Smartproxy API
Provides a managed proxy network with residential, datacenter, and mobile IPs that agents can route HTTP/HTTPS requests through to bypass geo-restrictions, IP bans, and rate limiting during web scraping or data collection tasks.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Proxy credentials in URLs are a security concern — they can be logged by intermediate systems. No per-IP or per-subdomain credential scoping. HTTPS tunneling is supported for encrypted traffic through the proxy.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Best when an agent needs reliable, large-scale web data collection from sites that actively block datacenter IPs, and requires geographic targeting.
Avoid When
Avoid when target sites prohibit scraping in their ToS and legal compliance is a concern, or when sub-100ms latency is required.
Use Cases
- • Route web scraping requests through rotating residential IPs to avoid detection and blocking by target sites
- • Geo-target requests to specific countries or cities to collect localized pricing, content, or search results
- • Manage and rotate proxy sessions programmatically via the dashboard API to monitor bandwidth usage and pool health
- • Use sticky sessions to maintain a single residential IP across multiple requests within a scraping session
- • Automate proxy credential rotation and pool configuration updates as part of a larger data pipeline agent
Not For
- • Anonymity or privacy for sensitive personal use — proxies are logged and Smartproxy has acceptable use policies
- • Bypassing security controls of systems you do not own or have permission to access
- • Low-latency real-time applications where proxy overhead is unacceptable
Interface
Authentication
Proxy access uses username:password basic auth embedded in the proxy URL; dashboard/management API uses an API key via Authorization header.
Pricing
Pricing is primarily bandwidth-based for residential; datacenter plans offer fixed-thread options. Bulk bandwidth discounts available.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Residential proxy latency is highly variable (100ms–10s+) due to the nature of routing through real user devices; agents must implement generous timeouts
- ⚠ Sticky session IDs expire after a configurable TTL (default 10 minutes); agents must handle session expiry and re-establish sessions gracefully
- ⚠ Bandwidth consumption is billed even for failed requests, so retry loops without backoff can rapidly inflate costs
- ⚠ The proxy endpoint hostname encodes targeting parameters (country, city, session ID) as subdomains, which must be constructed correctly per request
- ⚠ Some residential IPs may be temporarily unavailable or slow; connection pooling with fallback logic is essential for production agent use
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.