How Much Proxy Bandwidth Do I Need? Estimate It in 3 Steps

What counts as traffic

Per-GB billing counts the bytes that pass through the proxy, in both directions: the page, its scripts, its images, and every request you repeat after a failure. Only requests you actually send are counted, so the same URL fetched with plain HTTP costs far less than the same URL opened in a full browser.

For scale, the HTTP Archive Web Almanac measured a median page weight of 2,652 KB on desktop and 2,311 KB on mobile in October 2024, spread over a median of 71 requests on desktop. Images (1,054 KB) and JavaScript (620 KB) are the biggest parts. A browser that loads all of that spends the bytes; an HTTP client that fetches only the HTML or JSON does not.

• Sources:
• HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2024: Page Weight

Three worked examples (assumptions to replace with your own)

Sizes in A and C are assumptions to be replaced by your own measurement. In B, 2.65 MB is the HTTP Archive median desktop page (2,652 KB) used as a starting point. 1 GB = 1,000 MB here. The 10% retry margin is an assumption. Price: Proxy302 Budget line per-GB price, checked 10 November 2026.

• Sources:
• HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2024: Page Weight
• Proxy302 product facts and price list

Reading the three examples

Example A is a scraper that reads product pages with an HTTP client and never loads images or scripts. Example B opens each profile in a real browser, so most bytes are images and scripts, and the monthly total is larger than A even though the number of visits is much smaller. Example C sends small JSON requests, so a large number of requests still costs only a few GB.

The lesson is that request count alone tells you little: size per request decides the bill. If B ran on the Premium line at US$5 per GB, 15.84 GB would cost 15.84 × 5 = US$79.20, so the line you choose matters as much as the volume.

Measure 20 real requests through the proxy

import requests
from urllib.parse import quote

user = quote("USERNAME", safe="")
password = quote("PASSWORD", safe="")
proxy = f"http://{user}:{password}@proxy.proxy302.com:2222"
proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}

urls = ["https://example.com/"] * 20   # replace with 20 real URLs of your job
total = 0
for url in urls:
    r = requests.get(url, proxies=proxies, timeout=(5, 20))
    total += len(r.content)

average_kb = total / len(urls) / 1000
print(f"average body size: {average_kb:.1f} KB")

requests_per_month = 60000              # your own number
gb = requests_per_month * average_kb / 1_000_000
print(f"about {gb:.1f} GB a month before retries")

Example only. Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with the values from My assets, and the URLs with your own. len(r.content) counts the response body after decompression, so it understates what the proxy carried: treat the result as a lower bound.

How to size your first purchase

1. Step 1

   Pick 20 real URLs from your job and run the script above, or your own tool. Write down the average size and how many requests you will send a month.

2. Step 2

   Multiply to get GB, then add a margin for retries and blocked responses. 10% is a starting guess; use your own failure rate once you have one.

3. Step 3

   Buy a small amount of traffic, run a day of the real job, and compare the traffic used with your estimate. Scale the monthly number from that day, not from the guess.

   • traffic estimate for price monitoring

Buying small first at Proxy302

Rotating residential traffic starts at 1 GB, so a test costs about US$1.50 on the Budget line or US$5 on the Premium line. Purchased traffic has no expiry, which means a test purchase is not wasted if your real number turns out larger: what you do not use stays available. There is no free trial.

Concurrency does not change how many GB you need, only how fast you use them. How per-GB billing works in general is covered in the pay-per-GB guide.

• how per-GB billing works

• Sources:
• Proxy302 product facts and price list

FAQ

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