# How to estimate a proxy budget: pages × size × rate, with worked examples

A proxy bill is arithmetic: how many requests, how heavy each one, which network. Three numbers and a ladder give you a figure you can defend before the first gigabyte is bought.


## Per-GB networks: the formula

**monthly GB = requests per month × average bytes per request (both directions) ÷ 1,000,000,000**, then read the rate for a purchase of that size on the ladder. The tier applies to the whole purchase, so buying the month at once costs less than buying it in pieces.

| Request type | Typical size | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| HTML product or listing page | 200–500 KB | Compression on; no assets loaded |
| JSON API response | 20–200 KB | The cheapest way to collect |
| Search results page | 200–800 KB | Heavier with scripts inline |
| Headless browser, assets blocked | 0.5–1.5 MB | HTML plus XHR calls |
| Headless browser, everything loaded | 2–6 MB | Images and fonts dominate: block them |


## Worked examples on the residential ladder

| Workload | GB per month | Rate | Monthly cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 100,000 product pages at 350 KB | 35 | $1.82/GB | $63.70 |
| 500,000 pages at 350 KB | 175 | $1.54/GB | $269.50 |
| 2,000,000 API calls at 60 KB | 120 | $1.54/GB | $184.80 |
| 50,000 rendered pages, assets blocked, 1 MB | 50 | $1.75/GB | $87.50 |
| 50,000 rendered pages, everything loaded, 4 MB | 200 | $1.54/GB | $308 |

Rates are the current ProxShift residential tiers; the [pricing page](https://proxshift.com/pricing) has the full ladder and a calculator that uses the same table. Mobile traffic follows its own ladder, from $2.62 per GB.


## Per-IP networks: the other arithmetic

ISP and datacenter addresses are priced per IP and per term, so the question becomes: how many parallel identities or how many fixed exits do you need? One address per account, per whitelisted egress or per parallel task; multiply by the monthly rate of your term and zone; apply the volume discount from 10 addresses. Traffic is unlimited on ISP and pooled on datacenter (100 GB per address), so heavy pages cost nothing extra there.


## Choosing by cost per successful request

The cheapest network is the one whose requests succeed. A datacenter address at a fraction of a cent per request is expensive if the target blocks it; a residential gigabyte that returns real pages is cheap. Estimate success rates per network on a small sample (fifty requests), then divide cost by successes.


## Five habits that halve the bill

- Block images, media, fonts and trackers in browsers.
- Prefer JSON endpoints and mobile pages to full desktop HTML.
- Cache what does not change; re-fetch prices, not descriptions.
- Send datacenter-tolerant targets to datacenter addresses.
- Buy the month at once to reach a lower tier; traffic never expires on ProxShift, so there is no risk in buying ahead.


## Questions

**Does traffic count in both directions?**

Yes, on ProxShift request and response bytes, headers and TLS records included; connections that fail before the target are not billed.

**What if I over-estimate?**

Nothing is lost: residential and mobile traffic never expires, and unused wallet balance can be refunded to the wallet it came from.

Source: https://proxshift.com/guides/estimate-a-proxy-budget