One SIM at a Flat Rate, or Pay by the Gigabyte?

There are two ways to pay for a mobile proxy. One is to buy traffic by the gigabyte from a pool of other people's phones. The other, which is what SimProxies does, is to rent one SIM in one modem for a flat price and use as much data as the work needs. Neither is dishonest and neither is right for everyone, so this page puts the two side by side: what you actually get, how the numbers work out at different volumes, and the kinds of jobs where each one is the better buy.

What you get for the money

Metered mobile proxies, usually sold as mobile or residential pools, give you access to many devices for short spells. The devices are typically phones whose owners installed an app that shares their connection in exchange for something. Each request is routed through whichever phone is available, the session may move to another phone after a few minutes, and you are billed for the bytes that pass through. You do not pick the phone and you do not keep it.

A SimProxies plan is one physical SIM from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon in one 4G or 5G device that we own, in a US city you choose, used by you alone for the term. You pay $5 a day, $28 a week or $65 a month on 4G, and $6, $31 or $75 on 5G, and the data is unlimited for proxy work. The SIM is the same SIM on the last day of the month as on the first.

The arithmetic at different volumes

Metered pricing varies by seller, but the shape is consistent: a small purchase costs somewhere in the region of fifteen to twenty-five dollars per gigabyte, and a large bundle brings that down to roughly ten dollars per gigabyte. Those are typical published figures as of autumn 2026 rather than any one company's list.

Put the monthly SIM against those. At twenty dollars per gigabyte, a $65 4G SIM costs the same as a little over three gigabytes of metered traffic. At ten dollars per gigabyte, the same $65 buys six and a half gigabytes. So the crossover for a month of work sits between three and seven gigabytes, depending on how big a bundle you would have bought. Below that, metered is cheaper. Above it, the SIM is cheaper, and the gap widens with every gigabyte, because the SIM's price does not move.

For the weekly and daily plans the crossover is lower in absolute terms, because the plan costs less, but the principle holds: a short, light job can be cheaper metered; a job that moves real data is cheaper on a SIM.

Two worked examples

First, a seller account that is managed every day: product photos uploaded, a dashboard open for hours, app syncs in the background, the occasional video. Over a month that is easily tens of gigabytes. Metered at even ten dollars a gigabyte, that is several hundred dollars; on a $65 SIM it is $65, and the account also gets the stable address it needed anyway.

Second, a one-off check of forty product pages from a US address to confirm a price. That is a few megabytes. Metered, it costs cents. On SimProxies, the cheapest honest way to do it is the hourly plan at $2 for two hours on 4G, which is still more than the metered cost, though it comes with a dedicated line for those two hours. If you only ever do jobs like this, a pool is the right buy.

What the meter does to behavior

Billing by the gigabyte changes how people work, and not always for the better. Teams start blocking images and scripts to save bytes, which makes their traffic look less like a person. They avoid app syncs and media, which are the very things a real account does. They stop before a job is finished because the bundle is running low. A flat-rate SIM removes all of that: the modem is yours, the data is unlimited, and the only question is whether the work is proxy work rather than bulk file transfer, which is what our fair use rule is about.

What the pool does to identity

The other cost of a pool is not on the invoice. Because the phone behind your request changes, the network identity of your work changes with it. For anonymous requests that is fine, even desirable. For an account, it means logging in from a different device in a different place every few days, which is the pattern platforms notice. A dedicated SIM gives an account one carrier, one metro and one device for the month, and that stability is worth more to most account work than any price difference in either direction.

When to pick which

Pick a metered pool when the work is many short, anonymous requests across many sites, when you need many cities touched lightly, or when the total data for the month is a gigabyte or two. Pick a flat-rate SIM when the work is an account, a profile, a routine or a long session, when it moves real data, or when it has to come from one place for weeks. Many teams run both, a pool for volume and a SIM per account, and that is a sensible division rather than a compromise.

If you are not sure which shape your job is, write to us before you rent. We would rather tell you a pool is the right buy than sell you a SIM for the wrong job.

• Light, anonymous, many sites: metered pool
• Accounts, profiles, long sessions, real data: flat-rate SIM
• Both at once: a pool for volume, a SIM per identity

The SimProxies numbers in one place

4G: $5 a day, $28 a week, $65 a month. 5G: $6 a day, $31 a week, $75 a month. Hourly test: $2 for the first two hours on 4G, $3 on 5G, up to four hours, with the hours counting toward a day if you keep the line. Unlimited data on every plan, one SIM and one modem per customer, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in eight US metros, free moves between cities, and refunds of unused days to your balance if you stop early.

Questions about per-GB pricing