TL;DR: We drove six vendors’ live pricing calculators, VirtualSMS, Decodo, Oxylabs, IPRoyal, Bright Data, and VoidMob, through every published residential proxy volume tier and recorded what each one actually charges, not what its marketing headline says. Decodo’s advertised “$2/GB” is real, but it’s a 1,000GB monthly tier, not an entry price; Decodo’s real entry price is $3.75-$4.00/GB. Bright Data’s $3.50 headline needs roughly 141GB or a $499+/month plan. IPRoyal’s $1.75 needs 10,000GB. VirtualSMS is cheapest at every published tier from 1GB to 25GB with no monthly minimum, but Decodo and IPRoyal both genuinely undercut VirtualSMS at 1,000GB and 10,000GB scale, and that’s worth saying plainly.
Every residential proxy vendor publishes a headline price. Almost none of them publish it at the volume a small buyer is actually about to purchase. Decodo advertises “$2/GB.” Bright Data advertises “$3.50/GB.” IPRoyal advertises “$1.75/GB.” Every one of those numbers is real, and every one of them requires a purchase size the marketing page doesn’t put next to the price. We sell a residential proxy ourselves, so instead of repeating the headlines, we opened each vendor’s live pricing widget and pushed it through every volume it publishes, screenshotting the number at each step.
That produced a dataset nobody else has published in this shape: six vendors, the same five volume checkpoints, captured within a 48-hour window, with a blank cell wherever a vendor simply doesn’t sell that tier. It’s also how we caught our own near-miss, covered honestly below.
Key Takeaways
- VirtualSMS is the cheapest published price at every matched tier from 1GB to 25GB, with no monthly minimum, 13% cheaper than the next vendor at 1GB, 23% cheaper at 25GB
- Decodo’s marketed “$2/GB” is its 1,000GB monthly enterprise rate, not its entry price, which is $3.75/GB committed or $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go
- IPRoyal’s $1.75/GB headline needs a 10,000GB purchase; IPRoyal’s actual 1GB entry price is $7.00, the highest in this comparison
- Decodo and IPRoyal genuinely beat VirtualSMS at scale, at 1,000GB and 10,000GB respectively, and we’re naming both wins directly
A note on these numbers: every price below was captured directly from each vendor’s live pricing calculator on August 20-21, 2026 (Oxylabs, Decodo and VoidMob re-verified August 26, 2026, see the correction notes in Sources), driven through the actual widget rather than read off static marketing copy (which under-reports in our testing). The exact capture date per vendor is in the methodology table immediately below. A blank cell means that vendor does not publish a plan at that volume, we never interpolated or estimated a number to fill it. Where a vendor’s real nearest tier didn’t land on our 1GB / 3GB / 10GB / 25GB / 100GB+ grid, Bright Data’s cheapest per-GB rate sits at roughly 141GB, Oxylabs’s at 1,000GB, we labeled it with the actual volume instead of forcing it into the nearest column. Proxy pricing changes without notice. Confirm current terms on the vendor’s own page before buying.
How We Priced Six Proxy Vendors at the Same Volumes
Comparing proxy pricing honestly means comparing the same unit at the same volume, driven through the same interface, not the number a vendor chooses to put largest on the page. Here’s exactly what we tested and when.
