Pay as you go
Pay as you go means buying bandwidth in top-ups instead of a monthly plan. 17 of the 545 plans Proxy Compare prices work that way, read 5 Oct 2026, against 377 sold monthly. It costs more per gigabyte and wastes nothing, so bursty work usually pays less overall.
Why it costs you money
Scraping work is rarely steady, and a subscription bills the same whether you used three gigabytes or three hundred. The per-gigabyte rate is usually higher, so the question is whether your idle months cost more than the premium. Check the expiry before buying: bandwidth that expires monthly is a subscription wearing a different label.
See it in the data
Related terms
- Bandwidth overageWhat a provider charges once you pass the gigabytes your plan includes. Often several times the headline rate.
- Concurrency limitThe cap on how many requests you can have in flight at once. Often the real constraint on a scraping job, not price.
- Prepaid trafficBuying a block of gigabytes up front and drawing it down, instead of committing to a recurring monthly allowance.
- Minimum commitmentThe smallest spend or term a provider will sell, which decides whether an advertised rate is reachable by you at all.
- Traffic rolloverWhether gigabytes you paid for but did not use survive into the next billing period. Most providers do not say.
- Every term we define
Questions
Is pay as you go cheaper?
Not per gigabyte. 17 of the 545 plans priced here are pay as you go against 377 sold monthly, read 5 Oct 2026, and the top-up rate is normally the higher of the two. It wins overall only when you would have wasted a monthly allowance.
Does my balance expire?
Some providers let it sit indefinitely and some do not, and it is rarely stated on the pricing page. Ask before you buy a large top-up, because the answer decides whether bulk is a discount or a deadline.
When should I move to a monthly plan?
When the work stops being bursty. Compare the top-up rate against the monthly rate at the volume you actually use; the commitment wins as soon as you would burn most of what it includes.