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The data quota — what counts, and what does not

Some plans include a data allowance; others are unlimited. Here is how to read your usage and what makes it climb.

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Where to see it

My proxies shows, for each capped proxy, the usage and the limit. The counter adds upload and download: what you send counts as much as what you receive.

What actually consumes it

Use Order of magnitude for 1 GB
Text browsing, forms, posting listings ~5,000 to 10,000 pages
Browsing with images (marketplaces, social networks) ~500 to 1,000 pages
HTML scraping without assets tens of thousands of requests
Video at 720p ~1 hour
Video at 1080p ~25 minutes

These figures are orders of magnitude, not guarantees: a "heavy" page varies tenfold from one site to the next.

The message to take away: normal marketplace use — logging in, posting, answering messages — consumes very little. It is video that empties a quota, and nothing else comes close.

Saving without thinking about it

  • Block images in your antidetect browser if your work does not require them. By far the setting with the biggest return.
  • Block autoplay video.
  • Avoid software updates behind the proxy: they go over the mobile line and sometimes weigh several hundred megabytes.
  • When scraping, ask for the HTML alone, not images or stylesheets.

That last point often doubles or triples how far a quota goes.

The alert at 80%

You are warned when you reach 80% of your cap. That is deliberately before the cut-off: the idea is that you get to decide — ease off, renew, move to an unlimited plan — rather than discover the problem at the same time as the outage.

What happens at 100%

The proxy stops passing traffic. Your requests time out — see common errors.

The counter resets on renewal. Renewing your period therefore refreshes your quota at the same time as it extends your expiry date: one gesture for both.

Rotating the IP, on the other hand, resets nothing. The quota follows the proxy, not the address.

Unlimited, really?

On uncapped plans there is no counter and no cut-off. What remains is the physical reality of 4G: a throughput that varies with the hour, the cell and the state of the network. Intensive, continuous video use is still discouraged — not because it would be billed, but because it degrades the line for everything else you do on it.


See also: Your balance · Changing your IP

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