Best Residential Proxies: 7 Providers Compared on Real Cost
· Updated October 24, 2026
Part of our Proxy Providers guide
Residential proxies are the expensive part of most proxy budgets. The advertised price per gigabyte rarely matches what you end up paying.
The real cost depends on four things:
- How much traffic you use.
- Whether unused traffic expires.
- How the provider counts each request.
- What extra targeting adds.
Two providers with the same headline rate can differ by hundreds of dollars a year.
Our top three picks are below:
- Decodo for balanced, easy residential access.
- Evomi for the lowest rate at steady volume.
- DataImpulse for cheap prepaid traffic that never expires.
Oxylabs and Bright Data suit large data teams. IPRoyal fits occasional users, and SOAX stands out for precise location targeting. All prices were checked in mid-October 2026.
What Are Residential Proxies?
Residential proxies route your requests through IP addresses that internet providers assign to real homes. To a website, each visit looks like it came from an ordinary household, not a server.
That makes them the go-to choice for strict sites, local search checks, regional pricing research and ad verification. Not sure you need them? Read our guide to residential vs datacenter proxies first, because datacenter IPs are far cheaper when they work.
Most residential networks come from people who opted in to share spare bandwidth. They often join through apps that pay them or unlock features.
Most providers bill residential traffic by the gigabyte. The pool usually rotates, giving you a new IP on each request unless you ask for a sticky session.
Quick Comparison: 7 Best Residential Proxies
Decodo is our top pick overall, followed by Evomi and DataImpulse. Here is how all 7 compare on use case, starting price and billing model. Prices were checked in October 2026, so confirm the live rate before you buy.
| Provider | Best For | Starting Price | Billing Model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo | Balanced all-round residential use | Around $4/GB pay-as-you-go | Pay-as-you-go or monthly plans |
| Evomi | Lowest rate at steady volume | Around $0.49/GB on the 100 GB plan | Monthly plans or non-expiring credit |
| DataImpulse | Bursty projects on a budget | Around $1/GB | Prepaid traffic that never expires |
| Oxylabs | Large, ongoing collection | Around $30 for 5 GB | Monthly plans by volume |
| Bright Data | Enterprise tooling and compliance | Around $8/GB pay-as-you-go | Pay-as-you-go or monthly; KYC required |
| IPRoyal | Occasional and irregular use | Around $7/GB at 1 GB | Prepaid traffic that never expires |
| SOAX | Precise city and ISP targeting | US traffic around $3 to $5/GB | Prepaid credits |
What Makes a Great Residential Proxy Provider?
A great provider gives you clean, well-sourced IPs where you need them, at a fair per-gigabyte price for your volume. The fine print matters as much as the rate. Expiry rules, minimum billing per request and targeting surcharges can quietly double your bill.
We weighed five things:
- Effective price per GB at small and large volumes.
- Whether traffic expires.
- Location and session controls.
- IP sourcing and acceptable-use policies.
- How easy it is for a small team to get started.
Best Overall and Budget Residential Proxies
1. Decodo: Best balanced residential provider
Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, is the easiest residential provider to recommend to most buyers.
What it does well. Decodo pairs a fair price with clear controls and a smooth dashboard.
You can target by country, state or city. You can rotate on every request or hold an IP for 1, 10, 30 or 60 minutes, or a custom time up to 24 hours.
That covers simple page checks and longer flows, like browsing a store's local catalog. Setup guides and browser extensions make it friendly for people new to proxies.
Key features:
- Rotating and sticky sessions up to 24 hours
- Country, state and city targeting
- Pay-as-you-go or cheaper monthly plans
- Three-day free trial with 100 MB of traffic
Pricing. Residential pay-as-you-go was listed at around $4 per GB, with lower rates on monthly plans. Decodo offers a 14-day money-back window on eligible purchases.
Best for: Most small and mid-sized teams that want residential access without a big commitment.
Limitations. At $4 per GB, pay-as-you-go costs several times more than budget rivals. If you use a lot of traffic every month, compare Decodo's monthly plans against Evomi and DataImpulse.
2. Evomi: Best rate at steady volume
Evomi has one of the lowest residential prices we found, if you can use the plan.
What it does well. Evomi's Core Residential plans are built for buyers with predictable monthly usage. On the 100 GB plan, the rate drops to about $0.49 per GB, a fraction of premium prices. If your usage is less steady, pay-as-you-go costs only about $0.99 per GB and never expires.
Key features:
- Core Residential plans with low per-GB rates
- Non-expiring pay-as-you-go traffic
- Mobile, datacenter and static residential options
- Free trial for new accounts
Pricing. The 100 GB Core Residential plan was listed at roughly $49.99 a month, or about $0.49 per GB. Pay-as-you-go was about $0.99 per GB.
Best for: Teams with steady monthly residential usage who want the lowest unit cost.
