TL;DR — Quick picks
- Best overall value DataImpulse — $1/GB, traffic never expires
- Cheapest legit price Proxy-Seller — from $3.5/GB at scale
- Sneaker copping Oculus Proxies — $0.85/GB sneaker tier
- High-volume scraping Thordata — 100M+ pool, scraping APIs included
- Free trial to test Proxying.io — 2 GB no credit card
- Premium quality on a budget PrivateProxy.me — boutique, since 2010
Price comparison at a glance
Entry-tier residential price per GB. Lower is cheaper.
The 12 providers, reviewed in depth
Listed in your requested order. Each provider gets a full breakdown: real specs, pros, cons, and an honest verdict.
Oculus Proxies has carved out a specific niche in sneaker copping and event-based purchasing, then expanded into general-purpose scraping. New users can sign up for free and get 5 datacenter proxies (100 MB, valid for 7 days) — no credit card required.
Rotating residential starts at $1/GB, sneaker-optimized residential at $0.85/GB, tickets-residential at $0.68/GB, ISP from $0.50/GB, and shared datacenter from just $0.10/GB. The 100 Gbps server infrastructure and 78M+ proxy pool across 195 countries support time-sensitive operations like limited drops.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Bottom line: If you're coping with limited-edition releases, securing event tickets, or running tasks that need US-residential IPs with low latency, Oculus is one of the best values on this list. For general-purpose scraping at scale, larger pool providers offer better diversity.
FloppyData entered the market in April 2024 and quickly built attention with $1/GB residential pricing and traffic that never expires. The provider offers residential, mobile, datacenter ($0.60/GB), and ISP ($5/IP) proxies with city-level targeting, sticky sessions, and HTTP/HTTPS/SOCKS5 support.
A 2024 GoLogin benchmark ranked FloppyData first for clean ASNs and zero DNS leaks across 50 IPs in three locations. The provider currently shows a 4.0-star Trustpilot score, with 65M+ residential IPs across 195+ countries.
Pros:
Cons:
Bottom line: Cheap entry pricing with non-expiring traffic and a clean test methodology behind it. Best for users with smaller workloads who can verify performance with a small initial purchase. For high-stakes production scraping, established alternatives have more proven track records.
Proxy-Seller has been operating since 2014 — over a decade in the proxy market, which is genuinely rare. Based in Cyprus, the company has served more than 500,000 clients and offers residential, ISP, datacenter (IPv4 and IPv6), and mobile proxies under one account.
Residential pricing starts at $0.70/GB at higher volumes, $3.50/GB at entry tiers, with a $1.99 starter trial. The pool covers 220+ countries and regions with city-level targeting on residential and mobile, and a $20+ million IP network.
Reviews on G2 and Trustpilot consistently praise responsive support and fast proxy replacements.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: If you need multiple proxy types under one account from a long-established provider, Proxy-Seller is one of the safest mid-budget bets in 2026. The pricing only becomes truly cheap at higher volumes, but the trust signals and breadth of products justify the choice for serious users.
Proxy-Cheap built its reputation on accessibility. The interface is one of the cleanest in the industry, sign-up is friction-free, and the company offers credit cards, PayPal, and crypto (BTC, ETH, USDT) as payment options. Both rotating and static residential options sit on the same platform alongside mobile and datacenter proxies.
The rotating residential pool covers 85M+ IPs across 130+ countries, with 1M+ static residential IPs, unlimited bandwidth on certain plans, and concurrent thread support up to 100. Trustpilot has 600+ reviews averaging around 4.4 stars.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: For freelancers and small teams who want to start using proxies without learning a new language, Proxy-Cheap is one of the best entry points. Not the cheapest by per-GB metric, but the user experience compensates.
Thordata, based in Hong Kong since 2018, runs one of the larger budget-tier networks at 100M+ residential IPs across 190+ countries. Volume pricing is aggressive: residential drops to $1.5/GB at volume, with entry tiers around $1.50- $2.80/GB.
The platform bundles built-in scraping APIs (SERP API, Web Unlocker, Scraping Browser, Web Scraper API), which can replace separate tooling for large data pipelines. Sticky sessions support up to 90 minutes, with country, city, state, and ISP-level geo-targeting.
The 99.82% success rate and 0.5s average response time are among the better-published metrics in this tier.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: Best for budget-conscious teams running large-scale operations who can absorb some support friction in exchange for aggressive volume pricing and bundled scraping APIs. Test small first to confirm refund expectations are clear.
