Buyer’s guide · measured · dated
Buy residential proxies: prices, trials and the real cost per request
Every provider sells by the gigabyte. You are buying successful page fetches. This page converts one into the other with traffic and pass rates we measured on nine real sites, and lists what each provider’s trial, plan and targeting actually get you.
Latest run
- Tested
- 10 Sep 2026
- Targets
- 9real sites
- Providers
- 3+ datacenter baseline
- Baseline pass rate
- 15 / 45no proxy
Quick answer · 10 Sep 2026
The best residential proxies to buy in September 2026, ranked by what a successful page fetch actually costs at list price, using traffic and pass rates we measured on 9 real sites:
- Decodo from $2/GB · about $0.29 per 1,000 successful requests · 19/45 passed · trial: 3-day trial, 100 MB Best for the lowest price per successful request and a self-serve start.
- SOAX from $5/GB · about $0.74 per 1,000 successful requests · 19/45 passed · trial: 3-day trial, 400 MB, $1.99 Best for sticky sessions of custom length and the cheapest way to try residential proxies.
- Oxylabs from $6/GB · about $0.90 per 1,000 successful requests · 20/45 passed · trial: None on self-service Best for the highest pass rate on protected retail and real-estate sites.
- Bright Data test pending · from $8.4/GB Best for enterprise pipelines that need ZIP-level targeting and a compliance team.
Baseline without a proxy, from the same datacenter server: 15/45 passed, median 0.3 s. Residential proxies bought access to Zillow; the 5 sites that blocked everything (Google, Walmart, Best Buy, LinkedIn, Indeed) block the missing browser, not the address; the browser run below shows which of them a real browser opens.
Residential proxy pricing
What 1,000 successful requests cost at list price
Traffic per request is what we measured with browser headers and no JavaScript against Amazon, Google, Zillow, Walmart and five more. Cost per 1,000 successful requests divides the traffic cost by the share of requests that brought back the real page. Blocked responses cost traffic too; that is why a cheap gigabyte is not always cheap.
| Provider | List price | Traffic per 1,000 requests | Cost per 1,000 requests | Pass rate | Cost per 1,000 successful | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | $2/GB | 62 MB | $0.12 | $0.29 | See Decodo pricing | |
 | $5/GB | 62 MB | $0.31 | $0.74 | See SOAX pricing | |
 | $6/GB | 67 MB | $0.40 | $0.90 | See Oxylabs pricing | |
 | $8.4/GB | – | – | Test pending | – | See Bright Data pricing |
We earn a commission if you buy through the pricing links. It does not change the numbers: the test script, the target list and the raw results are public, and providers do not see results before you do.
Prices are the pay-as-you-go or smallest-plan list price per gigabyte on the date shown, without volume discounts. A page fetched with a headless browser loads images, scripts and fonts and typically moves five to twenty times more traffic than the plain requests measured here; scale the numbers accordingly, the ranking does not change.
Plans and terms
Pool, targeting, sessions, trial and entry price, side by side
Pool sizes are the providers’ own claims and we do not verify them; everything else in this table is a term you can check on the pricing page before you pay.
| Provider | Pool | Locations | Targeting | Sessions | Trial | Entry price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100M+ | 195 countries | City · ASN | Rotating and sticky | None on self-service | $6/GBStarter 5 GB, $30/mo, cancel any time | See Oxylabs pricing |
| 72M+ | 195 countries | City · ASN · ZIP | Rotating and sticky | Free trial for verified businesses | $8.4/GBPay as you go, no commitment | See Bright Data pricing |
| 115M+ | 195+ locations | City · ZIP · ASN | Rotating and sticky (minutes to days) | 3-day trial, 100 MB | $2/GBPay as you go $4/GB, plans from $2/GB | See Decodo pricing |
| 155M+ | 195+ locations | City · ISP | Rotating and sticky, custom length | 3-day trial, 400 MB, $1.99 | $5/GBPay as you go $5/GB, $3/GB on $200/mo plan | See SOAX pricing |
What to look for
Six things that matter when you buy residential proxies
In the order they change your bill.
All three tested providers deliver real Comcast and Charter addresses, and all three passed Amazon and Nike and failed Walmart, Best Buy, LinkedIn and Indeed. The only site that separated them was Zillow. Check the target matrix on the front page for your site; if it is not there, test it yourself before buying a plan.
A provider at $2/GB with a 42 % pass rate and one at $6/GB with a 44 % pass rate are not three times apart once you count the traffic spent on blocked responses. The table above does that arithmetic. The cheapest gigabyte on this page is also the cheapest successful request, but that will not hold for every target.
Free residential trials are gated behind business verification at every major provider, because free residential traffic attracts abuse. Decodo gives 100 MB for three days after card verification; SOAX sells 400 MB for $1.99; Oxylabs has none on self-service; Bright Data verifies the company first. Budget two dollars and a card, not a free trial.
Rotating per request is the default and what this page measures: every request in our run came from a different address. Sticky sessions keep one address for minutes to days and are needed for logins, carts and paginated results that check consistency. All four providers offer both; SOAX lets you set a custom session length, Decodo goes up to days.
Country targeting is included everywhere. City targeting is included in every plan at all four. ZIP code (Bright Data, Decodo) and ASN, a specific carrier (Oxylabs, Decodo), matter when a site prices or stocks by neighbourhood or behaves differently per ISP. If your target is a national site, do not pay for depth you will not use.
