Proxy questions, answered without the jargon
Every answer below is written for someone trying a proxy for the first time. When a technical word can’t be avoided, we explain it, and the six that come up most are defined just underneath. Can’t see your question? Ask the Budget Proxies team.
Six words you’ll meet in the answers
Learn these first and the rest of the page reads much more easily.
- IP address
- The number that identifies an internet connection. Websites see it on every visit, and a proxy shows them a different one.
- Port
- A number that goes with the IP address, a bit like a flat number on a street address. Apps usually ask for it in a box next to the IP.
- GB (gigabyte)
- An amount of data. You buy proxy data in GB, and it goes down a little with every page, picture or file that passes through.
- Protocol
- The “language” an app uses to talk to a proxy. Ours speak HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5, which covers the proxy settings in most browsers and apps.
- Rotating or sticky
- Rotating means a fresh IP for every request your app makes. Sticky means keeping the same IP for a while before it changes.
- IP whitelist
- A list of your own IP addresses that may use your proxies without typing in a username and password.
First things first
A proxy is a go-between. Your browser or app sends its traffic to the proxy first, the proxy passes it on, and the website sees the proxy's IP address instead of yours. (An IP address is the number that identifies an internet connection.) Budget Proxies rents out those IP addresses and charges for the data that travels through them. For the longer version, read our beginner guide to proxies.
Proxy data, sold by the gigabyte (GB) and priced in US dollars. There are four types: Datacenter, Residential, Mobile 4G/5G and Residential Premium, and every one of them works with HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5. You can choose from 55+ countries, your proxies arrive the moment you pay, and people answer support 24/7. There is no subscription, no contract and no minimum spend. Our proxies page puts the four types side by side.
No. There is nothing to install. Each proxy comes as four details: an IP address, a port (think of it as the door number that goes with the address), a username and a password. You type those into the proxy settings of any browser, app or tool that supports HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5 proxies. Our first-timer's walkthrough shows where those settings usually live. Whatever you connect to, its terms of service still apply to you.
Straight away. Once your payment clears, the proxies appear in your dashboard and a copy is emailed to you. Nobody has to approve the order by hand and there is no waiting list. Delivery is automatic, 24/7, so it works the same in the middle of the night as it does at lunchtime.
No, we don't run free trials. What we suggest instead is a small first order, even 1 GB, so you can test the service for very little before buying more. Because you pay per GB, there is no minimum spend and nothing to commit to.
Common jobs include collecting public information from websites automatically (web scraping), keeping an eye on prices and search rankings, checking that adverts display properly (ad verification), market research, spotting fake listings of a brand, and seeing how a website looks in another country. Whatever you use them for, it is up to you to stay within the law and the terms of service of each site you visit. Our acceptable use policy has the details.
It depends on what you are doing. Checking a few pages now and then uses very little, while scraping lots of pages or loading image-heavy sites uses much more. Every order lasts 30 days, so start small, watch your usage in the dashboard and top up if you need to. Our proxy calculator can give you a rough estimate before you buy.
No, and it is worth knowing why before you buy. A proxy changes the IP address a website sees, nothing more. If you log in to an account, the site still knows it is you, and cookies (small files that sites store in your browser) keep working as usual. Anything you haven't pointed at the proxy also goes out over your normal connection. If you are weighing up a proxy against a VPN, our proxy vs VPN guide explains the difference.
Choosing a proxy type
Datacenter proxies (from $2.49/GB) run on servers in data centres, which makes them quick and priced below the other three. Residential proxies (from $3.98/GB) use IP addresses that belong to real home internet connections. Mobile 4G/5G proxies (from $4.98/GB) send your traffic over mobile phone networks. Residential Premium (from $6.99/GB) is the higher residential tier, kept for jobs the others can't manage. All four are charged per GB and work with HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5.
A simple way to decide: pick Datacenter if price and speed matter most and the site you are using isn't strict about automated visitors. Pick Residential when you need an ordinary home connection in another place, for example to see a site the way a local visitor sees it. Pick Mobile when you specifically need IPs from a mobile network, and keep Residential Premium for the most demanding jobs. Still unsure? A small test order tells you a lot. Our guide to choosing a proxy without overspending walks through it, and there are more comparisons in our guides section.
Datacenter IPs live on servers in data centres, so they are quick and inexpensive to provide. Residential IPs are handed out by internet service providers (the companies that supply home broadband) to real households, so websites see them as ordinary home connections. Building a pool of those works very differently from renting server space, and that is why the per-GB price is a little higher.
They belong to people who chose to share their connection and agreed to it first. Our residential and mobile IPs are ethically sourced, and we keep no logs of what you do through them. How the IPs were gathered matters to us as much as how many there are, and so does your privacy.
