A residential proxy should be judged by the data it actually delivers, not only by its price per gigabyte. Failed requests, inaccurate locations, and unstable sessions can make an inexpensive plan costly during a large scraping run. The eight services below can be tested against the same target list to compare their real cost and reliability.
Run One Test Across All Eight
- Target set: 500 public URLs from the intended project.
- Locations: The same countries or cities for every provider.
- Sessions: One run with per-request rotation and another with a sticky IP.
- Record: Usable pages, blocks, response time, and consumed traffic.
- Formula: proxy spend ÷ usable pages × 1,000.
Eight Providers to Put Through the Test
- Oxylabs
A scraper checking hotel rates by neighborhood may need more than country-level routing. Oxylabs offers country, state, city, ZIP, coordinate, and ASN selection across a network it lists at 175M+ IPs in 195 countries. The smallest package costs $30 per month and includes 5 GB.
IPs can change with each request or remain sticky for up to 24 hours, and connections run through HTTP(S), or HTTP/3, or SOCKS5. One extra step applies to certain configurations: IP version and operating system filters may require KYC.
- SOAX
SOAX prices Sandbox traffic by destination: $5 per GB for Tier 1 locations and $2 per GB for Tier 3. Its 155M+ pool covers 195+ geographies, although Texas exits are unavailable. This regional split matters for price-monitoring teams collecting the same catalog across markets.
Rotating every request is available, as are custom-length sticky sessions and unlimited concurrent connections. Standard targeting reaches country, region, city, and ISP; ASN and ZIP filters require a Scale or Enterprise plan.
- Decodo
Decodo gives small scraping jobs a low entry point: pay-as-you-go traffic costs $4 for 1 GB. Monthly packages begin at $11.25 for 3 GB, and each plan reaches its advertised 115M+ IP pool across 195+ locations.
Geo controls include country, state, city, ZIP code, and ASN at no added charge. Users can rotate per request or hold an IP for longer workflows, with support for HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 and unlimited concurrent sessions.
- DataImpulse
For teams whose scraping volume varies month to month, DataImpulse sells residential IP proxy traffic on an as-needed basis. New accounts can buy 5 GB for $5, and unused bandwidth does not expire. The first-party pool is advertised at 90M+ IPs across 195 countries.
Country selection is included at no added cost, while state, city, ZIP, and ASN targeting are offered as more advanced options. Scrapers can rotate addresses, maintain sticky sessions, and connect via HTTP(S) or SOCKS5.
- IPRoyal
IPRoyal is geared toward buyers who want bandwidth to remain available until consumed. A one-off 1 GB purchase costs $7.35, while a subscription costs $7. The network lists 64M+ addresses in 195+ countries.
A scraper may rotate its IP address on every request or retain a single IP for up to seven days. Country, state, and city targeting and unlimited concurrent sessions are included, with HTTP(S) and SOCKS5.
- Infatica
Infatica draws from a 35M+ IP pool with country, city, and ZIP targeting included on every plan. Rotation intervals are adjustable and concurrent sessions are unlimited, which suits parallel jobs like market research built on public social metrics, for example, tracking how Instagram analytics shift across regions.
Pay-as-you-go traffic costs $4 per GB, and a 7-day trial costs the same. The gap between that and a fixed allowance is steep, though: the first listed monthly bundle is 25 GB for $96. Teams wanting predictable capacity should budget for the jump rather than expect a gentle step-up from PAYG.
- Rayobyte
Rayobyte makes its volume discounts easy to see. Residential traffic costs $3.50 per GB for the first 50 GB, drops to $2 per GB from 50 GB to 249 GB, and reaches $0.70 per GB at 1 TB or more. Every tier draws from 40M+ IPs in 163+ locations.
Sticky sessions are available, though the residential product lists HTTP(S) rather than SOCKS5. The pricing favors ecommerce or SERP collectors able to justify larger volume bands. Teams running heavier social-data workloads may also need to think beyond proxy traffic alone, since dedicated servers for Instagram tools can provide more predictable infrastructure for sustained automation or data-processing tasks.
- PacketStream
PacketStream charges a flat rate of $1 per GB, but the minimum purchase is $50. The balance never expires, so that recurring low-volume collectors can spend it over time. Country targeting is included; state, city, ZIP, ASN, and ISP selection are not offered.
A new residential exit can be selected for each connection, or one can be held for up to 60 minutes. HTTPS is the primary endpoint, with HTTP and SOCKS5 also supported. PacketStream does not publish a pool size figure, which makes coverage harder to compare with other services here.
Use the Number That Matters
The cheapest listed traffic may not produce the cheapest dataset. Compare providers by cost per 1,000 usable pages, then check whether the winning result remains stable at the planned production volume. That same emphasis on usable rather than merely collected data also matters when teams turn social data into actionable app features, where reliability and consistency can matter more than raw volume.
