Subscription Plans

A proxy subscription gives you access to a defined service for a paid period: a list of IP addresses, a traffic allowance, a number of simultaneous connections, or a package of API results. Its appeal is predictable purchasing. You can keep working addresses reserved, receive a regular allowance, and avoid placing a new order every time the previous one ends. Longer commitments may also reduce the price.

The amount shown on the pricing page tells only part of the story. Two subscriptions with the same monthly price can handle unused traffic, upgrades, failed payments, and cancellation differently. Within proxy pricing models, a subscription describes when and under what conditions you pay. Per-IP and per-GB pricing describe what you buy. A residential plan can therefore be both a monthly subscription and a service priced per gigabyte.

How one subscription cycle works

Consider an illustrative plan: 20 GB for 60 USD, valid for 30 days, with automatic renewal. Payment starts the period and makes 20 GB available. Over those 30 days, your software uses 14 GB to check product pages and collect prices. You have 6 GB left, but the paid period is about to end.

At renewal, the provider charges another 60 USD and gives you a fresh 20 GB package. What happens to the old 6 GB depends on the plan. Without rollover, it expires and you start with 20 GB. With rollover, it is added to the new package and you start with 26 GB. Both examples include a new payment; the difference is what happens to the unused allowance.

These are illustrative plans. The expiry date and limits for carried-over traffic depend on the subscription. Before paying, check how long the remainder stays available and whether there is a cap on the amount you can carry forward.

What the subscription actually reserves

The word “subscription” does not identify the resource you receive. Read the unit next to the price and the limits attached to it.

A port in a commercial offer can mean a proxy endpoint assigned to your account. It does not automatically mean a physical modem or one permanent IP. Likewise, a provider may use “threads” to mean concurrent network connections rather than workers in your software. One browser worker can open several connections.

There are published plans where five purchased ports provide five dedicated IPs and a combined allowance of 700 connections, calculated as 5 × 140. The allowance applies across the purchased ports. This is a product-specific arrangement, not a conversion rule for all proxy subscriptions.

For mobile rentals, establish what is actually dedicated. A dedicated modem can remain assigned to you while its public IP changes after reconnection. The subscription reserves access to the connection; an unchanging public IP needs a separate promise. Carrier coverage, congestion, and SIM-plan restrictions still affect the service.

The payment date and allowance reset can be different

A subscription can have four separate deadlines: the next payment, the next allowance reset, the end of access, and the end of the reservation for your IPs. A remaining balance does not automatically extend all four.

“Monthly” may mean a calendar month or a fixed 30-day period. Calendar billing usually follows the purchase date; a 30-day cycle moves relative to the calendar. For a purchase on the 29th, 30th, or 31st, check how the service handles shorter months. Also check the billing timezone if you plan to renew or cancel near the deadline.

Annual payment does not necessarily provide one freely spendable annual traffic allowance. One documented model bills every 360 days while resetting the traffic allowance every 30 days. Other products use calendar-year terms or credits with their own expiry. Compare the payment schedule and the resource schedule separately.

When a longer commitment saves money

The monthly equivalent displayed for an annual plan may be much smaller than the payment due today. A card showing “70 USD/month, billed annually” can require an immediate payment of 840 USD.

Here is an illustrative comparison: 100 USD for each monthly period versus 840 USD prepaid for 12 equivalent periods, a 30% discount. Assume identical features, unchanged prices, and no refund for unused prepaid time.

The prepaid option becomes cheaper after 8.4 periods, or from the ninth whole period purchased. A large discount can still be an expensive choice for a project that ends early. Test the required locations, target sites, workload, and IP stability before committing to a longer term.

Compare features too. A subscription may include a better pool, finer location selection, team access, or support options unavailable with a smaller purchase. Conversely, a higher allowance does not automatically unlock every country, authentication method, or concurrency limit.

Unused traffic, credits, and money are different balances

An account balance may represent GB, money available for purchases, usage credits, or a credit issued after changing a plan. Their expiry and permitted uses can differ.

Even upgrading, downgrading, and renewing the same product can treat unused GB differently. Published policies include carrying the remainder through an upgrade but removing it at an ordinary renewal or downgrade.