Residential addresses belong to real people. The accepted model is an SDK inside an app the person installed, with disclosure and payment. NetNut, a fixture of “best residential proxies” lists for years, had its domain seized by the FBI in July 2026 after its addresses were tied to a botnet. Ask the provider for its sourcing policy; the four here publish one.
Before you commit
How to try residential proxies for under five dollars
The way we would buy them, and the way we test them.
- 1. Buy the smallest package from two providers. SOAX’s $1.99 trial and Decodo’s card-verified trial together cost two dollars and give you half a gigabyte, which is over a hundred times what our benchmark used. Oxylabs’ 5 GB starter is the right first purchase if you already know you need volume.
- 2. Send five requests to your real target from each. Use the same headers your scraper uses. Count the responses that contain the content you need, not the ones that returned status 200; Google returned a full-size page with no results in it on every request in our run.
- 3. Note the traffic each provider used. Every dashboard shows it. Divide the price per gigabyte by that traffic and by your pass rate, and you have your own version of the cost table above for the site you actually scrape.
- 4. Stay on pay as you go for the first month. Plans cut the per-gigabyte price by a third to a half, but traffic in most plans expires monthly. Move to a plan when you have a month of real usage to size it by, and check whether unused traffic rolls over.
- 5. Re-check every month. Targets change their defences and providers change their prices. This page is rerun on the same day each month; the date at the top is the date of the numbers you are reading.
Providers
Four providers, one test
Measured numbers, list prices and the facts that decide a purchase. Full reviews are on the front page.
Best in test- City and ASN targeting in every plan
- Rotating and sticky sessions
- Starter 5 GB, cancel any time
Test pending- City, ASN and ZIP targeting
- Pay as you go, no commitment
- Scraping browser and dataset marketplace
Tested 10 Sep 2026- City, ZIP and ASN targeting included
- Pay as you go $4/GB
- 3-day free trial, 100 MB
Tested 10 Sep 2026- Country, city and ISP targeting
- Sticky sessions with custom length
- 3-day trial, 400 MB, $1.99
FAQ
Buying residential proxies
How much does it cost to buy residential proxies?
List prices on this page run from $2 to $8.4 per gigabyte (Decodo to Bright Data), checked 9 Sep 2026. Per gigabyte is the wrong unit to compare, though: what matters is what a successful page fetch costs. Using the traffic and pass rates we measured, 1,000 successful requests cost from about $0.29 (Decodo) at list price. Larger monthly plans cut the per-gigabyte price by a third to a half.
Which residential proxy has a free trial?
Of the providers here: Oxylabs: None on self-service; Bright Data: Free trial for verified businesses; Decodo: 3-day trial, 100 MB; SOAX: 3-day trial, 400 MB, $1.99. Every major provider asks for a card or a business verification before a residential trial, because free residential traffic attracts abuse. The cheapest real test is SOAX's paid trial: 400 MB for $1.99, which is more traffic than this whole benchmark used.
Pay as you go or a monthly plan?
Pay as you go if you scrape in bursts or are still testing a target: you pay list price but nothing expires and there is no commitment. A monthly plan pays off when you use more than the plan's included traffic in most months; the per-gigabyte price drops with volume (for example Decodo from $4 to $2, SOAX from $5 to $3). Watch for traffic that expires at the end of the month, which turns a low per-gigabyte price into a high effective one.
Can I buy just 1 GB of residential proxies?
Yes. Decodo sells pay-as-you-go traffic from $2/GB, and Oxylabs' smallest plan is 5 GB for $30 a month. One gigabyte is roughly 15,000 plain page requests at the traffic we measured; with images or a headless browser it is a few thousand.
Are cheap residential proxies safe to use?
Price says nothing about how the addresses were obtained. The question to ask a provider is how the people whose connections you are using agreed to it: an SDK in an app they installed, with disclosure and compensation, is the accepted model. NetNut, once a common recommendation, had its domain seized by the FBI in July 2026 after its addresses were tied to a botnet. All four providers on this page publish their sourcing policy; none of them is priced like a scam.
What is a residential proxy service, in one sentence?
A service that routes your requests through internet connections of real households (Comcast and Charter in our test) so that the site you are scraping sees a consumer address instead of a datacenter, and charges you per gigabyte of traffic that passes through.
Do I need city or ZIP targeting?
Only if the page changes by location: local prices, delivery availability, regional search results, real-estate listings. All four providers offer country and city targeting; Bright Data and Decodo add ZIP code, Oxylabs and Decodo add ASN (a specific carrier). For a national e-commerce site, country targeting is enough and costs nothing extra.
Rotating or static residential proxies?
Rotating, which is what this page measures, gives you a new address for every request and is right for collecting public pages at scale. Static (ISP) proxies keep one address for hours or days and are for logins, carts and anything that ties a session to an address. We measured what rotation actually delivers on each provider here: <a href="/rotating-residential-proxies/">rotating residential proxies tested</a>. They are priced per address per month rather than per gigabyte.
Which residential proxy should I buy?
For the targets in this test, Oxylabs (20/45) had the highest pass rate and Decodo the lowest cost per successful request. If your target is on our list, use the target matrix on the front page; if it is not, buy the smallest pay-as-you-go package from two providers and run the same requests yourself before you commit to a plan.