If you want residential proxies without a subscription, the cheapest published options are DataImpulse at $1.00/GB and Evomi at $0.99/GB, and both sell traffic that never expires. IPRoyal and ProxyLane also sell non-expiring traffic, at higher rates. Decodo, Bright Data and SOAX publish a pay-as-you-go rate too, but their balances run on a clock — 12 months at Decodo, 60 days at SOAX — or have no stated lifetime. The table below sets out the rate, the smallest purchase and how long it lasts for every provider we track, read from each vendor's own pages.
Key takeaways
- DataImpulse sells never-expiring traffic at $1.00/GB, falling to $0.80/GB from 1,000 GB, from a $5 first purchase — with state, city and ASN targeting billed at twice the traffic and later top-ups starting at $50.
- Evomi's pay-as-you-go rate is $0.99/GB from 15 GB with no expiry, but its page does not say whether 15 GB is a minimum, and pay-as-you-go purchases are excluded from its refund policy.
- IPRoyal's traffic never expires and starts at a single gigabyte for $7.35, down to $5.51/GB at 10 GB; ProxyLane sells never-expiring prepaid packages from $6.50, with a supply chain that is described but not audited.
- Pay-as-you-go does not always mean no expiry: Decodo's balance is usable for 12 months, SOAX credits for 60 days, and Thordata's smallest package for 30 days.
- A monthly plan beats pay-as-you-go only if you use the allowance: Decodo's 100 GB plan is $2.75/GB against $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, but unused plan gigabytes are lost at the end of the month.
- This is a document-based comparison of published terms; ProxyFacts has not benchmarked speed or success rates, and earns affiliate commissions from some providers listed here.
The pay-as-you-go table
Every figure below is rendered from our pricing dataset, so it changes when a vendor's page does. "Smallest purchase" is the cheapest thing you can buy; "Unused traffic" is what happens to the part you do not use — the column that decides whether pay-as-you-go is actually cheaper for irregular work.
| Provider | Pay-as-you-go rate | Smallest purchase | Unused traffic | State, city or ASN targeting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evomi | $0.99/GB | $14.85about 15 GB at the displayed rate | never expires | Not recorded |
| DataImpulse | $1/GB, down to $0.80/GB by volume | $5buys 5 GB | never expires | Billed at 2× the traffic |
| IPRoyal | $7.35/GB, down to $5.51/GB by volume | $7.35buys 1 GB | never expires | Not recorded |
| ProxyLane IP sourcing described, not audited | No pay-as-you-go rate published | $1.95buys 350 MB | never expires | Not recorded |
| Decodo | $4/GB | $4+VATbuys 1 GB | usable for 12 months | No surcharge |
| SOAX IP sourcing undocumented | $5/GB | $25+VATabout 5 GB at the displayed rate | usable for 60 days | Not recorded |
| Thordata IP sourcing undocumented | No pay-as-you-go rate published | $2buys 1 GB | usable for 30 days | Not recorded |
| Bright Data | $4/GB | $10about 2.5 GB at the displayed rateverified companies only | Not stated | Not recorded |
| Oxylabs | No pay-as-you-go rate published | $30buys 5 GBrenews until cancelled | Monthly subscription allowance | Not recorded |
List prices as each vendor publishes them on the dates above. Rows run from purchases that never expire, through those with a stated window, to subscriptions; within a group, the lower entry rate comes first. “Not recorded” means we have no published figure for that vendor, not that the feature is free.
Three things the table cannot show in a cell. First, minimums move after the first order: DataImpulse's $5 Intro plan is a one-time offer, and every later purchase starts at $50. Second, a rate is only half the bill when you target below country level — DataImpulse meters state, city and ASN targeting at twice the traffic. Third, the cheapest never-expiring rows are not the best-documented ones: the badges in the provider column mark vendors whose IP sourcing we could not verify, and our own pool composition measurements of DataImpulse found a network it has not classified supplying part of its US pool.
What "pay-as-you-go" means at each provider
The term covers three different billing shapes, and they cost differently for the same usage:
- A metered balance that never expires. You top up, traffic draws the balance down, and an unused gigabyte is still yours next year. DataImpulse, IPRoyal and Evomi's pay-as-you-go route work this way.
- A metered balance with a clock. The same model with a deadline: Decodo's pay-as-you-go traffic is usable for 12 months and SOAX credits roll over for 60 days. For most irregular users a year is as good as never; 60 days is not.
- A prepaid package. You buy a fixed block, not a meter. ProxyLane's packages never expire; Thordata's smallest is valid for 30 days and the vendor told us by email that its packages last a month, so its low per-gigabyte package rates only pay off if you use the block within the month.
A monthly subscription is the fourth shape, and the one this page is about avoiding: Oxylabs sells only that, from $30/mo for 5 GB ($6/GB).
Engineer's take (Hinata): I pick between these by asking how many months will pass between my scraping runs, not by the per-GB rate. If the gap can exceed a few months, anything with a clock — even a generous one — needs to be priced as if I will lose part of the balance. Then I buy the smallest block from the two cheapest never-expiring vendors, run the same job through both, and divide dollars by pages I could actually use, targeting surcharges and retries included.
