String won the measured fetch comparison, and the gap widened between runs. On the September 16, 2026 Web Data Frontier Benchmark, String returned verified content on 97.0% of 500 requests and Decodo returned 50.6%. Decodo lost 20.1 points against its August result, the largest decline of any provider in the field. String's failure-aware latency score was 7.06 seconds against Decodo's 25.41. The benchmark did not handicap Decodo: its adapter used the universal target, premium proxies, and JavaScript rendering, the configuration Decodo recommends for protected or difficult pages. Pick String for measured coverage and speed. Pick Decodo when its $1.20 per 1,000 premium-plus-JS rate and broader scraping platform matter more.
TL;DR
| String | Decodo | |
|---|---|---|
| Product type | Fetch, search, sitemap, and remote browser | Web Scraping API, 100+ templates, proxies, Site Unblocker, search APIs, AI Parser, MCP |
| Benchmark success rate | 97.0% (485/500) | 50.6% (253/500), premium proxies plus JS |
| Latency score | 7.06s, first of 16 | 25.41s, 15th of 16 |
| Per-target outcome | 92 perfect, 5 partial, 2 zero | 59 perfect, 21 partial, 19 zero |
| Anti-bot highlights | 100% Cloudflare, PerimeterX, AWS WAF and Fastly | 93.3% Kasada, 82.2% PerimeterX, 57.0% Akamai |
| Pricing basis | Plan plus successful-request usage; credits roll over | Prepaid request allowance by proxy and rendering path; failed scrapes are free |
| Entry point | First 5,000 requests free | Free plan, no card: up to 2,000 standard or 667 premium-plus-JS requests |
| Agent tooling | Hosted MCP and HTTP API | MCP server, Markdown output, AI integrations, TypeScript tooling |
| Where it wins | Measured coverage and latency | Three targets, premium-plus-JS pricing, templates, formats, proxy breadth, ISO 27001 |
We built the Web Data Frontier Benchmark and sell the product that ranks first. The defense against that conflict is reproducibility. The targets and pass criteria, every provider adapter, and the raw results are public. A request passes only when its body contains an expected marker from the real page. A captcha or empty shell with HTTP 200 fails.
The Decodo adapter called POST /v2/scrape with target: "universal", proxy_pool: "premium", and headless: "html". Decodo's parameter reference says premium proxies are for stronger anti-bot measures and headless: "html" enables JavaScript rendering. Its introduction recommends that combination for protected or difficult targets.
This is the strongest general-purpose Decodo path, returning raw HTML. It did not use one of Decodo's 100+ site-specific templates, a dedicated parser, browser actions, or location targeting. A template could do better on a supported target, but no one template spans the 100-site suite.
If Decodo believes a different general configuration is fairer, the adapter is one file and a pull request changes the next run. A Firecrawl engineer used that route in benchmark pull request 6, and the next run raised Firecrawl's result by 7.7 points.
Pricing and product claims were checked against live first-party pages on August 31, 2026. Performance figures are from the September 16, 2026 run.
Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, sells both raw proxy infrastructure and managed scraping products. Its Web Scraping API handles proxy rotation, browser rendering, anti-bot work, retries, and parsing behind one endpoint. It can return HTML, JSON, CSV, Markdown, XHR captures, or PNG screenshots, synchronously or asynchronously.
The product has 100+ target templates for search engines, ecommerce, social platforms, and other common sources. The universal Web target accepts any public URL. Per-request controls cover standard or premium proxies, JavaScript rendering, location, device, sessions, POST bodies, Markdown, XHR capture, and successful status codes. Decodo also documents browser actions for clicks, waits, and network-resource capture.
Outside the Web Scraping API, Decodo sells residential, mobile, ISP, and datacenter proxies, Site Unblocker, Fast Search API, specialized scraping APIs, an AI Parser, and a free MCP server. String is narrower: one adaptive fetch endpoint, plus search, sitemap crawling, a remote browser over CDP, and MCP.
The benchmark sent 16 providers the same 100 URLs five times each. Most targets are protected retail, travel, news, real-estate, and social pages.
| Provider | Successful requests | Success rate | Latency score |
|---|---|---|---|
| String | 485/500 | 97.0% | 7.06s |
| Scrapfly | 431/500 | 86.2% | 19.79s |
| ScraperAPI | 420/500 | 84.0% | 12.97s |
| Firecrawl | 401/500 | 80.2% | 9.11s |
| Apify | 387/500 | 77.4% | 20.64s |
| Bright Data | 373/500 | 74.6% | 15.62s |
| Zyte | 340/500 | 68.0% | 17.46s |
| Decodo | 253/500 | 50.6% | 25.41s |
Decodo ranked eighth for success and 14th on the latency score. The score uses each target's p75 successful latency. A complete miss inherits that target's p75 from providers that did return content, or the 90-second timeout when nobody did. Fast failures do not improve it.
The 26.3-point success gap is meaningful because Decodo already had premium routing and browser rendering enabled. This is not a basic-proxy result.
Decodo was the only one of these two providers to return Skyscanner content, passing one of five attempts while String passed none. Decodo also passed Allegro and Booking.com on all five attempts; String passed each four times. Those are three clean target wins for Decodo.
Decodo's strongest verticals in September were fashion and luxury at 83.6% and social platforms at 80.0%. It fell hardest in real estate, to 17.1%, and returned nothing at all across tickets and events, developer and research, search engines, and gaming. Against named anti-bot vendors its best columns were Kasada at 93.3%, tied with String, and PerimeterX at 82.2%.
