What is Bandwidth?
The volume of data transferred through a proxy, usually measured in gigabytes. Residential proxies are typically billed by bandwidth.
Bandwidth billing counts every byte in both directions, including request headers and any images, fonts, scripts and tracking calls the page pulls in. A single modern product page can weigh several megabytes if loaded in full.
That makes blocking unnecessary resources the single most effective cost control in scraping. Fetching HTML alone instead of rendering the whole page routinely cuts consumption by an order of magnitude, and requesting a site's underlying JSON endpoints where they exist cuts it further.
Whether unused traffic expires is worth checking before you buy. Some providers void the remainder at the end of a billing cycle; with seamless, purchased traffic does not expire.
Related terms
Residential Proxy
A proxy that routes traffic through an IP address assigned by an ISP to a real home device, making requests appear to come from a genuine consumer.
Sub-User
A separate proxy account with its own credentials and usage limits, created under a main account — useful for teams and agencies.
Proxy Pool
The total set of IP addresses a provider can assign. A larger, more diverse pool means lower detection rates and better success at scale.
IP Whitelisting
Authorising specific IP addresses to use a proxy without a username and password, as an alternative to credential-based authentication.