PacketStream review (2026): one flat $1/GB rate and a balance that never expires

PacketStream pricing (as of October 2026)

Price

$1.00 per GB, measured at PacketStream’s gateway; rotating and sticky cost the same¹

Minimum purchase

$50 (resellers: $500)¹

Billing model

Pay-as-you-go; no subscription²

Expiry

Purchased balance never expires²

Volume pricing

By arrangement with PacketStream’s sales team¹⁰

Free trial

Discretionary trial credits after a person reviews your use case¹¹

Refund

Remaining balance, if requested within 24 hours of purchase²

Payment

Card (Stripe) or PayPal; bank transfer by approval for large purchases²

What $1 per GB means

The rate is measured at PacketStream’s gateway and is the same for rotating and sticky traffic, in every country it serves¹. Elsewhere, the rate often depends on what you switch on or where you exit: Evomi’s “more IPs” mode uses six times the traffic and ASN targeting four times¹²; SOAX prices by exit-country tier¹³; Oxylabs, Webshare and Decodo price by monthly plan^14,15,16. With PacketStream, the invoice is your gigabytes.

Purchases start at $50, which buys 50 GB. Because the balance never expires, a 5 GB month leaves 45 GB for later, with no renewal date to beat^1,2. Larger buyers can arrange volume pricing with PacketStream’s sales team¹⁰.

PacketStream’s $1.00 is a quarter of the $4.00 median entry price and about half the $1.94 median at a terabyte^17,1. For what eleven providers charge at five volumes, see the price-per-GB tables.

Trial and payment

PacketStream offers discretionary trial credits after a person reviews your use case¹¹. You can pay by card (via Stripe) or PayPal, and bank transfer is available by approval for large purchases².

Targeting, protocols and sessions

Targeting

Country, by two-letter ISO code on the auth key (e.g. _country-US)⁵

Protocols

HTTPS on port 31111 (recommended), HTTP on 31112 (legacy), SOCKS5 on 31113³

Rotation

A new exit for each new connection⁴

Sticky sessions

Append _session-<ID>; rolling 60-minute inactivity timeout; fails visibly rather than silently switching IP if the peer drops⁴

Authentication

Username plus a dashboard auth key; country and session options are suffixes on the key, e.g. AUTH_KEY_country-US_session-<label>³

Reseller API

Approved resellers can create sub-users ($0.10 each), move balance, pull 90 days of usage and reset keys³

Integration guides

curl, Python, Node (Undici) and Go, plus step-by-step guides for Playwright, Scrapy and Puppeteer^6,18,19,20

Other products

Search API (Google), Fetch API and MCP server, at $2.50 per 1,000 successful calls from the same balance^7,8,9

Country targeting

Add a two-letter ISO country code to the auth key — _country-US, for example — and the request exits in that country⁵. If a requested country has no available exit, the request fails rather than leaving from somewhere else⁵. The dashboard’s Proxy Access page builds the key, country suffix included, for you³.

Rotation and sticky sessions

Rotation happens per new connection⁴. Most HTTP clients reuse keep-alive connections by default, so consecutive requests share an exit until the connection closes; close the connection when you want a new exit.

Sticky sessions cost the same as rotating traffic. Append _session- plus an ID of your choice to the auth key and the session holds while it’s in use, on a rolling 60-minute inactivity timeout, so an active session can run past an hour⁴. If the home connection behind it drops, the session fails visibly instead of quietly switching to a new IP — the right behaviour for logged-in flows, where an IP that changes mid-session is worse than an error. The rotating vs sticky guide compares session handling across providers.

Protocols and authentication

All three protocols run on one gateway, proxy.packetstream.io: HTTPS on port 31111 (recommended), plain HTTP on 31112 for legacy clients and SOCKS5 on 31113³. At least one 2026 review elsewhere claims there is no SOCKS5; the documentation says otherwise.

Authentication is your PacketStream username plus the auth key from your dashboard. Country and session options are suffixes on the key — AUTH_KEY_country-US_session-<label>, country first³. Approved resellers also get an API that creates sub-users ($0.10 each), moves balance between them, pulls 90 days of usage and resets keys³.

Integration guides

PacketStream’s documentation is detailed. It has worked examples for curl, Python, Node (using Undici) and Go⁶, and step-by-step guides for Playwright, Scrapy and Puppeteer^18,19,20.

