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Short answer: choose a proxy type before choosing a provider. Datacenter proxies are usually the least expensive option for high-volume public-data collection. Rotating residential or mobile proxies cost more but are better suited to stronger bot defenses and precise consumer locations. Static ISP proxies are the practical middle ground when one address must remain stable.
For a documented low-cost starting point, Decodo publishes datacenter pricing from $0.57/GB on a 50 GB plan, ISP from $2.25/GB on a 50 GB plan, and residential and mobile from $3/GB. Proxy-Cheap is useful when you want pay-as-you-go residential access and a $1.99 seven-day trial. ProxyEmpire is a multi-type option for teams that may scale. Bright Data and Oxylabs are better treated as enterprise upgrade paths than as budget leaders.
Prices and IP-pool claims change frequently. The figures below are the providers’ or directories’ published information available on September 29, 2026, not a common independent speed or success-rate benchmark.
Cheap proxy services at a glance
| Service or source | Published price or allowance | Proxy types and billing | Best fit | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo | Datacenter $0.57/GB on 50 GB; ISP $2.25/GB on 50 GB; residential $3/GB; mobile $3/GB | Datacenter, ISP, residential and mobile; plan pricing plus a 3-day trial | First budget comparison when you want clearly stated entry prices | Prices are provider-published and depend on the selected plan |
| Proxy-Cheap | $1.99 seven-day trial | Pay-as-you-go rotating residential; fixed-term datacenter, static ISP and mobile products; HTTP/SOCKS5 | Small experiments and customers avoiding a monthly minimum | Trial and product terms should be checked at checkout |
| ProxyEmpire | More than 30 million IP addresses in 170+ countries, according to the provider | Residential, mobile and datacenter | One account that can cover several proxy types as usage grows | Pool size is a provider claim, not an independent availability or block-rate test |
| ProxyLook directory | September 2026 tables list lows of $0.02/GB for residential and datacenter and $0.18/GB for mobile | Directory listings from 223 providers | Finding candidates for further verification | Listings are not a uniform performance test; confirm live checkout restrictions |
| Oxylabs | Residential pay-as-you-go $4/GB; monthly examples of $400 for 133 GB to $2,000 for 1 TB | Residential and larger managed plans | Enterprise automation and support requirements | The cited rates are not budget-leading |
There is no single “cheapest” service for every workload. A low residential rate can still cost more than a higher datacenter rate if your target accepts datacenter addresses and your traffic is large. Conversely, repeated blocks, retries and discarded sessions can make the nominally cheaper pool the expensive choice.
#1 Best Overall
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Understand the proxy type before comparing prices
Datacenter proxies
Datacenter addresses come from hosting or cloud networks rather than consumer internet providers. They are generally the budget choice for high-throughput collection of public pages. Use them when throughput and price matter more than appearing to originate from a household connection. They can be a poor fit for targets that aggressively identify hosting-network ranges.
Rotating residential proxies
Residential pools route through addresses associated with consumer connections and commonly rotate between requests or sessions. They are useful when a target applies stronger anti-bot checks or when you need a country or city that looks like a consumer location. Rotation can also break login state, carts or multi-step workflows unless the service supports sticky sessions.
Static ISP proxies
Static ISP proxies combine a stable address with an ISP-associated identity. They are designed for long-lived sessions such as account administration, monitoring or a workflow that cannot tolerate an IP changing halfway through. Their per-gigabyte price is usually above datacenter pricing, but the stability can reduce failed runs.
Mobile proxies
Mobile pools use carrier-connected addresses and are typically selected for difficult anti-bot environments or mobile-location testing. They are among the more expensive options in the published Decodo rates. Do not pay for mobile addresses when a datacenter pool already works for your target.
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Best cheap proxy picks
Decodo: the clearest low-friction starting point
Decodo is the strongest first comparison when you want entry prices stated for several proxy categories rather than one headline rate. Its published starting points are shown in the table above, and it advertises a three-day free trial. That combination lets you test whether a datacenter pool is sufficient before moving to ISP, residential or mobile traffic.
Decodo also states that its proxies and Scraping API are ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified and that its IPs are ethically sourced from consenting users. Those are useful signals to investigate, but they remain provider statements; they do not establish a universal success rate, latency or block rate for your target sites.
Rank #2
- 5-in-1 USB-C Hub: Experience comprehensive connectivity featuring a Power Delivery input, two USB-A 2.0 ports, a USB-A 3.0 port, and an HDMI port. (Note: The USB-C power delivery input port is only for connecting an external wall charger to power your laptop and cannot power peripheral devices.)
- 90W Pass-Through Charging: Achieve optimal charging with 90W pass-through power to your laptop, supported by a total input of 100W, with the hub reserving 10W for operational efficiency. (Note: Wall charger not included.)
- Quick Data Transfers: Accelerate your productivity with rapid data transfers using a high-speed 5Gbps USB 3.0 port and two 480Mbps USB 2.0 ports.
