Effective cost per used GB: divide by consumption, not allowance

Effective cost per used GB is the checkout total divided by the traffic the buyer will actually consume. It changes the bill comparison whenever a package contains more traffic than the job needs, because paid but unused GB cannot lower the cost of completed work. The provider’s advertised rate divides by the package allowance. Effective cost divides by the buyer’s expected use and therefore exposes the price of overbuying.

A package that becomes dearer when use is lower

Bright Data’s dataset plan named monthly, 30-day expiry publishes a residential package with 141 GB, a $3.50 per GB displayed rate, and a $499 monthly checkout. The provider also states that the monthly commitment does not roll over and that billing resets with the next month. Bright Data residential package, retrieved 2026-07-25T15:31:32Z

If a buyer expects to use 100 GB during that billing period, the applicable receipt is still $499. Dividing that checkout by 100 used GB produces an effective cost of $4.99 per used GB, with 41 GB left unused. Dividing by the 141 GB allowance would repeat the displayed package rate and hide the mismatch between the package and the job. Bright Data residential price evidence, retrieved 2026-07-25T15:31:32Z

That calculation is not a new vendor price. It is a buyer-specific comparison. Another buyer who can consume the full allowance has a different effective cost from one who uses only part of it. The result also depends on whether the unused balance expires, rolls over, or can be pooled across projects. In this example the published 30-day expiry and no-rollover on the provider’s page rule make the unused 41 GB a current-period loss rather than future inventory. Bright Data monthly billing terms, retrieved 2026-07-25T15:31:32Z

Publication coverage across 47 providers

Zero of the 47 providers publish a universal effectiveUsdPerGb value, because no provider can know each buyer’s actual consumption. The current dataset does, however, contain at least one traffic-priced plan with enough published quantity and checkout inputs to calculate an effective cost for 31 of 47 providers. That count requires a usable traffic tier or both min_checkout_usd and min_checkout_gb; a sticker rate alone does not qualify. Current effective-cost input count

For the other 16 providers, the collected rows do not provide a complete traffic purchase that supports this calculation. Some sell by IP, concurrency, or time instead of traffic. Others publish a starting rate but not a purchasable total. Their effective per-GB cost stays not published rather than borrowing a quantity from another plan.

Use a realistic consumption range before comparing plans. Calculate checkout cost for each point in that range, divide by the GB expected to be used, and keep expiry and rollover beside the result. A single best-case utilization assumption can make a large package appear cheaper precisely because it ignores the traffic most likely to go unused.