Residential Proxy Free Trials 2026: Card, KYC and Refund Terms

As of September 30, 2026, Decodo, Oxylabs and Thordata publish free residential proxy trials with stated terms, and none is both instant and unconditional. Decodo's is self-serve but needs a card, PayPal or Google Pay on file and forfeits its 14-day refund; Oxylabs grants trials only on request; Thordata's needs no card but is activated by chat, and Thordata does not document how its residential IPs are sourced. IPRoyal also offers verified companies a trial on request, with no published terms, and Bright Data's sign-up credit does not open its residential network. The table sets out each provider's published trial, what it takes to start it, what refund you keep if you pay, and the smallest purchase that buys real traffic when no trial fits. We read these terms on the vendors' own pages and activated none of the trials.

Which residential proxy trial fits your situation?

The right trial depends less on the provider than on who you are and what you need to prove. Each route below names the constraint that decides it; the provider sections that follow give the full terms and their sources.

You cannot or will not put a card down

No card-free residential trial here comes without a catch. Oxylabs' trial is a request, and its pages state no card rule either way — ask when you apply. Bright Data's sign-up needs no card, but on a personal email every proxy product, datacenter included, stays locked until you add a payment method, and residential needs company KYC. SOAX's Sandbox account is card-free but carries no traffic until you buy credits. Thordata's pricing page and documentation describe a 3-day, 100 MB trial that its homepage says needs no card; it is claimed by chat, and Thordata does not document how its residential IPs are sourced, which is why we list it without recommending it.

You are an individual, not a registered company

Decodo's trial is the self-serve option, provided you accept the payment details, the automatic conversion and the lost refund. Oxylabs may grant individuals 3 days, but its own page contradicts itself on whether that is a free trial or a money-back window, and Thordata's 100 MB trial is open to new users by chat, though Thordata does not document how its residential IPs are sourced. If a paid start is acceptable, DataImpulse's $5 Intro plan and IPRoyal's 1 GB minimum are both sold as never-expiring traffic (IPRoyal's help centre adds that some accounts may face activity requirements), which suits an unhurried test.

You are a verified company

Oxylabs gives verified company registrations 7 days. Bright Data's residential network opens only after its company KYC, which needs real funds first. Decodo and IPRoyal both invite companies to request a trial from sales once registration details are verified, though neither publishes its length or allowance; DataImpulse's help centre also says corporate-email sign-ups are eligible for free testing traffic, a trial its own FAQ says does not exist. Each of these asks for your use case, so have it written before you apply.

You need to test more than a trial allows

No provider here publishes a free 1 GB residential trial. The published free allowances are 100 MB, at Decodo and at Thordata (whose IP sourcing is undocumented), and SOAX's 400 MB trial is paid and contested. Past that you are buying, and only Oxylabs, Decodo (if you skip its trial) and DataImpulse publish a refund for traffic that simply does not suit you — each on a first purchase only (at DataImpulse, only the $5 Intro plan), within days and under a usage cap; the others refund faults only, or nothing. Our cheapest residential proxies analysis shows what a larger test budget buys at each provider.

You need static residential (ISP) IPs

Decodo's shared static residential (ISP) plans carry its 3-day trial on the same terms as residential — 100 MB, plus 10 IPs on pay-per-IP plans, with a card, PayPal or Google Pay on file, converting to the chosen plan unless you cancel — while its dedicated ISP proxies are excluded. IPRoyal's company trial covers ISP proxies on request, while Oxylabs' free-trial page offers trials for residential, mobile and dedicated datacenter proxies but not ISP. Our ISP proxies explainer covers when a static IP is worth paying for.

Does Oxylabs have a free trial?

Yes: as of September 30, 2026, Oxylabs gives residential proxy trials on request and only once per client — 7 days for verified company registrations, while its terms for individuals contradict each other. Its free-trial page offers a "7-day free trial for verified company registrations and a 3-day free trial for individual clients" in its FAQ, while the banner on the same page promises individual clients a "3-day money-back guarantee" instead. Both read the same on two fetches, so treat the individual offer as unsettled until Oxylabs confirms it. The residential product page adds that "the free trial offer is only available once".

Getting it is a conversation, not a button:

1. Create an account and describe your use case. Oxylabs runs KYC on every customer and asks what you will use the proxies for, so write it down before you request anything.
2. Request the trial with a test plan. Use the contact form, a demo booking, live chat or support@oxylabs.io, and state your targets, volume and geos.
3. Confirm the terms before you start measuring. No page states a traffic allowance or whether a payment method is required, so ask — and do not activate the trial before your test harness is ready.

