Commitment and prepayment terms: the rate is not the amount due
A commitment is the time or recurring spend a buyer agrees to, while prepayment is money placed with the provider before the corresponding usage occurs. Both change the bill before proxy traffic begins. A low monthly-equivalent rate can require an annual checkout, and a pay-as-you-go rate can still require a wallet deposit. The comparison must show the amount due and when it is due, not just normalize every offer to one month. Current 710-row plan dataset, generated 2026-07-26T02:15:19Z
A named plan billed for a full year
infatica-residential-ipv4-annual, named Residential IPv4 annual, publishes a 365-day commitment. Its annual ladder spans 300 to 12,000 GB and $922 to $24,960, with the provider advertising a 20% annual-billing discount. Those totals are the relevant purchase amounts. Presenting only their monthly equivalents would hide the cash required for the annual term. Infatica annual residential pricing, retrieved 2026-07-25T15:57:28Z
Commitment and expiry remain separate. An annual billing term says how long the commercial purchase runs. It does not prove that every unused GB survives for 365 days, renews automatically, or rolls into another term. Those claims need their own fields and evidence. The same separation applies to refunds: a long commitment does not establish a prorated exit right.
Prepayment also needs a separate flag. A wallet-funded traffic plan may describe itself as having no commitment because the buyer can stop adding funds. That does not make the initial deposit optional or make the advertised per-unit rate equal to the first checkout. Conversely, monthly invoicing is a commitment state but does not by itself prove that the provider requires a prepaid wallet.
Publish rate across 47 providers
Forty-four of 47 providers, or 93.6%, publish at least one commitment state in the current dataset. Valid states include none, monthly, quarterly, annual, or custom. A value of none is an explicit no-commitment statement. Custom means the term depends on a negotiated offer. The remaining three providers have no published commitment state at provider level, so null cannot be rendered as no commitment. Current commitment fields across all providers, generated 2026-07-26T02:15:19Z
Thirty-nine of 47 providers, or 83.0%, also publish a numeric billing period on at least one plan. Only two of 47, or 4.3%, explicitly mark a wallet top-up requirement. The other 45 are not proven postpaid; the prepayment field is simply null or absent in the collected evidence. Current billing and wallet fields across all providers, generated 2026-07-26T02:15:19Z
Before comparing plans, record the checkout total, billing period, renewal behavior, committed spend, deposit or wallet requirement, refund rule, and traffic expiry. Use an explicit no-commitment value only when published. If the provider gives a unit rate but withholds the deposit or contract total, keep the first payment not published and exclude that row from cheapest-checkout claims.