Q&ALearn · Comparisons

How Much Do Proxies Cost in 2026?

Proxy prices vary by type: residential proxies cost $1.10-$6/GB, datacenter proxies cost $0.02-$0.10/IP/day, mobile proxies cost $3-$12/GB, and ISP proxies cost $2-$5/IP/month. KnoxProxy residential starts at $2.10/GB pay-as-you-go with volume tiers down to $1.10/GB. The cheapest option depends on your workload: datacenter for permissive targets, residential for protected ones.

KRKnoxProxy Research Team, Technical Content · Updated Jul 5, 2026 · 8 min read

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Jul 5, 2026Last updated

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4 sectionsIn-depth coverage

Key takeaways

What you need to know

The essential points from this guide -- each one is explained in detail below.

Residential: $1.10-$6/GB depending on provider and volume tier.

Datacenter: $0.02-$0.10/IP/day -- the cheapest proxy type.

Mobile: $3-$12/GB -- the most expensive but highest trust.

ISP (static residential): $2-$5/IP/month.

KnoxProxy PAYG: $2.10/GB residential, with tiers to $1.10/GB.

Residential proxy pricing

Residential proxies are priced per gigabyte of bandwidth consumed. Entry-level PAYG rates range from $2.10/GB (KnoxProxy) to $5.88/GB (Bright Data). Volume commitments bring rates down to $1.10-$3/GB at the high end. The best providers bill only for successful (2xx) responses, so failed requests do not count against your bandwidth allowance.

Datacenter proxy pricing

Datacenter proxies are 10-50x cheaper than residential. Shared datacenter proxies can cost as little as $0.10/IP/month. Dedicated (private) datacenter proxies run $0.02-0.10/IP/day. Bandwidth is typically unlimited or has high caps. This makes datacenter proxies the most cost-effective option for targets that do not require residential IPs.

Mobile and ISP proxy pricing

Mobile proxies (4G/5G) are the most expensive at $3-12/GB because carrier IPs are the scarcest and highest-trust proxy type. ISP (static residential) proxies are priced per IP per month ($2-5/IP), not per GB, because they provide a dedicated static IP with unlimited bandwidth. Use mobile proxies only for the hardest targets; ISP proxies for long-running sessions requiring stable IPs.

Calculating your actual cost

Your real cost depends on: bandwidth per request (average page = 200-400KB), number of requests, success rate (failed requests cost nothing with 2xx-only billing), and your target's difficulty. For a 10,000-page scraping job at 240KB average: 2.4GB bandwidth x $2.10/GB = $5.04 total on KnoxProxy residential PAYG.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest proxy type?

Datacenter proxies are the cheapest at $0.02-0.10/IP/day with unlimited bandwidth. However, they only work well on permissive targets. For protected targets, residential proxies are the cheapest effective option.

Why do residential proxies cost more?

Residential IPs come from real household connections with limited bandwidth. The supply is naturally scarce. Datacenter IPs can be provisioned cheaply from cloud hosting providers.

Does KnoxProxy charge for failed requests?

No. KnoxProxy uses 2xx-only billing -- you are only charged for successful responses. Failed, blocked, or error responses are free.

Are free proxies worth using?

No. Free proxies are unreliable, slow, and often compromise your data security. They may inject ads, steal credentials, or operate as honeypots. For any professional use case, a paid provider is essential.

In practice

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Written by

KnoxProxy Research Team · Technical Content

Network engineers and proxy infrastructure specialists with 10+ years in anti-bot systems, web scraping, and IP routing.

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