| Vendor | Capture date | Plan type / pricing control tested | Published volumes checked | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VirtualSMS | 2026-08-21 | Prepaid balance, residential proxy tier ladder | 1GB, 3GB, 10GB, 25GB, 100GB+ | Live pricing page |
| Decodo | 2026-08-26 | Pay-as-you-go widget + monthly-committed tier slider (Regular tab), Enterprise tab | PAYG (no minimum), 3GB, 10GB, 25GB, 50GB, 100GB, 1,000GB (Enterprise) | Vendor’s live pricing calculator; full sourced breakdown in our Decodo alternative comparison |
| Oxylabs | 2026-08-26 | Monthly subscription, 4 published tiers | 5GB, 20GB, 125GB, 1,000GB | Vendor’s live pricing calculator; full sourced breakdown in our Oxylabs alternative comparison |
| IPRoyal | 2026-08-21 | Pay-as-you-go tiered pricing table | 1GB, 10GB, 10,000GB | Vendor’s live pricing calculator; full sourced breakdown in our IPRoyal alternative comparison |
| Bright Data | 2026-08-20 | Pay-as-you-go widget + monthly plan tiers | PAYG (no minimum), ~141GB | Vendor’s live pricing calculator; full sourced breakdown in our Bright Data alternative comparison |
| VoidMob | 2026-08-26 | Mobile proxy pricing slider (Shared Mobile) | 1GB, 10GB, 25GB, 50GB, 100GB | Vendor’s live pricing calculator; full sourced breakdown in our VoidMob alternative comparison |
Two things fall out of this table before we even get to the numbers. First, none of the five competitors publish pricing at all five of our checkpoints, so most of the price ladder below has real gaps, not filled-in estimates. Second, three of the six vendors, Oxylabs, Bright Data, and IPRoyal at the high end, gate their cheapest number behind a volume that lands off our grid entirely. We labeled those with their actual GB figure rather than rounding them into a column they don’t belong in.
Residential Proxy Pricing by Volume, 2026
This is the price ladder: what each vendor actually charges per GB, at the volumes each vendor actually publishes.
| Vendor | 1GB | 3GB | 10GB | 25GB | 100GB+ | Commitment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VirtualSMS | $3.49 | $2.90 | $2.70 | $2.50 | $2.30 | None — prepaid balance, never expires |
| Decodo | $4.00 PAYG | $3.75 | $3.50 | $3.25 | $2.75 | Monthly subscription (PAYG tier has no commitment) |
| Oxylabs (4 tiers: 5GB-1,000GB) | — | — | — | $5.00 (20GB) | $4.00 (125GB) | Monthly, $30-$2,500 tiers |
| IPRoyal | $7.00 | — | $5.25 | — | — | None — pay-as-you-go, never expires |
| Bright Data | $4.00 PAYG | — | — | — | $3.50 (141GB) | $499-$1,999/mo for the cheaper tiers |
| VoidMob | $3.99 | — | $3.50 | $3.25 | $2.50 | 30-day term (shared mobile) |
Two rows need a footnote so nobody reads them as apples-to-apples with the column headers above them. In the Oxylabs row, $5.00 is priced at 20GB, not 25GB, and $4.00 is priced at 125GB, not 100GB, its two closest published tiers to those columns. Bright Data’s $3.50 number is its rate at roughly 141GB, not 100GB. None of these lands on our exact checkpoint volumes, so we labeled each with its real volume instead of rounding it into a column it doesn’t occupy. Decodo’s $4.00 in the 1GB column is its pay-as-you-go rate, not a committed 1GB tier — Decodo dropped its 1GB committed tier entirely; its smallest committed volume is now 3GB, at $3.75/GB.
The pattern holds across every tier we could match: VirtualSMS is cheapest at 1GB, 3GB, 10GB, and 25GB, and its edge widens with volume, 13% cheaper than the next-lowest published price at 1GB, roughly 23% cheaper at 3GB, 10GB, and 25GB. Two vendors publish a tier right at 25GB, Decodo and VoidMob, both at $3.25; Oxylabs’s nearest tier, 20GB, is $5.00, double VirtualSMS’s $2.50.
Is Decodo’s “$2/GB” Headline Price Real?
