Datacenter vs Residential Proxies for Scraping: Cost per GB

The per-GB prices

Source: Proxy302 product facts file, checked 10 November 2026. Residential traffic you buy has no expiry; datacenter traffic is billed from the wallet with no packs.

• Sources:
• Proxy302 product facts and price list

Why the same page can work on one and fail on the other

Services that publish IP data classify addresses by network. IPinfo, for example, says its data flags IPs associated with hosting infrastructure. A site that reads that classification can tell a datacenter IP from a home connection. Many public pages and APIs never look; some do.

So you cannot know in advance. That is the reason to test a sample instead of guessing, and why datacenter is the sensible first try for public pages.

• Sources:
• IPinfo IP geolocation API page

Break-even: how much must datacenter deliver

Arithmetic: US$0.40 ÷ US$1.50 = 0.267, multiplied by the residential usable share (0.9 gives 0.240, 0.8 gives 0.213). The shares are example inputs, not measurements; use your own.

• Sources:
• Proxy302 product facts and price list

A sample test, step by step

1. Step 1

   Pick 100 real target URLs that represent your job, including the heaviest page types, and write down what a good response looks like.

2. Step 2

   Run them through datacenter traffic. Record the share with usable content, the traffic used in GB, and the time per request.

   • rotating datacenter proxies

3. Step 3

   Run the failing targets through residential traffic and record the same numbers. Divide each price by the usable share to get the cost per useful GB.

   • rotating residential proxies

4. Step 4

   Split the job: keep datacenter for targets where it works and use residential only for the rest. Keep to the sites' terms and collect public data only.

Count retries and page weight

Every retry and every image or script you load uses traffic, whichever line you choose. Fetching JSON or HTML only, and not loading images, usually cuts the GB a lot more than switching providers. Both lines are billed per GB, so measure the GB per 100 pages in your sample.

• estimating traffic for price monitoring

FAQ

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