Catalog Math: What Per-GB Bandwidth Really Costs a Store Compared With an Unlimited Line
Retail runs on repetition. You check competitor prices every few hours, confirm third-party sellers respect your minimum advertised price, audit product pages after every deploy and watch how listings rank in different cities. Each of those checks loads a page, and every page load has a weight. On per-GB proxy billing, that weight lands on your invoice. On a TigerProxies line you rent one dedicated US mobile device with unlimited data for a flat price. Below we size real catalog workloads, compare the two bills and point out plainly where a small shop is better off paying by the gigabyte.
The price sheets we are comparing
On the metered side we use a public US per-GB list from September 2026: $20 for a single gigabyte, $40 for two, and $300 for a 25 GB bundle, which brings the rate to $12 per gigabyte when you buy in bulk. TigerProxies charges $4 a day, $25 a week or $60 a month for 4G, and $5, $29 or $70 for 5G.
Break-even for a 4G month lands at exactly 3 GB against the $20 rate and exactly 5 GB against the $12 bundle rate. On 5G it is 3.5 GB and about 5.8 GB. Any store running automated checks on more than a few dozen products will blow past those figures in days.
Sizing a monitoring workload by SKU
The formula is simple: SKUs times checks per day times 30 days times page weight. Page weight is the variable most teams underestimate. A modern product page with images, scripts and recommendation widgets often weighs 1 to 2 MB fully loaded. Strip it to the HTML and structured data and you might get it down to 200 or 300 KB, but many sites only render prices through scripts, so you cannot always strip it.
Take a mid-size home goods brand watching 3,000 competitor SKUs four times a day. That is 360,000 page loads a month. At 300 KB per page it is about 108 GB; at a full 1.5 MB render it is about 540 GB. The table puts dollar figures on that and on a few smaller programs.
| Monitoring program | Monthly page loads | Data at page weight | Per-GB bill, best rate | TigerProxies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 SKUs checked weekly, full render | 80 | about 0.12 GB | $20 minimum, under $3 pro rata | $60 (4G month) |
| 300 SKUs daily, HTML only | 9,000 | about 2.7 GB | about $54 | $60 (4G month) |
| 3,000 SKUs four times a day, HTML only | 360,000 | about 108 GB | about $1,296 | $60 (4G month) |
| 3,000 SKUs four times a day, full render | 360,000 | about 540 GB | about $6,480 | $60 (4G month) |
Small catalogs should pay per gigabyte
Look at the first two rows. A boutique checking twenty rival listings once a week moves barely a tenth of a gigabyte a month, and even three hundred SKUs a day in HTML-only mode stays under our monthly price. If that is your operation, a metered plan is cheaper and we would tell you to buy it.
Per-GB also wins if you sell internationally and need to see prices from Canada, the UK or Australia. TigerProxies covers eight US metros only: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, North Carolina and Boston. And if you just want a one-time snapshot of a competitor's Black Friday pricing, a single metered gigabyte or a $4 day line will do it.
Why retail checks go better on a dedicated line
Beyond cost, the metered model has a structural quirk for commerce work. Per-GB mobile residential is usually a pool of consumer handsets, often enlisted through app SDKs, and your request lands on a random one of them. Retail sites personalize by location, so a price check that hops between neighborhoods and networks can return prices that are not comparable from one run to the next. You end up chasing noise in your pricing data.
A TigerProxies line is one real 4G or 5G modem, router or Android phone on an AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon SIM, used only by you, in the metro you selected at checkout. Keep a sticky IP so every check in a run comes from the same carrier address, then rotate on your own schedule through the dashboard, the rotation link or the API, or run per-request rotation. Rotations are unlimited and there is no wait between them. Addresses come from the carrier's regional CGNAT pool, so you will see some repeat over a day, which is normal for mobile.
Putting two lines to work across regions
Say that home goods brand sells heavily in the Southeast and on the West Coast. It runs one 4G line in Miami, which leans AT&T, and one in Los Angeles, for $120 a month total. The Miami line handles the morning and evening competitor sweeps; the Los Angeles line covers MAP compliance on marketplace sellers and an ad placement check after each campaign launch. On a meter, the HTML-only version of that workload alone runs well over a thousand dollars a month. The flat lines absorb it, plus the full-render audits the QA team runs after each storefront deploy.
When the brand opens a Chicago warehouse and wants Midwest pricing, it moves the Los Angeles line to Chicago from the dashboard at no charge. Setup never changes: host, port, username and password for HTTP(S) or SOCKS5 are in the dashboard, and UDP over SOCKS5 is there if a tool needs it. Typical speeds run 20 to 45 Mbps on 4G and 50 Mbps or more on 5G, depending on signal.
How to decide for your store
Multiply out your SKUs, frequency and page weight. Under about 3 GB a month, or checks outside the US, choose per-GB. Above that, a flat line wins, and every added SKU from there on costs nothing. Pay by card through Stripe, PayPal, Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum, Zelle or bank wire, and reach support around the clock by email or the Telegram bot. Keep monitoring within each marketplace's terms; a proxy changes where your requests come from, not the rules they fall under.
Questions about per-GB pricing
How many SKUs can I monitor before an unlimited line is cheaper?
It depends on page weight. At 300 KB per page, 3 GB covers about 10,000 page loads a month, roughly 330 SKUs checked daily. Beyond that, a $60 TigerProxies 4G line costs less than paying $20 per GB.
Is there a data limit on TigerProxies plans?
No. Every plan includes unlimited data, so adding SKUs or checking more often does not change the price.
Can I see prices as shoppers in different US cities see them?
Yes, within our eight metros. Choose the metro at checkout and move lines between metros free from the dashboard.
Do you offer proxies for international storefronts?
No, TigerProxies is US-only. For prices in other countries, a per-GB global service is the better option.
Should I run full page renders or HTML only?
Use HTML only when prices appear in the source; render fully when prices load through scripts. On a flat line the extra weight of full renders costs nothing.