What is a residential proxy?

Residential routing matters to a bill because vendors meter it in incompatible ways. It can replace a basic request with a larger credit bundle, form a base to which rendering is added, be included in an all-in request charge, or be billed separately by transferred data. A request count alone cannot compare those models. (Scrape.do request costs, Scrapfly billing rules, and Bright Data Web Unlocker pricing, checked 2026-07-26; Browserbase pricing, checked 2026-07-25.)

Scrape.do uses replacement bundles. A datacenter request without rendering costs one credit, residential without rendering costs ten, and residential with rendering costs twenty-five. Per-domain defaults can select a stricter proxy-and-rendering bundle, and the response cost header reports the observed debit. (Scrape.do request costs, checked 2026-07-26.)

Scrapfly uses a one-credit datacenter base or a twenty-five-credit residential base. JavaScript rendering then adds five credits to either route. Large response bodies can add bandwidth credits, and Automatic Scraping Protection can dynamically upgrade the proxy pool, changing the request’s base cost. (Scrapfly billing rules, checked 2026-07-26.)

Bright Data Web Unlocker publishes residential routing, proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and CAPTCHA handling as included in its successful-request rate. The residential route is not shown as a separate multiplier for that product. Bright Data’s Browser API is different: it bills transferred browser traffic rather than successful requests, so the product name and endpoint matter. (Bright Data Web Unlocker pricing, checked 2026-07-26; Bright Data Browser API, checked 2026-07-25.)

Browserbase separates proxy traffic from browser time. Its plans include a proxy-data allowance and publish additional residential traffic as a per-gigabyte meter, while browser hours have their own allowance and overage. A long session and a data-heavy session can therefore produce different totals even if each visits one page. (Browserbase pricing, checked 2026-07-25.)

Before signing up, check whether residential routing is optional, automatic, or required for named targets. Confirm whether billing is per request, credit, successful delivery, or gigabyte; whether JavaScript adds to the route; whether country or city selection costs more; and whether automatic escalation has a cap. Measure transferred bytes as well as request counts when bandwidth is a meter. (Scrapfly billing rules and Bright Data Web Unlocker pricing, checked 2026-07-26; Browserbase pricing, checked 2026-07-25.)