Sticker price answers the wrong question
Public price tables tell you what the provider charges per GB. They do not tell you how many of those bytes come back as accepted rows. The cheap provider is the one with the lowest cost per result on your target, after retries, bad exits, challenge pages, and wasted images are counted.
A shortlist worth running against a real target: Proxynade, Webshare, IPRoyal, Decodo, Oxylabs, Bright Data. Public price anchors are worth noting, but they are the start of the comparison, not the end. The entry rates below are what each provider charges before any volume commitment.
residential entry rates, as listed June 2026
Proxynade Volume: $0.89/GB no minimum, no KYC, per byte
Proxynade Premium: $5.00/GB ISP/ASN targeting, per byte
Webshare rotating: $3.50/GB 50% sale at 1GB, $1.40 at 3,000GB
IPRoyal residential: $7.35/GB PAYG at 1GB, $1.75 bulk floor
Decodo residential: $4.00/GB PAYG, $2.00 at 250GB+
Oxylabs residential: $6.00/GB 5GB starter, $2.50 at 1TB
Bright Data: $4.00/GB PAYG promo, $2.50 at ~800GB
lowest entry rate: Proxynade Volume, by 4x to 8x
do not rank by price until target test is doneThat last line is the one buyers skip. A $4.00/GB line that burns twice the traffic or returns stale pages is not cheap. A $5.00/GB line can cost less per result if it keeps more rows and needs fewer reruns. But entry price still matters: at $0.89/GB with no minimum, Proxynade Volume is the lowest sticker here by a wide margin, and every competitor's deep-volume floor sits at or above $1.40/GB.
The app counter lies; the provider meter does not
Your scraper counts what it accepted. The provider meter counts what the proxy transferred: redirect chains, challenge pages, retry bodies, images you forgot to block, and responses your parser discarded. That gap is why the app counter usually looks cleaner than the bandwidth bill.
The only reliable unit is cost per accepted row: status 200, parsed value present, correct country echo, SKU matched. Everything else is an intermediate figure.
small target test, 420 product URLs
accepted row = status 200 + parsed price + same SKU + country echo ok
fields to record:
provider
plan
target host
requests sent
accepted rows
provider bytes (from dashboard usage log)
manual rejects
policy block y/n
notes from debuggerProxynade Volume vs Premium is a byte-cost decision
Proxynade publishes both tiers without a sales call: Volume Residential at $0.89/GB and Premium Residential at $5.00/GB. The dashboard's Usage Logs export as CSV and show host, outcome, latency, and byte totals per request, enough to run the same target on both tiers and decide whether the premium pool earns the 5x spend. Sometimes it does. Often the cheaper pool is sufficient once images, tracking domains, and retry loops are blocked.
The expanded username carries the routing choice. A Volume Residential request with US country targeting and a 30-minute sticky window looks like rt97db6958d9-plan-volume-country-us-lifetime-30. Premium uses plan-premium in the same position. Datacenter accepts a lifetime window only when the session is sticky.
Webshare, IPRoyal, and Decodo fit different job shapes
Webshare lists rotating residential at $7/GB, currently half off: $3.50/GB at 1GB, dropping to $2.25 at 100GB, $1.75 at 500GB, and $1.40/GB at 3,000GB as listed June 2026. That $1.40 floor is real, but it needs a 3,000GB prepay to reach. The important split is rotating residential versus static residential: they answer different problems, and a combined score across both hides which one actually worked. Webshare static residential is shared and starts near $0.30/IP, which can beat a dedicated IP if you do not need dedicated unlimited bandwidth.
IPRoyal lists residential pay-as-you-go at $7.35/GB for 1GB, falling to $5.15/GB at 50GB, with a bulk floor advertised at $1.75/GB as listed June 2026. Traffic does not expire and sticky sessions run up to 7 days. IPRoyal applies KYC for full access, and unverified accounts can buy but run restricted in pool and targets. Decodo, the former Smartproxy after its 2025 rebrand, lists residential PAYG at $4/GB, stepping down to $3 at 50GB and $2.50 to $2.00 at 250GB and up, with a 3-day trial and a 14-day money-back window as listed June 2026. The same caveat applies to all three: run your target before committing volume. Country fit, session behavior, and retry rate vary by target, not by marketing copy.
Oxylabs and Bright Data are not cheap for small buyers
Both publish tiered residential pricing that starts high and only falls at enterprise volume. Oxylabs lists $6/GB at the 5GB starter, $5 at 20GB, $4 at 125GB, and $2.50/GB at the 1TB corporate tier as listed June 2026. Targeting is granular, down to ASN and coordinates, and advanced filters require KYC. Bright Data lists residential pay-as-you-go at $4.00/GB, a 50% promo off its $8 list, with plan tiers at $3.50/GB, $3.00/GB, and $2.50/GB at roughly 800GB as listed June 2026. Bright Data runs strict KYC and a policy review. If your use case is near gaming, ticketing, or account automation, confirm it passes their review before treating any number on their pricing page as final.
Both run large pools and enterprise tooling, and a buyer who needs that, has the budget, and is fine with KYC may prefer them. Neither belongs on a cheapest list for sub-$100 tests. Their entry rates, $6 and $4 per GB, sit well above Proxynade Volume at $0.89, and even their enterprise floors of $2.50/GB stay above it. For hard targets without the KYC, Proxynade Premium Residential at $5/GB lands in the same range as their premium pools.
Residential per-GB, side by side
Entry rate is the price with no volume commitment. Volume floor is the lowest published rate, which usually needs a large prepaid tier to reach. Competitor figures are as listed June 2026 and change often.
| Provider | Entry rate | Volume floor | KYC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proxynade Volume | $0.89/GB | $0.89/GB, no minimum | No |
| Proxynade Premium | $5.00/GB | $5.00/GB, no minimum | No |
| Webshare | $3.50/GB (sale, 1GB) | $1.40/GB (3,000GB) | No |
| IPRoyal | $7.35/GB (PAYG) | $1.75/GB (bulk) | For full access |
| Decodo | $4.00/GB (PAYG) | $2.00/GB (250GB+) | No |
| Oxylabs | $6.00/GB (5GB) | $2.50/GB (1TB) | Yes, advanced filters |
| Bright Data | $4.00/GB (PAYG promo) | $2.50/GB (~800GB) | Yes, strict |
Proxynade Volume holds the lowest entry rate by 4x to 8x, and no competitor floor drops below $1.40/GB even at large prepaid volume. Webshare's $1.40/GB can edge specific large runs, but it needs a 3,000GB commitment, while Volume stays $0.89 with none.
Run the test before buying volume
The test that actually answers the question: 100 to 1,000 real requests, target host unchanged, provider-metered bytes recorded from the dashboard, accepted rows manually sampled, result written as cost per accepted row. Run it on at least two providers. The cheaper one on paper is not always the cheaper one in the CSV.
| What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Provider bytes vs app bytes | Gap reveals wasted traffic: redirects, retries, unblocked assets |
| Accepted row rate | Low rate means the cheap per-GB cost is multiplied by more attempts |
| Country echo accuracy | Wrong country on a geo-targeted target inflates retry count |
| Policy fit | Some providers restrict categories before you learn about it mid-run |
| Session mode match | Sticky vs rotating requirements differ by target; mixing them breaks the test |
When the CSV is in, the math usually favors the lowest entry rate that still keeps rows. Start on Volume Residential at $0.89/GB, no minimum and no KYC, billed per transferred byte, and check the cost per accepted row against any provider above. The gateway is proxynade.net:2555 across http, https, and socks5.