is why plenty of comparison content is out of date. The figures on this page are from Decodo's current public pricing page, recorded on the verification date shown above.

What you get for
.00 per GB

Real ISP-assigned residential addresses across 200+ countries, rotating and sticky sessions, HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 on every plan, and country-level targeting — the same network our premium residential tier draws from. Plus a Scraper API, a SERP API and an MCP server billing from the same balance, so an agent workflow does not need a second vendor.

Volume pricing without a plan

The rate falls with size and still nothing recurs: 500 GB is $450, or $0.90 per GB, and 1 TB is $800, or $0.80 per GB. That $0.80 is well below the $2.75 Decodo advertises as its cheapest tier — so we are cheaper at the entry point and cheaper at the floor, which is the part most comparisons quietly skip.

Payment options and the VAT difference

Card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay all work, as do Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Monero and around 300 other cryptocurrencies with automatic activation and no KYC. Crypto and account-balance payments carry no VAT; card, PayPal and Stripe add 22%. Paying in crypto is therefore worth roughly eighteen percent off the total on its own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Decodo the same as Smartproxy?

Yes. Smartproxy now trades as Decodo. It is the same company and the same product line, so comparisons written about Smartproxy generally still describe Decodo — though the pricing in older articles is often stale.

Is there a free Decodo alternative?

Free residential proxies are shared and mostly blocked, so they are not a real substitute. The practical alternative is a very low entry price: QuantumProxies Residential Basic is $5 for 5 GB, which is

.00 per gigabyte with no subscription.

How much does Decodo cost per GB?

As recorded in our pricing index on the verification date shown on this page, Decodo lists $4.00 per GB pay-as-you-go, with a cheapest advertised tier of $2.75 per GB. Its smallest subscription is

1.25 a month for 3 GB, an effective $3.75 per GB.

Does Decodo require a monthly subscription?

Decodo offers both a pay-as-you-go rate and monthly plans, but the cheaper per-gigabyte pricing sits on the subscription tiers. QuantumProxies has no subscription at any tier — every plan is a one-off purchase of bandwidth.

Does QuantumProxies offer a money-back guarantee like Decodo?

No. Our terms state that fees are non-refundable, and we would rather be direct about that than surprise you later. What we offer instead is a $5 minimum order, so evaluating us costs less than one month of Decodo's cheapest plan.

Who are Decodo's main competitors?

Bright Data, Oxylabs, IPRoyal, SOAX and Webshare are the usual comparison set, with QuantumProxies at the value end. Our residential proxy pricing index puts ten providers side by side on price per gigabyte.

So: is QuantumProxies the better Decodo alternative?

Yes. This is the closest comparison on the site and the answer is still clear: four times cheaper per gigabyte at the entry point, a lower floor at volume, a $5 one-off instead of a monthly subscription, and no allowance to waste. Decodo's refund window is a genuine advantage and we have said so plainly — but at a $5 test order, it is protecting you against a risk you were never really taking.

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