Pay as you go residential proxies are traffic bought by the gigabyte with no monthly plan. You pay for an amount, use it, and nothing renews. Five sellers we read on October 22, 2026 sell both ways. At each, pay as you go cost 14% to 102% more per gigabyte than its own monthly plan. It still costs less in total when you use well under what a plan holds. The catch to check first is expiry. Some pay-as-you-go traffic lapses after 30 days, and the two sellers that offer both terms charge 22% to 47% more for none.
What does pay as you go mean at each seller?
The words cover different terms. We read 14 sellers' own pages and set down the smallest first purchase and what happens to traffic you do not use.
| Seller | Smallest first purchase | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| HProxy | $3 in crypto or $10 by card | no expiry date |
| Rainproxy | 1 GB for $0.99 | never expires |
| Fastproxy | no minimum spend | never expires |
| DataImpulse | $5 once, then $50 | never expires |
| MarsProxies | 1 GB for $4.99 | never expires |
| ProxyEmpire | 1 GB for $3.50 | never expires |
| PacketStream | $1 per GB | nothing expires |
| Evomi | 15 GB for $14.85 | no expiry |
| Decodo | 1 GB for $4 | not stated |
| Bright Data | $8 per GB at list | not stated |
| ProxyScrape | 1 GB for $7.50 | 30 to 90 days, or none |
| IPFoxy | 1 GB for $5.99 | 30 to 180 days |
| IPDeep | 5 GB for $6.50 | 30 to 360 days |
| 711Proxy | 5 GB for $15 | 30 days |
Validity often grows with the purchase. IPFoxy's 1 GB and 10 GB packs last 30 days, its 100 GB pack 60 days and its 1,000 GB pack 180 days. IPDeep gives 5 GB 30 days, 10 GB 180 days and 100 GB 360 days. NSTData's 10 GB Lite package also runs 30 days. Rainproxy puts the other policy plainly on its pricing page: "Pay once. Traffic never expires".
Some sellers attach rules of their own. Decodo's pay as you go draws on a prepaid wallet and sells "only one GB at a time", its FAQ says. A buyer also "can't have a monthly subscription plan and Pay As You Go simultaneously".
How much more does pay as you go cost than a monthly plan?
Per gigabyte, more. Five sellers in our reading sell the same residential traffic both ways, and each charges more for the flexible way. Decodo asks $4 per GB pay as you go and $3.50 on its 10 GB monthly plan. NodeMaven asks $4.50 and $3.75 at 20 GB. ProxyEmpire asks $3.50 and $2.85 on its 7 GB plan. Bright Data lists $8 and $7 on its 141 GB plan. Evomi asks $0.99 and $0.49 on its 100 GB plan, roughly double.
The plan wins only if you use enough of it. Divide the plan's price by the pay-as-you-go rate, and you get the usage at which the two cost the same.
At Decodo the $35 plan beats $4 a gigabyte from 8.75 GB a month. Below that, pay as you go costs less, and above it the plan does. Evomi's plan is the exception: its $49 for 100 GB beats its pay-as-you-go rate from 49.5 GB, half the plan. A plan also bills every month, used or not, which no average shows.
What does "never expires" cost?
Two sellers price it openly, because they sell the same pack with and without an end date. ProxyScrape's pricing data offers each pack for 30, 60 or 90 days, or with no expiry. Plainproxies, which prices in euros, offers 30, 60 or 90 days or "Non-expiring".
A third more is cheap insurance if a project pauses for a month. It is wasted money if you always finish a pack within 30 days. ProxyScrape's 60-day term sits between the two, at $3.05 per GB for 5 GB.
Sellers that never expire traffic build that cost into one rate instead. DataImpulse charges $1.00 per GB with no expiry; Rainproxy $0.60 per GB at 10 GB. Our own Lite rate, $0.50/GB, carries no scheduled expiry date either.
When does pay as you go cost less than a subscription?
Whenever your monthly use falls below the break-even line. That happens in three common cases:
- You do not yet know your volume. Most buyers start here. A small pay-as-you-go purchase measures your real use before you sign up for anything.
- Your jobs come in bursts. Price checks around sale days or a research pull each quarter leave most of a monthly plan unused.
- Your job is small and steady. A monitor that uses a few gigabytes a month never fills a plan, and a balance without expiry can run it for months.
