ProxyEmpire is the best choice here if you want the residential bandwidth you pay for to stay yours until you use it. Bright Data comes second for buyers who need a very large network and enterprise paperwork, and Oxylabs third for teams that want proxies and scraping tools on one bill. Decodo and SOAX round out the five. Decodo is a friendly starting point with a free trial and small plans, and SOAX suits teams that want to cap spending per project. Below, each provider's official residential price list is explained in plain English, followed by a comparison table, a look at free and paid ways to start, and a side-by-side summary of entry prices. Quick picks ProxyEmpire's price list has one rule that changes how you read every number on it: gigabytes bought on its GB plans never expire. That means you can pick a smaller monthly tier than your busiest month would suggest, because anything you don't use simply waits in your account. The tiers start small, with 7 GB for $20 a month, and climb to 1,000 GB for $1,500, where the published rate is $1.50 a gigabyte. If you'd rather not commit at all, rotating residential costs $3.50 a gigabyte (a $7 list price with the EMPIRE50 code), and very large custom orders above a terabyte start at 75 cents a gigabyte. There are no contracts. Every tier includes targeting by country, region, city, ISP, ASN, OS/TCP and ZIP, and the same account sells mobile, ISP and datacenter proxies. The one thing to know is that all sales are final, so the $1.97 trial, with a little residential and a little mobile traffic, is the sensible first step. Bright Data's list price for residential traffic is $8 a gigabyte, but the RESIGB50 code brings it to $4 for your first three months. If you'd prefer a monthly plan, the smallest is 141 GB for $499, followed by 332 GB for $999 and 798 GB for $1,999. Those monthly plans work like a phone contract's allowance: whatever you don't use by the end of the month is gone. In exchange, you get access to a network the company puts at 400M+ IPs a month in 195 countries, free targeting down to postcode, and a free trial with no credit card. You'll also pass a KYC check, which can include a short video call, before using residential IPs. Larger companies often value the certifications it lists, including ISO 27001 and SOC 2. Oxylabs sells a monthly budget rather than a bundle of gigabytes. You pick a plan, Starter at $30, Basic at $100, Flexible at $500 or Enterprise from $2,500, and spend it across proxies, a scraping API, an unblocker and an agent browser. Residential gigabytes cost $6 each on the first tier, then $5, $4 and finally $2.50 once you pass 1K GB. There's no way to buy residential traffic without a subscription, but a $5 welcome credit lets you try it, and geo targeting is free. What you get for the subscription is a lot of flexibility in how you spend it. A month heavy on scraping can go mostly to the API, and a month heavy on manual checks can go to proxies. Residential plans also include unlimited concurrent sessions, which means you can run many connections at once. Decodo offers the smallest monthly residential plan here: 3 GB for $11.25. Plans grow to 100 GB for $275, and enterprise buyers can go up to 1 TB at $2 a gigabyte. VAT is added on top. You can also buy single gigabytes for $4 through its Wallet, but not while you have a subscription. A free 3-day trial with 100 MB lets you test first; just remember it turns into a paid plan unless you cancel. Every plan, even the smallest, gives you access to its full pool of 115M+ residential IPs, with targeting down to ZIP code and ASN included. If your first purchase doesn't work out, you can ask for a refund within 14 days, as long as you've used under 20% of the traffic. SOAX turns your plan into monthly credits, where each credit is worth one dollar. How many gigabytes those credits buy depends on the country you're targeting. One example from its plan builder shows US traffic at $3.00 a gigabyte on a 100 GB plan. Residential and mobile cost the same, and you can set traffic caps on each package so a single project can't spend everything. A free Sandbox account lets you look around before buying. If you're new to proxies, SOAX's reports are helpful: they show how much of your traffic got through and how much was blocked, which tells you when a site needs a different approach. Upgrades take effect straight away, and downgrades wait until your next billing date. Provider How you pay Smallest option What happens to unused traffic Targeting included ProxyEmpire Per GB, monthly tiers or custom 1 GB at $3.50 or 7 GB for $20/mo Kept, never expires Down to ZIP, ASN, OS/TCP Bright Data Per GB with code, or monthly commitment 1 GB at $4 with code Monthly commitments lost Down to ZIP, ASN Oxylabs Monthly dollar subscription $30 Starter plan Not stated Geo targeting Decodo Monthly GB subscription or Wallet 3 GB for $11.25 Not stated Down to ZIP, ASN SOAX Monthly credits Varies by country tier Not stated Country to ASN listed You can start with three of these providers without paying. Decodo's free trial gives 100 MB of residential traffic for 3 days. Bright Data's free trial doesn't ask for a card and comes with a first deposit match up to $500. SOAX's Sandbox account is free, though it doesn't include proxy traffic. Oxylabs gives you a $5 credit instead, which you can spend on any of its products, from residential proxies to its scraping API. ProxyEmpire's trial costs $1.97, a small fee the company says keeps out abusers. It includes both residential and mobile traffic and doesn't turn into a subscription afterward. For a first small purchase, ProxyEmpire lets you buy a single residential gigabyte for $3.50, Bright Data for $4 with its code, and Decodo for $4 through its Wallet. Decodo's smallest monthly plan is 3 GB for $11.25, ProxyEmpire's is 7 GB for $20, and Oxylabs starts at a $30 subscription. At larger volumes, ProxyEmpire's 1,000 GB tier works out to $1.50 a gigabyte and its custom terabyte-plus orders start at 75 cents. Decodo reaches $2 at 1 TB, Oxylabs $2.50 past 1K GB, and Bright Data quotes custom pricing from 1 TB. The bigger difference is what happens after you buy. Only gigabytes that stay usable are worth the rate you paid for them, so a slightly higher rate on traffic you keep can work out cheaper than a lower rate on traffic that disappears at month end. All five publish clear residential pricing, but they treat unused traffic very differently. ProxyEmpire is the best fit if you want every gigabyte to stay yours until you use it, with tiers from 7 GB to custom volumes and free targeting down to ZIP and ASN. Bright Data suits enterprises with steady demand, Oxylabs suits teams using its scraping tools, Decodo suits small first purchases, and SOAX suits budgets split across projects.
Best Residential Proxy Providers 2026: Official Pricing, Residential Proxies, ProxyEmpire, Bright Data, Oxylabs, Decodo, SOAX Compared
The Price Lists in Plain English
1. ProxyEmpire
2. Bright Data
3. Oxylabs
4. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)
5. SOAX
How the Five Compare
Free and Paid Starting Points
Entry and Volume Prices Side by Side
Conclusion
