Best proxies for scraping at under 100 dollars per month in 2026

Most proxy guides are written for enterprise budgets. This one is not. If you are running a side project, a small data pipeline, or a lean research operation, you do not need to spend $500 a month to pull structured data from the web. The question is where to draw the line between “cheap enough to stay in budget” and “so cheap it wastes your time fighting bans and bad IPs.”

I have been running scraping projects out of Singapore since 2021, mostly for price monitoring and lead generation. Over that time I have tried a lot of proxy vendors. The $100/month ceiling is a real constraint I have operated under for several projects, so I have direct experience with where the tradeoffs actually land. This list covers seven providers I would genuinely recommend to someone working in that range in 2026.

The selection skews toward operators who need rotating residential or datacenter proxies for structured data extraction, not for ad verification, sneaker copping, or account farming. If you are doing multi-account work, the proxy needs are somewhat different. The multiaccountops.com blog covers that angle well and is worth a read alongside this. For pure scraping on a budget, read on.

how I picked

price fit: the plan or pay-as-you-go rate has to realistically keep a typical scraping workload under $100/month. I note where this only works for light use.
IP pool quality: size and freshness of the pool matter. A small, dirty pool with recycled IPs burns through bandwidth before you get any data.
protocol support: HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 at minimum. RFC 9309 governs robots.txt, and most serious scraping targets use Cloudflare or similar, so proxy protocol support affects what you can actually reach.
rotation and session control: sticky sessions for multi-step flows (login, cart, checkout), rotating for bulk collection.
dashboard and API: you are going to be debugging failed requests at midnight. a usable UI and a clean API matter more than vendors admit.
real-world ban rates: I look at community reports on forums like Reddit r/webscraping and Discord groups, not just vendor marketing.

the picks

Webshare

Webshare is the first provider I point budget-conscious scrapers toward, specifically for datacenter proxies. Their shared datacenter plan runs around $23/month for 100 proxies, with dedicated options available at higher tiers. They also have a free plan with 10 proxies that is useful for testing. The pool is not residential, so you will hit blocks on heavily guarded targets, but for sites that do not actively fingerprint proxy ASNs, Webshare datacenter proxies work reliably.

The dashboard is clean, the API is simple, and proxy delivery is fast. Rotation is configurable per-request or sticky. For scraping public data from sites with moderate defenses, like e-commerce catalogs or aggregator pages, this is a perfectly workable choice at a very low cost. If your target starts returning 403s, you will need to upgrade to residential, but for an initial pipeline Webshare is where I would start.

pros: cheapest entry point on this list, good uptime, clean API
pros: free tier makes it easy to test before committing
pros: datacenter speeds are genuinely fast
cons: datacenter IPs get flagged on bot-protected targets
cons: shared pool means occasional dirty IPs in cheaper plans

pricing: shared datacenter 100 proxies ~$23/month, rotating residential from ~$30/month. webshare.io

IPRoyal

IPRoyal has positioned itself as the go-to pay-as-you-go residential provider for operators who do not want a monthly commitment. Residential proxies run at approximately $1.75/GB on the standard plan, which means $100 buys you roughly 57GB. For most scraping projects that are not doing bulk image or video downloads, 57GB of residential bandwidth goes a long way. I have used them for price monitoring jobs that pull maybe 10-15GB per month, and the cost sits well under $30.

The residential pool is sourced via an opt-in network of users, which is standard for this tier of provider. IP quality is decent, though not as clean as the premium tier providers. Session control works, sticky sessions hold reliably for 1-60 minutes depending on configuration. The main limitation is that their pool is smaller than Bright Data or Smartproxy, so on very competitive targets you may exhaust fresh IPs faster. For general scraping, it is not a problem I have run into.

pros: true pay-as-you-go, no monthly commitment
pros: $1.75/GB is competitive for residential
pros: solid sticky session implementation
cons: smaller pool than top-tier providers
cons: no dedicated account manager or premium support at this price

pricing: residential pay-as-you-go from ~$1.75/GB. iproyal.com

Smartproxy

Smartproxy is the most polished budget-friendly residential provider in this category. Their Micro plan runs around $75/month and includes 8GB of residential bandwidth, which works out to ~$9.38/GB. That is more expensive per GB than IPRoyal, but you get a larger, cleaner pool and noticeably better success rates on Cloudflare-protected targets. For anyone who has spent an afternoon trying to figure out why their scraper is getting JS challenges on every request, having a better pool makes a real difference.

