How Much Do Residential Proxies Cost in 2026
Residential proxies cost about $2.50 to $8 per GB in 2026, and per-GB is the least useful number. What matters is cost per successful page after retries.
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Rankings reflect documented features, public pricing as of the "Last Updated" date, and category positioning analysis. We apply a Commercial Gate: only tools we can earn a commission from (now or in the next 12 months) enter the ranking pool. When a non-monetizable tool is the right answer, we name it with a caveat. How rankings work · Editorial policy
Bright Data
Published residential proxy rates run from about $2.50 to $8 per GB depending on plan size and promotions, and the per-GB number is only part of the cost: what matters is cost per successful page after retries. Decodo is the lowest-priced self-serve option at small and mid sizes, from $4 per GB pay as you go to $2.75 at 100 GB. Oxylabs publishes plans from $30 a month for 5 GB at $6 per GB, falling to $2.50 per GB at 1 TB. Bright Data lists $8 per GB pay as you go ($4 with its current promotional code) and monthly plans from $499. IPRoyal sells traffic that never expires at $7 per GB for 1 GB and $5.25 at 10 GB, with $1.75 only on custom plans from 10 TB. The number that decides which tier is right is the success rate on your target, not the headline rate.
Try Bright DataAt a Glance
| Feature | IPRoyal | Bright Data | Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | From $5.25/GB at 10 GB, non-expiring | Pay as you go $8/GB list ($4 with promo); plans from $499/mo | $4/GB pay as you go; $3.75 at 3 GB to $2.75 at 100 GB | From $6/GB ($30/mo for 5 GB) |
| Per-GB Price | - | - | - | - |
| Billing Model | - | - | - | - |
| Minimum Commitment | - | - | - | - |
| Best For | - | - | - | - |
Quick Comparison
Our Top Picks
IPRoyal
The floor of residential pricing, and the only one here where traffic never expires.
- Lowest per-GB price in the category
- Traffic never expires, so burst usage is not penalised
- Self-serve with no minimum commitment
- Smaller pool and lower success rate on hardened targets
- Retries on hard targets erode the price advantage
- Thinner tooling than the premium providers
Bright Data
The price anchor for production scraping. The GB costs more and buys more successful pages.
- Highest success rate on hardened targets, so retries stay low
- Pay-as-you-go with no minimum at the $5 rate
- Volume tiers reduce the rate materially at scale
- ZIP-level targeting included rather than surcharged
- Add-on products are separately metered and add up fast
- Compliance onboarding takes longer than self-serve competitors
- Overkill for occasional or easy-target scraping
Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)
The middle tier. Self-serve, reliable, and priced for teams that outgrew the cheap pool.
- Success rates close to Bright Data on mainstream targets
- Cleanest dashboard and fully self-serve
- Per-GB rate falls materially on larger monthly plans
- Unused monthly traffic is forfeited
- Headline $7 is the small-plan rate, not the working rate
- Weaker on the hardest targets than Bright Data
Oxylabs
Where the pricing model changes shape. Sales-led, contracted, and priced for scale rather than entry.
- Strongest enterprise support and compliance documentation
- Effective rate falls well below $8 on committed volume
- Custom SLAs and dedicated account management
- Highest entry rate in the category
- Sales-led, so small buyers face friction for little benefit
- Wrong tier for anything below sustained high-volume use
How This Was Tested
Rankings reflect documented features and public pricing as of September 2026, re-read for Bright Data, Decodo, Oxylabs and IPRoyal in October 2026. Per-GB rates fall with volume on every provider listed; the figures quoted are entry rates and the review text indicates where the working rate diverges materially. Performance and quality judgements are editorial opinion based on vendor documentation, not measured results or independent benchmarks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Published rates run from about $2.50 to $8 per GB. Decodo is $4 pay as you go and $2.75 at 100 GB, Oxylabs is $6 at 5 GB and $2.50 at 1 TB, IPRoyal is $7 at 1 GB and $5.25 at 10 GB (and $1.75 only on custom plans from 10 TB), and Bright Data lists $8 pay as you go ($4 with its current promotional code) with plans from $499 a month. Every provider reduces the rate with volume.
Because a failed request still consumes bandwidth. As an illustration, a pool that succeeds 70 percent of the time on a hard target uses about 1.4 GB to deliver 1 GB of useful pages, while one that succeeds 95 percent of the time uses about 1.05 GB, so on difficult targets a higher per-GB rate can deliver results for less. Compare cost per successful page, not cost per gigabyte.
On most providers, yes, at the end of the monthly billing period. Decodo and Oxylabs plans forfeit unused bandwidth. Bright Data pay-as-you-go bills what is used. IPRoyal is the exception here: purchased traffic sits in the account until consumed, which makes it the right model for teams that scrape in irregular bursts rather than continuously.
Decodo pay as you go at $4 per GB, IPRoyal from 1 GB at $7 (traffic never expires), or Bright Data pay as you go. All allow buying a few gigabytes to test a target before committing to a plan. Avoid monthly plans until the traffic pattern is known, because a plan sized for peak usage forfeits bandwidth in every quieter month.
When monthly spend is high enough that a negotiated rate saves more than the account management costs in time, which typically means sustained usage in the hundreds of gigabytes per month or more. Below that, self-serve providers deliver comparable success rates without the procurement cycle, and the flexibility to change plans monthly is worth more than a modest rate reduction.
Substantially, usually five to twenty times per GB, because residential IPs belong to real consumer connections and are harder for targets to detect and block. Datacenter proxies are the right choice for targets that do not block them, which is a shrinking set. Paying residential rates for a target that accepts datacenter traffic wastes money; paying datacenter rates for a target that blocks them wastes everything.