Methodology
Version 2 · published Oct 19, 2026
How the prices on this site are collected and computed, step by step.
Where prices come from
Once a day, we read each provider's public pricing page for each category we track (residential and rotating mobile) from a server in the US, as an anonymous visitor. Some providers show different prices, tiers or VAT-inclusive prices to visitors from other regions; we record what a US visitor sees and don't adjust it. We count the price a returning customer pays every month: the monthly subscription or fixed-volume package price where a provider publishes one, otherwise its pay-as-you-go price. Annual plans, first-purchase bonuses and prices that need a coupon or promo code don't count — where a discount needs a code, we use the regular price. A temporary sale shown next to the regular price is ignored; a crossed-out "was" price shown on every tier, with no code and no end date, is a permanent anchor, so we use the price actually charged. Packages ("100 GB for $300") count as a tier at their per-GB price. A plan with included credits and a per-GB rate counts at its highest rate, for traffic through exit IPs in high-cost countries such as the US and EU. "Contact sales" tiers without a number are skipped. So are "as low as" prices that need a sales contact. We track the residential product any buyer can order from the pricing page; separate products sold only after a compliance review or a sales call are left out, even when cheaper. When a provider sells more than one residential product, we track the main one — the product on its plain residential proxies page — and leave the others out, even when cheaper. Provider promotions are shown as a badge next to the price and never change the indexed price.
From price
The From price is the cheapest price on a provider's own price list — the lowest $/GB across every tier it publishes, whatever volume that tier requires. It's a raw fact from the current price list, not adjusted for anything: it doesn't account for minimum deposits, minimum purchase volumes, or traffic that expires before you can use it, and it usually isn't the price you'd actually pay — see Gap vs From below for how far off it typically is.
List price at your volume
A provider's price list usually has several tiers: the more you buy, the less you pay per gigabyte. The list price at a given volume is the price of the tier that applies there — the tier with the largest minimum that doesn't exceed your volume (or the smallest plan, if your volume is below it). It's what the provider's own price list charges before minimum deposits or expiring traffic come into play. The list price at 50 GB/month is also what we publish as open data (the headline_price field).
Effective price
The effective price answers a different question: if you need the same amount of traffic every month, what does each gigabyte you actually get to use cost? We compute it at four monthly volumes — 5, 50, 500 and 1,000 GB — assuming you use exactly that much every month, with no idle months and no spikes.
- Tier. We take the price of the tier that applies at your volume: the tier with the largest minimum that doesn't exceed it. If your volume is below the provider's smallest plan, we use the smallest plan. If a bigger tier costs no more in total than this one — a price drop that starts just above your volume — we take the bigger tier instead and count its full size as your purchase. The list price shown next to the effective price stays the price of the tier your volume falls into, so in this case the effective price can be lower than the list price.
- Monthly bill. Tier price × your volume — or × the smallest plan's size, if you need less than that, or × the bigger tier's size, if we took it. If the provider requires a minimum deposit larger than this, the deposit is your bill.
- Usable traffic. If unused traffic never expires, you eventually use everything you paid for. If it expires, we count only what you can use before it does: your monthly volume × the expiry window in months (at least one month; a month is 30 days).
- Effective price = monthly bill ÷ usable gigabytes.
In short, a minimum plan or deposit makes a provider more expensive only when it forces you to buy traffic that expires before you can use it. Hypothetical example: with a $50 minimum deposit at $1.00/GB, a buyer who needs 5 GB a month pays $50 and gets 50 GB. If unused traffic expires after 30 days, they use 5 GB of it, so the effective price is $10.00/GB. If it never expires, the effective price stays $1.00/GB.
Gap vs From
Gap is the effective price at a given volume divided by the provider's From price. ×1.00 means you'd pay the provider's cheapest advertised rate; ×1.50 means you'd pay 50% more per gigabyte than the ad suggests. At small volumes the gap is usually largest, because the From price belongs to the provider's biggest tier.
Partial data (*)
An asterisk means at least one of the two facts that can raise the price — the minimum deposit or the traffic expiry window — isn't verified yet. For whatever is missing, we use the assumption most favorable to you: no deposit, and traffic that never expires. While traffic expiry is unknown, the effective price therefore equals the list price for that volume, or the price of a bigger tier that costs no more in total. Confirming the expiry window can only keep the number the same or raise it. A confirmed deposit usually does too, but a deposit large enough to buy a bigger tier can lower it.
Why 50 GB a month?
50 GB a month is a common recurring workload: big enough that the smallest starter plans no longer apply, small enough that enterprise-only tiers don't either. It lets every provider be compared at the same volume. If your volume is different, switch the table to 5, 500 or 1,000 GB a month.
Freshness
Every price carries the date it was last confirmed. If a provider's price hasn't been re-verified in the last 72 hours, we show that date in amber rather than hide it or remove the row — a stale price is still the best information we have, it's just aging.
A sudden jump — a new price at least 1.5× the old one or half of it or less — is held back until we confirm it by hand or see the same value three successful checks in a row. Until then we keep showing the previous price with its own date.
