Residential proxy pricing is the published amount a vendor charges per gigabyte of traffic that exits through household ISP addresses. It is not the price of a datacenter IP, a scraping API credit, or a vanity pool-size number. Most buyer spreadsheets still lock onto that one €/GB or $/GB sticker. This page lists the stickers we could read on public pages on 22 August 2026, at 10, 50, and 100 GB — then explains why the sticker is not the bill you pay.
[!IMPORTANT] Disclosure: This comparison is published by Aethyn, a residential proxy provider. It is not an independent review. Competitor figures are copied from the vendor pages linked in the source column, retrieved 22 August 2026. Aethyn figures come from our public ladder in product code, not from a marketing round number.
Aethyn sells Premium and Elite residential only. We do not sell datacenter, mobile, or ISP SKUs, so those prices are omitted on purpose.
How We Compared
We took the listed residential SKU that a self-serve buyer can click without a sales call. Where a vendor has no 10, 50, or 100 GB pack, we say so and show the nearest published rung instead of interpolating a fake rate. Promotional coupons are labelled as promo. Scoring rules: comparison methodology.
Sticker table (retrieved 22 August 2026)
Rates are per GB unless noted. Totals are sticker × GB for matching SKUs only.
| Vendor | 10 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB | Billing notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aethyn Premium | €2.90/GB (€29) | €2.20/GB (€110) | €2.00/GB (€200) | Subscription ladder; PAYG +10%, never expires | aethyn.io/pricing |
| Aethyn Elite | €6.50/GB (€65) | €5.00/GB (€250) | €4.50/GB (€450) | Same PAYG rule; city/ISP targeting | aethyn.io/pricing |
| Decodo (formerly Smartproxy) | $3.50/GB ($35) | $3.00/GB ($150) | $2.75/GB ($275) | Listed monthly residential SKUs; PAYG $4.00/GB | decodo.com residential pricing |
| Oxylabs | No 10 GB SKU. Nearest: 5 GB at $6/GB | No 50 GB SKU. Nearest public rungs: 20 GB at $5/GB, 125 GB at $4/GB | No 100 GB SKU. Nearest: 125 GB at $4/GB | Self-serve residential pool page | oxylabs.io residential pricing |
| Bright Data | PAYG $4.00/GB promo ($8 list) | Same PAYG until the $499 / 141 GB plan | Same PAYG until 141 GB | 50% coupon RESIGB50 shown on the proxy-network page; KYC before residential | brightdata.com proxy network pricing |
| IPRoyal | $5.25/GB on the listed 10 GB PAYG pack | No 50 GB SKU on the public grid (1 / 2 / 10 GB + custom from 10 TB) | No 100 GB SKU on the public grid | Traffic never expires; custom $1.75/GB from 10 TB | iproyal.com residential pricing |
Read the table as a snapshot, not a quote. Bright Data’s $4.00 figure is a couponed PAYG rate sitting next to an $8 list price and a $499 monthly plan that only starts at 141 GB. Oxylabs’ $2.50/GB corporate rung is 1 TB. Putting those three numbers in one “entry price” cell is how buyer spreadsheets lie.
Sticker is not the bill
Residential traffic is billed by bytes. A CAPTCHA page, a consent wall, and a geo-wrong catalog still move gigabytes. If a €1.00/GB pool lands usable HTML on half of attempts, you already paid €2.00/GB of good data before engineering time. The formula we use internally — and the one we ask every buyer to run — is in cost per successful request:
effective € per success ≈ (page_GB × sticker) / success_rate
Define success as the content you needed, not HTTP 200. Then re-rank the table. Elite at €4.50/GB with a 95% content-verified rate on a hard target routinely beats a cheaper pool that retries twice. That is why Aethyn publishes two residential tiers instead of one “from $X/GB” headline.
Datacenter stickers do not belong in this ranking. A $0.50 datacenter gigabyte that fails a Cloudflare 1020 is not a residential alternative; it is a different trust class. See residential vs datacenter.
Subscription versus PAYG
Aethyn subscription is the ladder above. PAYG multiplies those rates by 1.10 and does not expire — useful for bursty crawls and for teams that refuse to race a monthly reset. Decodo lists PAYG at $4.00/GB beside cheaper monthly SKUs. IPRoyal’s public grid is PAYG-shaped with a subscription discount. Bright Data PAYG exists; the rate that matters at volume is on a committed plan with a minimum. Oxylabs self-serve packs are billed monthly. Pick the model that matches how you actually burn bytes, not the one that prints the smallest unit price at 1 TB you will never buy.