- 4K HDMI Display: Enhance your visual experience with a hub capable of delivering 4K resolution at 30Hz in both mirror and extend modes. Please note that this hub is compatible with MacBook (macOS 12 and newer), Windows 10 and 11, ChromeOS, and laptops equipped with DP Alt Mode and Power Delivery. Note: This device is not compatible with Linux.
- What You Get: Anker USB-C Hub (5-in-1, 4K HDMI), welcome guide, 18-month warranty, and our friendly customer service.
Proxy-Cheap: a small trial without a monthly commitment
Proxy-Cheap is a practical choice when the immediate goal is a limited experiment. Its rotating residential product is advertised as pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum, while fixed-term products cover datacenter, static ISP and mobile use cases. The service advertises HTTP and SOCKS5 support, country and ISP targeting, and dedicated-IP options on the trial product.
The seven-day $1.99 trial is long enough to test authentication, concurrency and a representative sample of pages rather than judging a pool from a handful of requests. Read the trial’s limits and refund rules before starting; a cheap trial is not evidence that the same economics apply to production traffic.
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ProxyEmpire describes residential, mobile and datacenter products in one account. It claims more than 30 million clean IP addresses across 170-plus countries. That breadth can simplify procurement when a project may move from datacenter collection to residential or mobile targeting.
Treat the IP count as a provider-published claim, not as a guarantee that every country, ASN or session type will be available at your required concurrency. Ask for the exact targeting, rotation and authentication behavior you need before committing to a large traffic package.
Bright Data and Oxylabs: upgrade paths rather than cheap picks
TechRadar describes Bright Data’s cloud web-scraping service as covering more than 120 popular websites. Oxylabs’ cited residential pay-as-you-go rate is $4/GB, with monthly examples from $400 for 133 GB to $2,000 for 1 TB. Those offerings may justify their cost when managed automation, support or enterprise processes matter, but the cited prices do not make them the low-cost leaders in this comparison.
Rank #3
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- Flawless 4K@60Hz Video with HDMI: Delivers exceptional clarity and smoothness with its 4K@60Hz HDMI port, making it ideal for high-definition presentations and entertainment. (Note: Only the HDMI port supports video projection; the USB-C port is for data transfer only.)
- Double Up on Efficiency: The two USB-A 3.0 ports and a USB-C port support a fast 5Gbps data rate, significantly boosting your transfer speeds and improving productivity.
- Fast and Reliable 85W Charging: Offers high-capacity, speedy charging for laptops up to 85W, so you spend less time tethered to an outlet and more time being productive.
- What You Get: Anker USB-C Hub (7-in-1), welcome guide, 18-month warranty, and our friendly customer service.
ProxyLook: useful discovery, not a final buying decision
ProxyLook’s September 2026 directory tracks 223 providers and lists unusually low table values: $0.02/GB for residential and datacenter and $0.18/GB for mobile. Such numbers can help you discover vendors, but directory entries may use different definitions, minimums, geographies or promotional conditions. Verify the provider’s current checkout, expiration policy, authentication method and acceptable-use terms before treating a listing as a real offer.
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For high-volume public pages
Start with datacenter proxies. Measure the number of successful pages per dollar, not just the advertised gigabyte rate. Set a concurrency limit, record response codes and stop retrying a URL after a defined threshold; uncontrolled retries can consume more traffic than the original collection.
For location-sensitive or heavily protected targets
Test rotating residential first, then mobile if the target still rejects requests or requires a carrier-like origin. Specify country, city or ISP only when the task needs it, because narrow targeting can reduce the usable pool and raise the effective cost.
For accounts and persistent sessions
Prefer static ISP or another explicitly sticky product. Confirm how long an address remains assigned, whether credentials are shared or dedicated, and what happens when the IP is unavailable. A rotating pool is the wrong tool for a session that must keep the same origin.
Calculate the effective cost
Compare like with like: the same proxy type, geography, protocol and billing model. A simple estimate is:
effective cost per successful page = (traffic charge + fixed fees + retry traffic) ÷ successful pages.
Rank #4
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- Next-Level 10Gbps & 3A Charging: No more slow 480Mbps, this usb to usb c adapter has a transfer speed of up to 10Gbps, allowing you to do more transferring in less time. This usb adapter fits both USB A and USB C charger, supporting up to 3A fast charging
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Include minimum commitments, one-time setup charges, expiring unused traffic and overage rates if the provider applies them. No common expiration or refund policy is published across these services, so obtain those terms from each live checkout. Also price the engineering time required to rotate credentials, diagnose blocks and replay failed requests.
Use a controlled trial
- Define the target and permission. Confirm that the website’s terms and applicable law allow your planned access to publicly available data.
- Choose the least powerful proxy type that can work. Try datacenter for ordinary public pages; move to ISP, residential or mobile only when the target’s behavior justifies it.
- Use a representative sample. Include the countries, URL paths, login states and page sizes your production job will actually request.
