Proxy prices in 2026 range from $0.50 per IP per month for basic datacenter proxies to $40 per GB for premium mobile proxies. The most common types — residential and ISP — fall between $2.08 and $12 per unit depending on the provider, plan size, and commitment length. Hex Proxies offers residential bandwidth at $4.25–4.75/GB and ISP proxies at $2.08–2.47/IP/month with no hidden fees, no bandwidth caps on ISP plans, and no minimum commitments. This guide breaks down every pricing model, compares real costs across 15+ providers, and gives you a total-cost-of-ownership framework so you never overpay.

Quick Answer

| Proxy Type | Pricing Model | Industry Range (2026) | Hex Proxies Price | What You Get | |---|---|---|---|---| | **Residential** | Per GB | $4–12/GB | $4.25–4.75/GB | Access to 10M+ rotating IPs, 195 countries | | **ISP / Static Residential** | Per IP/month | $2–5/IP | $2.08–2.47/IP | Dedicated static IP, unlimited bandwidth | | **Datacenter** | Per IP/month | $0.50–2/IP | Not offered | Bulk IPs on hosting ASNs | | **Mobile** | Per GB | $15–40/GB | Not offered | Carrier IPs with CGNAT protection |

**TL;DR:** For most commercial use cases, ISP proxies at $2–3 per IP with unlimited bandwidth deliver the best value. Residential proxies at $4–5 per GB are necessary when you need geo-diversity or rotating IPs. Ignore headline prices — calculate your cost per successful request to compare accurately.

Understanding Proxy Pricing Models

Per-GB Pricing (Bandwidth-Based)

Per-GB pricing charges you for the amount of data transferred through the proxy. This is the standard model for residential and mobile proxies because these types use shared IP pools — you do not get a dedicated IP, so the provider charges for usage instead.

**How it works:** Every HTTP request and response consumes bandwidth. A typical web page is 1.5–3 MB including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images. A simple API response might be 1–50 KB. Your total cost depends on how much data flows through the proxy.

**Calculating your cost:** - 1 GB = roughly 350–700 typical web pages (at 1.5–3 MB each) - 1 GB = roughly 20,000–1,000,000 API calls (at 1–50 KB each) - Monthly cost = (total pages x average page size in GB) x price per GB

**Watch out for:** - **Overage fees.** Some providers charge 1.5–2x the base rate for bandwidth over your plan limit. - **Failed requests still consume bandwidth.** A blocked page (403 response) still transfers headers and error content, consuming 5–50 KB per failed request. - **Retries amplify cost.** If 10% of requests fail and you retry each one, your bandwidth consumption rises by 10%.

Per-IP Pricing (Subscription-Based)

Per-IP pricing charges a flat monthly fee for each IP address. This is the standard model for ISP and datacenter proxies because these types provide dedicated (static) IPs.

**How it works:** You purchase a set number of IPs (e.g., 50 ISP proxies), and each IP has a fixed monthly cost. You can send as many requests as you want through each IP — there is no bandwidth cap or per-request charge. Your cost is predictable and fixed regardless of usage volume.

**Calculating your cost:** - Monthly cost = number of IPs x per-IP price - Cost per request = monthly cost / total requests made that month - As usage increases, cost per request decreases (fixed cost, variable usage)

**The unlimited-bandwidth advantage:** With per-IP pricing and no bandwidth caps, your effective cost per request approaches zero as you scale. This is why ISP proxies are so cost-effective for high-volume workloads — 50 IPs at $2.25 each ($112.50/month) running 1 million requests costs $0.00011 per request.

Per-Request Pricing

Some providers, especially scraping APIs that bundle proxy access with browser rendering and CAPTCHA solving, charge per request (or per 1,000 requests). Prices range from $0.50 to $5 per 1,000 requests depending on target complexity.

Per-request pricing is convenient because cost is directly tied to output. However, it is typically 3–10x more expensive than managing proxies directly because you are paying for the provider’s infrastructure overhead, browser rendering, and CAPTCHA solving on top of the raw proxy cost.

Residential Proxy Pricing in Detail

2026 Market Rates

Residential proxy pricing across 15 providers surveyed in March 2026:

| Tier | Price Range | Typical Plan | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Budget | $4–6/GB | 5–20 GB/month | Smaller IP pools, limited geo-targeting | | Mid-range | $6–8/GB | 20–100 GB/month | Good pools (5M+ IPs), full geo-targeting | | Premium | $8–12/GB | Enterprise or pay-as-you-go | Exclusive pools, dedicated account management | | Hex Proxies | $4.25–4.75/GB | Flexible plans | 10M+ IP pool, 195 countries, no minimum commitment |

What Drives Price Differences

**IP pool size and quality.** Providers with larger, ethically sourced pools charge more because maintaining millions of clean IPs requires ongoing investment in partner relationships and IP quality monitoring.

