Webshare is known for cheap datacenter proxies and a free starter tier, but its residential bandwidth lists at $7.00 per GB pay-as-you-go. QuantumProxies Residential Basic is $1.00 per GB with a $5 minimum — seven times cheaper on the residential traffic most people actually came for.
On residential proxies, QuantumProxies is the better choice by a wide margin. Webshare's reputation for cheapness is built on its datacenter tier and its free proxies — cross into residential, where the blocked requests actually get through, and it becomes one of the more expensive options in our index.
| What you actually pay | QuantumProxies Residential Basic | Webshare |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price per GB | $1.00 / GB | $7.00 / GB |
| Minimum to start | $5 (5 GB, no subscription) | $7 (1 GB, pay-as-you-go rate) |
| Pay-as-you-go without a plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest advertised rate | $0.80 / GB | $1.40 / GB |
| What that cheapest rate requires | A 1 TB purchase ($800). No monthly contract. | a high-volume residential tier |
Competitor prices verified 2026-09-08. Webshare figures are advertised list prices for rotating residential proxies from its public pricing page, recorded in our residential proxy pricing index on the verification date shown above. Webshare's datacenter and free-tier products are priced separately and are not comparable to residential bandwidth. QuantumProxies figures are from our live plan catalogue. All prices in USD, excluding VAT.
Switching away from Webshare usually means shortlisting three or four providers, not one. This is the rest of our pricing index: every residential provider we track, the rate a new account pays, the cheapest rate each one advertises, and what that cheapest rate costs to unlock. We name them and we do not link to them — the index itself records a source page for every figure, so any of it can be checked without taking our word for it.
| Provider | Pay-as-you-go per GB | Cheapest advertised rate | Minimum to start |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuantumProxies — Residential Basic | $1.00 | $0.80 | $5 minimum, no subscription |
| DataImpulse | $1.00 | $0.80 | $5 (5 GB); $0.8/GB from 1 TB, custom pricing from 5 TB |
| PacketStream | $1.00 | $1.00 | $50 minimum purchase, no subscription, balance never expires (single flat rate) |
| Proxy-Cheap | $2.60 | $0.78 | UNVERIFIED: homepage card reads '$2.60 $0.78/GB' and the JS-only product page could not be read (404 + bot challenge), so it is not clear whether $0.78 is a promo or a bulk tier; PAYG, no monthly commitment |
| Proxy-Seller | $3.50 | $2.20 | $220/mo (100 GB plan) for $2.20/GB; page advertises 'From $1.30/GB' for custom/enterprise volumes via sales ('save up to 30% on large projects') |
| Decodo | $4.00 | $2.00 | $11.25/mo (3 GB at $3.75/GB); $2.00 tier requires the 1,000 GB/mo enterprise plan |
| SOAX | $5.00 | $0.85 | none (Sandbox $0/mo at $5.00/GB); $0.85 tier requires the $3,000/mo Enterprise plan |
| NodeMaven | $5.00 | $2.20 | none (PAYG from 2 GB at $5.00/GB); $2.20 tier requires the 1,000 GB monthly plan (PAYG 1,000 GB is $2.45/GB) |
| ProxyEmpire | $7.00 | $3.00 | none (PAYG 1 GB); $3.00/GB list ($1.50 with EMPIRE50) requires the 1,000 GB Enterprise plan at $3,000/mo list ($1,500 promo); custom 5 TB+ 'From $0.75/GB' |
| IPRoyal | $7.35 | $1.75 | none; $1.75/GB only on subscription from 10 TB (PAYG bulk is $1.84/GB from 10 TB) |
| Bright Data | $8.00 | $2.50 | none (PAYG) / $1,999-mo (798 GB plan) for $2.50 tier |
| Oxylabs | No pay-as-you-go rate | $2.50 | no PAYG; $30/mo (5 GB Starter at $6/GB); $2.50 tier requires $2,500/mo (1 TB Corporate) |
| NetNut | No pay-as-you-go rate | $0.00 | NOT VERIFIABLE on 2026-09-08: netnut.io/pricing/ and netnut.io/residential-proxies/ both returned a page titled 'Seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation' (HTTP 200 via Cloudflare, no pricing content). Re-check by hand before publishing. |
Competitor prices verified 2026-09-08. Sorted by pay-as-you-go rate, lowest first. That is an arithmetic order, not a ranking: providers publishing no pay-as-you-go rate appear last, and nothing here scores quality, success rate or support. Figures are advertised list prices taken from each provider's own public pricing page on the verification date shown above, in USD, excluding VAT.
