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Decodo is the best documented low-cost starting point in 2026: its published entry prices cover datacenter, ISP, residential and mobile proxies, and it offers a three-day trial. Choose the proxy type before choosing a vendor: datacenter is usually cheapest for high-volume public-data collection, static ISP suits long sessions, and residential or mobile is better for location-sensitive targets with stronger bot defenses. Proxy-Cheap is the strongest alternative when you want pay-as-you-go residential traffic or a $1.99 seven-day trial.
Prices below are provider-published figures available on September 29, 2026. Proxy pools, discounts, trial rules and availability can change, so confirm the checkout terms before paying.
What “cheap” means for proxies
A low price per gigabyte is only useful if the proxy type works for your target. A failed request, forced retry, short session or unsuitable location can make a nominally cheap plan more expensive than a higher-priced one. Compare these dimensions together:
- Proxy type: datacenter, rotating residential, static ISP or mobile.
- Billing: pay-as-you-go traffic, fixed per-IP plans or monthly commitments.
- Targeting: country, city, ASN/ISP and session persistence.
- Operations: throughput, concurrency, HTTP/SOCKS5 support, authentication and API quality.
- Exit terms: trial duration, minimum spend, refunds, expiration of unused traffic and cancellation rules.
Use proxies only where the target website’s terms and applicable law allow it. Decodo states that proxy use is generally legal when accessing publicly available data in compliance with the target site’s Terms of Service; that is not permission to bypass access controls or collect private information.
#1 Best Overall
- CPU:Intel Core i3-N305 Processor,8 cores , 8 threads,6M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz,15W
- Configuration:8G DDR4 Ram 128G M.2 SSD NO WIFI
- 196 x 122 x 47mm ,Low Power,Aluminum alloy case ,24/7/365 ,Perfect fit for a LAN or WAN router, firewall, proxy, WiFi access point, VPN appliance, DHCP Server, DNS Server, etc.
- 2 x Marvell AQC113 10 Gigabit LAN,4 x Intel I226-V 2.5 Gigabit LAN,3 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0,1 x Type C,1 x Nano SIM Slot,1 x HD Video, 1 x Display Port
- Supports Windows and Linux kernels, such as Windows, OpenWrt, Linux, iKuai, etc, Does not support Unix kernels, such as pfsense, OPNsense, etc.Pre-install windows 10(Unactivated)Please reinstall OS by yourself.
Best cheap proxy services compared
| Provider | Published low-price example | Types and billing | Best fit | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo | Datacenter $0.57/GB on a 50 GB plan; ISP $2.25/GB on a 50 GB plan; residential $3/GB; mobile $3/GB; pay-as-you-go residential from $4/GB | Datacenter, ISP, residential and mobile; plans plus pay-as-you-go residential | First trial when you want clearly stated entry prices across several proxy types | Three-day free trial; prices are provider-published and plan-specific |
| Proxy-Cheap | $1.99 seven-day trial | Rotating residential pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum; fixed-term datacenter, static ISP and mobile products | Small experiments and buyers avoiding a monthly commitment | Trial terms, dedicated-IP availability and traffic limits should be checked at checkout |
| ProxyEmpire | Not stated in the supplied pricing information | Residential, mobile and datacenter | Teams that may expand across several proxy types | The provider claims more than 30 million IP addresses in 170+ countries; no independent uptime, latency or block-rate test establishes those claims here |
| Bright Data | Not stated as a budget entry price | Cloud web-scraping service and broader enterprise tooling | Organizations needing managed automation and support | TechRadar describes coverage for more than 120 popular websites; it is an enterprise upgrade path, not a cheap pick |
| Oxylabs | Residential pay-as-you-go $4/GB; monthly examples reported as $400 for 133 GB to $2,000 for 1 TB | Residential traffic and larger monthly plans | Higher-volume buyers with an enterprise budget | The cited figures are reported prices, not a claim that Oxylabs is the lowest-cost option |
1. Decodo: best documented low-friction starting point
Decodo publishes the clearest low-end price ladder in the available material. A 50 GB datacenter plan starts at $0.57 per GB, while a 50 GB ISP plan starts at $2.25 per GB. Residential and mobile start at $3 per GB, and its pay-as-you-go residential option starts at $4 per GB without a monthly commitment.
The three-day free trial is useful for checking your target before committing. Test the exact countries, concurrency and session behavior you need rather than assuming a trial proves performance everywhere. Decodo also says its proxies and Scraping API are ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified and that IPs are ethically sourced from consenting users. Those are provider statements; ask for the scope and current documentation if certification or sourcing is a procurement requirement.
When Decodo is the economical choice
- Choose datacenter when the target is public, throughput matters and basic IP reputation is sufficient.
- Choose static ISP when one login or shopping session must persist for a long time.
- Choose residential or mobile when the target is location-sensitive or applies stronger anti-bot checks.
2. Proxy-Cheap: best for a small, no-commitment trial
Proxy-Cheap advertises residential, mobile, ISP and datacenter products. Its rotating residential service is pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum, while fixed-term per-IP products cover datacenter, static ISP and mobile use cases. The provider lists a $1.99 seven-day trial and says the trial supports HTTP/SOCKS5, country and ISP targeting, and dedicated IP options.
