Residential proxy price index 2026: what a gigabyte costs, from 1 GB to 1 TB

Finding 1: the median price falls 70% from 1 GB to 1 TB

Volume is the biggest price lever. The median fell from $4.00/GB at 1 GB to $1.20/GB at 1 TB, a 70% drop, and individual price lists fell by up to 80% between their smallest and largest published size (Rayobyte, $3.50 to $0.70). The largest steps come above 100 GB: the median falls from $2.50 at 100 GB to $1.50 at 500 GB, then to $1.20 at 1 TB.

For a buyer, the consequence is simple: buying a year of traffic at once is much cheaper per GB, but only if the traffic does not expire before you use it. That is where Finding 3 matters.

Finding 2: budget offers moved under $1/GB, but mostly at volume

At 10 GB, only one offer listed less than $1/GB: Geonode's monthly plan at $0.79. At 100 GB, two did: Geonode ($0.65) and Databay Flex ($0.55). At 1 TB, six of the twelve offers with a published price were under $1/GB: Geonode ($0.50), Databay Flex ($0.55), Rayobyte ($0.70), Thordata ($0.73), DataImpulse ($0.80) and Databay Premium ($0.90).

The budget offers often come with conditions. Databay Flex traffic is valid for 31 days with country targeting only. DataImpulse's $1/GB at 5 GB is now an intro pack for new customers, followed by a $50 minimum. Read the terms column of the comparison before you compare list prices.

Finding 3: only a third of offers say traffic never expires

Of the 16 offers we recorded, 5 state that purchased traffic does not expire: DataImpulse, Geonode, IPRoyal, Byteful and NodeMaven. Eight expire or are billed monthly: Databay Flex and Premium (31 days on most tiers), SOAX (credits valid 60 days), and the monthly plans of Webshare, Decodo, Oxylabs, Infatica and anyIP. Three did not state a rule on the pages we read: Thordata, Rayobyte and Lightning Proxies.

Expiry changes the real price. A team that uses 40 GB in a slow month and 200 GB in a busy one pays for unused gigabytes on a monthly plan, and pays only for use with non-expiring traffic. CrawlRelay traffic never expires at any tier.

Finding 4: crypto is common, crypto without KYC is not

Seven of the 16 offers say they accept cryptocurrency: DataImpulse, Decodo, SOAX, IPRoyal, Byteful, anyIP and NodeMaven. Two say they do not: Webshare and Oxylabs. The rest did not say on the pages we read.

Accepting crypto does not mean paying without identity checks. SOAX accepts crypto "after KYC", IPRoyal requires identity verification for unrestricted access, and Bright Data's Residential network has required company KYC for zones created after July 7, 2026. CrawlRelay accepts BTC, USDT, USDC, ETH, SOL, LTC with no ID, no selfie and no documents, under an Acceptable Use Policy.

Finding 5: below $0.50/GB, ask where the IPs come from

Within the 1 GB–1 TB volumes we sampled, no offer listed a self-serve price below $0.50/GB. Larger volumes go lower: Geonode lists $0.47/GB from 2 TB, down to $0.27/GB at 100 TB, on monthly plans. Proxyway's Proxy Market Research 2026 places prices "under $0.50, reaching $0.15" with botnet-linked storefronts, and describes what it calls a grey market "where a gigabyte can cost $0.30 or even less". In 2026, Google took legal action to take down IPIDEA domains (January), and the FBI and IRS-CI seized NetNut's domains (July). CrawlRelay keeps $0.50/GB as its own floor, and its sourcing page says where its IPs come from.

How does October 2026 compare with Proxyway's spring 2026 study?

Proxyway tested 13 providers in March and April 2026 and published medians of $3.75/GB at 5 GB, $3.00/GB at 50 GB and $2.25/GB at 500 GB. Our October medians at the same volumes are $3.88, $2.73 and $1.50/GB: about level at 5 GB, lower at 50 GB and 500 GB. The samples differ: ours includes budget offers that Proxyway did not test, such as Geonode and Databay Flex, and excludes providers whose pages we could not read. Treat the difference as a sign of a wider budget segment, not as a measured 6-month price fall.

Method

• Date: all prices read on 13 October 2026, on each provider's own pricing page.
• Volumes: 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1,000 GB of residential traffic.
• Rule: the provider's per-GB rate for that volume, or its largest published plan below it (for example IPRoyal's 2 GB plan at 5 GB, and anyIP's 500 GB plan plus extra GB at 1 TB). Coupon codes, time-limited promotions and per-concurrency business plans are excluded; sale prices with no stated end date (Thordata) are included and marked.
• Offers: 15 offers from 14 providers in the statistics; each median uses only the offers priced at that volume. NodeMaven appears in the comparison with prices taken from Proxyway's review and is left out of the medians. Bright Data, Massive and Proxy-Cheap pages could not be read and are not priced. FloppyData lists one $1.00/GB rate for a pool that mixes residential, mobile and datacenter traffic, with no plan sizes on its page, so it is left out of the residential statistics.
• Exclusions: providers are left out for missing data, promotion-only prices, seizure (NetNut, July 2026) or a commercial relationship with us.
• Disclosure: CrawlRelay sells residential proxies and appears in the tables for reference; its prices are not part of the medians.
• Reuse: you may quote these figures with a link to this page. Corrections: [email protected].