This is an independent, vendor-neutral snapshot of the residential-proxy market in 2026 — per-GB pricing, advertised pool sizes, free trials, and compliance policies across the providers we track (Oxylabs, Bright Data, Decodo, IPRoyal, SOAX), plus the wider market context. Every figure is a published rate or a dated third-party finding, sourced as of July 2026 (USD; trial terms re-checked September 30, 2026). It is a documented-facts reference, not a performance benchmark.
Key takeaways
- Published residential pay-as-you-go rates span $1.00–$7.35/GB and converge near $4.00/GB at the entry tier (Bright Data, Decodo +VAT); DataImpulse is the outlier at a flat $1.00/GB on traffic that never expires. Volume floors reach $2.00–$2.50/GB on subscriptions, $0.85/GB on SOAX's Enterprise plan and $0.65/GB on Thordata's 5,000 GB prepaid package.
- Advertised pool sizes are vendor claims and ceilings: Bright Data 400M+, Oxylabs 175M+, SOAX 155M+, Decodo 115M+, Thordata 100M+, DataImpulse 90M+, IPRoyal 64M+ — against a 54M-IP industry median advertised pool (Proxyway 2026). Neither of the two newest publishes a counting basis.
- Free trials vary widely: Decodo has a 3-day trial (card required) or a 14-day money-back — not both; Thordata offers a no-card trial but does not document how its residential IPs are sourced; Bright Data a no-card sign-up credit, but residential access requires company verification; Oxylabs a once-per-client trial on request (7 days for verified companies); IPRoyal none standard; SOAX none free per its pricing FAQ (product pages still show a paid $1.99 3-day trial); DataImpulse none at all — its $5 intro block is the entry point.
- Compliance is a real differentiator and it does not track price: every vendor here documents some customer vetting except SOAX, whose policy we could not find at the URLs we checked. Bright Data's is the strictest (company-only); Decodo blocks banking/financial, government, streaming and app-store targets; DataImpulse blocks government and payment sites but gates unblocking on spend or identity; Thordata publishes a KYC page and no sourcing policy.
- Market context (Proxyway 2026): residential pricing stabilized after 2023–25 declines of up to 75%; grey-market entry pricing under $0.50/GB is a red flag; AI demand is the growth engine. This is a documented-facts reference — no independent benchmarks yet.
Residential proxy pricing (2026)
Published residential pricing has two axes: a per-GB pay-as-you-go rate (flexible, higher) and subscription tiers whose per-GB rate falls with commitment. Entry rates cluster near $4.00/GB; volume tiers reach $2.00–$2.50/GB (and $0.85/GB on SOAX's Enterprise plan). Prices are in USD; Decodo's exclude VAT.
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| Provider | Pay-as-you-go | Entry subscription | Volume floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | Not published | $30/mo — 5 GB ($6.00/GB) | $2.50/GB (1 TB) |
| Bright Data | $4.00/GB (50% off $8.00) | $499/mo — 141 GB ($3.50/GB) | $2.50/GB (798 GB) |
| Decodo | $4.00/GB (+VAT) | $11.25/mo — 3 GB ($3.75/GB) | $2.00/GB (enterprise) |
| IPRoyal | $7.35/GB (1 GB) | ~5% below pay-as-you-go | $5.15/GB (50 GB) |
| SOAX | $5.00/GB (Sandbox, +VAT) | $200/mo — about 66.67 GB ($3.00/GB, +VAT) | $0.85/GB (Enterprise) |
| Thordata | Not published — prepaid packages only | 1 GB package — $2.00 ($2.00/GB) | $0.65/GB (5,000 GB) |
| DataImpulse | $1.00/GB (+VAT), never expires | $5 intro block — 5 GB, then a $50 minimum top-up | $0.80/GB (1,000 GB) |
For the full plan-by-plan breakdown see proxy pricing comparison and, for the cheapest routes, cheapest residential proxies. To convert a rate into a project budget, use how much web scraping costs.
Advertised pool sizes
Pool size is the industry's favourite marketing number and its least verifiable — all figures below are vendor claims and represent ceilings, not guaranteed concurrent IPs. Proxyway's 2026 research puts the median advertised residential pool at 54M IPs, which is a useful reality check against the headline claims.
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| Provider | Claimed pool | Claimed coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | 400M+ | 195 countries |
| Oxylabs | 175M+ | Not stated |
| Decodo | 115M+ | 195+ locations |
| IPRoyal | 64M+ | 195+ countries |
| SOAX | 155M+ | 195+ geos |
| Thordata | 100M+ | 190+ countries |
| DataImpulse | 90M+ | 195+ countries |
Free trials and refunds
Trial terms are where they diverge most, and they decide how cheaply you can validate fit before committing.
