What changes at scale
At high volume, the questions shift from "which is cheapest to start" to:
- What's the price at my volume, and can it be negotiated?
- Can the network handle my concurrency without degrading?
- How do I monitor and govern usage across teams?
- What happens when the provider has an incident?
Volume pricing
| Product | Webshare at volume (list) | Geonode at volume (list) |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | $1.40/GB at 3,000 GB monthly; lower with yearly billing | About $0.30/GB at 100 TB pay as you go, lower on subscription |
| Unlimited residential | Not offered | From $1,800/month (200 Mbps) to $3,800 (1,000 Mbps) |
| Datacenter | Under $0.02 per IP at 60,000+ IPs | About $0.16/GB at 100 TB |
| ISP | $0.225 per IP at 10,000 | $1.25 shared or $2.25 dedicated at 1,000+ |
| Scraping API | Not offered | Unlimited plans by concurrency |
At enterprise volumes, both are worth contacting for custom pricing. List prices are a starting point.
Concurrency and performance
- Webshare plans set thread limits (up to a few thousand on listed plans) and advertise a 100+ Gbps network with 99.97% uptime.
- Geonode's unlimited residential plans are sized by bandwidth (Mbps), and its Scraper API unlimited plans by thread count.
At scale, run a load test that ramps concurrency on your real targets and watch success rate, latency and error types on each. See speed and reliability compared.
Account structure and governance
- Separate plans or sub-accounts per team or client, so usage and credentials are isolated.
- API keys per system, with rotation.
- Usage dashboards and alerts on spend.
- IP allowlists limited to known infrastructure.
Both providers offer APIs for usage and proxy management. See API and dashboard compared.
Procurement questions to ask both
- Pricing at our forecast volume, and commitments required.
- Sourcing and consent for residential IPs. See ethics and sourcing compared.
- Acceptable use policy and restricted targets.
- Support channels and response times. See proxy provider support and SLA.
- Invoicing, payment terms and data processing agreements.
Proxy tip: To test the Geonode side of this comparison, a small residential balance from Geonode is enough, and it doesn't expire if you pause. See our complete Geonode guide for its full product range.
Redundancy
At scale, a single provider is a single point of failure. Running both, with traffic routed by target and automatic failover, protects you from incidents and from one network degrading on a specific target. See using both together.
Verdict
- Huge datacenter and static IP fleets: Webshare's per-IP pricing at volume.
- Huge residential volumes: Geonode's per-GB or unlimited residential.
- Mission-critical pipelines: both, with failover.
Load test plan
| Phase | Concurrency | Duration | Watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 10 | 30 min | Success, p50, p95 |
| Ramp | 50, 100, 200 | 30 min each | Error types as load grows |
| Soak | Target production level | 6 to 24 hours | Stability over time |
| Recovery | Back to baseline | 30 min | Whether performance recovers |
Run the same plan on both providers, on your real targets, in parallel.
Vendor scorecard
| Criterion | Weight | Webshare score | Geonode score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per 1,000 successes | 30% | ||
| Success rate on key targets | 25% | ||
| Stability under load | 15% | ||
| Product fit (types, APIs) | 15% | ||
| Support and documentation | 10% | ||
| Compliance and sourcing | 5% |
Fill it in from your tests; weights should reflect your priorities.
Budget tip: The cheapest way to settle this comparison is to test both: Webshare has a free datacenter plan, and Geonode offers a low-cost residential trial. Run the same targets through each. See Webshare geo-targeting.
Contracts and commitments
Negotiate volume pricing on the products you use most, avoid long commitments on products you're still testing, and keep the ability to shift traffic between providers. Dual sourcing is also your best negotiating position.
A real-world example
A large retailer's data team moves 15 TB of datacenter traffic and 4 TB of residential traffic a month. After a ramped load test on both providers, they negotiate volume pricing with Webshare for datacenter lists and with Geonode for residential, keeping 10% of each workload on the other provider as warm failover. During a later incident on one network, traffic shifts automatically and the pipelines slow down instead of stopping.
Webshare and Geonode are two options among many. Our best proxies in 2026 guide explains how to match a proxy type to each task, and cheap proxies that work shows where budget providers fit.
Key takeaways
- Webshare's per-IP pricing scales well for huge datacenter and static IP fleets.
- Geonode's per-GB and unlimited residential plans scale for huge residential volumes.
- Load test both on real targets with ramped concurrency.
- Negotiate volume pricing and keep the ability to shift traffic.
- Dual sourcing provides redundancy and negotiating leverage.
FAQ
Can I negotiate prices with Webshare and Geonode?
At high volumes, contact both; custom pricing is common in the industry.
Which has an unlimited residential plan?
Geonode.
How do I compare reliability at scale?
Run the same ramped load test on both, on your real targets.
Do these providers offer SLAs?
Ask each for current SLA terms at your volume.
Can enterprises get invoices instead of card payments?
Ask about invoicing and payment terms when negotiating volume plans.
How do I govern proxy use across many teams?
Centralise access through an internal proxy service with per-team credentials and usage reports.
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.