How Much Do Residential Proxies Cost? 2026 Pricing

Residential proxy pricing in 2026 runs from about $1 per GB at the budget end to $8 or more per GB at the enterprise end, and almost every provider bills by bandwidth, not by IP. BuyProxy sits at the low end: $0.99/GB pay-as-you-go, falling to an effective $0.50/GB on the largest plan. This guide shows what those rates mean in real dollars at 10, 100 and 1,000 GB, and when a monthly plan beats pay-as-you-go.

What You're Actually Paying For

With a residential proxy you pay for the data that moves through the IP, measured in gigabytes. A page that weighs 2 MB costs you 2 MB whether the request succeeded or got blocked, so the per-GB rate only tells half the story: the other half is how many of your requests succeed.

Per-GB billing is the dominant model for rotating pools because the IPs are shared and constantly changing, so there is no single address to charge for. Other models exist (per IP per month, per port, per thread), but they mostly show up on static or dedicated proxies. If you are still deciding what type of proxy you need, the residential proxy explainer covers the basics before you start comparing rates.

Residential Proxy Price Per GB in 2026

The pay-as-you-go rates below are the ones we have verified and published in our provider comparisons. Providers change pricing often, so confirm on each pricing page before you buy, and see the ranked provider review for the full feature picture.

The spread is large because you are paying for different things. The $8 tier bundles scraping APIs, compliance documentation and account management. If you only need clean rotating IPs, that bundle is mostly overhead, which is why our budget residential guide focuses on the sub-$2 tier.

What It Costs at 10, 100 and 1,000 GB

Here is the same arithmetic at five volumes, using each provider's pay-as-you-go rate from the table above. These are straight multiplications, so they ignore any volume discounts a competitor may offer on larger orders.

On BuyProxy, a top-up of 100 GB or more also adds a 10% bonus: pay $99 for 100 GB and you receive 110 GB, which works out to about $0.90 per GB you can actually use.

When a Monthly Plan Beats Pay-as-you-Go

A plan beats pay-as-you-go when you would otherwise buy more GB each month than the plan includes. BuyProxy's plans include a monthly bandwidth allowance that is credited to your Core Residential balance, and credits never expire.

The break-even points are simple division. Pro ($30) equals what 30 GB costs on pay-as-you-go, so if you use more than about 30 GB a month, Pro is cheaper. Business ($90) matches about 91 GB of pay-as-you-go, and Advanced ($300) matches about 303 GB. Business and Advanced also unlock the Reseller Program, which matters if you plan to resell access rather than just use it.

If your usage is spiky, such as a few big scraping runs a year, pay-as-you-go is usually the better fit because you never pay for idle capacity. Our buying guide walks through how to size a purchase.

The Other Proxy Types Are Priced Per GB Too

Residential is not the only per-GB product. BuyProxy prices each proxy type separately, and balances are kept per product, so a top-up for one type does not spill into another.

Hidden Costs to Check Before You Commit

The sticker rate is rarely the whole bill. Check these before you compare providers on price alone:

• Credit expiry. SOAX, for example, expires credits 60 days after they are added on Sandbox or a monthly plan, according to its pricing page. Unused balance at the end of that window is gone. BuyProxy credits do not expire.
• Country tiers. Some providers price countries differently, so a Tier 1 country like the US costs more than the headline rate.
• Minimum commitments. A $100+ minimum before you can test the network against your own targets is a real risk.
• Failed requests. Blocked requests still use bandwidth. A cheaper rate with a lower success rate can cost more per successful result.
• Bandwidth you did not need. Images, fonts and scripts add up. Blocking them in your scraper cuts GB use without touching the rate.

How to Estimate Your Monthly GB

Multiply the number of pages you fetch by the average size of one page, then add 20-30% for retries. To get a real page weight, open your target in your browser's network tab and read the transferred size, with and without images. If you are not sure, start with a small top-up, run a representative batch, and read your balance afterwards. Our proxy testing guide includes a script that records both success rate and timing, which helps you work out cost per successful request.

New accounts with a major email provider also get a one-time 100MB bandwidth bonus, so you can run a first test before you pay anything.

Per-GB billing is not the only model. Per-IP vs per-GB proxy pricing shows when renting IPs is cheaper, and scraper API pricing compared covers per-call billing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much do residential proxies cost per GB?
Most providers charge between roughly $1 and $8.50 per GB on pay-as-you-go. BuyProxy charges $0.99/GB, and monthly plans lower the effective rate to about $0.75/GB on Pro, $0.60/GB on Business and $0.50/GB on Advanced.

Q: Is pay-as-you-go or a monthly plan cheaper?
It depends on volume. Below about 30 GB a month, pay-as-you-go is cheaper than the Pro plan. Above that, a plan wins, and the bigger the plan, the lower the effective per-GB rate.

Q: Do residential proxy credits expire?
It varies by provider. SOAX expires credits after 60 days per its own pricing page. BuyProxy credits, whether bought pay-as-you-go or included in a plan, never expire.

Q: Why are some residential proxies so much more expensive than others?
Premium-priced providers bundle extras such as scraper APIs, formal SLAs and account managers. If you only need rotating residential IPs, you can usually skip the bundle and pay a fraction of the price.

Q: Is there a cheaper alternative to residential proxies?
Yes, for targets that do not block them. Datacenter IPv4 is $0.99/GB and IPv6 is $0.29/GB on BuyProxy, but both are easier for protected sites to detect, so they only make sense for unprotected targets.

Summary

Residential proxies cost $1 to $8+ per GB, and the cheapest verified pay-as-you-go rate is BuyProxy's $0.99/GB, with plans bringing the effective rate down to $0.50/GB. Work out your monthly GB first, pick pay-as-you-go for uneven usage and a plan once you pass roughly 30 GB a month, and always judge a rate by cost per successful request, not the sticker price.

Start with pay-as-you-go from $0.99/GB on BuyProxy →