Quick answer: typical proxy prices
Proxy prices have fallen considerably over the past few years. At the time of writing, these are typical market ranges. Individual providers, promotions and volumes vary widely, so treat these as orientation, not quotes.
| Proxy type | Billing unit | Small plans | At volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rotating residential | Per GB | ~$3 to $8 | ~$1 to $3, sometimes lower |
| ISP / static residential | Per IP per month | ~$1.50 to $4 | ~$0.80 to $2 |
| Dedicated datacenter | Per IP per month | ~$0.50 to $2.50 | Under ~$0.50 |
| Shared datacenter | Per IP per month | A few cents | Fractions of a cent |
| Rotating datacenter | Per GB or per thread | Well under $1/GB | Lower |
| Rotating mobile | Per GB | ~$4 to $15 | Negotiated |
| Dedicated mobile port | Per port per month | ~$40 to $150+ | Negotiated |
| Scraping API / unblocker | Per 1,000 requests | Varies widely by target difficulty | Negotiated |
Why prices vary so much
- IP source cost. Datacenter IPs are cheap to produce; residential and mobile IPs require paying device owners or running SIM cards.
- Volume. Large commitments get large discounts.
- Term. Annual plans cost less per unit than monthly.
- Features. City/ASN targeting, long sessions, dedicated pools and unblocker layers add cost.
- Brand and support. Enterprise providers charge for compliance, account management and SLAs.
- Reselling. Some brands mark up another network's traffic.
Cost per successful request: the only fair comparison
Here's a worked example. You need 100,000 successful product pages per month from a moderately protected retailer.
Option A: Dedicated datacenter proxies
- 200 IPs at $1/month = $200
- Success rate: 45%
- Requests needed: ~222,000
- Hidden cost: IPs burned and replaced, slower runs
- Cost per 1,000 successes: ~$2.00, with a fragile setup
Option B: Rotating residential, full browser
- 2.5 MB per page × ~105,000 attempts ≈ 262 GB
- At $3/GB = ~$787
- Success rate: 95%
- Cost per 1,000 successes: ~$7.87
Option C: Rotating residential, HTTP client fetching HTML only
- 180 KB per page × ~105,000 attempts ≈ 19 GB
- At $3/GB = ~$57
- Success rate: 93%
- Cost per 1,000 successes: ~$0.57
Option D: Scraping API
- Price per 1,000 successful requests on this difficulty tier, say ~$1 to $3
- Cost per 1,000 successes: ~$1 to $3, with no engineering overhead
The same job ranges from about $57 to nearly $800 depending on how you do it. Technique matters more than provider. See proxy bandwidth pricing explained.
How to estimate your own costs
- Pick a sample of target pages.
- Measure bytes per page with the method you'll actually use (HTTP client vs browser).
- Estimate success rate from a small test.
- Calculate attempts = needed successes ÷ success rate.
- Multiply attempts × bytes per attempt (for per-GB) or estimate IPs needed (for per-IP).
- Add 20% overhead.
Proxy tip: One low-risk way to follow this advice is to start with a provider whose traffic doesn't expire. Geonode bills residential proxies per GB with no expiry on purchased bandwidth, so you can test properly before buying volume. We cover its plans in our Geonode proxies guide.
Ways to reduce your proxy bill
- Use the cheapest proxy type that works for each target. See cheap proxies.
- Block unnecessary resources in browsers.
- Call JSON APIs instead of rendering pages.
- Use non-expiring or pay-as-you-go traffic if your usage is irregular.
- Negotiate once you know your volume.
- Watch for seasonal promotions.
- Track cost per success weekly.
Pricing traps
- Low prices that only apply to annual prepayment at huge volume.
- Monthly traffic that expires, so you pay for what you don't use.
- Premium targeting or session features at extra cost.
- "Unlimited" plans with tight thread or speed caps. See unlimited bandwidth proxies.
- Refund policies that exclude the plan you bought.
Price examples by buyer profile
| Profile | Typical setup | Rough monthly spend range |
|---|---|---|
| Hobbyist learning to scrape | Free tier + a few GB PAYG residential | Zero to tens of dollars |
| Freelancer with client projects | DC list + 10 to 30 GB residential | Tens to low hundreds |
| Agency managing 30 social accounts | 30 ISP proxies | Low hundreds |
| Sneaker cook, weekly releases | Daily/weekly ISP + residential for raffles | Varies with releases |
| Growing data team | Hundreds of GB residential + DC | Hundreds to low thousands |
| Enterprise data operation | TB-scale residential, unblockers, DC | Thousands and up, negotiated |
These are broad orientation ranges, not quotes; your costs depend on providers, targets and technique.
