Smartproxy (now Decodo) sells access to a very large proxy network, and it is good at that job. It has a Web Scraping API layered on top, so on the surface it looks like a direct alternative to a managed scrape API. Look at how the two are actually built and the difference is structural. Decodo is a proxy business first. Anakin is a managed API that owns unblocking, rendering, and parsing end to end. That decides how much of the work lands on you.
With a proxy-first vendor, you still make the infrastructure decisions. You pick a proxy pool, choose a request tier, and watch how those choices move your bill. With Anakin, there is one endpoint, no pool to select, no tier to tune, and you are charged only when a call succeeds. This post walks through where each fits.
What each tool is built for
Decodo (the April 2025 rebrand of Smartproxy) is a proxy platform. Its core products are residential, ISP, datacenter, and mobile proxies backed by a pool of 125M+ IPs across 195+ locations. On top of that sit a Web Scraping API, a Site Unblocker, SERP and ecommerce templates, an AI Parser, and an MCP server. The scraping API is real and success-billed, but it is a layer over the network, not the whole product. Buyers still think in terms of pools and tiers because that is how the platform is organized.
Anakin starts from the opposite end. The URL Scraper takes any URL and returns the page, with residential rotation, fingerprint variation, and CAPTCHA handling done inside the service and no configuration exposed. Crawl walks a site, Map discovers its links, the Browser API drives a real browser, and a Search API covers discovery. You do not choose a proxy pool or a request tier. You send a URL and get content back, or structured JSON shaped to your schema.
Pricing and how you get billed
Decodo's Web Scraping API uses success-based billing, which is genuinely fair, and its plans are cheap at volume. They run from a free tier at 2K requests through Starter at $19 for 38K, Professional at $49 for 163K, and Business at $99 for 707K. The nuance is a per-1,000-request surcharge that depends on the request tier: Standard, plus JavaScript, Premium, and Premium plus JavaScript each cost more than the last, as Decodo's own pricing lays out.
That tier surcharge is where independent testers raise a flag. AIMultiple reports that the default proxy_pool setting can silently escalate the request tier, so the blended cost lands well above the headline rate, closer to 1.7 times it in their testing. This is a reported finding from independent testers rather than settled fact, and it is worth verifying against your own usage. The point is not that success-based billing is bad. It is that a success-only price still moves when the tier moves underneath it, and the tier is one more thing you are managing.
Anakin bills per credit. A scrape is one credit, JavaScript rendering is included rather than a surcharge, and you are charged only on success. Failed requests, timeouts, and cache hits cost nothing, and purchased credits do not expire. There is no tier to escalate, because there is one path for every page. The live per-plan numbers sit on the Anakin pricing page.
| Smartproxy (now Decodo) | Anakin | |
|---|---|---|
| Core product | Proxy network with a scraping API on top | Managed scraping API |
| What you configure | Proxy pool, request tier, geo | A URL |
| Billing | Success-based, tier surcharge per 1k | Per credit, success only |
| Failed requests | Not charged | Free |
| Cost predictability | Tier can escalate the blended rate | One credit per scrape, JS included |
| Structured JSON | 100+ prebuilt templates plus AI parser | Your own schema, any page |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city, no surcharge | 207 countries |
| Compliance | See note below | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, GDPR |
What you manage versus what is managed
This is the wedge. On a proxy-first platform, the pool and the tier are your levers, and pulling them is part of the job. Choosing residential over datacenter, deciding when JavaScript rendering is worth the surcharge, and reading the bill to see which tier the default landed on are all decisions that stay with you. Decodo gives you a lot of control, and for teams that want that control it is a strength.
Anakin removes those levers on purpose. The unblocking stack rotates residential IPs, varies fingerprints, and solves CAPTCHAs without a setting to turn. It is built to get through Cloudflare, Akamai, PerimeterX, and DataDome on pages that fight scrapers, and none of that surfaces as a tier you pick. You send a URL.
curl -s -X POST https://api.anakin.io/v1/url-scraper \
-H "X-API-Key: $ANAKIN_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url": "https://example.com/product/9912", "country": "us"}'The call returns a jobId. Poll GET /v1/url-scraper/{id} until the status reads completed, and the page comes back. Add an outputSchema to the request and Anakin returns structured JSON shaped to that schema on any page you choose, not a preset list.
Structured output
Decodo's parsing ecosystem is a real asset. It ships 100+ prebuilt templates plus an AI parser, and they are strong on ecommerce and SERP targets, which is where much proxy-driven scraping lives. Inside those verticals the parsing saves you work, the same way a good SERP tool does.
Anakin returns HTML, Markdown, or schema-constrained JSON through the outputSchema parameter. The difference is reach rather than parse quality. Decodo structures the targets its parsers know about. Anakin structures whatever page you send it, because the schema is yours and the extraction runs against arbitrary URLs.
Geo-targeting and coverage
Give Decodo its due here. Its geo-targeting is genuinely granular, offering country, state, and city targeting at no extra surcharge. For teams that need to see a page exactly as it renders from a specific place, that precision matters and it comes without a geo tax.
Anakin's coverage is built for the general-purpose job. It reaches 207 countries and carries the anti-bot infrastructure to get through Cloudflare, DataDome, and Akamai on protected pages. The two are tuned for different shapes of work: fine-grained proxy geography on one side, managed unblocking of arbitrary protected URLs on the other.
Compliance
On certifications, be precise. Anakin holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, and GDPR compliance, published on its security page. Decodo's compliance picture is less settled: an ISO 27001 certification is claimed by Decodo and repeated by AIMultiple, but that claim is disputed by at least one competitor source, and its SOC 2 Type II status is not independently verified. This post makes no assertion either way about which certifications Decodo holds. If certifications are a deciding factor for your team, confirm Decodo's current status directly before relying on it.
Reputation
Decodo is a well-regarded vendor, and its ratings reflect that. It carries a Trustpilot score around 4.2 and a G2 score around 4.6, which is solid for the category. The large, cheap proxy pool and the fair success-based billing on its scraping API are real reasons teams pick it.
When Smartproxy (now Decodo) is the right call
If your work is fundamentally proxy-driven, if you want direct control over pools and tiers, if you need granular geo down to the ZIP or ASN, and if your targets are ecommerce and SERP pages the prebuilt parsers already cover, Decodo is a strong, economical choice. A team that wants to manage its own network layer will find a mature one here.
The bottom line
The real question is how much of the pipeline you want to own. With a proxy-first platform you manage the pool, the tier, and the way those choices move a success-only bill. If you would rather hand the unblocking, rendering, and parsing to one managed API and pay only when a call succeeds, that is what Anakin is built for: any URL, structured to your schema, one credit per scrape, charged only on success.