1 GB of residential proxy lasts for about 20,000 light HTML pages, 4,800 public Instagram profiles or 350 full page loads in a browser, which is about 6 hours of browsing at one page a minute. The figures are bytes we measured and published between 3 September and 20 October 2026; the gigabytes stay valid for the plan term.
"How long" has two answers. One is how much work a gigabyte does: that depends on what you fetch, not on the proxy, and it ranges from tens of thousands of pages to a few hundred. The other is how long the gigabyte stays usable: that is the plan term. This page gives both, from pages we measured, and explains what the "GB" in a residential plan counts. To size a monthly plan from a page count, use our guide on how much proxy data you need; this page is the quick view per gigabyte.
1 GB in pages: ten pages we measured
Each row is a real fetch, published on QuanticData with its method and date. Pages per GB is 1,000,000,000 divided by the bytes per page, rounded.
| Page | How it was fetched | Bytes per page | Pages per 1 GB | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia article | HTML, gzip | 47 KB | about 21,000 | 3 Sep 2026, sizing guide |
| TikTok public profile | HTML, compressed | 49 KB | about 20,000 | 4 Oct 2026, Instagram and TikTok test |
| Wikipedia home page | HTML | 119,573 bytes | about 8,400 | 13 Sep 2026, residential test |
| Instagram public profile | HTML, compressed | 207 KB | about 4,800 | 4 Oct 2026, Instagram and TikTok test |
| NYTimes front page | HTML, gzip | 302 KB | about 3,300 | 3 Sep 2026, sizing guide |
| Best Buy home page | HTML, no browser | 506,484 bytes | about 2,000 | 26-28 Sep 2026, 53-target measurement |
| BBC News front page | Full load in a browser | 1.24 MB | about 800 | 11 Sep 2026, Playwright measurement |
| YouTube transcript | Open-source package, retries included | about 1.6 MB | about 625 | 20 Oct 2026, YouTube transcript test |
| GitHub repository page | Full load in a browser | 1.94 MB | about 515 | 11 Sep 2026, Playwright measurement |
| Best Buy home page | Rendered in a browser | 4,968,555 bytes | about 200 | 26-28 Sep 2026, 53-target measurement |
The spread is a factor of about 100, and almost all of it is the fetch mode. The same Best Buy home page cost 506,484 bytes as HTML and 4,968,555 bytes rendered: 9.8 times the bandwidth, for one word fewer. A browser downloads the page plus every script, stylesheet, font and image it references; the HTTP Archive puts the median desktop page at 2,862 KB in 2025, which is about 350 full page loads per GB. The two browser rows from our Playwright measurement are floor values, because some cross-origin files report no size to the browser.
1 GB in hours and days: five everyday jobs
Turn the bytes into a rate and the gigabyte becomes a duration. The assumptions are in the first column; the bytes come from the table above.
| Job | Traffic | 1 GB lasts |
|---|---|---|
| A scraper fetching one TikTok-size page (49 KB) per second | about 0.18 GB an hour | about 5.7 hours |
| A browser profile opening 60 full pages an hour at the median desktop weight (2,862 KB) | about 0.17 GB an hour | about 5.8 hours |
| Monitoring 1,000 public Instagram profiles a day (207 KB each) | about 0.21 GB a day | about 4.8 days |
| Checking 500 retailer home pages a day as HTML (506,484 bytes each) | about 0.25 GB a day | about 4 days |
| Reading 100 YouTube transcripts a day with the open-source package (about 1.6 MB each) | about 0.16 GB a day | about 6 days |
Add about 10% for request headers, TLS handshakes and the occasional retry, as our sizing guide does, and more if many requests fail. Antidetect and browser profiles cost more than the table suggests on their first visit to a site and less afterwards, because the browser caches scripts and images between pages.
What a GB means in a residential proxy plan
- A decimal gigabyte. 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes, and 1 GB is 1,000 MB. That is how the QuanticData dashboard counts used and remaining traffic.
- Bytes on the wire, not page size. The meter sees what crosses the connection, which for most HTML is the compressed body. In our 11-page measurement the decoded HTML was 4.7 to 10 times larger than what crossed the wire, so a client that does not ask for compression pays that difference.
- Everything the connection carries. Responses, the requests you send, headers, redirects and TLS handshakes all pass through the proxy.
- Failed requests count. A blocked page, an error or a challenge still moves bytes, as our residential proxy guide explains. Retries are the usual reason a job uses more than planned.
- Only what you route through it. A proxy is set per application, so nothing else on your computer touches the plan.
How long the gigabytes stay valid
Residential packs are not monthly allowances. You buy gigabytes and use them at your own pace over the plan term, with no monthly reset inside it:
| Line | Smallest pack | Term | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential Basic | 5 GB | 30, 90 or 360 days, by pack | $0.80/GB |
| Residential Premium | 1 GB | 30 or 90 days, by pack | $2.20/GB |
| Mobile | 1 GB | 90 days for the 1 GB pack | $2.30/GB |
| Free Residential Basic trial | 100 MB | 5 days | free, SMS verification, no card |
Unused bandwidth expires at the end of the pack's term, which each pricing card shows. Every pack with its size, term and price per GB is on the residential volume pricing page. The trial is a measurement budget as much as a test: 100 MB is about 480 public Instagram profiles or about 35 full browser page loads, enough to read your own bytes per page before you buy.
Five ways to make 1 GB last longer
- Ask for compression. Send
Accept-Encoding: gzip, br. Most HTTP clients do; minimal ones do not, and pay the decoded size. - Fetch HTML before you render. In our 53-target measurement, 26 of 53 sites did worse or no better in a browser than as plain HTML, and the render cost up to 15 times the bytes.
- Block what you do not need when you render. Images, fonts and video are most of a page's weight and rarely the data you want.
- Keep sessions sticky where a flow allows it. Reusing one connection avoids a new TLS handshake on every request.
- Stop retrying blind. A request that failed three times on one exit is cheaper to move to a new session than to repeat.
For heavy pages, per-GB billing stops being the cheapest unit: a web scraping API bills per successful page, whatever its size, and never bills a failed one. The crossover is worked out in the sizing guide.
Which residential line to put the gigabyte on
For public pages at volume, Residential Basic from $0.80/GB with packs valid up to 360 days. For sites that challenge cheaper pools, or flows that need one IP for hours, Residential Premium from $2.20/GB, sold from a 1 GB pack. Both are on QuanticData residential proxies, with the country in the username, HTTP or SOCKS5, rotating or sticky.
