Proxy Costs Compared: Per IP, Per GB and Per Connection
How per-IP, per-GB and per-connection proxy billing change the cost of the same job, with a worked example for each proxy type.
Compare proxy prices by billing unit before you compare rates. The same scraping job costs very differently per IP, per gigabyte or per concurrent connection, so the cheapest headline number is often the wrong plan. Static proxies are billed per address, residential and metered rotating plans per gigabyte, and connection-priced rotating plans by how many connections you hold open. This guide explains each unit with Node4's catalog as the worked example; Node4 publishes it and sells every product named. It compares billing models, not vendors, because rates change too often for a cross-vendor price table to stay right. For a vendor comparison, see residential providers compared.
Three billing units, one job
For example, take one job and price it three ways: a crawler that fetches 200,000 pages a month at about 500 KB each, holding 40 connections open at peak. That is roughly 100 GB a month.
- Per gigabyte (residential, Rotating Datacenter): you pay for the 100 GB. Double the page weight and the bill doubles; double the concurrency for the same pages and nothing changes.
- Per concurrent connection (Rotating Unmetered): you pay for 40 connections and the 100 GB has no per-GB charge. Double the page weight and nothing changes; double the concurrency and the bill moves to the next size up.
- Per address (dedicated and shared datacenter): you pay for however many fixed IPs you rent. The job's cost depends on how many addresses the target needs before it stops rate-limiting you, which you only learn by testing.
Put your own numbers into the proxy calculator, then price the plan sizes that cover them.
Billing units by proxy type
| Type | Billing unit | What drives the bill | Locations | Where it loses on cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated datacenter | Per proxy per month, no data cap | Number of addresses | US, Italy, Spain (Node4-owned) | Many addresses needed to spread load |
| Shared datacenter | Per proxy per month, pooled data allowance | Number of addresses, then data | US, Italy, Spain (Node4-owned) | Heavy data use beyond the allowance |
| Rotating Datacenter | Per GB | Data moved | US, Italy, Spain (Node4-owned) | Large pages or media |
| Rotating Unmetered | Concurrent connections, no data cap | Peak open connections | US, Italy, Spain (Node4-owned) | Many connections moving little data |
| Residential | Per GB | Data moved | Many countries, listed on the residential page (partner network) | Any heavy job; higher per-GB rate than datacenter |
Residential costs the same per gigabyte in every country on Node4; only plan size changes the rate. Vendors differ on this, so read each rate card.
Per address: dedicated and shared datacenter
A dedicated proxy is one address on Node4-owned blocks, yours alone, with no data cap. A job that moves a lot of data through a handful of fixed addresses is cheap this way, because bytes do not appear on the bill. It gets expensive when the target rate-limits per address and you need hundreds of them. Dedicated pricing lists the per-proxy rate by quantity.
Shared proxies put a few accounts on each address, so the per-address rate is lower, and they carry a monthly data allowance pooled across the order. At the allowance, access pauses until you top up or the period renews, unless auto top-up is on. Shared pricing shows the allowance per plan. The free plan sits here: 3 free shared proxies, 1 GB a month, no card required. The free plan has no end date; if your free proxies carry no traffic for 30 days we pause them, and you can reactivate a fresh set from your dashboard in one click.
Per gigabyte: residential and Rotating Datacenter
Per-GB billing tracks data moved, so page weight is the number to measure. A text-only API response of 20 KB and a product page of 2 MB differ by a factor of 100 in cost per request. Block images and fonts in a headless browser and the residential bill falls accordingly.
Residential exits come from a partner network, with current countries listed on the residential page, and cost more per gigabyte than datacenter. Pay it only for targets that refuse hosting ranges or need a country outside the US, Italy and Spain (residential plan prices). Rotating Datacenter is the per-GB way to rotate across owned datacenter exits (rotating datacenter pricing). On both, the allowance belongs to the billing period, and unused gigabytes do not carry into the next one.
Per connection: Rotating Unmetered
Rotating Unmetered draws the same owned exits as Rotating Datacenter and bills by concurrent connections instead, with no data cap (network safety limits still apply). It costs less than per-GB when you move a lot of data through a steady number of connections, and more when a job opens many connections to move small responses. When every connection your size allows is open, new ones are refused and open ones keep running, so cap concurrency in your client at the plan size. Sizes are on connection-based pricing.
The decision
Measure two numbers on a bounded slice of the real job: gigabytes per month and peak open connections. If the target accepts datacenter exits, compare Rotating Datacenter at your gigabytes with Rotating Unmetered at your connections and take the lower. If the target needs a fixed identity, price dedicated addresses. If it refuses hosting ranges, residential is the only Node4 option that works, and the job is to shrink the gigabytes. For how speed differs across the same types, see which proxy type is fastest; for lower-cost vendors, see cheap proxy providers.