This structure is useful when you have a narrowly defined test: buy only the traffic or IPs needed, record success and failure rates, then decide whether a recurring plan is justified. Proxy-Cheap also publishes a claim of 155M+ IPs across 180+ countries. Treat pool-size figures as provider claims; a large advertised pool does not guarantee that a particular city, ASN or target will be available at the moment you need it.
3. ProxyEmpire: a multi-type option for scaling
ProxyEmpire describes residential, mobile and datacenter products, making it a candidate when a project may move between proxy classes as requirements change. It claims more than 30 million clean IP addresses across 170+ countries. The supplied information does not establish comparative latency, uptime, block rates or effective cost, so start with a small, target-specific evaluation rather than buying on pool size alone.
Rank #2
- 【Five Gigabit Ports】1 Gigabit WAN Port plus 2 Gigabit WAN/LAN Ports plus 2 Gigabit LAN Port. Up to 3 WAN ports optimize bandwidth usage through one device.
- 【One USB WAN Port】Mobile broadband via 4G/3G modem is supported for WAN backup by connecting to the USB port. For complete list of compatible 4G/3G modems, please visit TP-Link website.
- 【Abundant Security Features】Advanced firewall policies, DoS defense, IP/MAC/URL filtering, speed test and more security functions protect your network and data.
- 【Highly Secure VPN】Supports up to 20× LAN-to-LAN IPsec, 16× OpenVPN, 16× L2TP, and 16× PPTP VPN connections.
- Security - SPI Firewall, VPN Pass through, FTP/H.323/PPTP/SIP/IPsec ALG, DoS Defence, Ping of Death and Local Management. Standards and Protocols IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, 802.3ab, IEEE 802.3x, IEEE 802.1q
Why Bright Data and Oxylabs are not the cheap picks
Bright Data and Oxylabs can be sensible when managed automation, support or enterprise controls outweigh price. TechRadar describes Bright Data’s cloud web-scraping service for more than 120 popular websites. The same source reports Oxylabs residential pay-as-you-go at $4/GB, with examples from $400 for 133 GB to $2,000 for 1 TB on larger monthly plans. Those figures place both in an upgrade category for buyers who need scale or tooling, not in the low-cost shortlist.
Proxy type: select this before a provider
Datacenter proxies
Datacenter addresses generally offer the lowest traffic cost and high throughput. They are a practical default for public pages, availability checks and other workloads where the target does not require a consumer-looking connection. They are also more likely to be recognized as hosting-network traffic, so budget for retries or a different type if blocks appear.
Rotating residential proxies
Residential exits resemble consumer networks and can provide broader geographic choice. Rotation can help distribute requests, but it can also break workflows that depend on one IP staying logged in. Use sticky sessions where the provider supports them and where the target’s terms permit automated access.
Static ISP proxies
Static ISP addresses are designed for long-lived sessions: account administration, repeated checks from one location or workflows where changing IPs would trigger additional verification. They cost more than datacenter traffic in Decodo’s published examples.
Mobile proxies
Mobile exits can be useful for mobile-network location requirements or particularly strict defenses. They are usually among the more expensive choices; Decodo lists a $3/GB starting price.
How to calculate the real cost
- Estimate successful traffic. Include HTML, scripts, images and retries, not just the response body you save.
- Measure failure overhead. A 20% retry rate turns 100 GB of useful results into about 125 GB of purchased traffic.
- Separate fixed and variable costs. Per-IP plans can be cheaper for a stable session; per-GB plans are safer for bursty tests.
- Check expiration and minimums. Unused traffic, trial allowances and cancellation terms can matter more than the headline rate.
- Price the required geography. City, ASN and ISP targeting may narrow the pool or require a different product tier.
For example, 50 GB at Decodo’s published $0.57/GB datacenter rate is a $28.50 traffic allowance before taxes or add-ons; the rate is tied to that 50 GB plan and should not be generalized to every volume. A $3/GB residential rate would make the same allowance $150, illustrating why proxy type dominates the budget.
Rank #3
- 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐰 – Delivering high-capacity tri-band lanes, the Wi-Fi 7 Archer BE770 combines 10 internal antennas, an open 6 GHz band, and a future-ready 10G WAN/LAN port for busy, connected homes.
- 𝐁𝐄𝟏𝟖𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐭𝐫𝐢-𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝟏𝟎-𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐖𝐢-𝐅𝐢 𝟕 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 - Delivers up to 11528 Mbps (6 GHz), 5764 Mbps (5 GHz), and 688 Mbps (2.4 GHz) speeds for 4K/8K streaming, AR/VR gaming & more.◇**△ Performance varies by conditions, distance, & obstacles such as walls.
