Bandwidth billing
Charging by gigabyte transferred — the standard model for residential proxies, and easy to underestimate.
Bandwidth billing charges for data transferred through the proxy rather than for addresses or time. It is standard for residential and mobile services.
#What counts as billable traffic
Usually everything: request and response, headers as well as bodies, and typically retries and failed requests too. This is where estimates go wrong. A page whose HTML is 50 KB may transfer well over a megabyte once images, fonts, stylesheets and scripts are included — and a headless browser fetches all of them by default.
#Reducing consumption
- Block images, media and fonts when rendering — often the single largest saving.
- Request compression and confirm the server honours it.
- Use an API or JSON endpoint instead of a rendered page where one exists.
- Avoid re-fetching content you already hold.
#Comparing plans honestly
Headline price per gigabyte usually reflects the largest commitment. Compare the tier you will actually buy, and check the minimum spend and whether unused traffic expires.