The three targets Decodo won in the August run are gone. It now returns nothing on Skyscanner and Allegro, and four of five on Booking.com against String's five. There is no site in this run where Decodo returned every attempt and String returned none.
| Outcome across 100 sites | String | Decodo |
|---|---|---|
| Passed all 5 attempts | 93 | 34 |
| Passed 1 to 4 attempts | 5 | 27 |
| Passed none | 2 | 39 |
Decodo returned nothing on 39 sites, including Temu, Mouser, Trustpilot, Apartments.com, Realtor.com, Skyscanner, Neiman Marcus, Idealista, StubHub, Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, Kayak, Allegro, Google Search, Amazon, Vinted, Leboncoin, Rightmove, Pinterest, CoinMarketCap, TradingView, CarGurus, Delta, Kroger, AXS, Roblox, GitHub, Stack Overflow, arXiv and Bing. String passed 36 of those 39 on all five attempts. Temu and Idealista defeated both products, and String returned four of five on Allegro.
Decodo also has 27 partial targets against String's 5. Retries improve its result on those, but they stretch completion time and leave a dataset that differs between runs.
The anti-bot columns show the coverage difference. Decodo passed 46.7% of Cloudflare requests against String's 100%, 47.4% of DataDome against String's 92.6%, and 30.0% of AWS WAF against String's 100%. Its one parity result is Kasada, where both returned 93.3%. On Akamai, the largest group at twenty sites, Decodo fell from 81.0% in August to 57.0%.
Decodo's current pricing separates four paths: standard proxies, standard plus JavaScript, premium proxies, and premium plus JavaScript. The benchmark used the last and most expensive path.
| Monthly plan | Standard | Standard + JS | Premium | Premium + JS | Premium + JS allowance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0.50/1k | $0.75/1k | $1.00/1k | $1.50/1k | 667 |
| $19 | $0.50/1k | $0.75/1k | $1.00/1k | $1.50/1k | 12,000 |
| $49 | $0.30/1k | $0.65/1k | $0.90/1k | $1.25/1k | 39,000 |
| $99 | $0.14/1k | $0.60/1k | $0.85/1k | $1.20/1k | 82,000 |
The free plan requires no card. Decodo says only successful scrapes consume the allowance, and paid plans include a 14-day money-back option.
String charges a monthly plan plus successful-request usage. Starter is $20 per month, then $0.30 per 1,000 standard fetches or $3 per 1,000 premium fetches. Growth is $100, then $0.20 or $2. Browser paths cost more. Blocks are free and credits roll over.
At 100,000 calls against the benchmark target mix:
| Assumption | Monthly cost | Cost per 1,000 usable pages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo $99, premium + JS | 50,600 successes fit its 82,000-request allowance | $99.00 | $1.96 |
| String Starter, standard fetch | 97,000 successes at $0.30/1k, plus $20 plan | $49.10 | $0.51 |
| String Growth, premium fetch | 97,000 successes at $2/1k, plus $100 plan | $294.00 | $3.03 |
This is a model, not a bill. String chooses a path based on what a page needs, so production traffic mixes standard, premium, request, and browser rates. Decodo is cheaper than String when most String traffic needs a premium fetch or browser. String is cheaper when most pages use its standard request path. Decodo's price advantage is real and should be measured alongside its 50.6% delivery rate.
Decodo is a larger scraping toolbox. The Web Scraping API offers 100+ maintained target templates, sync and async jobs, structured parsers, browser actions, location and device controls, pagination, filtering, and multi-format responses. Raw proxy customers can choose residential, mobile, ISP, or datacenter pools instead of the managed API.
Its MCP server connects compatible agent clients to the Scraping API, with a hosted endpoint and an open-source repository. Markdown output keeps responses compact for LLM use. Decodo also lists n8n, LangChain, and OpenClaw integrations.
For procurement, Decodo publishes an ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification covering its proxies and Scraping API, along with a Trust Center that exposes security, privacy, infrastructure, and data-processing materials. String's public product is more focused on retrieval than on a broad proxy and template catalog.
String was better on the measured fetch task: 97.0% success against 50.6%, with a 7.06-second latency score against 25.41. Decodo is better on premium-plus-JS pricing and product breadth. The three target-level wins it held in the August run, Skyscanner, Allegro and Booking.com, did not survive the September run.
For protected pages that need premium proxies and JavaScript, yes. Decodo's $99 plan prices that path at $1.20 per 1,000 and includes about 82,000 successes. String Growth premium fetch is $2 per 1,000 plus $100 per month. String is cheaper when most pages stay on its standard fetch path.
No. Decodo's Web Scraping API page says only successful scrapes are charged. String also bills only requests that return content.
The public adapter used the universal target with the premium proxy pool and headless: "html", which enables JavaScript rendering. It returned raw HTML and did not use a site-specific template or parser.
Less often than in the August run. Decodo passed 46.7% of requests across 15 Cloudflare targets in September, down from 66.7%; String passed 100%. Decodo reached 57.0% on Akamai and 30.0% on AWS WAF.
Yes. Decodo documents an MCP server for compatible clients, backed by its Web Scraping API. It supports live scraping and structured outputs for agent workflows.
Use Decodo when you want premium-plus-JS scraping at a lower published rate, site-specific templates, multiple output formats, raw proxy options, browser actions, or ISO 27001 documentation. Use String when verified retrieval coverage and completion speed are the main job.
Run the open-source benchmark with your own keys. The results JSON, target markers, and provider adapters are public. Start with your target subset because a full run makes thousands of billable calls.
