Proxy-Cheap is one of the cheaper per-gigabyte options, and it is a reasonable buy if you want low prices and do not mind managing an account. It fits unattended work badly, and that covers automated ordering, signup without an identity, and bandwidth that outlives a billing cycle.
Wallet-authenticated, pay per gigabyte
Residential and mobile SOCKS5 billed per gigabyte. There is no email, no account, and no dashboard. A wallet address and an API key are the entire identity. You either prepay a fixed package or draw down credits against the live market rate.
Low per-GB rates behind an account
Rotating residential runs around $2.60/GB at list price. That undercuts ProxyBase, and it is the tradeoff you are choosing between. Datacenter IPv4 starts near $1.50 per IP per month, with IPv6 from about $0.15. Purchasing, tracking, and replacing IPs all happen inside an account dashboard.
The two models bill different things. Rented addresses by the month, residential traffic by the gigabyte. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how much you push and how evenly.
Datacenter IPs bill monthly per address. Fifty IPv4 addresses at roughly $1.50 each is about $75/month whether your scraper runs four hours a day or not at all. The same $75 at ProxyBase's ~$3/GB market rate buys about 25 GB of residential traffic. Push more than that through the rented pool and Proxy-Cheap is the cheaper option; push less and it is not. Neither model wins in general.
This is a property of datacenter hosting, not of Proxy-Cheap specifically: their IPs sit in ASNs like DigitalOcean, OVH, and Hetzner, and those ASNs are widely published and easy for anti-bot vendors to score. Residential and mobile ranges are scored differently. If you are choosing between the two, pick based on the sites you need to reach.
Proxy-Cheap's flow assumes a person at a browser: order, copy credentials, and replace IPs by hand. An agent cannot do any of that. ProxyBase is headless end to end. Register, order, poll, and rotate are all HTTP calls, which matters more as the number of concurrent sessions grows. See proxies for AI agents.
Proxy-Cheap does accept BTC, ETH, and USDT. But the payment still sits inside an email account with a password. If avoiding that account, and the identity it implies, is the point, then the wallet-only model is the difference. See also buying with crypto.
Compared across pricing model, account requirements, and automation. Rows where Proxy-Cheap comes out ahead are marked as such.
| Feature / Capability | ProxyBase | Proxy-Cheap |
|---|---|---|
| List price, rotating residential | ~$3.00/GB market rate | ~$2.60/GB |
| List price, datacenter | No datacenter tier listed | IPv4 from ~$1.50/IP/mo, IPv6 from ~$0.15 |
| Mobile proxies | $5.00/GB market rate | $5.99/GB (rotating) |
| Billing unit | Per gigabyte transferred | Per IP, per month, plus per-GB residential |
| Account required | None (wallet address only) | Email account and dashboard |
| Identity verification | None | Email registration (no documents) |
| Payment methods | USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH, SOL | Cards, wire, PayPal, BTC/ETH/USDT |
| Minimum order | $10 for a 1 GB package | No advertised minimum |
| Prepaid balance expiry | Packages do not expire | Top-up packs are capped per month |
| Protocols | SOCKS5 (incl. auth), HTTP/HTTPS | SOCKS5, HTTP/HTTPS |
| Ordering API | Full REST API, no dashboard needed | Dashboard-led; API available on some plans |
| IP rotation | Programmatic, via POST /v1/orders/{id}/rotate | Manual replacement in the dashboard |
| MCP server for agents | Yes (Claude and Cursor) | Not offered |
| Sell bandwidth back | Yes, via Markets | Not offered |
Proxy-Cheap figures above were checked against their published pricing on 24 September 2026. Listed rates change and promotions are common, so confirm current pricing on their site before buying. ProxyBase market rates are dynamic and move with seller supply.
The same jobs a dashboard would make you do by hand, as API calls. Both examples use the v1 gateway on port 1080.
# Connect through the SOCKS5 gateway: curl --socks5-hostname username:password@api.proxybase.xyz:1080 \ https://api.ipify.org?format=json # Request a fresh IP: curl -X POST https://api.proxybase.xyz/v1/orders/kQx7p3Wn/rotate \ -H "X-API-Key: pk_YOUR_KEY"
import requests
proxy = "socks5h://username:password@api.proxybase.xyz:1080"
session = requests.Session()
session.proxies = {"http": proxy, "https": proxy}
res = session.get("https://api.ipify.org?format=json", timeout=30)
print(res.json())Same analysis, applied to the rest of the market.
Enterprise pricing tiers, conditional KYC, and where the self-serve route differs.
Monthly plans and card-only checkout, versus pay-per-gigabyte bandwidth.
Per-IP rentals with an email account, versus a wallet-only model.
KYC-gated residential access and volume commitments, explained.
For low-cost residential and datacenter proxies bought by a person who does not mind an account, yes. The per-GB rate is competitive and the range is broad. It fits unattended automation poorly, because ordering and IP replacement assume a human at a dashboard. Judge it against your workflow, not against a feature checklist.
Rotating residential lists around $2.60/GB, against roughly $3.00/GB on ProxyBase's market, so Proxy-Cheap is cheaper per gigabyte. ProxyBase lists no datacenter tier. The models differ in what they bill: rented addresses by the month versus residential traffic by the gigabyte.
Yes, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT at checkout. The distinction is that crypto there is a payment method attached to an email account rather than the account itself. On ProxyBase the wallet address is the account, so there is no profile to create first.
Not end to end. Signup, ordering, and replacing blocked IPs all run through a web dashboard, which an unattended agent cannot complete. ProxyBase exposes the same operations as HTTP calls and ships an MCP server, so an agent can register, buy, and rotate on its own.
It depends on the target, and it applies to datacenter ranges generally rather than to one vendor. Those IPs sit in hosting ASNs that anti-bot vendors score aggressively, so sites behind strict protection will challenge them more often than residential or mobile addresses.
Not much. Register with a single POST to /v1/agents, or buy a fixed package from the store, and point your existing proxy configuration at the new credentials. Nothing needs to be cancelled to try it.
If you need bandwidth that does not expire, no signup, and rotation an agent can trigger on its own, that is what ProxyBase is for. Market rates from about $3/GB.