Webshare built its reputation on giving away ten free proxies and selling datacenter bandwidth cheaply, and that reputation is largely deserved. The trouble starts when a project outgrows datacenter addresses — which happens the first time a target starts blocking them — and you look at what residential costs. At $7.00 per gigabyte it is among the more expensive residential rates in our pricing index, seven times what we charge for the same category of address.
Webshare's ten free proxies are datacenter addresses. Datacenter IPs are fast and cheap and perfectly good against targets that do not check, but they announce themselves: the address block belongs to a hosting provider, and any anti-bot system worth the name treats that as a signal. When your success rate collapses, the fix is residential bandwidth — and that is where the pricing changes character entirely.
Webshare lists rotating residential at $7.00 per gigabyte pay-as-you-go. Our Residential Basic is $1.00. On 100 GB that is $700 against $100. Its cheapest advertised residential rate is $1.40 per GB at high volume — better than most of the market, and still above the $0.80 we charge at 1 TB. We are cheaper at the entry point and cheaper at the floor.
Two things, honestly. Webshare gives away a free tier and we do not — our minimum is $5. And on pure datacenter bandwidth for undefended targets, Webshare is competitively priced and easy to get started with. If your workload genuinely never needs a residential address, this comparison does not apply to you and Webshare is a sensible pick.
The free tier is what draws people in and it is not what they end up buying. The moment your targets start filtering datacenter ranges, the relevant number is the residential rate — and there the free proxies have no bearing on what you pay. Comparing a free datacenter IP to a paid residential gigabyte is comparing two different products; on the product that actually gets through, we are seven times cheaper.
This is not a residential-only argument. Our datacenter proxies start at $0.50 per GB and our IPv6 proxies at $0.20 per GB, both on the same account and the same balance as residential. If part of your workload runs fine on datacenter addresses, run it there and keep the residential bandwidth for the targets that demand it — without opening a second account with a second vendor.
Real ISP-assigned residential addresses across 200+ countries, rotating and sticky sessions, HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 included, and country-level targeting. The entry order is $5 for 5 GB with no subscription and no renewal. It is the same pool our premium residential plans use, offered at the basic tier.
Our residential rate falls with size and nothing recurs: 500 GB is $450, or $0.90 per GB, and 1 TB is $800, or $0.80 per GB. That is below Webshare's $1.40 cheapest advertised residential rate, and it is reached by buying a terabyte rather than by holding a monthly commitment open.
Card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay are all supported, along with Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Monero and around 300 other cryptocurrencies, activated automatically on confirmation with no KYC. Crypto and account-balance payments carry no VAT while card, PayPal and Stripe add 22%, so the payment method alone is worth about eighteen percent of the total.
Webshare is a proxy provider best known for offering ten free datacenter proxies and low-cost datacenter bandwidth. It also sells rotating residential proxies, which list at a considerably higher rate than its datacenter product.
QuantumProxies does not give away free proxies — our minimum order is $5 for 5 GB. Free datacenter proxies are widely blocked by defended targets, so for anything that matters the meaningful comparison is the residential rate, where we are $1.00 per GB against Webshare's $7.00.
As recorded in our pricing index on the verification date shown on this page, Webshare lists rotating residential proxies at $7.00 per GB pay-as-you-go, with a cheapest advertised tier of $1.40 per GB at high volume.
On price per gigabyte, QuantumProxies Residential Basic at $1.00 per GB with a $5 minimum. It is seven times cheaper than Webshare's residential pay-as-you-go rate and lower than its $1.40 volume floor.
Bright Data, Oxylabs, Decodo (formerly Smartproxy), IPRoyal and SOAX come up most often, with QuantumProxies at the value end. Our residential proxy pricing index compares ten providers on price per gigabyte.
On datacenter proxies and on its free tier, Webshare is competitive. On residential bandwidth it is not: $7.00 per GB against our $1.00 at the entry point, and $1.40 against our $0.80 at volume.
For residential proxies, yes — seven times cheaper at the entry point and cheaper again at volume. Webshare's free tier is real and we have not pretended otherwise, but it is datacenter bandwidth, and the moment your targets start blocking datacenter ranges it stops being part of the comparison. If you need residential addresses, $5 buys 5 GB and settles the question against your own targets.
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