- 𝟏𝟎 𝐆𝐛𝐩𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐬 - Features a 10 Gbps WAN/LAN port to maximize multi-gig internet plans. An additional 10 Gbps WAN/LAN port and four 1 Gbps LAN ports provide fast connections to PCs, consoles, NAS, and switches.§
- 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫 - Covers up to 3,600 sq. ft. for up to 150 devices at a time. 10 internal antennas and beamforming technology focus Wi-Fi signals toward hard-to-reach areas. Seamlessly connect phones, TVs, and gaming consoles.△
- 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐩 & 𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 - Quickly set up and manage your Archer BE770 with the free Tether App. Keep your WiFi performing at its best by keeping the firmware updated through the App. All Wi-Fi routers require a separate modem.
A practical buying test
- Write down the target domains, allowed request rate, countries or cities, required session length and protocol (HTTP or SOCKS5).
- Start with the smallest trial or pay-as-you-go purchase that can produce a meaningful sample.
- Run the same workflow through each candidate and record successful responses, challenge pages, median response time, retries, CAPTCHA frequency and usable geographic matches.
- Check whether authentication, concurrency and sticky-session controls behave as documented.
- Stop when the target’s terms prohibit the activity, when you encounter private-data boundaries or when the proxy cannot meet the required controls.
No common independent benchmark in the available material proves that one provider has the best success rate or latency across all sites. Your target-specific test is therefore more informative than a universal ranking.
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Requests are blocked immediately
Confirm that the target allows automated access, slow the request rate, reduce concurrency and try a different proxy type. Datacenter addresses are often the first to be challenged; switching to residential or mobile may help, but it costs more and does not override the site’s rules.
The session keeps logging out
Use a static ISP or a sticky residential session, preserve cookies, and avoid rotating the exit between authentication and subsequent requests. Check whether the provider’s session duration matches your workflow.
The location is wrong
Verify country, city and ISP targeting in the proxy settings and test the IP through a location service you are allowed to query. A country-level match does not guarantee a city- or ASN-level match.
Traffic costs exceed the estimate
Inspect retries, redirects and downloaded assets. Disable unnecessary resources where your client permits, cache immutable responses, and compare per-IP pricing with per-GB pricing for steady workloads.
What’s actually slowing this PC down?
Pick the symptom - the matching free tool is one click away.
The trial cannot answer your question
Trials may restrict locations, concurrency, protocols or dedicated IPs. Record those limits and ask the provider for the exact terms before treating a failed trial as a product-wide failure.
Rank #4
- Secure Remote Work for Two : Includes two travel routers, so a colleague or family member can also connect remotely.
- Work from Anywhere Securely : Connect to your home network with a VPN travel router designed for remote professionals.
- An active KeepYourHomeIP : subscription is required for the VPN setup to work. One month of free subscription is included with the VPN package.
- Seamless Remote Work : Connect multiple devices simultaneously, including laptops, tablets, and phones.
- Bypass Geo-Restrictions : Both users can access home services, streaming, and work apps securely from anywhere.
Or skip the browser setup
If your goal is to document how a public page renders while you test a proxy workflow, ScreenshotNeo can capture the page through one API request instead of maintaining Playwright or Selenium. It accepts a URL and returns PNG, JPEG, WebP or PDF. Before capture it can accept cookie or consent banners and remove more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups and chat widgets; each step can be turned off. Bot checks, CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads and cache hits are not billed, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server provides take_screenshot, get_page_info and capture_pdf tools for Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients.
See the ScreenshotNeo documentation for all options, including full-page lazy-image loading, CSS-selector element capture, device presets, retina scale, PDF controls, custom CSS and JavaScript, waits, request blocking, headers, cookies, user agents, authorization, timezone, geolocation, transparent backgrounds, resizing, TTL caching, signed links, asynchronous webhooks, bulk capture of up to 100 URLs per call, usage data and an OpenAPI specification.
curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://stripe.com -o shot.webp
import requests
r = requests.get("https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot", params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://stripe.com"}, timeout=90)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)
const q = new URLSearchParams({ access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY', url: 'https://stripe.com' });
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);
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Final recommendation
Begin with Decodo if you need a documented price across proxy types and a three-day trial. Choose Proxy-Cheap when a seven-day $1.99 trial and no monthly minimum are more important. Move to ProxyEmpire when multi-type expansion is the priority, and consider Bright Data or Oxylabs only when enterprise tooling or scale justifies the higher reported prices. In every case, validate the exact target, geography, session behavior and legal basis before increasing volume.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are cheap proxies suitable for private or account data?
No. Use only data and automation that the target’s terms and applicable law permit; a proxy does not make private-data collection lawful.
Should I buy rotating residential or static IPs first?
Use rotating residential for distributed, location-sensitive requests and static ISP for sessions that must keep one stable identity. The correct choice depends on the target workflow, not the provider’s headline rate.
Can directory prices be trusted as purchase quotes?
No. ProxyLook’s September 2026 directory reports listings as low as $0.02/GB for residential and datacenter and $0.18/GB for mobile across 223 providers, but those are directory entries rather than a uniform independent test. Verify the live checkout, limits and restrictions.
Is there one proxy provider with the best latency and success rate?
The available comparisons do not establish a universal winner. Measure the countries, targets, concurrency and session lengths your own project requires.
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.




