Cheap Residential Proxies: Best Providers Under $2/GB in 2026 (Tested & Ranked)

Introduction

The residential proxy market has a pricing problem: most guides recommend enterprise providers like Bright Data or Oxylabs that cost $8–$10 per gigabyte — completely unreasonable for independent developers, small scraping teams, or anyone who needs proxies on a budget.

The good news is that cheap residential proxies have improved dramatically. You no longer have to choose between affordability and quality. This guide ranks every noteworthy budget residential proxy provider, explains exactly what you get (and give up) at each price point, and shows you where the real value is in 2026.

Spoiler: V-Proxies at $0.99/GB is the clear winner on price — and it doesn't compromise on pool size, API quality, or session features to get there.

What "Cheap" Actually Means in 2026

The residential proxy market spans a huge price range:

This guide focuses on the budget tier — specifically providers charging under $2/GB — and evaluates them honestly.

Why Are Some Residential Proxies So Cheap?

The cost of a residential proxy service has two main components:

1. IP sourcing and maintenance — compensating device owners, managing the peer network, monitoring IP health

2. Infrastructure — gateways, PoPs, APIs, customer support

Cheap providers cut costs in different ways:

• Smaller pools → higher IP reuse → higher detection risk on repeat visits

• Fewer PoPs → higher latency for users far from the gateway

• No enterprise features → no dedicated account manager, no compliance docs, no SLA

• Limited geo targeting → country-level only, no city or ASN precision

• Minimal support → ticket-only, long response times

The question is which of these trade-offs matter for your use case. If you are scraping public product pages, a smaller pool and fewer PoPs may be perfectly acceptable. If you are running enterprise-grade ad verification with compliance requirements, budget providers are the wrong choice.

Budget Residential Proxy Comparison (Under $2/GB)

Here is every legitimate provider offering residential proxies under $2/GB as of mid-2026:

V-Proxies — The Clear Value Leader

Price: $0.99/GB
Pool: 84.2 million residential IPs
Targeting: Country, city, ASN
Sessions: Rotating (default) + sticky (up to 60 min)
Credits: Never expire
API: Full REST API, webhooks, CLI, Node.js and Python SDKs
Uptime: 99.7% across 7 global PoPs
Min purchase: $5

V-Proxies is the only budget provider that combines the lowest per-GB price with an 84.2 million IP pool, city-level geo targeting, a developer-first API, and credits that never expire. Compared to every other option under $2/GB, the value proposition is unmatched.

➡️ Start at V-Proxies

IPRoyal — Best Alternative for Non-Expiring PAYG Traffic

Price: $1.75/GB
Pool: ~34 million IPs
Targeting: Country, city
Credits: Non-expiring on pay-as-you-go plans
API: Basic
Notable: Solid Trustpilot and G2 ratings (4.6/5)

IPRoyal is the strongest alternative to V-Proxies in the budget tier. Its key advantage is non-expiring PAYG traffic — pay once, use it over months. The pool is smaller than V-Proxies (34M vs 84.2M) and the API is more basic, but it is a reliable option for users with sporadic scraping schedules.

At $1.75/GB vs V-Proxies' $0.99/GB, you are paying 77% more per gigabyte for a smaller pool and less capable API. For most users, the V-Proxies advantage is clear.

DataImpulse — Cheapest Alternative, Smallest Pool

Price: ~$1.00/GB
Pool: ~5 million IPs
Targeting: Country-level only
Credits: Non-expiring

DataImpulse is one of the few providers matching V-Proxies on price per GB, but the pool is dramatically smaller (5M vs 84.2M). Smaller pools mean faster IP exhaustion on high-volume scraping — the same IPs get reused more frequently, increasing detection risk. Country-only targeting limits geo precision.

For very light scraping of non-protected targets, DataImpulse works. For anything serious, V-Proxies' 84.2M pool and city-level targeting are worth the same price.

Webshare — Good for Static IPs, Weaker for Residential

Price: $1.00–$2.00/GB (residential)
Pool: ~30 million
Targeting: Country
Credits: Monthly (expire)

Webshare is better known for its datacenter proxy product than residential. The residential offering works, but credits expire monthly — unlike V-Proxies' never-expiring balance. For users with consistent monthly usage, this may not matter. For sporadic use cases, expiring credits mean wasted spend.

What You Should Never Sacrifice for a Lower Price

1. Pool Size

A pool under 10 million IPs is going to exhaust quickly for any meaningful scraping workload. V-Proxies' 84.2M pool is large enough that IP reuse is practically negligible.

2. Never-Expiring Credits

Monthly credit expiration is a hidden cost. If you use 30 GB in a 50 GB monthly plan, you lose 20 GB worth of payment. V-Proxies credits never expire — you pay only for what you use.