- Record operational metrics. Track successful responses, timeouts, CAPTCHA or bot-check pages, bytes consumed, median and tail latency, and the number of retries.
- Test failure recovery. Revoke a credential, exhaust a small allocation or simulate a timeout so you know how your client detects and replaces a bad endpoint.
- Recheck the price at scale. A trial rate or promotional allowance may not represent the recurring cost of your expected traffic.
Reliability, security and compliance checks
- Use HTTPS to the target whenever the application supports it, and protect proxy credentials in a secret manager rather than source control.
- Confirm whether the provider supports HTTP, HTTPS tunneling and SOCKS5 as required by your client. Proxy-Cheap explicitly advertises HTTP/SOCKS5; do not assume every product supports both.
- Ask how residential or mobile IPs are sourced. Decodo says its IPs come from consenting users; seek equivalent documentation from any other vendor.
- Do not equate a large advertised pool with guaranteed availability, anonymity, unblock rates or low latency. No common independent benchmark establishes that one provider wins on those measures across all targets.
- Respect rate limits, robots directives where applicable, privacy obligations and the target site’s terms. Decodo states that proxy use is legal in most jurisdictions when accessing publicly available data in compliance with the target website’s Terms of Service; that is not a blanket permission for every use case.
Troubleshooting common proxy problems
Authentication fails immediately
Check the username, password, host and port separately, then verify whether the provider expects IP allowlisting instead of credentials. Test the same endpoint with the provider’s documented HTTP or SOCKS5 format before changing your application.
Pages return a bot check or CAPTCHA
Reduce concurrency and request frequency first. If the target still rejects hosting-network addresses, test a residential or mobile pool with the required country. Do not assume switching providers alone fixes a workflow that violates the target’s terms.
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The session logs out or changes location
You are probably rotating between requests or using a pool without stickiness. Select a sticky residential session or static ISP product, and keep the session identifier consistent for the entire workflow.
Traffic costs rise unexpectedly
Inspect retries, large assets and redirects. Cache responses you are allowed to cache, block unnecessary resource types in your client, and set a hard traffic budget. Then compare successful pages rather than raw gigabytes.
A directory price is unavailable at checkout
Directory values can be outdated, promotional or tied to a minimum purchase. Treat the live provider checkout as authoritative and record the plan, geography and billing period when you compare offers.
Best Value
- 5-in-1 Connectivity: Equipped with a 4K HDMI port, a 5 Gbps USB-C data port, two 5 Gbps USB-A ports, and a USB C 100W PD-IN port. Note: The USB C 100W PD-IN port supports only charging and does not support data transfer devices such as headphones or speakers.
- Powerful Pass-Through Charging: Supports up to 85W pass-through charging so you can power up your laptop while you use the hub. Note: Pass-through charging requires a charger (not included). Note: To achieve full power for iPad, we recommend using a 45W wall charger.
- Transfer Files in Seconds: Move files to and from your laptop at speeds of up to 5 Gbps via the USB-C and USB-A data ports. Note: The USB C 5Gbps Data port does not support video output.
- HD Display: Connect to the HDMI port to stream or mirror content to an external monitor in resolutions of up to 4K@30Hz. Note: The USB-C ports do not support video output.
- What You Get: Anker 332 USB-C Hub (5-in-1), welcome guide, our worry-free 18-month warranty, and friendly customer service.
A separate tool for website screenshots
If your proxy project also needs repeatable website screenshots, ScreenshotNeo is an alternative to try first: it removes cookie-consent banners, newsletter popups and chat widgets before capture, bills only clean shots, and provides an MCP server for AI agents.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteOne GET request returns a PNG, JPEG, WebP or PDF. For example:
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webpSee the complete parameter list and options in the ScreenshotNeo documentation. Bot checks, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads and cache hits are not billed, and the response identifies the page verdict and billing result in headers. The service also supports full-page and element capture, device and viewport settings, custom CSS and JavaScript, waiting rules, request blocking, cookies, headers, geolocation, PDFs, signed links, asynchronous jobs, bulk capture and a usage API.
The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots each month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 shots. Create a free ScreenshotNeo account to try it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do proxies make data collection legal?
No. Legality depends on your jurisdiction, the data, your purpose and the target site’s terms. Decodo specifically conditions its legal statement on accessing publicly available data in compliance with those terms.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallShould I compare proxy prices by gigabyte alone?
No. Compare the same proxy type, targeting, protocol and billing model, then include retries, minimums, expiration and the number of successful pages produced.
Which proxy protocol should my application use?
Use the protocol your client supports and your provider documents. Proxy-Cheap advertises both HTTP and SOCKS5; confirm the exact endpoint format before production use.
The Bottom Line
For most budget buyers, test Decodo’s datacenter offer first, use Proxy-Cheap when a small no-monthly-commitment trial matters, and move to static ISP, residential or mobile only when the target’s behavior requires it. Verify every live price and restriction before purchase.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
