Residential proxy pricing explained: what a gigabyte costs once you reach checkout

Residential proxy pricing is almost always per gigabyte of traffic, sold either pay as you go or on a monthly plan that trades a lower rate for a commitment. The rate in large type on a pricing page is usually the bottom rung of a volume ladder, not what a small order pays. To compare vendors, work out your effective cost per GB: everything you pay, tax and plan fees included, divided by the gigabytes you use before they expire. Then divide once more by your success rate, because failed requests burn traffic too.

This guide walks through how the pricing is built, what moves the number between the headline and the card form, and a worked comparison from five vendors' own pricing pages, each read on 2026-09-29 and linked so you can check it.

#How residential proxy pricing works

Residential traffic leaves the network through other people's home connections, so bandwidth is the thing the network pays for, and it is what you are billed on. You are not buying IPs. You are buying the right to push a number of gigabytes through a rotating pool of them.

Vendors differ on what counts toward the meter. Request bytes, response bytes, headers, TLS handshakes and failed requests may all count, or some may not. The documentation of the vendor you pick should say; if it does not, ask before you size an order, because the difference between "response body only" and "everything on the wire" can be tens of percent on small pages.

#Volume tiers

Almost every vendor publishes a ladder: the more gigabytes you buy, the lower the rate. Two details decide what the ladder is worth to you:

1. Whole-order or marginal. Some ladders apply the lower rate to the whole order once you cross a tier. Others only discount the gigabytes above it. On ProxyHive the discount is whole-order: cross a tier and the lower unit price applies to everything in the basket.
2. Per order or per month. A tier you reach with one purchase is different from a tier you only reach by committing to that volume every month.

Our own ladder starts at $5.50/GB for a single gigabyte and falls with volume. Every rung is on the residential pricing page at the price checkout charges.

#Pay as you go vs subscription

A subscription is cheaper per GB when you use the whole allowance. That is not a trick; it is the deal. Decodo, for example, lists 10 GB of residential on a monthly plan at $3.5/GB, against a flat $4/GB pay as you go, as listed on their residential pricing page on 2026-09-29. If you burn 10 GB every month, the plan wins. If some months you use 3 GB, it does not, and the guide to proxy traffic expiry shows how to work out the break-even.

#Hidden fees: what raises the price between the headline and checkout

The gap between the advertised rate and your invoice usually comes from a handful of mechanisms. None of them is hidden in the sense of being secret. They are hidden in the sense of being two clicks away from the number in large type.

#The headline is the biggest plan

The lowest rate on a page is almost always the top of the ladder. Every vendor in the table below advertises a lowest rate that needs a plan of about $2,000 a month or more, or 1 TB to 10 TB of volume. That is a fair price for that buyer. It is not your price at 10 GB.

#Commitments that do not roll over

A monthly commitment buys a lower rate in exchange for paying whether you use it or not. Bright Data's residential pricing page states that if your account stays active for the whole month, your monthly commitment will not roll over to the next month, regardless of whether your usage fell below the minimum. That applies to their commitment plans, not to their pay as you go.

#Discount codes with an end date

A struck-through list price with a coupon is common. Bright Data listed pay as you go residential at $8/GB, reduced to $4/GB with code RESIGB50, and the code runs for 3 months. Budget for the list price from month four, and treat anything lower as a bonus.

#Tax

Decodo lists its plans "+ VAT", Oxylabs notes "VAT may apply" and SOAX shows totals excluding VAT. Our prices exclude tax too: VAT, GST or sales tax is added at checkout where we are required to charge it. Everyone does this, so compare pre-tax to pre-tax, then add your own rate once.

#Geo tiers

Some vendors price by the country of the exit IP. SOAX bills in geo tiers, with the United States in tier 1, the highest rate. A US-heavy job pays the top of the table. Our residential pool has one rate because it has no country selection at all, which is a limit, not a feature: if you need a specific country on residential, the vendors below let you choose it and we do not.

#Plan fee plus credits, and expiry

SOAX's Builder plan is $200 a month plus $100 in extra credits, $300 in total for 100 GB of US traffic, an effective $3/GB. Their credits on Sandbox or a monthly plan expire 60 days after they are added. Expiry turns unused gigabytes into a price increase on the ones you used; the traffic expiry guide does the arithmetic.

