# Minimum top-up

The minimum top-up is the smallest amount a provider accepts to fund an account or to buy a first product. It sets the cost of testing a network on a real workload, replaces the free trial at providers that do not offer one, and, for crypto payments, must be high enough to absorb network fees. Anything not used stays on the balance if the provider does not expire it.


## What a small top-up buys

Enough residential traffic to run a real crawl for a day, a single ISP address or mobile device for 24 hours, or a datacenter address for a month: the point is to test against your actual target, not a demo page.


## Network fees

With cryptocurrency, the sender pays the network fee, which varies by coin and by congestion. Low-fee coins (Litecoin, Tron-based USDT, Solana) make small top-ups practical; a Bitcoin fee can be a large share of a small deposit at busy times.


## How it works at ProxShift

ProxShift's minimum top-up is $20, enough for a few gigabytes of residential traffic or a 24-hour ISP address; there is no free trial, and unused balance stays available.

Source: https://proxshift.com/glossary/minimum-top-up