If you skip the trial, the cheapest self-serve purchase is the Starter plan, 5 GB for $30 billed monthly ($6/GB, and Oxylabs notes VAT may apply), which renews until cancelled; a FAQ on the residential page separately says plans start at $99 for 11 GB, so rely on the plan cards. Self-service purchases are refundable within 3 calendar days of the first transaction if no more than 20% of the traffic has been used on Regular plans such as Starter, per the Self-Service Subscription Agreement; pay-as-you-go residential purchases are not refundable. The rest of the picture is in our Oxylabs review.

Does Bright Data have a free trial for residential proxies?

Bright Data gives new accounts free credit rather than a residential trial (checked September 30, 2026). Its billing docs describe a one-time $2 trial credit for proxy products, valid for 7 days, plus a $5 bonus valid for 30 days once you add a payment method, which places a temporary pre-authorization (the 30-day trial does not apply in certain countries); the credit never turns into a paid plan. Whether you need that payment method depends on how you sign up: a business-email account can spend the credit without one, but on a personal email every proxy network, datacenter and ISP included, stays locked until you add one, per its payment-verification page.

The catch is the residential network itself. Its residential product page still offers a "free trial" with "No credit card required", and its FAQs say the $5 credit "can be used on any of our proxy products", but its network-access policy, the document that governs residential access, limits residential proxies to verified companies that pass a human-reviewed KYC — which "is not available in Playground or Limited Trial modes", starts only after real funds are added, and excludes accounts registered with a personal email. Under that policy the sign-up credit does not open residential for anyone during the trial, which is how the table marks it; an individual who adds a payment method can spend it on datacenter or ISP proxies, which tests a different network.

For a company that clears KYC, the smallest purchase is a pay-as-you-go top-up of "as little as $10", spent at the displayed $4.00/GB — a coupon rate (RESIGB50) that Bright Data says lasts 3 months, against an $8 list price. Payments are generally non-refundable, with exceptions only on request. Our Bright Data review covers how the pieces fit together, and our guide on how to choose a proxy provider treats onboarding gates like this one as a first-class criterion.

Does Decodo have a free trial?

Yes: as of September 30, 2026, Decodo gives new users a 3-day, 100 MB residential proxy trial — the only instant, self-serve free residential trial with published terms in this comparison — but it needs a card, PayPal or Google Pay on file and removes the 14-day money-back. Per Decodo's trials documentation, you start it from the dashboard by choosing a monthly residential plan, and you must "submit your card or payment details to activate the free trial"; a $1 pre-authorization may appear and then drop off. When the 3 days end, the chosen plan starts automatically unless you cancel first. Each account gets one trial per product, the trial is not offered on Pay As You Go, and companies can ask sales for a custom trial after providing registration details.

The decision that matters is trial or refund, not both. Decodo's billing FAQ offers a 14-day money-back on a first self-service purchase not paid in crypto, but activating the free trial removes it. Even without a trial the refund has usage caps, which Decodo states two ways: no more than 20% of the plan's traffic or 1 GB on the refund page, and 20% on regular plans or 10% on Enterprise plans on the pricing page.

If you would rather keep the refund, mind how you pay. The smallest purchase, 1 GB of Pay As You Go at $4 plus VAT, is usable for 12 months but can only be paid from pre-loaded Wallet credits, and Decodo's license agreement pays any refund on a Wallet-paid service back as Wallet credits, not money. A refund to your card needs a card-paid plan, the smallest being 3 GB at $11.25 a month plus VAT, which renews until cancelled. Everything beyond trial terms is in our Decodo review.

Does IPRoyal have a free trial?

IPRoyal publishes no free residential trial for individuals (checked September 30, 2026). The help-centre article that used to describe its trial now returns 404, and its residential page's structured data states "No free trial available". Its trial page offers a free trial of any proxy product to companies whose representative passes verification, with no length or allowance published, and its terms of service (version 9, effective September 14, 2026) call any trial discretionary and suspend access when it ends until you pay. The practical test is the 1 GB pay-as-you-go minimum at $7.35 (topping up an account balance instead has a $10 minimum), whose traffic IPRoyal's help centre says does not expire “under standard conditions”, adding that some accounts may face activity requirements.