Sourcing, KYC and trust

Company

PacketStream Inc., US; California law, Los Angeles County courts; founded 2018²

Sourcing

Opt-in desktop app (“Packeter”); sharers earn $0.10/GB²¹

Third-party sourcing rating

Synthient: LOW risk for consent practices²²

Customer verification

No up-front ID check described in the terms; PacketStream may “require additional information” when it investigates suspected violations²

Support

Email (help@packetstream.io, sales@packetstream.io) and a contact form, which PacketStream says are “monitored around the clock”¹⁰

Where the IPs come from

PacketStream’s network is peer-to-peer. People install its “Packeter” desktop app — Windows or macOS, or Linux via Docker — and earn $0.10 for every gigabyte routed through their connection, cashed out weekly via PayPal from $5²¹.

The consent model is explicit. Sharers must be 18 or over, install the app themselves, and own or be authorised to use the device and connection; sharing only happens while the app runs. Customers see only the exit IP and an approximate location^21,2. Synthient, which rates proxy networks on their consent practices, gives PacketStream a LOW risk rating²².

The terms, updated on 6 October 2026, also tell sharers that their connections carry PacketStream’s own “first-party” traffic — requests its Search and Fetch services make on customers’ behalf, plus its monitoring and testing — paid at the same $0.10/GB^2,21. Our guide to ethically sourced residential proxies compares other providers’ sourcing.

Company, customer checks and support

PacketStream Inc. is a US company, founded in 2018, whose terms are governed by California law with disputes heard in Los Angeles County². Buyers don’t face an up-front ID check; instead the terms let PacketStream investigate suspected violations, restrict destinations or traffic, “require additional information” and suspend access². Support runs through email — help@packetstream.io and sales@packetstream.io — and a contact form, which the company says are “monitored around the clock”¹⁰.

PacketStream’s strengths

Who should pick PacketStream

PacketStream suits buyers who value simple, predictable billing and want standard protocols and sticky sessions without paying extra for them.

Pick it if

• You want one rate to budget and to audit: $1 per GB in every country it serves, rotating or sticky¹.
• Your usage is bursty or occasional and you don’t want to lose traffic at the end of a month — the balance never expires and there’s no subscription².
• Country-level geography fits your job: regional price checks, localisation testing, content that varies by country⁵.
• You run logged-in or multi-step flows and want sticky sessions at no extra cost that fail visibly rather than switching IP⁴.
• You also want pay-per-call Google results or Markdown page fetches billed from the same balance (see below)^7,8.

PacketStream’s Search, Fetch and MCP APIs

PacketStream also sells three API products that draw on the same prepaid balance as the proxies, so one top-up covers both^7,8,9.

Search API

Google results in seven types — web, news, shopping, places, autocomplete, Scholar and AI Mode — as JSON or Markdown, with up to 10 web results per call, a country parameter and batches of up to 10 queries. $0.0025 per successful search ($2.50 per 1,000); failed requests are free⁷.

Fetch API

Downloads a public page live through the residential network, follows up to five redirects and returns the main content as Markdown with the final URL, HTTP status, title and description; long pages can be read in sections. Pages are fetched without JavaScript rendering. $0.0025 per fetch that returns content ($2.50 per 1,000), and every error is free, including target-site errors, timeouts and rate limits⁸.

MCP server

Exposes search and fetch as tools for AI assistants and editors — the docs cover Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, VS Code and Claude Desktop — at the same $0.0025 per successful call. The fetch tool returns up to 40,000 characters by default, adjustable from 1,000 to 100,000⁹.

Searches draw on the same prepaid, non-expiring balance as your proxies, failures cost nothing, and the terms describe no up-front ID check^7,2. That combination makes the Search API our runner-up for Google results without a subscription.

The 2026 relaunch

Between 24 June and 29 July 2026, according to Wayback Machine snapshots, PacketStream rebuilt its website, documentation and terms. The result is a detailed, current set of docs — endpoints and authentication, rotation and sticky sessions, country targeting, language integrations and tool guides — and terms last updated on 6 October 2026^3,4,5,6,2.

Some reviews written elsewhere in 2025 and 2026 still describe the old site. For what PacketStream offers today, its current documentation is the reference, and it is the main source for this review.

Alternatives to PacketStream

• Evomi review — our pick for the lowest price per GB.
• Rayobyte review — our pick for testing on a small budget and for terabytes without a subscription.
• Decodo review — our pick for the best performance below enterprise pricing.

For the full picture, see the best residential proxies by use case, the price-per-GB tables and our index of all eleven reviews.