A plan wins for flat, heavy use. If your last three months used most of a plan's traffic every month, take the plan. Before you compare, check the plan's own rule for unused traffic. Webshare's plan size sets a monthly allowance, and Proxiware rolls unused data over only while you stay subscribed. Our pay-as-you-go proxies guide runs the same arithmetic across every proxy type.
Estimating your gigabytes before you spend
Run a small batch of your real requests through any working proxy, read the traffic it used, and multiply out to a month. Fetching plain HTML uses a fraction of what a full browser session does. Blocking images in a scraper can cut a month's use sharply. The worked numbers are in how much residential proxies cost.
Can you get an unused balance back?
Refund rules differ as much as expiry does. Decodo advertises a 14-day money-back period. Rainproxy's covers GB plans used under 10%, within 14 days. Webshare refunds within 2 days of payment if a rotating residential plan used less than 0.1 GB. Our own refund policy offers a "14-day money-back guarantee on unused balance". A product, once activated, "is no longer refundable", the same page says.
What should you check before you top up?
- The rate at your amount. Read the ladder at the gigabytes you will buy, never the lowest rate on the page.
- Expiry. Find the line on unused traffic: never, a set number of days, or the end of a billing month.
- The smallest purchase. A low rate can come with a 15 GB or $50 minimum.
- The refund window. Note how many days you have, and what counts as used.
- The targeting you need. A cheap pool may target by country only, so price the pool that reaches your city or ISP.
The residential proxy price study shows where each seller's per-GB ladder sits. If a fixed address suits the job better than a pool, ISP vs residential proxies compares the per-IP way of paying.
Does Oxylabs offer pay as you go?
Not on its residential pricing page as we read it on October 22, 2026. The page listed monthly plans from $30, $100 and $500 a month, and plans from $2,500 a month. In July 2025 the same page, as the Internet Archive captured it, offered "Pay as you go $8/GB" with "No commitment". Bright Data still sells pay as you go, at $8 per GB at list. Its residential network is now open only to verified companies.
How does pay as you go work with HProxy?
Top up a balance with $3 or more in crypto, or $10 or more by card, Alipay, QRIS or Pix. The payment options page lists every way to pay. Bought traffic has no scheduled expiry date under our terms. One balance pays for every product we sell, including our ISP and mobile proxies.
Our residential proxies cost $0.50 per GB for Residential Lite from one gigabyte, stepping down to $0.44 per GB at 2,000 GB+. Residential Premium, with state, city and ISP targeting, costs $1.49 per GB, falling to $1.00 per GB at 1,000 GB+. The residential pricing page shows every step, and the pricing page lists every product. Monthly subscriptions are optional, for buyers whose own usage shows that a plan would save them money.
Testing sellers before you commit costs only a few dollars of pay-as-you-go traffic at each. The method is in best place to buy residential proxies.
What this page could not check
- Prices and published terms only. We measured no speed, success rate or pool size, ours included.
- Pages drawn by script. NodeMaven's rates and Plainproxies' no-expiry prices come from our records of October 12 and October 6, 2026.
- Expiry at the largest sellers. The pages we read do not say whether Bright Data's or Decodo's pay-as-you-go traffic expires.
- Currency. Plainproxies prices in euros; its figures are shown as it prints them.
- Discounts. NodeMaven and ProxyEmpire showed their rates as discounts from a higher list price; we used the price charged.
- Check by January 22, 2027. Terms and prices change often, so every line here needs a fresh read by then.
Sources
- Decodo, residential proxies pricing page, read October 22, 2026.
- NodeMaven, pricing and residential proxies pages, read October 22, 2026; plan rates also in our record of October 12, 2026.
- ProxyEmpire, pricing page, read October 22, 2026.
- Bright Data, residential proxies pricing page, read October 22, 2026, and documentation, "Residential network access", updated September 1, 2026.
- Evomi, Rainproxy, DataImpulse, Fastproxy, MarsProxies, IPFoxy, IPDeep, 711Proxy and NSTData, pricing pages, read October 22, 2026.
- PacketStream, pricing page, read October 22, 2026.
- ProxyScrape, residential pricing data (api.proxyscrape.com), read October 22, 2026.
- Plainproxies, residential pricing page, read October 22, 2026; no-expiry prices from our record of October 6, 2026.
- Oxylabs, residential proxy pricing page, read October 22, 2026, and its Internet Archive capture of July 25, 2025.
- Webshare, pricing FAQ, and Proxiware, Eco Residential page, read October 22, 2026.
- HProxy Terms of Service and payment options, and the HProxy minimum top-up rules, read October 22, 2026.