Budget that purchase as final. IPRoyal's refund policy covers only connection or service failures that support cannot fix, requested within 24 hours of purchase, and nothing once more than 100 MB has been used or for crypto payments. The rest of the picture is in our IPRoyal review.

Does SOAX have a free trial?

SOAX has no free trial, and its own pages disagree on whether a paid one still exists (checked September 30, 2026). Its mobile product page says it offers "a paid trial for $1.99" instead of a free one, and its residential product page still advertises a "Three-day 400MB trial for just $1.99", which we could not confirm as purchasable. Its pricing FAQ, by contrast, answers "Is there a free trial?" with "No", naming Sandbox — a free account with no subscription fee and no included credits — as the no-commitment option, and its developer FAQ says there is no separate trial.

The route SOAX does document is Sandbox plus a credit top-up: the minimum is $25, traffic is charged at Sandbox rates ($5.00/GB for Tier 1 countries, before VAT), and credits expire 60 days after they are added. SOAX's terms say the platform is designed primarily for business use and that it may decline individuals acting as consumers, its own pages disagree on whether identity verification is required before a purchase, and payments are generally non-refundable: the one exception its terms name is a duplicate or erroneous charge reported within 30 days, and nothing is refunded once usage has started. We also found no published policy on how its residential IPs are sourced. The rest of the picture is in our SOAX review.

Does Thordata have a free trial?

Yes: Thordata gives new users a free trial, claimed by chat (checked September 30, 2026). Its pricing page shows "3 Days Free" for new users, its documentation puts the trial at 100 MB, and its homepage says no credit card is required; you register, then ask live chat or support to activate it with your use case. By email in August 2026 the company told us 200 MB was standard and 3 GB common on request — figures its site does not publish.

Thordata also declined to document how its residential IPs are sourced, which is why it appears in our comparisons with that gap stated and never in a recommended slot; our Thordata review and ethical proxy sourcing guide explain what that gap means.

If you buy instead, the smallest residential package is 1 GB for $2.00, valid for 30 days. Refunds are contested on Thordata's own pages: its refund policy allows one, for quality problems, within 7 days of a first purchase with no more than 30% of the package and 2 GB used, but the same page excludes bundles that have started transmitting data, and its docs FAQ says all payments are final, so budget that purchase as final too.

Does DataImpulse have a free trial?

DataImpulse has no free trial as a rule (checked September 30, 2026): access normally starts with a small purchase. Its Intro plan sells new users 5 GB of residential traffic for $5, once per proxy type, and DataImpulse says that traffic never expires, so, like IPRoyal's 1 GB, it can be tested with no countdown; nothing renews unless you switch on auto-recharge, and later residential purchases start at $50.

A help-centre article dated July 29, 2026 also says users who register with a corporate email are eligible for free testing traffic, with no amount or length stated — while a still-live FAQ says DataImpulse does not offer a free trial, and its sign-up page describes only the paid $5 trial.

The refund path is narrow: its terms grant a 7-day refund on the first Intro purchase only, exclude cryptocurrency payments, and allow a refund to be refused when less than 20% of the traffic remains.

What you would be testing matters as much as the price. We measure where DataImpulse's residential exits actually come from in our pool composition study, and our runs have found some of its exits on hosting networks rather than home connections — worth knowing before you point a test at a target that blocks them.

Can you test residential proxies without paying?

Yes, through the trials above if you qualify for one: Oxylabs' is free for verified companies on request, as is IPRoyal's (its length unpublished), Decodo's costs nothing if cancelled in time, and Thordata's needs no card, though Thordata does not document how its residential IPs are sourced. Beyond them, only indirectly. The zero-cost options below are real, but none of them puts residential traffic through your own proxy client — they test whether a target is reachable through the vendor's stack, not what a residential gigabyte will cost you.

• Scraping and unlocker APIs. Decodo's free Web Scraping API plan gives $1 of credits, valid for a year, and taking it ends refund eligibility for later Web Scraping API purchases, per its trials documentation; Oxylabs says its Web Scraper API trial needs no credit card. These answer "can this vendor fetch my target?", which our web unblocker comparison prices out properly.
• Datacenter allowances. Decodo's Free Proxies plan gives 1 GB a month, reset monthly, on ten fixed, shared US datacenter IPs, and the plan does not expire. Useful for plumbing, useless for judging a residential pool.

If the target itself tolerates datacenter IPs, you may not need residential proxies at all; our free vs paid proxies guide covers the free options worth avoiding.

