Web scraping proxies is a search for a tool, and the honest answer depends on the page, not on a leaderboard. This note is for public data you are allowed to collect, ad checks, SEO monitoring you are allowed to run, and geo tests of properties you control. It is not a guide to account farming, credential abuse, or walking through a paywall.
Match the block, not the brochure
- The page loads from a normal server IP. Start on datacenter. Webshare’s shared list is about $0.03 per IP per month. You are not buying household reputation you do not need.
- The page rejects hosting networks. Rotating residential is the next test, billed per GB. Decodo’s public pay-as-you-go is $4 plus VAT. DataImpulse publishes $1 plus VAT. Those are stickers, not a success test.
- You must keep one exit for a session you own, a monitor, or a property you control. That is an ISP lease, not a longer sticky timer. Webshare shared ISP starts at $0.30 per IP.
- You already know the failure is a mobile carrier. Only then is mobile the meter, and it is usually more per GB than residential.
A gigabyte is not a visit count
One gigabyte is 1,048,576 kilobytes. Divide by the weight of the response you actually download. At 500 KB, that is about 2,097 page loads before retries. Images, scripts, and a second attempt burn the same meter. A sticky session holds one exit for minutes so a flow can finish. It does not give you a per-visit price. Rotating can change the exit each request and still bills bytes.
Buy the entry rung
The number in a hero is often a volume floor or a coupon. Bright Data’s residential list is $8 per GB. A coupon often displays $4. Oxylabs’ small public rung is a subscription, about $6 per GB on 5 GB, not pay as you go. If you price a vendor at the floor, you priced a plan you have not qualified for. Run a small pack against your own URL list. A cheap gigabyte that retries is not cheap.
Orange “Open” buttons can be affiliate. They do not change the editorial order. Confirm the live rate before you pay.