Real-Time Proxy Performance Benchmarks
Unbiased 24/7 testing of residential proxies from top providers worldwide
What a gigabyte actually costs, today
Every rate in the table above is the provider's own published price per gigabyte, re-read on a fixed cycle and dated 9 Sept 2026. Put together, the 15 networks tracked here average $3.47 a gigabyte for residential bandwidth, with a median of $3.00 and a field running from $0.50 to $8.00. The gap between mean and median is the enterprise tier pulling the average up, which is why the median is the number worth budgeting against.
The four products are not interchangeable and the price gap between them is the whole reason to care. Datacenter addresses are identified by a lookup before a page renders, so they are worthless against a site that checks and perfect against one that does not. Residential addresses belong to real home connections and cost several times as much for exactly that reason. Fixed ISP splits the difference. Mobile is the escalation you reach for when everything else has stopped working. Residential against datacenter, residential against fixed ISP, and the full price breakdown go through each trade in detail.
Start from the question you actually have
A single ranking cannot answer every question, because what disqualifies a network for one job is irrelevant to the next. Each page below filters this same catalogue on a rule that is printed on the page, then orders what is left by price — so you can disagree with the rule rather than with a score you cannot see.
Questions people ask before buying
What is the average cost per GB for residential proxies?
Across the 15 networks benchmarked here the average is $3.47 per gigabyte and the median is $3.00. The median is the figure to budget against — a pair of enterprise vendors at $8.00 pull the mean upward and nobody shopping on price is quoted it. Read 9 Sept 2026.
What are the cheapest residential proxies?
FlameProxies at $0.50 per gigabyte, then GeoNode at $0.88 and Evomi at $0.99. All three are published entry rates rather than negotiated enterprise pricing.
What are the best residential proxies for web scraping?
On success rate and response time together, the top of this table is where to look — Bright Data answers fastest at 400ms, and several networks hold above 99% success. Which one is best for you depends on your targets, which is why the shortlists here are filtered on printed rules rather than an editorial score.
What is the price range for premium proxies?
Taking premium to mean the networks graded A- or better, the range is $0.50 to $8.00 per gigabyte. It overlaps the lower-graded field almost completely, which is worth knowing: paying a premium rate does not reliably buy a premium network.
Can I get started with proxies without a credit card?
Yes. 10 of the 15 networks here take PayPal or cryptocurrency and open an account on an email address alone, with no identity check.
What options are available for free trials of proxy services?
10 of the 15 networks publish a trial — some a free bandwidth allowance, some a paid pass costing a few dollars, some a permanently free tier. A further 13 sell pay-as-you-go bandwidth, so a small top-up works as a trial where none is offered.
Are there differences in speed between residential and ISP dedicated proxies?
Yes, and it is structural. Fixed ISP addresses are hosted in datacenters and merely registered to a consumer internet provider, so they average 631ms against 724ms for rotating residential, which really does route through somebody's home connection. ISP is also far steadier hour to hour.
Which proxy services have the best customer support?
9 of the 15 networks publish round-the-clock support across two or more channels, and a smaller number assign a named account manager above a spend threshold. Support hours are listed on every provider page here.
Every figure on this page is either a measurement we take continuously or a price read from the provider's own site and dated. How we check · every provider · where the addresses come from