The network behind it. Residential IPs come from home broadband, while our mobile proxies run over real 4G and 5G carrier networks, the same networks phones use, so websites see an ordinary mobile connection. That is useful when you specifically need a mobile IP, for example when testing an app. Mobile proxies are charged per GB like everything else, from $4.98/GB.
Yes. Every order is separate, so you can run a Datacenter order and a Residential order at the same time and manage both from one dashboard. If you would rather buy them together, have a look at our mix packages.
Prices and paying
You pay for data, not for time and not for a number of proxies. A gigabyte (GB) is an amount of data, and every page, image or file that passes through your proxy uses a little of it. You choose how many GB to buy, and each type has its own rate. A GB starts at $2.49 on Datacenter, $3.98 on Residential, $4.98 on Mobile 4G/5G and $6.99 on Residential Premium, priced in US dollars. You won't get a monthly bill, and nothing is charged per proxy.
No. You pay once for each order, and that is the end of it. Nothing renews by itself, there is nothing to sign and there is no minimum spend. You buy data when you want it, and not before.
Each order lasts 30 days from the day you buy it, used or not. That period is the same for every order and can't be made longer or shorter, so the only choice you make is how many GB to buy. If you need more later, place another order.
No. An order ends at whichever comes first: the last of its data being used, or the 30-day period running out. Leftover data doesn't carry over to a new order, which is why small orders make sense while you are learning. You can start a new order from your dashboard at any time.
By credit or debit card (processed by Stripe), by cryptocurrency (USDT, Bitcoin or Ethereum), or from prepaid account balance. If you already have credit on your account, you can pay for an order straight from it.
Crypto payments go through automatically, but only once the blockchain has confirmed the transaction enough times. These checks are called network confirmations, and as soon as the required number arrives your order is processed and the proxies appear. Card payments and account balance skip this step.
Yes, that is what account balance is for. It is prepaid credit: you add money first and spend it on orders later, which makes checking out quicker. Go to Dashboard → Balance and top up by card or crypto. The money appears as soon as the payment is confirmed.
Prices are shown in US dollars. If tax applies to your order, checkout works it out and shows it before you confirm, so you see the full total while you can still change your mind. Nothing is added afterwards.
Every completed payment has an invoice you can download. Open Dashboard → History, find the order and click "View" to see it or save a copy for your records.
The per-GB rate is the same on every order, large or small, and there is no minimum, so a small order isn't penalised. If you expect to use a very large amount of data, contact our team and we will happily talk it through with you.
Setting it up
In Dashboard → My Proxies, and in your email inbox too. You will see an IP address, a port, a username and a password. Type or paste them into the proxy settings of your browser, app or tool; there is nothing to install. Our setup guides go through popular tools one step at a time, and our proxy checker tells you whether a proxy is answering.
Both are ways of proving the proxy is being used by you. A username and password come with every order and work wherever you are. An IP whitelist is a list of your own IP addresses that may connect without a password, and you set it up in the dashboard. You can switch between the two as often as you like. The whitelist is handy when an app has no box for a proxy password. Our guide to proxy logins compares them.
These are protocols, the “languages” an app uses to talk to a proxy, and every proxy we sell speaks all three. Most browsers and scraping tools are happy with HTTP/HTTPS. SOCKS5 is the one to pick for traffic that isn't web browsing, and for many desktop apps.
Yes, at no charge. Go to Dashboard → My Proxies, open the row actions for that proxy and choose "Change protocol" to switch between HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 straight away.
Open Dashboard → My Proxies, switch the proxy to IP-whitelist authentication and enter the public IP address you will connect from. Not sure what that is? Our What is my IP tool shows it. Once your address is on the list, it can use the proxies without a username or password. Home connections sometimes get a new IP address, so if the proxy stops letting you in, update the list.
Most people never do, because the dashboard handles buying, setting up and topping up. The API is for approved resellers who manage orders and proxies with their own code. You can apply under Dashboard → Reseller; once you are approved, your API key appears there and you can use our REST endpoints. Everything is written up in our API docs.
The same way for all four types: by the gigabyte. You pay for the data in your order, and there is no extra limit on how many requests you send (a request is one call your app makes, such as loading a page). Your dashboard shows how much data is left and updates as you go.
Changing IPs, or keeping one
Only if you want it to. You choose how your IPs behave in the dashboard. Rotating IPs change with every request, which suits big, repetitive jobs. Sticky sessions keep the same IP for a while, which suits tasks that need to stay consistent. The options you get depend on the proxy type you bought.
A sticky session (some people call it a sessioned connection) keeps you on one IP address for a set time instead of switching on every request. It helps when a task should look the same from start to finish, such as moving through several pages of a site in one go. You set it up from your dashboard, and our sticky sessions guide explains it with examples.
Often, yes. How closely you can choose depends on the proxy type and the place. City-level targeting is available in a good number of countries, and you choose it in the dashboard while setting up an order. Our locations page shows what is available right now.