The number itself checks out. It just isn’t the price a typical buyer pays.
| Vendor | Marketed headline | What that headline actually requires | Real entry price (lowest published volume) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decodo | ”$2/GB” | 1,000GB monthly enterprise tier | $3.75 committed (3GB) / $4.00 PAYG | Real entry price is 87-100% higher than the headline |
| Bright Data | ”$3.50/GB” | ~141GB in one purchase, or a $499-$1,999/month plan | $4.00 PAYG, no minimum | Modest 14% gap, but the headline needs a volume or contract most small buyers don’t carry |
| IPRoyal | ”$1.75/GB” | 10,000GB purchase | $7.00 (1GB) | Real entry price is 4x the headline |
Decodo’s own site puts “$2/GB” in the largest type on its pricing page. That figure is what Decodo charges at its 1,000GB monthly tier, a real, documented, honest number, at that volume. It is not what a buyer purchasing 1GB, 10GB, or even 100GB actually pays. At Decodo’s lowest published tier, its smallest committed volume of 3GB, the real price is $3.75/GB committed or $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go with no minimum, essentially double the headline. Decodo no longer publishes a 1GB committed tier at all.
We should say plainly: we almost made this exact mistake ourselves. An earlier internal draft of one of VirtualSMS’s own competitor-comparison pages listed Decodo’s rate as “$2/GB” without the volume qualifier attached, the same shorthand Decodo’s own marketing uses. It was caught in review before publishing, because a flat “$2/GB” claim didn’t match the $3.75-$4.00 entry price our own browser-driven pricing capture had just recorded for Decodo’s actual entry tier. We’re naming our own near-miss here, not because it’s flattering, but because it’s the clearest proof of how easy this specific error is to make, even when you’re the one specifically trying to avoid it. It’s also why every price in this piece is tied to the exact volume it took to get there.
Bright Data’s gap is smaller in dollar terms but structurally the same problem. Its $3.50/GB headline isn’t far from its $4.00 pay-as-you-go entry price, a 14% difference, but reaching $3.50 requires roughly 141GB in a single purchase, or committing to a $499-$1,999/month plan. A buyer testing at 1GB or 10GB never sees $3.50, regardless of how close the two numbers look on paper.
IPRoyal’s gap is the widest of the three. Its $1.75/GB marketed rate requires purchasing 10,000GB, an enormous single commitment, while its actual 1GB entry price, $7.00, is the highest number anywhere in this comparison. Both figures are accurate. They describe two different businesses.
Where Competitors Actually Beat VirtualSMS
A comparison that only shows where we win isn’t a comparison, it’s an ad. Here’s where the other five vendors genuinely beat VirtualSMS on price, stated with the same table treatment as everything above.
Where VirtualSMS wins:
| Volume tested | VirtualSMS price | Next-cheapest published price | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1GB | $3.49 | VoidMob, $3.99 (Decodo publishes no 1GB tier) | 13% cheaper |
| 3GB | $2.90 | Decodo, $3.75 | 23% cheaper |
| 10GB | $2.70 | Decodo / VoidMob, tied at $3.50 | 23% cheaper |
| 25GB | $2.50 | Decodo / VoidMob, tied at $3.25 | 23% cheaper |
| Any tier | No monthly plan required | Oxylabs ($30-$2,500/mo), Bright Data ($499-$1,999/mo for cheap tiers) | — |
Where competitors win:
| Scale | Winner | Price | What it takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000GB (enterprise, monthly) | Decodo | $2.00/GB | Monthly enterprise tier |
| 10,000GB (single purchase) | IPRoyal | $1.75/GB | One pay-as-you-go purchase — the single cheapest number in this entire comparison |
| Pay-as-you-go, zero commitment | Bright Data and Decodo (tied) | $4.00/GB | No minimum purchase, no contract |
At 100GB+, VirtualSMS’s published rate is $2.30/GB. Both Decodo’s 1,000GB tier and IPRoyal’s 10,000GB tier beat that, genuinely, for a buyer who actually moves that volume every month. Oxylabs is the one vendor in this comparison with no tier that beats VirtualSMS anywhere, even at its highest published volume: its cheapest published rate, $2.50/GB, needs a 1,000GB monthly Corporate plan, $2,500 a month, and still costs more per GB than VirtualSMS’s 100GB+ price. VoidMob comes closest of the vendors that don’t beat us: its 100GB shared-mobile tier, $2.50/GB, is cheaper per GB than any other competitor’s entry price in this comparison, but it still costs more than VirtualSMS’s $2.30/GB at 100GB+.