Buying extra traffic near the end of a period deserves particular attention. Some add-ons expire with the current cycle, even when purchased the day before renewal. Other automatic top-ups can survive into the following cycle. “Extra GB” does not by itself promise another full month of use.

Keeping credits after cancellation can also change their purchasing power. Some services move the account to a different rate after the subscription ends while preserving unexpired credits. If a hypothetical 30 USD balance previously bought traffic at 3 USD/GB and the new rate is 5 USD/GB, its purchasing power falls from 10 GB to 6 GB. The nominal balance has not changed; the applicable price has.

Three payment controls that should be checked separately

Automatic renewal, automatic traffic purchases, and wallet funding solve different problems.

A fixed subscription price is therefore not necessarily a spending cap. A 60 USD plan with automatic top-ups can generate charges above 60 USD before renewal. One published auto-top-up system activates at 90% of traffic consumption, so the additional charge can arrive before the allowance reaches zero.

Check the top-up size, price, maximum spend, and payment method. Where a provider offers a budget limit, find out whether it includes subscription fees and add-ons or only metered usage. An email warning is not the same as a hard spending limit.

Some larger contracts use a minimum monthly commitment. Low activity does not necessarily remove that payment obligation, and usage above the included amount may be billed separately. Establish whether the quoted minimum includes usable credit or is a separate fee; otherwise you can either overlook a charge or count the same charge twice.

What an upgrade or downgrade does to the current period

There are two materially different ways to change a subscription.

Keep the existing billing date. The provider applies an upgrade immediately and charges a stated difference or prorated adjustment. A downgrade may be scheduled for the end of the current period. This avoids replacing an already paid period with a new one, but the allowance and price adjustment still need checking.

End the current plan and start a new period. The provider calculates a credit from the old plan and applies it toward a new purchase. The billing date and allowance reset. What looks like “add more GB” can therefore be a new subscription purchase rather than a simple top-up.

Do not assume the credit is based only on unused days. One published policy uses the smaller remaining proportion of time or bandwidth. Illustratively, a 200 USD plan with half its time left but only 10% of its allowance remaining produces a 20 USD credit under that formula. Moving to a 300 USD plan would then require 280 USD, assuming no other adjustments.

Before confirming a change, inspect four things together: the amount due now, the next billing date, the new allowance, and the treatment of the old balance. Annual subscribers should also check the selected term. Some editing flows require the annual option to be selected again; otherwise the replacement plan becomes monthly.

Will renewal keep the same IPs and settings?

For a static proxy list, continuity may matter more than a small discount. Working addresses are already in scripts, browser profiles, monitoring tools, or access lists. Replacing them creates work and can interrupt a running task.

Some providers allow an active order to be extended with the existing IPs but do not allow the same order to be renewed after expiry. A later payment should not be treated as a guarantee of recovering released addresses.

Changing the package can also affect the list. Adding IPs may preserve existing ones; reducing the quantity removes some; changing countries or switching from shared to private can replace part or all of the allocation. If particular addresses matter, check whether you can choose which ones to retain before reducing the order.

For rotating pools, a paid subscription normally preserves access to the service, not indefinite ownership of an exit IP. Check session duration and replacement rules separately. Before a plan change, save the current configuration and verify afterward whether the endpoint, credentials, location settings, and API access remain valid.

Trials and discounts can change the next charge

A free trial can require a card and convert to a paid subscription when it ends. A small bank entry does not necessarily represent a paid trial: a 1 USD authorization hold may be a temporary card check that disappears without a completed charge. The trial’s end time and the following subscription price are more useful than the size of that initial entry.

Check whether conversion is automatic, what plan starts afterward, and which cancellation action prevents it. A saved card or a completed trial does not mean that subsequent payments require another manual confirmation.

Promotions also need a billing-event check. A discount described as lasting “six months” may apply to six eligible subscription payments. If upgrades or early renewals count, those actions can consume discounted payments before six calendar months have passed. Extra traffic may have no promotional discount at all.

For any introductory offer, compare the first invoice with the stated renewal price. If a price change applies from the next cycle, that is different from repricing an already paid period. Read the actual effective date and retain the purchase confirmation rather than assuming either permanent price protection or an immediate increase.