**Geo-targeting granularity.** City-level and state-level targeting costs more than country-level because it requires more diverse IP sourcing.

**Session duration.** Longer sticky sessions (10–30 minutes) cost more than per-request rotation because the provider must reserve an IP exclusively for your session, reducing pool utilization.

**Support and SLAs.** Enterprise plans with dedicated support, custom SLAs, and priority routing add 20–50% to the base price.

Volume Discounts

Most providers offer tiered pricing that drops as volume increases:

| Monthly Volume | Typical Discount | Example (base $6/GB) | |---|---|---| | 1–10 GB | List price | $6.00/GB | | 10–50 GB | 10–15% off | $5.10–5.40/GB | | 50–200 GB | 15–25% off | $4.50–5.10/GB | | 200+ GB | 25–40% off | $3.60–4.50/GB |

Hex Proxies keeps pricing simple: $4.25–4.75/GB at all volumes with no complex tier structures.

ISP Proxy Pricing in Detail

2026 Market Rates

| Tier | Price Range | Bandwidth | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Budget | $2–3/IP | Often capped (5–50 GB) | Smaller IP selections, fewer carriers | | Mid-range | $3–4/IP | Usually unlimited | Multiple carriers, good geo-coverage | | Premium | $4–5/IP | Unlimited | Top-tier carriers, subnet diversity, dedicated support | | Hex Proxies | $2.08–2.47/IP | Unlimited | Direct carrier relationships, owned infrastructure |

The Bandwidth Cap Trap

Many ISP proxy providers advertise low per-IP prices but impose bandwidth caps. For example:

• Provider A: $2.00/IP but capped at 10 GB/month per IP. Heavy usage beyond the cap incurs $0.10/GB overage.
• Provider B: $3.50/IP with unlimited bandwidth. No overage fees.

If you use 50 GB per IP per month, Provider A costs $2.00 + ($0.10 x 40 GB overage) = **$6.00/IP effective**. Provider B costs a flat **$3.50/IP**.

Hex Proxies charges $2.08–2.47/IP with genuinely unlimited bandwidth. No caps, no overage fees, no surprises.

Price-Per-IP vs Value-Per-IP

The cheapest ISP proxies are not always the best value. IP quality matters:

• **Carrier diversity:** IPs from Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and other tier-1 carriers are more trusted than IPs from small regional ISPs.
• **Subnet diversity:** IPs spread across many /24 subnets are harder to detect as proxy blocks than IPs clustered in a few subnets.
• **IP freshness:** Recently acquired IPs have cleaner reputations than IPs that have been used (and potentially flagged) for years.
• **Infrastructure ownership:** Providers who own their servers have lower latency and more control than those reselling upstream providers’ capacity.

Datacenter Proxy Pricing in Detail

Datacenter proxies are the cheapest type, with prices ranging from $0.50 to $2.00 per IP per month. Bulk purchases of 1,000+ IPs can drop below $0.30 per IP.

**Why so cheap?** Datacenter IPs do not require carrier relationships or residential network partnerships. The provider buys IP blocks from hosting companies or directly from registries, which is significantly cheaper than sourcing residential or ISP IPs.

**The catch:** Low price comes with high detection risk. For any target with anti-bot protection, the effective cost per successful request rises dramatically because of failures:

| Scenario | Datacenter ($1/IP) | ISP ($2.25/IP) | |---|---|---| | 100 IPs, 10K requests/day | $100/month | $225/month | | Success rate (protected site) | 65% | 97% | | Successful requests/month | 195,000 | 291,000 | | Cost per 1K successful requests | $0.51 | $0.77 | | But: IP replacement cost (flagged) | +$50–100/month | ~$0 | | **Effective monthly cost** | **$150–200** | **$225** |

For unprotected targets, datacenter proxies remain the cheapest option by a wide margin.

Mobile Proxy Pricing in Detail

Mobile proxies are the most expensive type at $15–40 per GB. Premium mobile proxy services with carrier selection and precise geo-targeting can exceed $50/GB.

**Why so expensive?** Operating mobile proxies requires physical SIM cards, mobile modems or devices, power and connectivity infrastructure, and carrier data plans. Each GB of mobile bandwidth costs the provider $3–8 in carrier data fees alone, before infrastructure and margin.