Limitations. Evomi bills a minimum of 512 bytes per request. That barely matters for full pages, but it adds up on millions of tiny requests, like quick status checks. A monthly plan also only saves money if you use most of it.
3. DataImpulse: Best for bursty projects on a budget
DataImpulse sells cheap residential traffic that sits in your account until you need it.
What it does well. DataImpulse is ideal when your usage comes in bursts. You prepay at about $1 per GB, and the traffic never expires, so a quiet month costs nothing. The price falls to about $0.80 per GB at 1 TB, and small intro packs make it cheap to try.
Key features:
- Prepaid residential traffic that never expires
- Flat, simple pricing with volume discounts
- Premium residential, mobile and datacenter options
- Country, city and provider targeting
Pricing. Residential was listed at about $1 per GB (5 GB for $5 as an intro pack, 50 GB for $50). It was about $0.80 per GB at 1 TB. Premium residential was about $5 per GB and mobile about $2.
Best for: Freelancers and small teams with uneven, budget-sensitive usage.
Limitations. Advanced targeting, such as city or provider level, uses about twice the traffic. So a targeted gigabyte really costs about $2. Sources also disagree on the minimum top-up, quoting either $5 or $50.
Best Residential Proxies for Large Projects
4. Oxylabs: Best for large, ongoing collection
Oxylabs is a premium choice for companies that run residential traffic at scale every month.
What it does well. Oxylabs is built for serious data operations. It has mature infrastructure, detailed documentation and account support on bigger plans. Its monthly tiers reward volume, falling from about $6 per GB on the entry plan to about $2.50 per GB at 1 TB.
Teams can also switch some jobs to its scraper APIs, which handle proxies and retries for them.
Key features:
- Volume tiers from 5 GB up to 1 TB and beyond
- Country, state and city targeting with session control
- Scraper APIs for managed collection
- Dedicated support on larger plans
Pricing. Monthly residential plans were listed at around $30 for 5 GB, $100 for 20 GB, $500 for 125 GB and $2,500 for 1 TB. That works out to roughly $6, $5, $4 and $2.50 per GB.
Best for: Data teams with large, predictable monthly volumes.
Limitations. Small plans cost far more per GB than budget providers. Unused monthly traffic does not carry over like prepaid credit at DataImpulse or IPRoyal.
5. Bright Data: Best for enterprise tooling and compliance
Bright Data runs one of the best-known residential networks, now with a formal approval step.
What it does well. Bright Data's strength is depth. Its residential network sits alongside Web Unlocker, a scraping browser, scraper APIs and datasets. A large company can handle almost any public-data job with one vendor.
Its formal use-case review can also help enterprise buyers show their legal team how traffic is controlled.
Key features:
- Large residential network with detailed targeting
- Web Unlocker and scraping browser for hard pages
- Scraper APIs and ready-made datasets
- Human-reviewed use-case approval
Pricing. Pay-as-you-go residential was listed at around $8 per GB, with promotions as low as about $4. Monthly plans were about $3.50 per GB at $499, $3.00 at $999 and $2.50 at $1,999.
Best for: Enterprises that value tooling and compliance review over the lowest price.
Limitations. According to Bright Data's documentation, residential zones created after July 7, 2026 need three things:
- Human-reviewed KYC approval.
- A company email (no Gmail or Outlook).
- Traffic limited to approved use cases.
For lighter onboarding, see our Bright Data alternatives.
Best Residential Proxies for Occasional Use and Precise Targeting
6. IPRoyal: Best for occasional and irregular use
IPRoyal's residential traffic never expires, which suits people who need proxies only now and then.
What it does well. IPRoyal's official FAQ confirms that residential traffic you buy does not expire. You can top up once and draw from it for months. Its documentation lists sticky sessions up to seven days, though it does not guarantee the same IP for the full time.
Key features:
- Non-expiring residential traffic
- Sticky sessions up to seven days
- Country, state and city targeting
- Volume discounts on larger purchases
Pricing. Residential traffic starts around $7 per GB for one gigabyte. It falls to roughly $1.75 per GB at large volumes.
Best for: Occasional users who hate losing unused monthly traffic.
Limitations. The single-gigabyte price is high. The rate improves a lot if you commit to more traffic up front. Buy the largest amount you are confident you will use.
7. SOAX: Best for precise city and ISP targeting
SOAX is known for detailed location controls, down to the city and internet provider.
What it does well. SOAX lets you narrow residential traffic by country, region, city and internet provider. That helps with local search checks and confirming ads appear in specific markets. It also sells mobile, ISP and datacenter proxies, so you can match the IP type to each job.
Key features:
- Country, region, city and ISP targeting
- Residential, mobile, ISP and datacenter proxies
- Configurable rotation and sticky sessions
- Prepaid credits that cover several products
Pricing. SOAX sells prepaid credits. On the free Sandbox tier, US residential traffic costs about $5 per GB, and the $200-a-month Builder plan lowers it to about $3. There is no separate trial: Sandbox is the no-commitment way to test, and credits expire 60 days after they are added.
