Procurement9 min read

Proxy Price per GB Is Misleading: Calculate Cost per Successful Page

Quoted price tells you what traffic costs. This observed-run calculator shows what you paid for each page your workload could actually use.

Aleks

Aug 4, 20269 min read

Editorial standards

Open the cost calculator

A low proxy rate can produce an expensive page. Retries consume traffic, large responses consume more of it, and some completed requests still fail the check that matters to your workload. The invoice counts bytes. Your operation needs usable results.

Price per GB is an input. Cost per validated page is an outcome.

Define the unit before you price it

A successful page is a logical job that passed a validator you declared before the run. The validator might require the expected record set, a complete document, or another bounded application-level assertion. It should describe the result you can use.

RFC 9110 (opens in a new tab) says a 200 response indicates that the request succeeded at the HTTP layer, apart from CONNECT. That status cannot evaluate your page contents. A 200 that fails the workload validator still contributes traffic and cost, but it does not increase the successful-job count. This same denominator discipline explains why proxy success-rate numbers often disagree.

Calculate one observed run

The worksheet starts with fabricated values so you can see the model immediately. Replace them with aggregates from one isolated run. It makes no requests and keeps every value in your current browser tab.

Price the result, not the gigabyte.

Enter one observed run. The worksheet keeps billing, retries, and validation separate.

Values stay in this tab and are not stored or transmitted. Use aggregate counts only. Keep credentials, proxy URLs, target names, raw IPs, and customer data out of the worksheet.

SYNTHETIC STARTING POINTTen fabricated jobs and 250 MB of fabricated traffic. This is not a provider benchmark.

$0.125 proxy cost per success. The run used 31.25 MB and 1.625 attempts per validated job.

Completion: 80%
Attempts / success: 1.625
Billed MB / success: 31.25 MB
Proxy cost: $1.00
Proxy cost / success: $0.125
Retry traffic share: 24%
Retry cost: $0.24
Retry cost / success: $0.03
All-in cost / success: $0.25

proxy cost per success = (price per GB × metered MB ÷ 1000) ÷ validated jobs

Decimal gigabytes: 1 GB equals 1000 MB.

Input	Definition	Boundary
p	Effective dollars per decimal GB	Same product and billing period
J	Eligible logical page jobs	Count before the first attempt
A	Physical attempts	First attempts plus retries
S	Jobs whose validator passed	Within the fixed retry budget
T	Provider-metered MB	All attempts in the isolated window
R	Provider-metered retry MB, optional	Only attempt_index greater than 1
O	Other attributable cost, optional	Compute or another assigned run cost

Field	Run A	Run B	Why it stays
Effective $/GB	Your value	Your value	Billing input
Completion, S / J	Your value	Your value	Validator-defined outcome
Attempts / success, A / S	Your value	Your value	Retry pressure
Metered MB / success, T / S	Your value	Your value	Traffic efficiency
All-in cost / success	Your value	Your value	Comparable unit cost

Proxy Price per GB Is Misleading: Calculate Cost per Successful Page

Define the unit before you price it

Calculate one observed run

Price the result, not the gigabyte.

What goes into the calculation

Keep reading.

How to Test a Proxy Provider Before You Commit: A 30-Minute Workload Benchmark

Why Proxy “Success Rate” Numbers Disagree

Proxy Latency, Origin Latency, or Browser Timeout? How to Measure the Difference

From buying question to evidence.

Read the synthetic starting point

Use the billing meter for billing math

Freeze the run before comparing routes

Put five fields side by side

What the number cannot explain

Run it once before the next purchase