**When the cost is justified:** Mobile proxies are cost-effective only when no other type works — platforms with carrier-level fingerprinting (Instagram login, TikTok automation, mobile app testing) where residential and ISP proxies get detected. For these use cases, the alternative is being blocked entirely, which has an infinite effective cost.

Total Cost of Ownership Framework

Sticker price tells you what you pay the provider. Total cost of ownership (TCO) tells you what the proxy actually costs your business:

TCO = Proxy Cost + Failure Cost + Infrastructure Cost + Opportunity Cost

**1. Proxy cost:** What you pay the provider per GB or per IP per month.

**2. Failure cost:** - Failed requests consume bandwidth (residential/mobile) without returning data - Retries double or triple bandwidth consumption on difficult targets - IP bans require replacement or rotation, adding management overhead - Formula: proxy cost x (1 / success rate) = bandwidth-adjusted cost

**3. Infrastructure cost:** - Server resources to run your scraping/automation infrastructure - Developer time to build and maintain proxy integration code - Monitoring and alerting systems for proxy health - Time spent managing proxy rotation, session handling, and error recovery

**4. Opportunity cost:** - Slow proxies mean slower data collection, delaying business decisions - Unreliable proxies cause data gaps that affect analysis quality - Manual proxy management distracts engineers from core product work

TCO Example: Monthly E-commerce Price Monitoring

**Requirement:** Scrape 500,000 product pages daily from 20 e-commerce sites, most protected by Cloudflare.

| Cost Component | Residential ($4.50/GB) | ISP ($2.25/IP, 200 IPs) | |---|---|---| | Monthly proxy cost | 500K x 2MB x 30 days / 1024 = 29.3 TB → way too expensive | 200 x $2.25 = $450 | | Realistic approach | Use lighter requests (100 KB avg): 500K x 100KB x 30 / 1024 = 1,430 GB x $4.50 = $6,435 | $450 flat (unlimited bandwidth) | | Failure overhead (+8% residential, +3% ISP) | $6,435 x 1.08 = $6,950 | $450 (no bandwidth cost for retries) | | Infrastructure (servers, monitoring) | $200 (2 servers) | $200 (2 servers) | | Developer time (proxy management) | $500 (rotation logic, session handling) | $200 (simpler static IP management) | | **Monthly TCO** | **$7,650** | **$850** | | **Cost per successful page** | **$0.000510** | **$0.000057** |

ISP proxies are 9x cheaper in TCO for this workload.

Hidden Fee Checklist

Before committing to any proxy provider, verify these items:

Fees That Are Frequently Hidden

1. **Bandwidth overage fees.** Does the plan have a cap? What happens if you exceed it? Some providers charge 1.5–3x the base rate for overages.

2. **Minimum commitment periods.** Many providers offer low monthly prices that require 6–12 month commitments. If you cancel early, you owe the remaining balance or forfeit a deposit.

3. **Setup fees.** Enterprise plans sometimes carry $50–500 setup fees for dedicated account configuration, custom API endpoints, or IP selection.

4. **API access fees.** Some providers charge separately for API access, usage dashboards, or webhook integrations. These should be included.

5. **Geo-targeting surcharges.** Certain countries or cities cost extra. Providers may list a base price for US/EU IPs but charge 50–200% more for Japan, Brazil, or other high-demand locations.

6. **Concurrent connection limits.** Some plans limit the number of simultaneous connections. Exceeding the limit results in dropped requests (wasted bandwidth) or upgrade requirements.

7. **Support tiers.** Basic plans may include only email support with 24–48 hour response times. Live chat and priority support are often gated behind higher tiers.

8. **IP replacement fees.** If your dedicated IPs get flagged, does the provider replace them for free? Some charge $1–5 per replacement.

Hex Proxies Pricing Transparency

Hex Proxies explicitly has none of these hidden fees:

• No bandwidth overage fees (ISP plans are unlimited)
• No minimum commitment (cancel anytime, month-to-month)
• No setup fees (sign up and start using proxies immediately)
• API and dashboard included in every plan
• No geo-targeting surcharges
• No concurrent connection limits
• Live chat support on every plan
• Free IP replacement if an ISP proxy gets flagged

How Hex Proxies Handles This

Hex Proxies is built on two principles that directly affect pricing: infrastructure ownership and transparent billing.

**Infrastructure ownership** means we buy IP blocks directly from carriers, host them on our own servers, and manage the network end-to-end. There is no upstream provider taking a margin, no resold bandwidth adding latency, and no third party controlling IP quality. This is why we can offer ISP proxies at $2.08–2.47/IP with unlimited bandwidth — our cost structure is fundamentally lower than providers who resell.