We don't put a limit on requests, and you are only billed for the data you use. A sensible number of connections at once (sometimes called threads) depends on the proxy type and the site you are visiting, and going gently is kinder to the site too. Planning something heavy? Write to support and we will suggest a setup that fits.
Countries and cities
There are 55+ to choose from. You can pick by country, and by city where that is offered. The up-to-date list, with prices, is on our locations page.
Choose the country, and a city if one is offered, while you set up the order in your dashboard. What is available, and how precisely you can choose, varies with the proxy type and the region.
We build the network for 99.9% uptime, which means it is designed to be up almost all of the time. If something does go wrong, support is there at any hour, and you can check a proxy's status in your dashboard whenever you like.
A little, sometimes, because a proxy adds an extra stop between you and the website. Datacenter proxies are usually the quicker kind, as they run straight from data centres. Residential and mobile speeds depend on the home and mobile connections behind them. Your own connection, where you are and the site itself all play a part too. Our guide to testing proxy speed shows how to measure it yourself.
Is this allowed?
Using a proxy is legal in most places, and people use them every day for research, testing, monitoring and privacy. What can get you into trouble is what you do through it. It is your responsibility to make sure your use follows the law that applies to you and the terms of service of every website you visit. Please read our acceptable use policy before you start.
Anything illegal, and also fraud, hacking, spreading malware, harassment, or anything that tramples on someone else's rights or breaks a platform's terms of service. The full list is in our acceptable use policy, and we act on confirmed abuse reports.
No. A proxy only changes the route your traffic takes and the IP address a site sees. Every platform writes its own terms of service and enforces them as it sees fit, and following them is up to you. Nobody, us included, can promise how a platform will treat your account.
No. You can use our proxies with any service, as long as you stay within that platform's terms of service and the law that applies to you. We can't promise how a platform will react, and its own rules always come first.
We take it seriously. Anyone can report abuse through our abuse page. If we confirm that an account has broken our acceptable use policy, that account can be suspended or closed.
Privacy and safety
We don't keep traffic logs, so there is no record of the sites you visit or of the data that passes through your proxies. All we keep is the account and billing information needed to run the service. Our privacy policy sets out exactly what that is.
If the website uses HTTPS (its address starts with https://), your connection to it stays encrypted end to end, exactly as it would without a proxy. SOCKS5 is there for traffic that isn't web browsing. For anything sensitive, such as logging in or paying, stick to HTTPS sites.
Card payments are handled by Stripe, so your full card number never reaches our servers. For an extra layer of protection on your account, switch on two-factor authentication under Dashboard → Account. We strongly recommend it.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds a second check when you log in: as well as your password, you enter a short code from an authenticator app. We use the standard time-based kind (TOTP), so any common authenticator app works. Turn it on under Dashboard → Account. It makes your account much harder for anyone else to get into.
Your account and getting help
Click Register, enter your email address and choose a password. It is free, takes under a minute, and you can place your first order straight after.
Use the forgot password link on the login page and we will email you a secure link to set a new one. If the email doesn't arrive, check your spam folder, or contact support and we will sort it out.
Open a ticket from Dashboard → Support, use our contact page or email [email protected]. Support is staffed by people 24/7, and a reply usually comes within 1–4 hours.
Support is open 24/7. During business hours the first reply takes under 1 hour on average; overnight it takes under 4 hours on average. Whoever answers is a person, not a bot reading from a script.
First, use the "Check status" action in your dashboard to test the connection. If the proxy turns out to be dead on arrival, we will replace it or refund you, as long as you tell us within 24 hours of delivery. The details are in our refund & replacement policy.
No. Each order is a single purchase that runs for its 30 days and then stops by itself. There is no subscription carrying on in the background.
Refunds and faulty proxies
If your proxies arrive dead or don't work as described, you can ask for a replacement or a refund within 24 hours of delivery. After that, support looks at each request on its own merits. The full terms are on our refund & replacement policy page.
Your order reference and a few words on what went wrong. Send them in a ticket from Dashboard → Support, or through our contact page. If a proxy was dead on arrival and you let us know within 24 hours, we sort out the replacement or refund promptly.
Once a refund is approved, card payments go back through Stripe to the card you paid with. That usually takes a few business days, depending on your bank. Refunds to your account balance appear straight away.
The 24-hour dead-on-arrival cover is for proxies that don't work as described. If a proxy worked and you used a good amount of data through it, that usually shows the service did its job. You are still welcome to ask support, and we will look at your case fairly.
Still stuck? Ask us in your own words
You don’t need the right technical terms. Tell us what you are trying to do and what is going wrong, and someone from our 24/7 support team will help, whether that means picking a proxy type or making sense of a charge.
Ask a questionRather explain it in an email? Write to [email protected] whenever suits you. A person reads every message, day or night.
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