Never-expiring options
DataImpulse — the lowest published rate, with conditions
DataImpulse charges $1.00/GB, falling to $0.80/GB from 1,000 GB, and purchased traffic does not expire. A new customer's first purchase is $5 for 5 GB; after that, top-ups start at $50. Country targeting is free, but state, city and ASN targeting consume traffic at twice the rate, so a job that needs city-level exits pays twice the list rate per useful gigabyte. On supply, it names its sister app, TraffMonetizer, as the source of about 54.8% of its pool, while the remaining 45.2% comes through an SDK whose end users' consent and compensation are not published (vendor email, August 13, 2026). Our six measurements of its US pool in September and October 2026 found data-centre networks that the vendor then removed, and a network it has not classified that supplied 9.7% and then 3.9% of exits in the two latest runs.
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DataImpulse
$1.00/GB pay-as-you-go on traffic that never expires — state, city and ASN targeting bill at twice the traffic, and top-ups after the first purchase start at $50
Evomi — a near-identical rate, a vaguer minimum
Evomi's Core Residential pay-as-you-go rate is $0.99/GB, falling to $0.79/GB from 1,000 GB, with no commitment and no expiry. Its pricing page labels that rate "15+ GB" without saying whether 15 GB is a minimum purchase, which is why the table shows the smallest purchase as an approximation. Two other terms matter: Evomi's refund policy excludes pay-as-you-go purchases outright, on the grounds that the data does not expire, and its cheaper $0.49/GB rate belongs to a $49 monthly plan for 100 GB, not to pay-as-you-go. On sourcing, Evomi states that it owns its residential pool and that earn.fm and its SDK integrations are the only source of its IPs. ProxyFacts has no affiliate relationship with Evomi.
IPRoyal — the smallest entry, the highest rate
IPRoyal sells never-expiring traffic from a single gigabyte for $7.35, down to $6.25/GB at 2 GB and $5.51/GB at 10 GB, with a custom plan from 10 TB at $1.84/GB. Its subscriptions run about 5% cheaper but expire, so they are not the route for irregular use. What the higher rate buys is a short list of things the cheaper vendors do not offer together: sticky sessions of up to 7 days with unlimited concurrent sessions, a named supply app (Pawns.app) with a published user payout, and self-serve access without corporate KYC. If you are deciding whether to leave it, our IPRoyal alternatives guide weighs exactly that.
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IPRoyal
Never-expiring pay-as-you-go traffic from a single gigabyte, with sticky sessions of up to 7 days
ProxyLane — never-expiring packages, unaudited supply
ProxyLane sells one-off prepaid packages that never expire, from Explore at 1 GB for $6.50 down to $2.50/GB on the 1 TB Volume package, plus a $1.95 trial of 350 MB. There is no metered rate, so a buyer who needs a volume between two packages buys the larger one. Its supply chain is described by the vendor and attested by its upstream supplier but not audited, which is why it carries a badge in the table and is not one of our recommendations; the proxy market report sets out what was and was not documented.
Pay-as-you-go with an expiry window
Decodo charges $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go plus VAT, and its smallest pay-as-you-go purchase — 1 GB for $4 — is usable for 12 months. Its free trial is offered on monthly plans, not on pay-as-you-go. Decodo is also the provider we point to when a buying process needs a compliance record checked by someone other than the vendor; our Decodo pricing breakdown lists every plan.
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Decodo
$4.00/GB pay-as-you-go plus VAT, usable for 12 months — or monthly plans down to $2.75/GB at 100 GB
Bright Data lists $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, shown as a 50% promotion off an $8 list price, with no commitment. Residential access is limited to registered companies that pass a human-reviewed KYC, and its pages state no lifetime for a pay-as-you-go balance. Our Bright Data pricing breakdown covers the subscription tiers.
SOAX bills in credits rather than gigabytes. Its no-subscription route is Sandbox: no monthly fee, a $25 minimum credit top-up, traffic at $5.00/GB for Tier 1 destinations plus VAT, and credits that roll over for 60 days. ProxyFacts has no affiliate relationship with SOAX, and we could not locate a first-party page describing how its residential IPs are sourced; see our SOAX review.
Thordata sells fixed packages from 1 GB for $2.00 down to $0.65/GB at 5,000 GB; the smallest is valid for 30 days, and the vendor says packages last a month. The vendor declined to document how its residential IPs are obtained, which is the one requirement our recommendations do not waive; the Thordata review has the evidence.
When a monthly plan is the better deal
Pay-as-you-go is insurance against unused allowance, and you pay a premium for it at most providers. If you consume a predictable volume every month, a plan is cheaper per gigabyte: Decodo's 100 GB plan is $275 a month ($2.75/GB) against $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, and Evomi's $49 plan for 100 GB is half its pay-as-you-go rate. The two rules of thumb we use are simple. If you will use most of an allowance every month, take the plan. If months can pass between runs, take never-expiring traffic and accept the higher rate. Our proxy pricing comparison prices every provider's cheapest route at 10, 100 and 500 GB a month, and cheapest residential proxies shows what fixed budgets buy.
How we compared
Every rate, minimum and lifetime above comes from the providers' own pricing, help-centre and policy pages, recorded in our dataset with the date each was read — the table caption states both capture windows. Where a vendor's pages disagree or say nothing, the table says so in words. Pool sizes, speeds and success rates are vendor claims we have not benchmarked; the one first-party measurement cited here is our own composition study of DataImpulse's US pool. ProxyFacts earns affiliate commissions from DataImpulse, IPRoyal, ProxyLane, Decodo, Bright Data, Thordata and Oxylabs, and none from Evomi or SOAX; those relationships do not change which numbers we report or the order of the table, which is computed. For trial and refund terms, see residential proxy free trials. For how we judge sourcing, see ethical proxy sourcing.