Trial evaluation checklist

A three-day trial rewards preparation the way an exam does. This is what I would have ready before activating any of these offers:

1. Choose trial or refund before you click. On Decodo the trial removes the refund. Only Oxylabs, Decodo and DataImpulse publish a refund for a test that simply disappoints, each on a first purchase only, within days and under a usage cap; the others refund faults only, or nothing. Decide which safety net you want first.
2. Freeze your target list before the clock starts. A 3-day window is too short to spend day one deciding what to test. Pick the exact URLs, geos and volumes that represent a production month.
3. Measure bytes per successful page, retries included. Total bytes consumed divided by successfully fetched pages is your unit cost driver. Multiply it by monthly page volume and the per-GB rate to project the real bill.
4. Record success rate on your targets, not the vendor's. Published success rates are vendor claims with no published test conditions; 90% on your targets means about 11% more requests, and up to 11% more bandwidth, spent on retries.
5. Exercise the geo-targeting and sticky sessions you will pay for. If you need city-level accuracy or hour-long sessions, verify them during the trial, not after conversion.
6. Set a cancellation reminder. A trial that converts automatically bills you on day four if you forget.

Engineer's take (Hinata): A trial's job is to measure your workload, not to admire the vendor's benchmark page. With a 100 MB allowance I would not spread the traffic across my whole target list: I would spend it on the one or two targets most likely to block me, because an easy target passes on every network and tells me nothing about which one to pay for.

What we corrected since July 2026

This page was first published on July 17, 2026 and rebuilt on September 30, 2026 after every provider's terms were re-read. These are the conclusions we corrected, and what we added:

• Decodo — correction. In July we named Decodo's trial the easiest to start, rated it 4.0 out of 5 and highlighted it in our table, in part because we described its 3-day trial and its 14-day money-back as combining. They do not: activating the trial removes the refund. The trial also needs card, PayPal or Google Pay details and becomes the chosen monthly plan unless cancelled. We have withdrawn that verdict and rating, and this page no longer ranks any trial first.
• Bright Data — correction. In July we answered yes to trialling Bright Data's residential proxies without a card and called its no-card trial genuinely free. Its network-access policy, which covers residential zones created after July 7, 2026, opens residential only to verified companies after a human-reviewed KYC that cannot start in trial mode and needs real funds first, so the sign-up credit (a one-time $2) does not reach residential, and personal-email accounts are not eligible.
• Oxylabs — correction. In July we wrote that skipping the trial left no documented refund path. Its pricing page and Self-Service Subscription Agreement give one: 3 calendar days from the first transaction, with no more than 20% of the traffic used on Regular plans such as Starter. Its free-trial page, which the July version did not cite, states trial lengths: 7 days for verified companies, and conflicting 3-day terms for individuals.
• IPRoyal. The trial article we cited now returns 404, and its refund policy excludes any plan with more than 100 MB used, a condition the July version did not mention.
• Thordata (new on this page). Its published terms give a 3-day, 100 MB trial; the larger allowances its staff quoted us by email in August appear on no live page, and Thordata still does not document how its residential IPs are sourced.
• Coverage. Thordata, DataImpulse and SOAX were added; the July version covered only Oxylabs, Bright Data, Decodo and IPRoyal.

How we checked these terms (and how we make money)

This is a document-based comparison. Every term above comes from the providers' own pricing pages, help-centre articles, legal terms and trial pages, read twice on September 30, 2026; where a provider's own pages contradict each other, we quote both readings, and where one of them is the vendor's governing policy or the offer you can actually buy, we say which one decides and why; where a term comes only from a vendor's email, we say so. We activated no trials and ran no benchmarks for this page, so every performance figure a vendor publishes remains a vendor claim. These are summaries of each vendor's published terms, not legal advice: the vendor's own terms, and any consumer-protection law that applies where you live, decide what you are owed. The structured terms behind the table are published in our machine-readable dataset, and the tier prices behind each smallest purchase are compared in our residential proxy pricing comparison.

ProxyFacts is funded by disclosed affiliate partnerships with some of these providers; the IPRoyal card is an ordinary, unpaid link, and SOAX has none here. Those partnerships never change which terms or catches we report, or the order in which providers appear, and a provider that will not document its IP sourcing is never placed in a recommended slot.

For the full comparison of networks, pricing and compliance beyond trial terms, read our best residential proxies guide.