Best for: Marketers and analysts who need precise local views.
Limitations. Pricing has changed recently and prices vary by location tier. The rate for your target country may differ from the US rate.
How Should You Choose a Residential Proxy Provider?
Choose based on your real traffic, a small test and cost per successful page. First, estimate your monthly traffic honestly. Multiply your average page size by pages per month, then add 10 to 20 percent for retries.
If the result is small or unpredictable, pick a non-expiring option like DataImpulse or IPRoyal. If it is steady and large, Evomi's or Oxylabs' monthly plans will usually win.
Second, test before you commit. Use a trial or the smallest pack and run a few hundred requests against your exact pages and locations. Track three numbers:
- Success rate.
- Average response time.
- Megabytes per successful page.
Then calculate the cost per 1,000 successful pages for each provider. That number, not the headline rate, tells you which provider is cheapest for your job.
Third, cut wasted traffic. Blocking images, video and fonts in your tool can shrink a page a lot, which matters most on per-GB billing.
For fresh IPs on every request, see our guide to the best rotating proxies. For a wider shortlist that includes datacenter providers, see our proxy provider comparison.
Need a residential IP that stays the same for weeks? Our guide to the best ISP proxies covers static residential options. The best mobile proxies guide covers 4G and 5G carrier IPs for social and app work.
How We Evaluated These Residential Proxies
We built this list from each provider's public pricing pages, documentation, FAQs and acceptable-use policies, checked in mid-October 2026. We added independent reviews from outlets such as TechRadar and Proxyway.
We focused on effective cost at different volumes, traffic expiry, billing quirks, targeting and session controls, and onboarding.
We did not run our own success-rate or speed benchmarks. Use free trials to confirm performance on your own targets, and confirm live prices before you buy.
How much do residential proxies cost?
Residential proxies cost roughly $0.49 to $8 per GB in our October 2026 check. Here is how the range breaks down:
- Budget providers like Evomi and DataImpulse sit around $0.49 to $1 per GB.
- Mid-range options like Decodo cost around $4 on pay-as-you-go.
- Bright Data costs around $8 on pay-as-you-go.
- Large monthly plans at Oxylabs and Bright Data fall to about $2.50 per GB.
Are residential proxies worth it?
Residential proxies are worth it when cheaper datacenter proxies fail on your targets or you need true local views by city. For your own sites, lightly protected pages and testing, datacenter proxies are usually good enough at a fraction of the cost.
The best approach is to try datacenter first and pay for residential only where it is needed.
Are residential proxies ethical?
They can be, if the provider sources IPs with clear consent and you use them lawfully. Ask how users join the network, whether they are paid and whether they can opt out. Use residential traffic to view public pages as locals would, never to get past logins, paywalls or a site's clear rules.
The Bottom Line
Decodo is the best residential choice for most buyers, thanks to its balance of price, controls and ease of use. Evomi offers the lowest rate if your monthly usage is steady. DataImpulse is the budget pick for bursty work because its traffic never expires.
Oxylabs and Bright Data suit large data teams. IPRoyal suits occasional users, and SOAX is the pick for precise local targeting.
Next steps: Shortlist two providers that fit your usage, run the same small test on both and compare cost per 1,000 successful pages. If residential turns out to be overkill, our list of the best datacenter proxies covers cheaper options.
See every proxy provider compared
Our full shortlist of 8 proxy providers, with pricing, proxy types and who each one fits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which residential proxy provider is the cheapest?
Evomi was the cheapest we found, at about $0.49 per GB on its 100 GB plan. DataImpulse followed at about $1 per GB, with traffic that never expires. Factor in billing quirks, such as Evomi's 512-byte minimum per request and DataImpulse's doubled traffic for advanced targeting.
Does residential proxy traffic expire?
It depends on the provider. DataImpulse and IPRoyal say their prepaid residential traffic never expires, and Evomi's pay-as-you-go traffic does not expire either. Monthly plans at Oxylabs and Bright Data are use-it-or-lose-it, so unused traffic does not roll over.
What is a sticky residential session?
A sticky session keeps the same residential IP for a set time instead of rotating on every request. Decodo offers 1 to 60 minutes or a custom time up to 24 hours, and IPRoyal documents sessions up to seven days. Residential devices can go offline, so the same IP is never fully guaranteed.
Can I try residential proxies for free?
Several providers offer small trials. Decodo has a three-day free trial with 100 MB, and Evomi offers a free trial for new accounts. Others, like DataImpulse, sell very cheap intro packs instead. Use the trial to test your exact target pages before buying volume.
Are residential proxies legal?
Yes, residential proxies are legal to use in most countries. Your activity must still follow the law, the website's terms and privacy rules like the GDPR and CCPA. Reputable providers ban fraud and account abuse. Some, like Bright Data, now review your use case before approving residential access.