Read the two charts on this page together and the honest picture holds both halves at once: VirtualSMS wins the volumes most buyers actually purchase, and Decodo and IPRoyal win at scale most buyers never reach. Neither chart is the whole story by itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a residential proxy actually cost per GB in 2026?
Entry prices in this comparison range from $2.30-$3.49/GB at VirtualSMS, with no monthly minimum, up to $7.00/GB for IPRoyal’s smallest published tier (1GB). The single cheapest number anywhere in the dataset is IPRoyal’s $1.75/GB, but that requires purchasing 10,000GB at once, not a price most buyers will ever pay.
Is Decodo’s “$2/GB” headline price real?
The number is real, but it isn’t Decodo’s entry price. It’s Decodo’s published rate at a 1,000GB monthly tier. Decodo’s cheapest committed tier, at 3GB, is $3.75/GB, and its pay-as-you-go rate is $4.00/GB with no minimum purchase. Decodo no longer publishes a 1GB committed tier at all. A buyer purchasing under 1,000GB a month never actually pays $2/GB.
Which vendor is cheapest for small-volume buyers, under 25GB?
VirtualSMS, at every tier we captured from 1GB to 25GB ($3.49 down to $2.50/GB), with no monthly subscription and a prepaid balance that never expires. The nearest competitors at low volume, Decodo and VoidMob, both need a recurring monthly plan or fixed term to reach a comparable rate.
Which vendor is cheapest at very high volume?
IPRoyal, at $1.75/GB, but only on a 10,000GB purchase. Decodo’s $2.00/GB tier needs 1,000GB a month. Both genuinely undercut VirtualSMS’s cheapest published rate, $2.30/GB at 100GB+, so a buyer who actually moves that much traffic monthly has a real reason to look at either one.
Do any of these vendors require a monthly plan just to see their cheapest price?
Oxylabs and Bright Data both gate their lowest per-GB rate behind a monthly commitment: Oxylabs’s plans run $30-$2,500/month, and Bright Data’s cheaper tiers need a $499-$1,999/month plan. Decodo and Bright Data also each publish a pay-as-you-go rate, $3.75-$4.00 committed or $4.00 PAYG, with no minimum purchase.
The Bottom Line
If you’re weighing this by what you’ll actually do with the bandwidth, the price ladder above matters less than the workflow it’s paying for: see how these numbers play out for web scraping, social media management, travel price tracking, and SEO rank tracking. For a full head-to-head on everything besides price, read the standalone comparisons: Decodo, Oxylabs, IPRoyal, Bright Data, and VoidMob.
See VirtualSMS proxy pricing and plans → Full pricing →Sources
- VirtualSMS, live pricing page, captured 2026-08-21.
- Decodo (decodo.com), live residential proxy pricing calculator (Regular tab: PAYG, 3GB, 10GB, 25GB, 50GB, 100GB; Enterprise tab: 1,000GB), re-verified 2026-08-26 after an initial capture wrongly included a 1GB committed tier that Decodo no longer publishes; sourced breakdown in our Decodo alternative comparison.
- Oxylabs (oxylabs.io), live residential proxy pricing calculator, all 4 published tiers (5GB, 20GB, 125GB, 1,000GB) re-verified 2026-08-26 after an initial capture undercounted the vendor’s published tiers; sourced breakdown in our Oxylabs alternative comparison.
- IPRoyal (iproyal.com), live residential proxy pricing calculator, captured 2026-08-21; sourced breakdown in our IPRoyal alternative comparison.
- Bright Data (brightdata.com), live residential proxy pricing calculator, captured 2026-08-20; sourced breakdown in our Bright Data alternative comparison.
- VoidMob (voidmob.com), live mobile proxy pricing slider, all 5 published tiers (1GB, 10GB, 25GB, 50GB, 100GB), re-verified 2026-08-26 after an initial capture recorded only the slider’s default 10GB position and missed the rest of the ladder; sourced breakdown in our VoidMob alternative comparison.