VAT
We never add VAT to the effective price. VAT rates depend on the buyer's own status and country, not on the provider, so there's no single rate that would apply to every visitor equally. Where a provider's listed price already includes VAT for a US visitor, we note that as a fact on their page.
City and ASN targeting
City and ASN targeting let you pick IPs from a specific city or a specific network (ISP). Some providers include it, others charge extra per GB (for example "+100% per GB" doubles the price). This surcharge is not in the Effective price.
Plan and purchase facts
Next to prices, provider pages show facts we check by hand, each with its source and check date: whether the provider runs its own proxy network or resells another provider's ("Reseller", based on the provider's own statements about where its IPs come from). "Own infrastructure" means the provider builds and runs its own IP pool, including devices of users who opted in, rather than buying traffic from another provider. We also check whether listed prices include VAT and the billing country, city and ASN targeting, accepted payment methods, whether customers from Russia and Belarus are served, and when identity verification (KYC) is required. "Not verified" means our sources don't answer the question — it never means "no"; we mark something as not available only when the provider says so. None of these facts change the effective price. Promotions and coupon codes are shown as a badge with the date we last checked them and never change the prices we index.
Planner
The planner answers the same question as the effective price — what each gigabyte you use costs if you need the same amount every month — for any volume, not only 5, 50, 500 and 1,000 GB. It starts from the plan the effective price picks and also tries every bigger tier on the provider's price list that costs more in total, as long as that purchase would last you no more than 12 months and the provider's traffic expiry is verified. The option with the lowest cost per usable gigabyte wins, so at the table's volumes the planner can show a lower price per GB than the price table, but never a higher one — for example, when a bigger plan costs more up front but lasts you several months. Volumes entered in pages are converted at 250 KB per page (4,000 pages per GB). Providers whose terms aren't fully verified are listed separately and not ranked.
What we don't cover
Residential and rotating mobile proxies priced per GB, in USD, only. We don't measure speed, success rate or pool quality yet. Effective prices assume steady monthly usage; bursty usage can make a minimum plan cost more than shown. Some providers also sell pay-as-you-go traffic with no monthly commitment; at small volumes that can cost less than the subscription-based effective price we show. The price table never prices a bigger plan that costs more up front, even when it would last you several months and cost less per gigabyte; the planner does (see Planner).
Mobile proxies: what we list
Besides residential proxies, we price rotating mobile proxies: proxies that route your traffic through mobile carrier IP addresses (3G, 4G or 5G) and are sold per gigabyte. Dedicated mobile proxies — a modem or a SIM reserved for you, priced per port, per day or per month — are not listed: such a price can't be turned into a price per gigabyte without guessing how much traffic you will use, so it would not be comparable with the rest of the table. When a provider sells both, we track the rotating per-GB product.
Everything above applies to mobile prices as well: the same daily reading of the provider's public pricing page, the same tier rule, the same effective price at 5, 50, 500 and 1,000 GB a month. The minimum deposit and traffic expiry are checked separately for each category, since a provider can set different terms for its residential and mobile products. Mobile prices are published as open data in a file of their own, /api/v1/current-mobile.json, next to /api/v1/current.json.
Partnership & affiliate links
Some links from this site to providers are, or may become, affiliate links, and we may earn a commission when you buy through them. Only "Visit" links can be affiliate links; links to the pricing pages we cite as sources are always direct. Visit clicks are counted in a click log that does not store IP addresses. Affiliate status is a commercial fact only, not a signal of quality or price: it never affects a provider's position in any list, the default volume, the prices shown or how the effective price is calculated. Providers can't pay to change the prices we show, how they're calculated, or their order in the price table. Providers can pay to be added or featured; paid listings are clearly labeled and ranked by the same rules as everyone else. See the disclosure on the About page.
Open data
The list price at 50 GB/month for every provider (the headline_price field) is published as open data under a CC BY 4.0 license, together with the date it was last confirmed and a link to its source. Field reference, schema and how to cite: /data. The current snapshot is at /api/v1/current.json (for rotating mobile proxies, /api/v1/current-mobile.json), and the provider directory — slugs, names and websites — is at /api/v1/providers.json. The public repository proxyticker/proxy-pricing-data holds the same files, with the full history of past snapshots in its commit history. Effective price and gap aren't part of the open data — they're computed for display on this site only.
Corrections
If a price or a term looks wrong or out of date, open an issue in our public data repository or email data@proxyticker.com with a link to the provider's page. We re-check reported facts, usually within a few days; any change to how prices are calculated is logged in the changelog below. More on the About page.
Changelog
- v1 — Sep 21, 2026
Initial published formula: tariff price, overpay from a minimum plan or deposit, and unused traffic expiring before it can be used — computed at four reference monthly volumes (5, 50, 500 and 1000 GB) under steady usage.
- v2 — Oct 19, 2026
When a bigger tier costs no more in total than the tier your volume falls into, the effective price is computed for that bigger tier. The list price is unchanged. Earlier history is recomputed with the new formula.