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| Provider | Free trial | Refund |
|---|---|---|
| Decodo | 3-day, 100 MB trial (card required) | 14-day money-back on a first purchase; activating the trial removes it |
| Bright Data | No-card sign-up credit; residential access requires company verification | Generally non-refundable |
| Oxylabs | Once per client, on request; 7 days for verified companies | 3-day window on self-service plans, low usage only |
| IPRoyal | None standard (buy 1 GB minimum) | IPRoyal-side failures only, within 24h; none after 100 MB of use |
| SOAX | None per its pricing FAQ (product pages still show paid $1.99 / 400 MB / 3 days) | Generally non-refundable |
| Thordata | Free trial, no card (100 MB / 3 days, claimed by chat); IP sourcing undocumented | 7 days, first order only; usage under 30% and 2 GB |
| DataImpulse | None (the $5 intro block is the entry point) | 7 days, first intro purchase only; denied under 20% remaining |
Correction, September 30, 2026: an earlier version of this article said Decodo's 3-day trial and its 14-day money-back combine, and that Bright Data's no-card trial needed company KYC only for production access. Neither holds: activating Decodo's trial removes the refund, and Bright Data's sign-up credit cannot reach its residential network without company verification. We also updated the Oxylabs, IPRoyal, SOAX and Thordata trial and refund terms to match their current pages.
Compliance and KYC
Every provider now runs know-your-customer checks; the depth — and which target categories they refuse to serve — is a genuine differentiator, especially for regulated buyers. Our reasoning for favouring providers that can account for their IP origin is in ethical proxy sourcing.
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| Provider | KYC / verification | Restricted targets (stated) |
|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | Strictest: company-only, human-reviewed | Residential access gated behind company KYC |
| Oxylabs | Signup KYC + risk-based escalation | Risk-based monitoring; EWDCI founding member |
| Decodo | KYC + third-party screening for all | Blocks banking/financial, government, streaming, app stores, ticketing |
| IPRoyal | iDenfy KYC (mandatory for static/ISP) | Monitoring limited to accessed targets |
| SOAX | Not published at the URLs we checked (2026-07-26) | Not published; excludes servers in the State of Texas |
| Thordata | Published KYC page: multi-level vetting, video ID where needed | Acceptable-use policy; no industry membership or audit stated |
| DataImpulse | iDenfy KYC on the reseller programme; unblocking gated on spend or ID | Blocks government, banking and payment sites, and rival monetisation platforms |
Scraping API and unblocker pricing
Beyond raw bandwidth, most providers sell a managed scraping/unblocking product billed per request or per successful result — often cheaper than per-GB once pages carry real weight (see scraping API vs proxy).
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| Provider | Product | Price | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | Web Scraper API | from $0.25 / 1K results | 2K results, no card |
| Bright Data | Web Unlocker | $1.50 / 1K requests | 5K requests/mo, no card |
| Decodo | Web Scraping API | $0.50 / 1K (std); $1.50 / 1K (premium + JS) | 2K requests/mo |
| IPRoyal | Web Unblocker | $1.00 → $0.70 / 1K | Not stated |
| SOAX | Scraper APIs / unblocker (marketed) | Not published (2026-07-26) | Not stated |
| Thordata | Web Scraper API | from $1.00 / 1K results | 7-day trial, 5,000 credits (one-off) |
| DataImpulse | None published — proxy access only | — | — |
Oxylabs (Web Scraper API), Bright Data (Web Unlocker) and IPRoyal (Web Unblocker) document success-only billing on these products; Decodo's prices exclude VAT.
Market context (2026)
Per Proxyway's Proxy Market Research 2026, residential pricing stabilized after declines of up to 75% across 2023–2025: Oxylabs and IPRoyal retired long-running discount codes in favour of permanent plans revised down about 25%, and the median advertised pool reached 54M IPs. Grey-market entry pricing under $0.50/GB is a red flag for non-consensual sourcing. The growth engine is AI: Bright Data is cited at roughly $300M annualized revenue growing ~50% year over year on AI-data demand.
Two structural notes. First, the rebrand: Smartproxy became Decodo on April 22, 2025 — accounts, subscriptions, pricing and endpoints carried over unchanged. Second, on the cheap end, never use free proxies: an academic NDSS MADWeb 2024 study of 640,600+ free proxies found only 34.5% ever active and 16,923 manipulating content in transit, with 1,755 allowing remote code execution. The full argument is in free vs paid proxies.
Methodology and sourcing
This is a documented-facts reference, not an independent benchmark — ProxyFacts has not yet run first-hand performance tests. Every price and term comes from the providers' published pricing pages and documentation fetched July 17, 2026 (SOAX July 26, 2026; trial terms re-checked September 30, 2026), or a dated third-party source (Proxyway's 2026 research; the NDSS MADWeb 2024 study). Every vendor performance or pool-size figure is labelled a vendor claim. Prices are in USD; Decodo's exclude VAT. ProxyFacts earns disclosed affiliate commissions through the review links in our articles, marked rel="sponsored"; commissions never change the figures we publish. We refresh this report as the underlying dataset is re-verified.
Cite this report
Hinata Tomoda (2026). Proxy Market Report 2026: Residential Proxy Pricing, Pools & Compliance. ProxyFacts. https://proxyfacts.com/blog/proxy-market-report
Free to cite or reference with attribution to ProxyFacts. Figures as displayed on each vendor's own pages: July 17, 2026 for Oxylabs, Bright Data, Decodo and IPRoyal; July 26 for SOAX; August 11 for Thordata; August 13 for DataImpulse (USD); trial terms re-checked September 30, 2026.