Setup is straightforward, the proxy endpoint format is simple, and they have good documentation. They also run regular webinars and have a reasonably active support team. I have found their rotating residential proxies work well on mid-tier e-commerce sites and news aggregators. For $75/month you get a professional-grade tool, not a budget compromise. The 8GB ceiling is the main constraint. If your project grows, you will need to either upgrade or supplement with a cheaper datacenter option for less-guarded requests.

pros: excellent IP pool quality for the price
pros: clean onboarding, good docs, reliable uptime
pros: handles Cloudflare and similar bot detection better than cheaper options
cons: $75 Micro plan limits you to 8GB, tight for high-volume work
cons: per-GB cost is higher than pure pay-as-you-go providers

pricing: Micro plan ~$75/month for 8GB residential, pay-as-you-go ~$8.5/GB. smartproxy.com

You can also find a detailed breakdown in our Smartproxy review.

PacketStream

PacketStream runs a peer-to-peer residential proxy network and charges $1/GB, which makes it one of the cheapest residential options available. $100 buys 100GB, which is genuinely a lot of bandwidth for most scraping workloads. The tradeoff is consistency. Because IPs come from a P2P network of volunteers running the PacketStream client, the quality is variable. Some IPs are fast and clean, others are slow or already flagged. You will see higher failure rates than with a curated residential pool.

For projects where you can afford to retry failed requests and are not in a hurry, PacketStream’s cost advantage is hard to ignore. I have used it for bulk scraping jobs where I needed volume and was processing results asynchronously anyway. A 20% higher retry rate is fine when you are paying half what you would pay elsewhere. HTTP and SOCKS5 are both supported. The dashboard is minimal but functional. Do not use this for anything time-sensitive or for targets with aggressive bot detection.

pros: $1/GB is the lowest residential rate on this list
pros: 100GB/month easily fits under budget
pros: SOCKS5 support
cons: P2P network means inconsistent IP quality
cons: higher retry rates than curated residential pools

pricing: residential $1/GB, no monthly minimum. packetstream.io

Proxy-Cheap

The name is accurate. Proxy-Cheap offers a wide range of proxy types including rotating residential, static residential, datacenter, and mobile, all at rates that stay under typical premium pricing. Rotating residential runs around $3.50/GB on their standard plan, and datacenter proxies are significantly cheaper, around $0.99/month per proxy for static datacenter. This makes it useful for mixed workloads where you route easy requests through datacenter and only use residential when you actually need it.

The variety is the main selling point. If you are managing multiple scraping targets with different protection levels, having one dashboard where you can allocate budget across proxy types is useful. Their mobile proxies are available, though pricier, and worth considering for mobile-first targets. Pool quality sits in the middle of the market. Not as clean as Smartproxy, better consistency than PacketStream. Customer support is responsive, which matters when you are debugging at odd hours across time zones.

pros: widest proxy type selection on this list
pros: datacenter proxies are very cheap for static IPs
pros: good option for mixed workloads
cons: residential pool quality is average
cons: UI is less polished than Webshare or Smartproxy

pricing: rotating residential ~$3.50/GB, static datacenter ~$0.99/month per IP. proxy-cheap.com

Bright Data (pay-as-you-go)

Bright Data is the largest residential proxy network in the world, with over 72 million IPs according to their published figures. They are also the most expensive on this list if you commit to a fixed plan. However, their pay-as-you-go residential rate sits at around $8.4/GB as of early 2026, which means you can use roughly 11-12GB for $100. That is not a lot of bandwidth, but for scraping projects that hit very well-defended targets, Bright Data’s pool quality is meaningfully better than anything else here.

I use Bright Data selectively, routing only the hardest targets through it while using cheaper proxies elsewhere. If you are hitting something with aggressive Cloudflare Bot Management or Akamai protection, the success rate difference between Bright Data and a cheaper provider can be the difference between a working scraper and a broken one. The zone-based routing system takes some time to learn, and their dashboard is complex, but the documentation is thorough. Do not pay for a monthly plan at this price point unless your use case genuinely needs the volume.

pros: best IP pool quality on this list by a significant margin
pros: unmatched geographic coverage and pool size
pros: zone-based routing gives fine-grained control
cons: pay-as-you-go only makes sense for light or targeted use under $100
cons: steep learning curve on the dashboard

pricing: pay-as-you-go residential ~$8.4/GB. brightdata.com

See also our full Bright Data review for a deeper look at their zone system.

