Byteful is a highly performant SOAX alternative that offers all proxy types, bandwidth-saving SmartPath AI, ZIP-level geotargeting, team access rules, never-expiring bandwidth, and a powerful REST API with 40+ operational endpoints.
In comparison, SOAX has residential and mobile proxies (but lacks ISP proxies), has ASN targeting and team access locked to a $1,500 subscription, and its credits expire every 60 days on the base tier.
Users have rated Byteful a solid 4.6/5 (190+ reviews) on Trustpilot, vs. SOAX’s 3.4/5 (140+ reviews).
➡️Start with Byteful’s 1GB free residential data trial.
Byteful vs SOAX: Which one’s right for you?
Byteful is a made-in-Britain proxy provider that is known for its blazing-fast residential and mobile proxy network. It offers a state-of-the-art proxy dashboard that lets you issue proxies, manage teams, allocate bandwidth, and monitor real-time usage from a single window.
Its network is monitored 24/7 and boasts an impressive 99.991% historical uptime. You can start with affordable base tiers, which start with 1GB (residential and mobile proxies) and as low as 1 IP/month (datacenter and ISP proxies) plans.
What makes Byteful a value-for-money option is its never-expiring bandwidth. This is a budget-saving feature that can reduce the effective cost of long-term projects, especially if your purchased proxy resources aren’t spent 100% in each billing cycle.
SOAX, on the other hand, has priced mobile and residential proxies equally. The best part about SOAX is its pool size, which exceeds 155 million IPs. The price ranges from $2 to $5 per gigabyte, depending on the sourcing countries (Tier 1, 2, or 3). The entry-level plan costs $25 and provides 25 credits that last for 60 days if unused.
Bigger SOAX subscriptions charge a platform access fee ranging from $200 to $3,000+ for enterprise customers and also reduce the per-GB proxy cost. Besides, as you go higher up the subscription ladder, SOAX gradually unlocks features, including higher team access and ASN geotargeting.
However, SOAX handles node failure better (explained later) and has SOCKS-UDP protocol support live for residential and mobile. But if you only look at SOAX’s pricing structure, it seems better suited to teams with well-defined workflows and a flexible budget.
In terms of real-world performance, Proxyway’s 2026 market research provides a good baseline involving 13 of the top proxy providers (including Byteful and SOAX). Byteful soared to the top among all for…
- Fastest residential proxy network (0.41s response time)
- Fastest mobile proxy network (0.48s response time)
- Most authentic residential pool (98.68% genuine IPs)
- Highest success rate against real-world targets (81.23%)
- Single fastest mobile IP pool (0.40s response time)
- Sub-second P95 latency
Furthermore, the following table presents a side-by-side view of how Byteful and SOAX performed on a few parameters in Proxyway’s study.
| Factors | Byteful | SOAX |
|---|---|---|
| Average global residential response time | 0.41s | 0.89s |
| Average global mobile response time | 0.48s | 0.92s |
| Residential pool size (advertised) | 35 million | 155 million |
| Unique residential IPs (unfiltered globally) | 1.8 million+ | 1.6 million+ |
| % Authentic residential IPs | 98.68% | 98.08% |
| Average risk score (lower is better) | 2.61 | 3.2 |
| Residential infrastructure success rate | 99.69% | 99.78% |
| Mobile infrastructure success rate | 99.59% | 99.74% |
| Average residential success rate against Amazon, Google, and Instagram | 81.23% | 71.49% |
| Average mobile success rate against Amazon, Google, and Instagram | 83.46% | 70.63% |
The table above clearly demonstrates that raw pool numbers have little to do with real-life performance. You can check Byteful’s comparatively smaller pool did better in almost every aspect and was very close in the only few aspects in which SOAX could lead.
Byteful vs SOAX: Features Showdown
The following table presents a feature comparison, backed by Byteful’s and SOAX’s documentation.
| Feature | Byteful | SOAX |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Pay per GB or IP | Monthly platform fee + credits |
| Data (credits) expiry | Never expires until consumed | 60 days on monthly plans, 12 months on annual |
| Minimum to start | 1GB free residential trial | $1.99 3-day 400MB trial |
| Proxy types | Residential, Mobile, ISP, and Datacenter | Residential, Mobile, and Datacenter (being withdrawn, as per Proxyway) |
| Specialized routing | Smartpath AI routes non-critical residential/mobile requests over datacenter IPs | No equivalent documented |
| Geotargeting | Country, state, city, ISP, and ASN | Country, region, city, and ISP. ASN unlocks at $1,500 subscription |
| Rotating | Per request | Per request or timed |
| Sticky maximum | 24 hours explicit TTL; default holds up to 7 days | Rotation timer up to 1 week |
| Idle behaviour | No idle timeout documented | Session expires after 60 seconds of inactivity |
| Protocol support | HTTPS, HTTPS, SOCKS5-TCP, SOCKS5-UDP (datacenter and ISP) | HTTPS, HTTPS, SOCKS5-TCP, SOCKS5-UDP (residential and mobile) |
| Authentication | Username-password & IP authorization | Username-password & IP authorization |
| Published concurrency limit | None published, advertised unlimited | 4,000 concurrent per gateway on Sandbox |
| Session rule changes and failure handling | Proxy username governs geo-targeting, session duration, etc. Changing anything prompts a new session. No documented on-failure controls. | Rules apply to the session ID on first request and stay for the entire session. Multiple error handling options (replace, retry, or return error). |
| Restricted domains | Government, banking and financial, payment processors, NSFW, national postal, some e-commerce, etc. | Financial services, government, some news domains |
| Sub-users | Proxy Users with no documented cap | Team seats capped by plan, 1 on Sandbox to 10 on Enterprise |
| API overview | Purchasing, quote generation, checkout, view account balance, top-up, proxy management, detailed analytics, team management, authentication, etc. | Proxy package inspection, connection string generation, check proxy locations, analytics, manage API keys, etc. |
| Observability | Live network activity viewer, log summaries, analytics breakdown by user, hostname, network type, proxy ID, protocol, time, etc. | Activity analysis by package, network, tier, country, egress IP, and domain |
| Proxy tester | Web tool and API endpoint | Web tool (50 proxies per batch) |
