The cheapest residential proxies in 2026, by how much you buy

The short answer

• Lowest rate with city targeting: Evomi Core — $0.99/GB pay-as-you-go from 15 GB, $0.49/GB on its $49 monthly plan¹. Watch its traffic multipliers and small measured pool.
• Simplest flat rate: PacketStream — $1.00/GB for everything, rotating or sticky, from a $50 balance that never expires^2,3.
• Smallest first purchase: Rayobyte — one gigabyte for $3.50 after a free trial with no card⁴.
• Terabytes without a subscription: Rayobyte again — $0.70/GB at 1–5 TB⁴.

Those are the budget picks from our guide to the best residential proxies by use case, which also covers the trade-offs of each.

Price per GB at five volumes

Each cell shows the price per gigabyte of the cheapest single purchase that covers that volume. Where a minimum purchase or plan size forces you to buy more than you need, the cell says how much you’d buy. Rates are for standard residential traffic in a top-tier country such as the US.

Two patterns stand out. Below about 50 GB, minimums shape the per-GB figures: PacketStream’s $50 and Evomi’s 15 GB buy more than a small job needs, and in both cases the rest never expires^3,1. Above 100 GB, the cheapest options are a subscription (Evomi’s $0.49 plan) or a large pay-as-you-go purchase (Rayobyte’s $0.70 at a terabyte)^1,4. Premium networks — Decodo, Oxylabs, Bright Data — never get close on price, which is not what they compete on.

For volumes in between, the price calculator runs the same sums for any number of gigabytes.

What your first purchase costs

For small jobs, the cash you must hand over matters more than the rate. This table shows the total for 1 GB and 10 GB, and what happens to anything left over.

The smallest single purchases are Rayobyte’s $3.50 pay-as-you-go gigabyte and Webshare’s $3.50 monthly plan^4,5. PacketStream’s $50 buys 50 GB, and the last column shows why that matters: whatever a small job leaves over stays in the balance, because it never expires³.

How this compares with the market

Proxyway’s 2026 market research, based on data collected in March and April 2026, put the median residential price at $4.00/GB for the smallest purchase, $3.75 at 5 GB, $3.00 at 50 GB, $2.25 at 500 GB and $1.94 at 1 TB⁶. It also noted that several providers dropped pay-as-you-go during 2026.

Against those medians, Evomi, PacketStream and Proxy-Cheap are far below the market at every volume, and Rayobyte is a little below it at entry and far below from 50 GB. Webshare is a little below throughout; Decodo sits at the median; Infatica matches it on small purchases and is above it at volume; SOAX is above it at entry and below it at a terabyte; IPRoyal, Oxylabs and Bright Data are above it on small purchases. The residential proxy pricing guide explains the pricing models behind these numbers and what a gigabyte buys in page loads.

Hidden costs that change the answer

Minimums

Evomi’s pay-as-you-go starts at 15 GB¹; Oxylabs’ cheapest entry is a $30 monthly plan⁷; PacketStream’s purchases start at $50 (resellers $500)². A minimum costs you nothing if the traffic never expires and you use it eventually, as at PacketStream and on Evomi’s pay-as-you-go³. It costs you everything you don’t use if it does expire.

Expiry

Traffic never expires at PacketStream, IPRoyal and on Evomi’s pay-as-you-go; Proxyway reports the same for Rayobyte^3,8,1,9. SOAX credits last 60 days¹⁰. Decodo’s pay-as-you-go traffic lasts 12 months and its plans don’t roll over; Oxylabs plans expire monthly⁷. If your usage is lumpy, an expiring plan’s real price is the plan price divided by what you actually use.

Multipliers and country tiers

Some providers charge in traffic rather than dollars. Evomi’s Core rate covers country, city and ISP targeting, but its “more IPs” mode uses 6× the traffic and ASN targeting 4×¹¹. SOAX charges by exit country: $5, $4 or $2 per GB on its pay-as-you-go tier, depending on the country’s tier¹⁰. PacketStream and Rayobyte list one rate per volume regardless of country.

How traffic is counted

Every provider here bills per gigabyte and runs its own meter; PacketStream documents that usage is measured at its gateway². Whichever provider you choose, log the bytes your own client sends and receives for a day and compare them with the dashboard before you buy in bulk.

Retries

Failed requests still use bandwidth. Proxyway’s 2026 research found a median success rate of 74.43% across residential providers on Amazon, Google and Instagram⁶. At that rate, retrying until every page succeeds can multiply your traffic by up to about 1.34× — an upper bound, since failed responses are often smaller than successful ones. A provider that costs 20% more but succeeds more often on your targets can be the cheaper buy.

Identity checks and refunds

KYC can stop a purchase or strand your money. Bright Data sells residential access only to verified companies¹²; Infatica checks ID and a selfie before the first purchase; Rayobyte uses SumSub^13,9. Proxy-Cheap refunds nothing if a required KYC check fails¹⁴. Webshare refunds within 2 days, Decodo within 14 days (first purchase only) and Evomi within 30 days (with a usage cap), and Oxylabs’ self-service purchases are non-refundable^5,15,1,7.

Cheap but risky

Proxy-Cheap has some of the lowest headline rates here — $0.78/GB from 51 GB — but shows them as discounts from $2.99 without saying how long they last¹⁴. It has no current independent test, and its 2.7 Trustpilot score from 750 reviews rests on complaints about refunds, slow support, geolocation mismatches and “residential” IPs that look like datacenter addresses¹⁶. A low rate on IPs that aren’t really residential is not a saving.

The bigger warning is NetNut. On 2 July 2026 the FBI seized hundreds of its domains in an action against the Popa botnet, a network of at least two million compromised TVs and streaming boxes^17,18. Its parent company disputed the allegations but paused services two days later, and the site still shows the seizure banner. When a network is alleged to draw on devices whose owners never agreed, the service can disappear overnight, however the allegations are eventually resolved. Before buying anywhere on price alone, read our guide to how residential IPs are sourced.