**Transparent billing** means the price you see is the price you pay. No overages, no minimums, no tiers that force you into plans you do not need. Our residential pricing is $4.25–4.75/GB with no hidden surcharges for geo-targeting, concurrent connections, or API access. Our ISP pricing is $2.08–2.47/IP/month with genuinely unlimited bandwidth.

For most commercial workloads — scraping, account management, sneaker bots, ad verification — our ISP proxies deliver the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry because the combination of low per-IP cost, unlimited bandwidth, and sub-3% failure rate minimizes every component of TCO.

Methodology

• **Provider pricing survey:** 15 proxy providers’ publicly listed pricing pages, collected March 2026. Providers span budget, mid-range, and premium tiers across residential, ISP, datacenter, and mobile categories.
• **Hex Proxies pricing:** Live pricing as of April 2026 from hexproxies.com.
• **TCO calculations:** Based on real workload measurements across 500,000 requests per proxy type against a mix of protected and unprotected targets.
• **Failure rate data:** Measured over a 7-day period in March 2026 across Cloudflare-protected, Akamai-protected, and unprotected targets.
• **Last updated:** April 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

**How much do residential proxies cost?** Residential proxies cost $4–12 per GB in 2026, depending on the provider, plan size, and features. Hex Proxies offers residential bandwidth at $4.25–4.75/GB with access to 10M+ IPs across 195 countries. Budget providers start around $4/GB but may have smaller IP pools or limited geo-targeting.

**How much do ISP proxies cost?** ISP proxies (also called static residential proxies) cost $2–5 per IP per month. Hex Proxies offers ISP proxies at $2.08–2.47/IP with unlimited bandwidth. Some providers offer lower per-IP prices but impose bandwidth caps that can significantly increase effective costs.

**What is the cheapest type of proxy?** Datacenter proxies are the cheapest at $0.50–2 per IP per month. However, they have the highest detection rate on protected sites. When you factor in failure rates and retries, ISP proxies often deliver a lower cost per successful request for most commercial workloads.

**Is per-GB or per-IP pricing better?** It depends on your usage pattern. Per-IP pricing (ISP, datacenter) is better for high-volume workloads because cost does not increase with usage. Per-GB pricing (residential, mobile) is better for light usage or when you need access to massive rotating IP pools but do not transfer much data.

**Why do mobile proxies cost so much?** Mobile proxies cost $15–40/GB because the provider must operate physical SIM cards and devices, pay carrier data rates ($3–8/GB wholesale), and manage cellular infrastructure. The cost reflects real carrier bandwidth expenses, not markup.

**Are there free proxies that work?** Free proxies exist but are not viable for any commercial use. They are slow (if they work at all), log your traffic, inject ads or malware, and rotate out within hours. The security risk alone (credential theft, traffic interception) far outweighs any cost savings. Most proxy providers offer free trials — use those instead.

**How do I calculate cost per request?** Cost per request = (monthly proxy cost) / (total successful requests per month). For per-GB plans: cost per request = (average page size in GB) x (price per GB) / (success rate). For per-IP plans: cost per request = (number of IPs x per-IP price) / (total successful requests).

**Do proxy prices include API access?** Not always. Some providers charge separately for API access, usage dashboards, or webhook integrations. Hex Proxies includes API access, a full management dashboard, and webhook support in every plan at no additional cost.

**What are bandwidth overage fees?** Bandwidth overage fees are charges that apply when you exceed your plan’s data transfer limit. Typical overage rates are 1.5–3x the base per-GB price. Some providers auto-upgrade you to a higher tier; others cut off service. Hex Proxies ISP plans have no bandwidth limits, so overages are not possible.

**Should I choose monthly or annual billing?** Annual billing typically saves 15–25% but locks you in. If you are new to a provider, start monthly to test quality and support. Only switch to annual once you have confirmed the proxies perform well for your specific use case. Hex Proxies offers month-to-month billing with no minimum commitment.

**How much should I budget for proxies per month?** For small-scale scraping or account management (under 100,000 requests/month), budget $50–150/month for ISP proxies or $20–50/month for residential. For medium-scale operations (100K–1M requests/month), budget $100–500/month. For enterprise-scale (1M+ requests/month), expect $500–5,000/month depending on proxy type and target difficulty.

**What is total cost of ownership for proxies?** TCO includes the proxy subscription cost plus failure/retry costs (wasted bandwidth on blocked requests), infrastructure costs (servers, monitoring), and developer time for integration and maintenance. A proxy with a low sticker price but high failure rate can have a higher TCO than a pricier proxy with near-perfect success rates.