#A worked comparison from five pricing pages

Every competitor figure below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-29. Prices change; follow the link before you rely on one. ProxyHive's figures come from our live price list.

Read the table two ways.

Where others win. At the top of its ladder SOAX's $0.85/GB is cheaper than our lowest rate. Decodo's monthly 10 GB plan at $3.5/GB beats a one-off 10 GB here if you use the same volume every month, as our Decodo comparison says in its own table. And all five sell residential with location targeting (country at least, down to city and ZIP on several), which our residential pool does not offer today. If a job needs a named city on a rotating pool, buy from one of them. If it needs a named place on a fixed address, our ISP proxies are chosen by country, region, city and carrier, and buying a single static IP explains how to avoid paying for ten when you need one.

Where the headline misleads. Every lowest rate above sits behind a plan of $1,999 a month or more, or behind 1 TB to 10 TB of volume. For a team buying 5 to 50 GB, the realistic comparison is the right-hand column. Our provider comparisons price the same order on both sides at several sizes, with every figure dated and sourced, and state the rows we lose.

#How to calculate your effective cost per GB

The formula is short:

effective $/GB = (plan fees + credits + tax + anything else charged)
                 / GB actually used before the traffic expires

Two worked examples from the figures above:

• A commitment you do not fill. Bright Data's $1,999 a month plan includes 798 GB. Use 500 GB in a month and the commitment does not roll over, so your effective rate is $1,999 / 500 = about $4.00/GB, the same as their pay as you go rate with the discount code, and before tax.
• Credits that expire. SOAX's Builder plan buys 100 GB of US traffic for $300. If a project ends and 40 GB are still unused when their 60 days run out, you paid $300 for 60 GB: $5/GB, the same as their no-plan US rate.

Neither vendor did anything wrong in either example. The plan was sized for a different buyer. The formula tells you which buyer you are.

#Cost per successful request: the number that matters

A gigabyte is an input. What you want is pages, prices or SERPs. The cost of one result is:

cost per success = effective $/GB x GB per request / success rate

Say your average response is 400 KB (0.0004 GB) and you pay $4/GB. Each attempt costs $0.0016. At a 90% success rate that is $1.78 per 1,000 successful requests. At 70% it is $2.29. A cheaper gigabyte with a worse success rate on your targets can cost more per result, and block pages are not free: many are heavy HTML, and they count toward the meter like any other response.

You cannot get a success rate from a pricing page, including ours. You get it by running your own targets through each vendor in the same time window. How to test a proxy provider has the method and a Python script that reports success rate, latency, exit IPs, bytes used and cost per 1,000 successful requests.

#Questions to ask before you pay

Copy this list into your notes and answer every line for each vendor you shortlist.

1. What is the total for my exact order, tax included? Not the rate: the total.
2. Is the rate I see for my quantity, or for a larger plan?
3. Does the volume discount apply to the whole order or only above the tier?
4. Is this a subscription? Does it renew on its own, and at what price after any discount code ends?
5. What happens to unused traffic at the end of the month or the credit window? Is there a rollover cap?
6. Does the rate change with the exit country, targeting or session type?
7. What counts toward the meter: request bytes, headers, TLS, failed requests?
8. Is there a free trial, and does it turn into a paid plan when it ends? Decodo's residential trial, 100 MB for 3 days, activates the chosen plan automatically unless you cancel, per their pricing page.
9. Can I get unused balance back? Read the refund policy for what "unused" means.
10. Are the rules on what I can target published before I pay? Ours are on the allowed-use page.

If a vendor answers all ten in writing, you know your effective price before the card form does.

#How ProxyHive prices residential

One ladder, starting at $5.50/GB for 1 GB, with the discount applied to the whole order. The configured price is the checkout price: nothing is added at the payment step apart from tax we are required to collect. Traffic never expires, and neither does your balance, so there is no month to fill. Rates hold for 12 months after purchase, and move down if list price drops. The minimum top-up is $10, and a new account gets 1 GB of residential traffic free to run the test above before spending anything.

What it does not do: residential has no country, region or city selection today, and we do not sell a cheaper monthly plan in exchange for a commitment. If a steady monthly volume and a named country matter more than non-expiring traffic, one of the vendors in the table may suit you better, and the comparison pages say so row by row.