Budgeting tips
- Start with a usage cap per sub-user to prevent runaway costs.
- Alert on cost per success, not just total spend.
- Reserve 10 to 20% of budget for testing new providers and handling surprises.
- Review quarterly whether each target still needs its current tier.
Budget tip: If you want a cheap proxy to try this with, Webshare has a free plan with 10 datacenter proxies and 1 GB of bandwidth a month, no card required. Paid lists let you pick proxy count, bandwidth and location. See Webshare pricing explained.
How promotions work
Common promotional patterns:
- First-purchase discounts.
- Seasonal sales (Black Friday, Cyber Monday).
- Bonus traffic on larger bundles.
- Discount codes from partners and affiliates.
Promotions can be excellent value for prepaid, non-expiring traffic. For expiring monthly plans, a discount only helps if you'll use the traffic.
When price shouldn't be the deciding factor
- Compliance-sensitive work where sourcing documentation matters.
- Mission-critical releases or deadlines where reliability is worth paying for.
- Accounts whose loss would cost far more than the proxies.
In those cases, choose on quality and support, then negotiate price. See enterprise proxy providers.
Residential tip: Rayobyte is worth testing when you need precise targeting: its residential proxies can be pinned to a country, state, city, ZIP code or ASN, with sticky sessions from 1 to 120 minutes. More in Rayobyte pricing explained.
Forecasting next quarter's proxy spend
Proxy bills grow with output, so forecast from output rather than from last month's invoice:
- Find your unit: pages, products, keywords, accounts or checkouts.
- Measure cost per unit per target from last month: spend divided by successful units.
- Get next quarter's planned volume per target from whoever owns the roadmap.
- Multiply, then add a buffer of 15 to 25% for retries, new targets and changes in site protection.
- Flag risky targets: any whose cost per unit has risen two months running.
A worked example: 2 million product pages a month at $0.40 per 1,000 successful pages is $800. With a 20% buffer, budget $960 a month.
| Target | Units per month | Cost per 1,000 units | Base | With 20% buffer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product pages | 2,000,000 | $0.40 | $800 | $960 |
| Search pages | 150,000 | $2.00 | $300 | $360 |
Share the unit cost with finance alongside the total. It makes later increases explainable ("we're collecting twice as much") rather than alarming. For ways to bring unit costs down, see cheap proxies; for flexible capacity, pay-as-you-go proxies; and for contracted volume, enterprise proxy providers.
Price is only half the decision. Our best proxies in 2026 guide covers how to weigh it against quality and fit.
Choosing between providers for this? Our Webshare vs Geonode Pricing comparison shows where each one is stronger, with costs for typical workloads.
If you're weighing Rayobyte as well, Rayobyte Pricing Explained explains which of its products fits, and Rayobyte vs Geonode vs Webshare Pricing puts it side by side with Geonode and Webshare.
FAQ
Why are residential proxies so expensive?
Each IP is a real consumer device whose owner must be compensated, and the network is complex to run.
What's the cheapest proxy type?
Shared datacenter and IPv6 proxies per IP; dedicated datacenter for reliable cheap scraping of lenient sites. See cheapest proxy providers.
Are proxy prices going down?
The long-term trend has been downward as competition has grown, particularly for residential bandwidth.
Sources and further reading
Independent references that back up the points above, from standards bodies, governments, universities and non-profits. They open in a new tab.
- RFC 8200: Internet Protocol, Version 6 (IPv6) (IETF / RFC Editor): The current IPv6 specification, the address format behind IPv6 proxies.
- Bandwidth (computing) (Wikipedia): What bandwidth means, the unit most residential proxies are priced by.
- Cybersecurity Framework (NIST): The NIST framework many companies use to manage cyber risk, including outbound traffic.
- RFC 9110: HTTP Semantics (IETF / RFC Editor): The HTTP standard that defines how proxies, tunnels and the CONNECT method behave.
- Quarterly Retail E-Commerce Sales (US Census Bureau): Official US e-commerce sales data, the market price monitoring watches.
Editorial note: Proxy providers change their pools, features and prices often, so treat any figures here as typical ranges at the time of writing and confirm current terms with the provider before you buy.