Failed payments and apparently sufficient balances

A failed renewal can put a subscription into a past-due state, leave a short grace period, or stop access. The exact sequence depends on the service. An email saying payment failed does not guarantee that the assigned IPs remain reserved indefinitely.

Check the renewal source before the deadline. Money in an internal wallet, a saved card, and usage credits are not interchangeable. Some services automatically use eligible account credit; others require a card payment for renewal even when usage credits remain. Direct cryptocurrency orders may require manual extension, while a wallet funded through cryptocurrency may support different billing rules.

Update payment details in advance. Some published renewal instructions require a card change at least an hour before expiry to prevent an attempt against the old card. Do not assume a last-second edit has changed a payment already being processed.

If renewal fails, inspect the subscription status and invoice before repeatedly trying again. Confirm whether a successful retry restores the old order, starts a new one, or requires support to recover access. For production work, monitor payment failures alongside proxy availability.

Stopping renewal, cancelling now, and pausing work

Similar button labels can produce very different results.

This difference is documented in real products: one service has an immediate cancellation flow that moves the account to a free plan, while a separate auto-renewal switch preserves the rest of the paid term. Elsewhere, cancellation simply schedules the subscription to end at the next boundary.

Stopping a scraper does not cancel a subscription. Nor should removing a card be treated as confirmation that every billing obligation has ended. Use the subscription control, check the resulting status, and save confirmation. Cancellation and a refund request are separate actions.

A further detail is easy to miss: a new payment can reactivate automatic renewal in some systems. After returning to the service, editing a plan, or paying again, recheck the renewal setting. A previous decision to turn it off may not survive a new purchase.

There is also no universal right to freeze the paid clock while keeping the same dedicated IPs reserved. If the dashboard offers “pause,” establish whether it pauses traffic, future payments, or the expiry of the purchased service.

Measure the useful capacity, not just the package size

A traffic plan has a nominal unit price and an effective price for the traffic you actually consume. In the earlier 20 GB / 60 USD example, the advertised rate is 3 USD/GB. If only 8 GB is used before the rest expires, the effective cost is 7.50 USD per consumed GB. A smaller package at a higher advertised rate may cost less for that workload.

Consumption is also not necessarily the size of saved files. Depending on the product, outgoing requests, incoming responses, headers, retries, and unsuccessful target-site responses can consume the allowance. A mismatch between a local counter and the dashboard needs a comparison of what each measures; it does not by itself prove inflated billing. Before choosing a tier, run representative work and measure billable usage per useful result.

For unmetered subscriptions, check the speed limit, concurrency allowance, rotation limits, and fair-use conditions. “No per-GB charge” does not promise unrestricted throughput. Mobile services may also face carrier restrictions even when the proxy subscription is described as unlimited.

Buying more of one resource may not fix a shortage of another. More GB does not necessarily increase simultaneous connections. More ports does not automatically unlock more locations. Base the upgrade on the actual bottleneck rather than the largest number on the pricing card.

Multiple plans under one account

If you run several projects, check whether each subscription has its own billing date or whether the service aligns them. Adding a second product can, under some billing systems, reset a shared cycle and generate charges for existing plans as well.

A combined invoice does not imply a combined traffic pool. IP allocations, GB, access permissions, and features can remain separate. Establish which subscription pays for each workload and whether a card change or cancellation affects one plan or the whole account.

What to verify before subscribing

Before the first payment, you should be able to answer these questions for the selected product:

1. What exactly am I reserving? IPs, GB, connections, a mobile connection, API results, or credits—and with which locations and features?
2. What is charged today and at renewal? Include the payment term, taxes shown at checkout, and the end of any promotion.
3. When do the allowance, access, and IP reservation expire? Check rollover and the deadlines for add-ons separately.
4. Which automatic purchases are enabled? Renewal, traffic top-ups, and wallet funding can be independent.
5. What happens when I change the plan? Confirm the immediate charge, credit formula, new cycle, and IP continuity.
6. What happens if payment fails? Know the retry process and whether there is a documented grace period.
7. Which action ends the subscription when I want it to end? Check the effective time and save the confirmation.

For regular workloads, a subscription can provide a stable budget and continuous access to a tested service. Its value depends on how much of the reserved capacity you can use and whether the renewal rules fit your work. The right plan makes both the next payment and the next operating period predictable.