Geonode

Geonode is a proxy marketplace and provider that offers both managed proxies and a free tier. Their free plan includes rotating proxies you can use immediately, though with rate limits. Paid plans for residential start around $45/month for 15GB on their premium residential offering, which is solid value. The platform is designed to be accessible to developers without a lot of proxy experience, and the onboarding is genuinely beginner-friendly.

The pool covers residential, datacenter, and ISP proxies. ISP proxies, which are datacenter IPs assigned to residential ISP blocks, are increasingly useful for targets that check ASN type but do not require a truly residential IP. Geonode’s ISP proxies are priced competitively compared to the broader market. The free tier makes it easy to prototype before spending anything, which is a genuine advantage for early-stage projects. Pool size is smaller than Bright Data or Smartproxy, but for standard commercial scraping targets it covers the bases.

pros: free tier lets you prototype at zero cost
pros: ISP proxies are good value and useful for mid-difficulty targets
pros: developer-friendly onboarding
cons: smaller pool limits effectiveness on very competitive targets
cons: free tier is rate-limited, not production-ready

pricing: free tier available, premium residential from ~$45/month for 15GB. geonode.com

Check our Geonode review for a walkthrough of the free tier limitations.

comparison table

provider	starting price	primary strength	primary weakness
Webshare	~$23/mo (datacenter)	cheapest entry, fast datacenter	flagged on bot-protected targets
IPRoyal	~$1.75/GB residential	pay-as-you-go, no commitment	smaller pool than premium tiers
Smartproxy	~$75/mo for 8GB	best pool quality in budget range	8GB ceiling on Micro plan
PacketStream	$1/GB residential	cheapest per GB residential	inconsistent P2P quality
Proxy-Cheap	~$3.50/GB residential	widest proxy type variety	average pool quality
Bright Data	~$8.4/GB (PAYG)	best pool quality overall	expensive per GB, complex setup
Geonode	free tier + $45/mo	free tier, ISP proxies	smaller pool

how to choose

The biggest mistake I see people make is buying residential proxies for targets that do not require them. If you are scraping a small SaaS company’s public pricing page or a regional news site, datacenter proxies from Webshare will work fine and cost a tenth of what residential would. Start cheap, escalate only when you are actually getting blocked. The HTTP request headers themselves, the User-Agent string, Accept-Language, and similar fields, often matter more than whether you are using a datacenter or residential IP.

For targets behind serious bot protection, pool quality starts mattering a lot. The practical ranking is: Bright Data at the top, Smartproxy close behind, then IPRoyal and Proxy-Cheap in the middle, and PacketStream at the bottom for quality. If you are running into consistent blocks that do not go away after rotating IPs, the issue might not be the proxy type. It could be your request fingerprint. Antidetect browser configurations and header spoofing are separate concerns. The antidetectreview.org blog covers that side of the stack if you need to go deeper on fingerprinting.

Bandwidth estimation is something most people get wrong upfront. A single page scrape with requests averaging 50KB returns, running 100 pages per minute for 8 hours a day, adds up to about 2.4GB per day, or roughly 70GB per month. At IPRoyal’s $1.75/GB that is $122.50, over budget. Scale down to 4 hours per day or reduce concurrency and you get under $100. The math is not complicated but you have to actually do it before buying.

Finally, check for overage policies before committing to a monthly plan. Some providers hard-stop your traffic at the plan limit, which kills your scraper mid-run. Others charge per-GB overages that can spike your bill. For a $100 budget project, an unexpected $40 overage is painful. Pay-as-you-go removes that risk entirely, at the cost of slightly higher per-GB rates.

verdict / top pick

For most people reading this, the right answer is to start with Webshare for easy targets and add IPRoyal pay-as-you-go residential for anything that needs a residential IP. That combination covers 80% of scraping use cases and comfortably stays under $100/month. If you are hitting only well-defended targets and need the best pool quality your budget allows, Smartproxy’s Micro plan at $75/month is the single best option in this price range.

Bright Data is worth knowing about even on a tight budget, because routing your hardest 5-10% of requests through their PAYG tier while handling everything else with a cheaper provider is a legitimate strategy. The complexity is higher, but the results justify it for the right targets.

Browse the rest of the proxyscraping.org blog for more guides on rotating proxies, scraper architecture, and anti-bot evasion.

Written by Xavier Fok

disclosure: this article may contain affiliate links. if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. verdicts are independent of payouts. last reviewed by Xavier Fok on 2026-05-19.