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Draft:Decodo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Decodo (known as Smartproxy until April 2025) is a Lithuanian technology company that sells proxy servers and web scraping software.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The company was founded in 2018 and was one of the founding members of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative, an industry consortium formed to develop standards for web scraping.[4][5][6]

History

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Decodo was founded in 2018 in Vilnius under the name Smartproxy. The company emerged during a period of growing demand for tools that enable large-scale access to publicly available web data, particularly in sectors such as eCommerce, digital advertising, and cybersecurity.[7][8]

In its early stage, Smartproxy focused primarily on proxy services, offering access to networks of IP addresses that allow users to send requests to websites from different geographic locations. These services are commonly used to manage rate limits, test localized content, and collect data without triggering automated restrictions.[9][10]

As the market for web data collection tools expanded, the company broadened its offerings to include integrated scraping tools and automation systems.[11][12]

On 22 April 2025, Smartproxy changed its name to Decodo.[13]

Products and services

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Decodo sells four main categories of proxy service.[4][9][8] Residential proxies route customers' traffic through IP addresses assigned to household internet connections, making automated requests appear to originate from ordinary users; they are typically used to gather data from websites that restrict or block traffic from known data centers. Mobile proxies route traffic through IP addresses belonging to cellular network operators. Static residential proxies, also called ISP proxies, provide residential addresses that remain fixed over time rather than rotating between requests. Datacenter proxies are hosted on commercial servers and are generally faster and less expensive, but easier for websites to detect and block.[9][8] Proxies of all four kinds are also used to view content or prices that websites display only to visitors from particular regions.[9]

In addition to proxy infrastructure, the company offers a web scraping API that automates the retrieval of data from websites.[5] TechRadar's review of the service described prebuilt scraping templates for search engine results pages, e-commerce sites, and social media platforms, as well as a "Site Unblocker" tool that combines browser fingerprinting, JavaScript rendering, and automatic IP rotation to retrieve pages from sites that use anti-bot measures.[5]

Proxy and scraping services of this kind are used for purposes such as price monitoring, market and trend analysis, search result tracking, and the collection of training data for artificial-intelligence systems.[14][15] According to reporting on the company's research, growing demand for AI training data has pushed firms to collect more varied kinds of content, including video, images, and audio, rather than text alone.[14]

References

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  1. ↑ Smartproxy (2025-04-22). "Smartproxy Rebrands to Decodo: A New Era of Web Data Solutions". ACCESSWIRE Newsroom. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  2. ↑ "Smartproxy Rebrands to Decodo: Powering the Next Generation of Web Data Solutions".
  3. ↑ "Smartproxy Rebrands to Decodo: A New Era of Web Data Solutions".
  4. 1 2 3 "Smartproxy Proxies: In-Depth Review & Performance Tests". Proxyway. 2020-01-29. Retrieved 2026-09-02.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Collins, Benedict; Fadilpašić, Sead (2022-02-05). "Decodo proxy service review". TechRadar. Retrieved 2026-09-02.
  6. 1 2 "I2Coalition Launches Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative to Promote Industry Best Practices". TDWI. Retrieved 2026-09-02.
  7. ↑ "Decodo Review: How It Performed in Our Tests". AIMultiple. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  8. 1 2 3 "Decodo: High-Quality Proxies at a Low Price". CNET. 2025-12-31. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Key, Kim (2025-07-10). "Decodo Review: Affordable, Business-Friendly Proxies". PCMAG. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  10. ↑ "Smartproxy Proxies: In-Depth Review & Performance Tests". Proxyway. 2020-01-29. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  11. ↑ "17 Best Web Scraping Tools Tested & Ranked For 2026". www.scrapingbee.com. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  12. ↑ "Decodo alternative for web scraping? | ScrapingBee". www.scrapingbee.com. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  13. ↑ "Smartproxy Rebrands, Becomes Decodo". Proxyway. Retrieved 2026-06-22.
  14. 1 2 Schultz, Ray. "Firms That Use Data Top List Of Most-Scraped Websites". www.mediapost.com. Retrieved 2026-09-02.
  15. ↑ "TikTok just dethroned Google as the internet's most-scraped site". Cybernews. 2025-12-06. Retrieved 2026-09-02.