Proxy traffic (GB)
Proxy traffic is the data that passed through a proxy in both directions, counted in megabytes and gigabytes.
Updated · Prokso editorial team
Every page consists of HTML, images, scripts and styles. Everything the program loaded through the proxy and everything it sent counts as traffic.
Images and video weigh the most. For data collection they are usually turned off, and consumption drops many times over. The traffic calculator will help you estimate the volume.
Pay-per-GB plans are convenient when the load is uneven: you pay for the actual volume, not for the number of addresses or months.
In Prokso traffic is counted in both directions, with no subscription, and purchased gigabytes do not expire. Traffic with precise geo (city, region, ZIP, carrier) is counted double. Prices are on the pricing page.
How to measure the real weight of a page
Open the page in Chrome with DevTools, go to the Network tab and reload it. At the bottom there are two numbers: transferred and resources. The first one is what actually went over the network, usually compressed, and it is the closer estimate of traffic through a proxy.
For scripts, count the size of the response body in bytes and add a little on top. Request and response headers take from a few hundred bytes to a few kilobytes, and every new HTTPS connection adds a TLS handshake of a few kilobytes.
An example calculation
Suppose you need 10,000 product pages. The figures below are illustrative: check your own site in DevTools first.
| Method | Weight of one page | Total for 10,000 pages |
|---|---|---|
| HTML only, plain request | about 100 KB | about 1 GB |
| headless browser without images | about 500 KB | about 5 GB |
| headless browser, everything loaded | about 2 MB | about 20 GB |
Repeated runs multiply the total, so keep the pages you already have and request only what changed. The traffic calculator does the same math with your numbers.
Keeping consumption under control in Prokso
In the plan settings you can set a traffic limit per hour, day or week and choose what happens when it is reached: stop the plan or only send a warning. This protects the balance from a script stuck in a loop. Plan statistics show consumption by days and by sites, so you can see which domain takes the most gigabytes.
The biggest consumer is usually a headless browser. If the data is in the page source or in an official API, a plain request is much lighter.
FAQ
Is traffic counted if the page did not open?
What passed through the proxy is counted: the request and part of the response, if it arrived.
How can I reduce consumption?
Turn off loading of images, video and fonts where they are not needed, and do not load the same page twice.
Residential $1.59, mobile $2.50, datacenter $0.65 per GB
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