Choosing the Best Residential Proxy Providers 2026: Official Pricing for Residential Proxies Across Bright Data, Oxylabs, Decodo, SOAX, ProxyEmpire

How much should a first residential proxy purchase cost before you know it works? Less than most buyers spend. Five providers, five official price sheets, and one question running through them all: how safely can a newcomer get from curiosity to a working setup? The answer depends on three things: the cost of the first test, what that test covers, and how much commitment the second purchase demands.

Quick picks

Pick	Why
ProxyEmpire	A $1.97 test across residential and mobile
Bright Data	Card-free trial on a very large network
Decodo	No-cost residential trial and small plans

Provider	First step	Next step	Leftover traffic	Refund stance
ProxyEmpire	$1.97 trial, two networks	$3.50 per GB, no contract	Kept	Sales final
Bright Data	Free trial, no card	$4 per GB with code	Commitments lapse	Not covered on pages reviewed
Oxylabs	$5 credit	$30 subscription	Not stated	Not rendered on pages reviewed
Decodo	Free 3-day trial	3 GB for $11.25	Not stated	14 days on first order, with conditions
SOAX	Free Sandbox	Monthly credits	Not stated	Not stated

Who Should Use These Providers

First-time buyers testing whether residential IPs solve a blocking problem on a site that rejects their own connection. Small teams running price checks or SEO tracking a few times a month, whose usage rarely looks the same twice. Agencies piloting a service before selling it to clients. And larger companies trialing a second vendor before a migration, who need proof on real workloads before procurement signs off.

What they share is uncertainty: about volume, about which network a target accepts, about whether the provider fits their tools. The right first purchase limits the cost of being wrong, and the right second purchase lets usage grow without forcing a commitment too early.

Ranked for a Safe First Purchase

ProxyEmpire (best for a low-risk trial on residential and mobile)

A first purchase here can cost as little as $1.97. It buys a small allowance on both rotating residential and rotating mobile, it does not convert into a subscription, and the company says the fee is there to filter out abusers. One test answers two questions: does residential work, and if not, does mobile?

The second step is just as low-risk. Rotating residential runs $3.50 per GB without commitment, mobile $4.50, and unused gigabytes never expire, so a cautious buyer can grow one gigabyte at a time. Targeting to ZIP, ASN and carrier comes included. The firm caveat: no refunds.

The account grows with the buyer. Static ISP, datacenter and dedicated mobile proxies sit on the same login, support answers around the clock by chat and email, and integration guides cover antidetect browsers such as Multilogin and GoLogin. By the company's count, the network spans 30 million residential and 4 million mobile IPs in more than 170 countries.

Key features:

• Test allowance on two networks
• No auto-conversion
• Leftover GB kept indefinitely
• Free targeting down to ZIP and carrier

Pricing: $1.97 trial; residential $3.50/GB; mobile $4.50/GB; monthly from 7 GB for $20.

Bright Data

Bright Data's free trial skips the card, and its first-deposit match, up to $500, adds to an early budget. Its network, put at more than 400 million residential IPs a month across 195 countries, gives newcomers plenty of locations to test. The coded rate of four dollars a gigabyte holds for three months before the $8 list price returns. Targeting down to ZIP and ASN is free, which helps newcomers test local results without extra cost.

Newcomers should expect a KYC step, possibly by video, before residential traffic flows, and should avoid committed monthly plans until volume is known, since unused commitments lapse. For buyers who outgrow the trial, the company lists ISO 27001 and SOC 2 among its certifications, and billing can run through AWS Marketplace or Azure.

Key features:

• Free trial, no card
• Deposit match up to $500
• 400M+ monthly residential IPs, per the company

Pricing: $4/GB with RESIGB50 for 3 months; monthly from $499 for 141 GB.

Oxylabs

Oxylabs offers a $5 credit rather than a trial, and it applies to any product, from residential proxies to its unblocker. After that, the path runs through a subscription, starting at $30, with no pay-as-you-go alternative on its pricing pages. Residential gigabytes cost six dollars on the first tier and fall as usage grows.

For a newcomer, that makes the second step bigger than elsewhere. In return, the subscription covers proxies, a scraping API, an unblocker and an agent browser, with free geo targeting. Teams that expect to use the scraping tools may find the bundle good value; those who only want proxies pay for capacity they may not touch.

Key features:

• $5 credit for any product
• Unlimited concurrent sessions on residential
• Mobile from real devices in 140+ countries

Pricing: Subscriptions from $30/month; residential $6/GB on the first tier.

Decodo (formerly Smartproxy)

Decodo's trial costs nothing: three days and 100 MB on its full residential pool, with postcode and ASN filters included. It does, however, convert into the chosen plan unless cancelled, so a calendar reminder is part of the test.

Its smallest subscription, 3 GB for $11.25, is the gentlest paid step among the five for buyers who want a plan rather than single gigabytes, and a conditional 14-day refund on first orders adds a safety net. A Wallet option sells single gigabytes at four dollars, though it cannot run alongside a subscription, and VAT is added at checkout.

Key features:

• No-cost residential trial
• Smallest monthly plan of the five
• Conditional first-order refund

Pricing: Residential from $11.25 for 3 GB; Wallet $4/GB.

SOAX

SOAX's Sandbox is free and needs no card, but it carries no proxy traffic; it is a tour, not a test. Real traffic requires credits, priced by country tier, so the same test costs more or less depending on the market.

For cautious buyers, whose budgets are usually small and fixed, its value lies in guardrails: caps on traffic, protocols and domains per package mean a first experiment cannot overspend. Reports showing delivered against blocked traffic also tell a newcomer quickly whether residential IPs are enough for a given site.

Key features:

• Free Sandbox account
• Per-package spending caps
• One price for residential and mobile

Pricing: Credits at $1 each; example of $3.00/GB for 100 GB in the US.

Where First Purchases Go Wrong

Treating a free trial as risk-free. One that converts automatically can become a monthly charge if nobody remembers to cancel it.

Testing the wrong network. A residential-only test says nothing about mobile, and some targets treat the two very differently.

Committing before volume is known. Monthly commitments that lapse punish guesswork; flexible per-GB buying is safer until usage settles.

Ignoring refund terms. Where sales are final, the trial is the only protection, so it should be run on real targets rather than test pages.

Forgetting promo expiry. Introductory rates can end after a set period, as Bright Data's three-month code does, so budgets should be built on the rate that follows.

Which Provider Should You Choose?

Choose ProxyEmpire if you want the smallest possible risk on a first purchase, covering residential and mobile, with no subscription and GB that never expire.

Choose Decodo if you want a no-cost residential trial and a small first plan.

Choose Bright Data if you want a card-free trial on a very large network.

Choose SOAX if you want hard caps while you experiment.

Choose Oxylabs if you already plan to use scraping APIs and are comfortable starting on a subscription.