What you are buying
You are buying exit bandwidth on household ISPs, plus the right to encode country (and on Elite, city and ISP) in the username, plus sticky or rotating sessions. You are not buying 85 million IPs. Headline pool counts do not meter. Concurrent quality on the ASNs you actually hit does. We argued that at length in the pool-size myth; this page just refuses to put pool size in the price table.
Why Aethyn (residential-only)
| Dimension | Aethyn | Typical competitor |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Premium + Elite residential only | Mixed DC, mobile, ISP, APIs |
| Public ladder | €2.90→€2.00 Premium; €6.50→€4.50 Elite | Often sales-gated at volume |
| PAYG | +10%, never expires | Plan-dependent expiry |
| Currency | EUR, published | Usually USD, sometimes quote-only |
| Best for | Self-serve residential with a scraper you already run | Full platforms, KYC queues, unlocker SKUs |
Our #1 pick in this guide
1. Aethyn
Aethyn is in this table because the rates are public and the product is residential-only. Premium HTTP proxy.aethyn.io:2099 / SOCKS5 1099; Elite HTTP 5499 / SOCKS5 3499. 10 GB Premium is €29. There is no KYC queue to buy bandwidth, and no datacenter SKU hiding in the fine print.
Pros
Cons
2. Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)
Decodo’s residential page lists the cleanest 10 / 50 / 100 GB USD SKUs in this set. Use it when you want a mid-market dashboard and a 3-day trial. It is still a proxy vendor, not a Bright Data platform. Decodo is the Smartproxy rebrand — compare it on Aethyn vs Smartproxy / Decodo, not on a new URL.
3. Oxylabs
Oxylabs publishes self-serve residential from $6/GB at 5 GB. There is no 10 or 50 GB pack on the page we retrieved. Volume rates ($4/GB at 125 GB, $2.50/GB at 1 TB) are real and they assume you will buy that much. Keep Oxylabs when procurement wants a CSM. Head-to-head: Aethyn vs Oxylabs.
4. Bright Data
Bright Data’s public residential PAYG is $8/GB list, $4.00/GB with the on-page coupon, and the first committed plan we could read is $499 / 141 GB. KYC is required for residential. That is a compliance strength and an onboarding delay. If you need the platform (Unlocker, SERP API, datasets), stay. If you need proxies, you are overpaying for SKUs you will not open. Aethyn vs Bright Data. Switcher narrative: Bright Data / Oxylabs alternatives.
5. IPRoyal
IPRoyal lists $5.25/GB at 10 GB PAYG and a custom floor of $1.75/GB from 10 TB. Traffic never expires. There is no honest 50 or 100 GB cell on the public grid we retrieved. Fine for small non-expiring blocks; do not use the 10 TB floor as your 10 GB price.
What to do with the table
- Circle the column that matches your real monthly GB, not a future maybe.
- Strike any row that is a different product (DC, mobile, unlocker).
- Run a 100-URL content-verified sample. Compute cost per success.
- If you already have a scraper, buy residential. If you want HTML-out, buy a scraping API — different SERP, different article.
Residential proxy pricing questions
How much do residential proxies cost in 2026?
Why is the lowest €/GB often the most expensive pipeline?
Does Aethyn sell datacenter, mobile, or ISP pricing?
What is the difference between subscription and PAYG on Aethyn?
Should I compare prices in USD or EUR?
Guides, integrations & docs
Continue reading
Stop Comparing Proxy Prices: Calculate Cost Per Successful Request (2026)
The cheapest €/GB is often the most expensive pipeline. Here is how to calculate effective residential proxy cost from price, page weight, and success rate — and why Premium vs Elite is an ROI decision.
Residential vs Datacenter Proxies: Which One Should You Use?
A residential proxy is an ISP-assigned household IP; a datacenter proxy is a cloud-hosted server IP. Compare trust, speed, cost, and when to switch — Aethyn sells residential only.
Bright Data and Oxylabs Alternatives in 2026 (Proxy Layer vs Platform)
A Bright Data alternative is either a cheaper residential proxy layer for a scraper you already run, or a different full-stack scraping platform. Do not mix those two lists.
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