DataImpulse is the provider that genuinely changed what "cheap residential proxy" should mean. Founded in late 2022 and based in Estonia, it earned a strong reputation for transparent pricing without crippling restrictions. The headline feature: $1 per GB with traffic that never expires.
The intro plan starts at $5 for 5 GB, scaling to $50 for 50 GB, with bulk discounts dropping to $0.70–$0.80/GB at 1 TB. The pool has grown to 90M+ ethically sourced first-party IPs across 195 countries, rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6 on Trustpilot. Sticky sessions go up to 120 minutes, with country targeting included free.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Best for: My default recommendation for anyone who wants honest pricing, no expiration, and a network big enough to handle real scraping workloads. The best balance of price, reliability, and ethics on this list.
LumiProxy positions itself between budget and premium, and the pricing reflects that. At $0.80/GB on the dynamic residential plan, it's competitive with the cheapest options while offering a 90M+ IP pool across 195+ locations including all 50 US states. Long-acting ISP proxies start at $1.40/GB, static residential at $6/IP.
The standout differentiator is dedicated account managers on higher-tier plans plus unlimited concurrent connections — useful when you're running ad verification or multi-account management at scale.
Subscription model only (no pure pay-as-you-go), but Trial plan starts at $10 for 2 GB.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Best for: Solid mid-tier choice if you want better support and a cleaner dashboard than the cheapest options. The strict no-refund policy means you should test thoroughly with the Trial plan before committing to a higher tier.
MangoProxy is positioned as a mid-budget infrastructure provider — not the cheapest, but stable and feature-complete. The pool covers 90M+ IPs across 200+ locations including underserved regions like Russia, LatAm, and Southeast Asia.
Pricing runs $2–$3.3/GB for residential at standard tiers, with promo codes like ORBIT20 (20% off residential) and COSMOS Launch (8% off ISP). Sticky sessions go up to 120 minutes, with precise filtering by country, city, state, ASN, and ZIP. Unlimited concurrent threads and HTTP/SOCKS5 support. No KYC required, and registration to first connection takes about 5–10 minutes.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
MangoProxy: Despite the "budget" framing, MangoProxy's standard rate is mid-tier. Best for users who specifically need its strong geo coverage in underserved regions, will use the promo codes, and value 120-minute sticky sessions over the absolute lowest per-GB rate.
Important: GoProxy.com is a separate provider from GoProxies.com - same brand-name family, different services. This review covers goproxy.com. Based in Hong Kong, GoProxy aggregates IP resources from major ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Cogent across 200+ countries with 90M+ residential IPs. Billing is monthly fixed-bandwidth (not pay-as-you-go), with smallest plan at $7/GB monthly.
New users get a 7-day free trial with full feature access, plus a $1 credit bonus on the Mini plan. Trial plan available at $2.4/GB. Country, city, and state-level targeting at no extra cost.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: The 7-day free trial is genuinely generous - you can verify everything before paying. But standard pricing is notably higher than mid-tier alternatives. Best if you need the trial to confirm fit on your specific use case and don't mind monthly bandwidth caps.
Proxying.io focuses on residential, ISP, and dedicated datacenter proxies with one of the most generous free trials in the industry: $1.50 GB of residential proxy data on signup, no credit card required. The service supports HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS5 (TCP and UDP), country-level targeting in 190+ locations, unlimited concurrent sessions with no thread caps, and data that never expires after purchase.
The IP pool is smaller than enterprise providers at 10M+ rotating residential - but for everyday scraping it works, and the pay-as-you-go model has no minimum commitment.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: A genuinely excellent way to start using residential proxies risk-free. The smaller pool size limits enterprise-scale operations, but for everyday scraping and learning the ropes, it's hard to beat 1.50 GB free with no credit card.
PrivateProxy.me has been operating since 2010, owned by Aqua Networks Limited (a London-based IT company). The Platinum Residentials plan provides access to 90M+ residential IPs across 180+ countries with low fraud scores, country/city/state-level targeting, and rotating or sticky session options.
Datacenter speeds reach 1 Gbps, residential 10-50 Mbps, with one free IP swap per month included. Per-GB residential plans start at $20 (10 GB / 25 GB / 100 GB tiers). The 4.5+ Trustpilot rating across 425+ reviews consistently praises support quality. Multiple authentication methods: user/password and IP whitelisting.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: The right pick when proxy quality matters more than volume. Choose this for managing high-value social media accounts, sensitive SEO work, or any scenario where one banned IP costs more than a few extra dollars per GB.