3. City-Level Targeting

Country-level targeting is the bare minimum. For SEO monitoring, ad verification, or any geo-specific use case, you need city precision. Only V-Proxies among sub-$2/GB providers offers city + ASN targeting.

4. Sticky Sessions

If you ever need to log into accounts, complete checkout flows, or maintain session state, you need sticky sessions. Make sure your provider supports them.

5. API Quality

Automation workflows require programmatic proxy management. A provider with only a dashboard UI and no API forces manual work at scale.

Cost Comparison: V-Proxies vs Competitors Over 12 Months

Assuming your team uses 50 GB/month:

At 50 GB/month, V-Proxies saves you $4,446 per year compared to Bright Data — with no meaningful trade-off in core functionality for most use cases.

5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Cheap Residential Proxy

1. How big is the pool and how fresh are the IPs? Ask for the active pool size (not the advertised maximum). Old, burned IPs will fail on protected targets regardless of price.

2. Do credits expire? Monthly resets waste money. Look for never-expiring credits (V-Proxies) or PAYG without resets.

3. What is the minimum purchase? V-Proxies: $5. Some providers require $50–$200 minimums. Low minimums let you test before committing.

4. Is there an API? Dashboard-only providers add manual overhead. A REST API, CLI, and SDKs are essential for automation.

5. What is the uptime guarantee? Budget providers often skip SLA documentation. V-Proxies publishes live uptime at status.v-proxies.com — currently 99.7% over 30 days.

When Cheap Residential Proxies Are (and Aren't) Enough

✅ Budget proxies work great for:

• Scraping public e-commerce product listings

• Collecting publicly available SERP data for your own sites

• Price monitoring for small to mid-size SKU catalogs

• Ad verification in specific geos

• Personal or hobby scraping projects

• Proof-of-concept and testing before enterprise procurement

❌ Budget proxies may struggle with:

• Fortune 500 enterprise data collection with compliance requirements

• Scraping platforms that have machine-learning-based IP scoring

• Workflows requiring dedicated account management and contractual SLAs

• Operations where a single blocked request has significant business cost

For the first category, V-Proxies at $0.99/GB is the best option in the market. For the second, consider Bright Data or Oxylabs — and budget for the 8–10x cost increase.

How to Get the Most Out of Cheap Residential Proxies

Combine pools strategically Use V-Proxies datacenter proxies ($0.80/GB) for unprotected targets and residential ($0.99/GB) only where anti-bot protection requires it. This hybrid approach can cut your average cost per GB significantly.

Cache aggressively You pay per GB. Store responses locally and only re-scrape when data is likely to have changed.

Use the right session mode Per-request rotation wastes IPs (and bandwidth) for account-based workflows. Use sticky sessions for tasks with session state, rotating for stateless scraping.

Monitor bandwidth consumption in real time Use the V-Proxies REST API (GET /v1/usage) to track GB consumption per pool, so you can optimize before costs accumulate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the cheapest residential proxy service in 2026? V-Proxies at $0.99/GB is the cheapest quality residential proxy service available in 2026, with an 84.2M IP pool, city-level targeting, never-expiring credits, and a full developer API.

Q: Are cheap residential proxies reliable? It depends on the provider. V-Proxies maintains 99.7% uptime across 7 PoPs at $0.99/GB — comparable to providers charging 5–8x more. Very cheap providers with tiny pools (under 5M IPs) tend to have lower success rates on protected targets.

Q: Why is V-Proxies cheaper than competitors? V-Proxies is built as a developer-first, self-serve platform with minimal sales overhead. There are no account managers, no enterprise sales teams, and no complex onboarding. Those savings pass directly to the per-GB price.

Q: Is $0.99/GB too cheap to be real? No. V-Proxies publishes live network stats — 84.2M IPs, 99.7% uptime, 12,833 req/s average — verifiable in real time at v-proxies.com. The price is low because the business model is self-serve.

Q: Do residential proxies have a monthly fee? At V-Proxies, no. You top up a balance and pay only for the bandwidth you use. No monthly fee, no seat fee, no setup fee.

Q: What is the minimum I can spend to test cheap residential proxies? At V-Proxies, $5. That gives you roughly 5 GB to test your integration and validate performance on your target sites.

Summary

Cheap residential proxies in 2026 do not have to mean poor quality. V-Proxies delivers $0.99/GB pricing with an 84.2M IP pool, city-level geo targeting, unlimited concurrency, never-expiring credits, and a developer-first API — making it the clear winner in the budget residential proxy segment.

The next cheapest quality option (IPRoyal at $1.75/GB) costs 77% more per gigabyte for a smaller pool and less capable API.

➡️ Start your first top-up at V-Proxies — minimum $5 →

Related Posts:

• Buy Residential Proxy: 2026 Buyer's Guide

• Best Residential Proxy Providers 2026

• Residential Proxies vs Datacenter Proxies

• What is a Residential Proxy?

• V-Proxies Pricing