Cheap residential proxies: what to check before you top up

Cheap residential proxies are easy to find. Search for them and you will see $1/GB headlines within a minute. What is hard is working out what that figure buys, because the price per gigabyte is only one of about eight numbers that decide what a job actually costs. The rest live in the terms, the refund page and the meter.

Below are the eight questions worth asking any provider before you top up. Each comes with what a good answer looks like, a red flag, and our own answer, because a checklist that exempts its author is an advert.

What makes cheap residential proxies cheap?

Usually one of three things: a small company with low overheads, a headline rate that only applies to a very large order, or a meter and terms that make each gigabyte buy less than it seems to. The first is fine. The other two are what this checklist is for.

None of the questions need inside knowledge. They need the terms page, the refund page, a few dollars of test traffic, and ten minutes.

Questions about the meter

1. What exactly does the meter count?

Look for a written definition: which direction of traffic is counted, whether headers and TLS overhead are included, whether failed connections are billed, and a per-request log you can export. Red flag: no definition anywhere, or only a running total with nothing to check it against.

A definition is not a verdict. A provider that counts fewer bytes per request can charge more per gigabyte and bill you the same, so compare what a job costs, not the sticker. The three ways providers inflate a meter come with a curl test that works against anyone.

Our answer: request bytes plus response bytes, including headers and protocol overhead on the tunnelled connection. Connections that fail before transferring data are not billed; retries you start are, each as its own log entry. Every request shows up with its bytes and cost, and if our figure is higher than you moved we credit back the difference. Reconcile our log against your own rather than taking that on trust.

2. Do the gigabytes expire?

Look for a balance that stays until you use it. Red flag: gigabytes that lapse at the end of a month, or a plan that resets its allowance each cycle. A low rate on traffic you do not get round to using is not a low rate.

Our answer: the balance does not expire. The terms say so in one line.

Questions about the money

3. What is the minimum top-up, and is there a commitment?

Look for a small first purchase with no subscription attached. Red flag: the cheap rate is only available on a monthly plan, or the smallest order is large enough that testing is itself a commitment.

Our answer: the minimum top-up is $5, and the smallest residential order is 1 GB, which costs $5.50 at the single-gigabyte rate. No subscription and no monthly minimum.

4. What does the headline rate need you to buy?

Look for the full ladder published, with the order size next to every rate. Red flag: a “from” price with the qualifying order hidden, or only visible once you are in checkout.

Our answer: our own cheapest rate is a volume rate too, and it is fair to say so. The rate attaches to the top-up that funded the traffic, and here is the whole ladder:

So the honest version of our headline is $1.75/GB if you buy 1,000 GB at once, and $5.50/GB for your first test. Size the job before you pick a rung: measure what your pages weigh, or use the bandwidth calculator.

5. What do refunds cover, and for how long?

Look for a refund of unused balance, a window you can actually use, and money back rather than store credit. Red flag: a policy that voids the refund once any traffic has been used, which in practice means it never applies.

Our answer: ask within seven days of a top-up and the unused portion goes back the way you paid, no reason needed. Using some of it does not void the rest. The refund policy is the binding version and fits on one screen.

Questions about the IPs

6. How do you know the IPs are residential, and where do they come from?

Look for exit IPs whose ASN belongs to a consumer internet provider rather than a hosting company, and a straight answer on how the people behind those IPs agreed to share them. Red flag: “ethically sourced” with no detail, or a sample of exit IPs that whois to cloud providers.

You can check the first half yourself. Pull a few hundred exit IPs through a trial balance and look up each one’s network; the proxy checker tutorial builds a script that does exactly that.

Our answer: we publish the ASN type behind every IP you get, so a datacenter range sold as residential would show up in the field. For sourcing, ask us the same question you would ask anyone else, in Discord, and judge the answer by the same rule: if it is vague, that is your answer.

7. Can you choose a country, and what does that cost?

Look for the price of choosing a country stated up front, and enough IPs in the countries you need. Red flag: a surcharge that only appears in checkout, or a long list of countries with a handful of IPs behind most of them.

Our answer, plainly: you cannot choose a country on our residential proxies. You get whichever home IP comes up from the whole pool. That is one of the trade-offs behind the price, and if your job has to come from one named country, our residential is the wrong tool. ISP and datacenter addresses are bought for a country you pick at checkout: from $3.20 for a dedicated ISP address and $3.20 for a dedicated datacenter one, for 30 days. The locations page lists which countries each line covers.

Questions about help

8. Who answers when something breaks?

Look for a channel where a person replies, and ideally one where you can read how other customers’ problems were handled. Red flag: a ticket form with no history, or a chatbot that only knows the sales page.

Our answer: support runs in public in Discord, and [email protected] reaches the same people if you would rather not post.

The checklist in one table

How to pick the best cheap residential proxies without trusting anyone

Put the same eight questions to two or three providers, then spend the minimum with each and run the same small job through all of them. Count your own bytes, compare them with each provider’s figure, and divide what you paid by the pages you actually got. That last number is the only price that matters, and it is often a different ranking from the per-gigabyte one.

Two more habits save money. Check whether you need residential at all: plenty of sites let datacenter IPs in, and a five-minute test tells you. And keep your first top-up small until a provider has passed your own test, not its own marketing.

We have put the questions to named providers on the comparison pages, with links to their own terms so you can check our reading. The checklist applied across the market, us included, puts their prices, minimums and refund terms in one table. Our side of every answer is written down on the honesty page, where you can hold us to it.