Critical clarification: there are two distinct services using the SmartProxy name. The original Smartproxy rebranded to Decodo in 2025. The site at smartproxy.org is a separate provider operating under the SmartProxy brand. This review covers smartproxy.org specifically. The service offers 100M+ residential IPs across 200+ countries, city and state-level targeting, 99.5% advertised success rate, processing 650 billion proxy requests monthly. Sticky sessions run 1 to 60 minutes.
Pricing scales - entry sits higher per GB, but advertised starting rate is $0.50/GB at higher volumes with city-level targeting. HTTP and SOCKS5 supported, GDPR/CCPA compliant.
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Bottom line: Verify which "Smartproxy" you're buying from — the URL matters. For users who specifically want smartproxy.org, the 100M+ pool and bundled scraping tools are competitive at scale. The pricing transparency issue (rates appear after signup) is a friction point worth knowing about before committing.
Choose by use case
Match the provider to the workflow, not the other way around.
Use case | Best pick | Backup |
|---|---|---|
Web scraping at scale | DataImpulse | Thordata |
Sneaker bots | Oculus Proxies | Proxy-Seller |
Social media accounts | PrivateProxy.me | Oculus Proxies |
SEO rank tracking | Proxy-Seller | LumiProxy |
Ad verification | LumiProxy | DataImpulse |
Just testing | Proxying.io (free 2 GB | GoProxy.com (7-day trial) |
Tightest budget | Proxy-Seller (at scale) | DataImpulse |
Red flags to watch for
Five warning signs that separate legitimate budget services from problematic ones.
Hidden pricing on the official site
If a provider can't show actual prices on its own pricing page, that's a transparency failure to address before paying.
No-refund or stacked-condition refund policies
"1 refund max, 7 days, 2 GB used, no crypto refunds" stack to make refunds practically impossible in real-world cases.
Zero organic Reddit discussion
Established services generate threads in r/webscraping and r/proxy. Total silence on a 12+ month service is a soft warning.
"Residential" IPs flagging as datacenter
Run any new provider through IPQualityScore before committing to volume. Some sell datacenter IPs as residential.
Brand-name confusion
SmartProxy.org vs Decodo (formerly Smartproxy.com); GoProxy.com vs GoProxies.com — verify the URL matches the company you researched.
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions buyers ask most.
Proxy-Seller and SmartProxy.org both advertise from $0.70/GB at higher volumes, followed by LumiProxy at $0.80/GB and Oculus sneakers tier at $0.85/GB. For pay-as-you-go without volume commitment, DataImpulse at $1/GB with non-expiring traffic is the best balance.
For most non-enterprise tasks, yes. Premium providers offer larger pools and stronger compliance, but at 3-8× the price. Mid-budget options handle general scraping, SEO monitoring, and ad verification well.
Yes in most jurisdictions, provided two conditions: IPs must be sourced from consenting users (reputable providers use opt-in SDK partnerships), and your usage must comply with target site terms and applicable laws like GDPR and CCPA. Not legal: scraping personal data without consent, bypassing authentication you don't have permission for, or facilitating fraud.
Depends on IP quality. DataImpulse and PrivateProxy.me tend to perform better than the cheapest options. Pair with browser fingerprinting tools like Multilogin or AdsPower for tough targets.
Run it through IPQualityScore, IP2Location, or Pixelscan. The usage type should show "ISP" or "Cable/DSL" — not "Data Center" or "Hosting." Some providers sell datacenter IPs masquerading as residential.
Rotating proxies switch IPs with every request — ideal for high-volume scraping. Sticky proxies keep the same IP for 5–120 minutes — needed for login flows, multi-page workflows, or session-based scraping where consistent identity matters.
Most cheap providers accept credit cards, PayPal, and crypto (BTC, ETH, USDT). Crypto payments are usually non-refundable — verify the policy before paying.
Final verdict
If I had $50 to spend today on general-purpose scraping
I'd pick DataImpulse. The combination of $1/GB pricing, 90M+ first-party IPs, traffic that never expires, $5 entry point, and 4.8/5 G2 rating puts it ahead of cheaper but less proven alternatives.
For sneakers, Oculus Proxies. For account management where IP cleanliness matters more than volume, PrivateProxy.me. For multi-type proxies under one account from an established provider, Proxy-Seller. For high-volume scraping with bundled APIs, Thordata. For risk-free testing, Proxying.io's free 2 GB.
The cheap residential proxy market in 2026 is the healthiest it's been. Test small, verify IP quality before scaling, and pick the provider matched to your workflow — not the one with the cheapest headline price.