# How much proxy traffic do I need? Measure one profile > How much proxy traffic do you need? It follows the pages a profile loads, not the profile count. Measure one profile for a week, then multiply. Source: https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-traffic-per-browser-profile ## How much proxy traffic a browser profile uses How much proxy traffic do you need? It follows the pages a profile loads, not the profile count. Measure one profile for a week, then multiply. ![1 week: Measure one profile for a week, then multiply](https://mosaicbrowser.com/covers/proxy-traffic-per-browser-profile.webp) How much proxy traffic you need comes down to what your profiles load. The number of profiles in the library hardly matters. A browser fetches every script, font, image and video segment a page names, and an order dashboard and a video feed are not in the same league. So measure one real profile for a week, then multiply by the profiles you open. We won't print a table here, because every one we have seen, ours included, is a guess set in a confident font. In [what a proxy costs per profile per month](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-cost-per-account) we used 0.5 GB and 3 GB a month as round assumptions and said so on the page. Your own figure will be different, and it takes a week to get. ## What the seller's meter counts A per-GB residential plan counts the bytes that pass through the seller's gateway. That covers a lot more than the article or dashboard you had in front of you: - the page itself, and every script, stylesheet, font and image it asks for - video and audio segments, which on a feed with autoplay are most of the total - ad frames, analytics beacons and tag managers, each fetching their own files - API calls a dashboard makes while it sits open, polling for new orders or messages - the TLS handshake and headers on every new connection - whatever the browser fetches for itself in the background The fourth and the last are the ones nobody counts. Leave a shop's orders dashboard open and it can keep asking its server about new orders all afternoon, so a tab you "only opened once" is a slow drip on the meter. And Chrome opens connections before you ask for anything. A restored tab preconnects to its own site during start-up; we learned that when a proxy counter of ours was reset too late, and the story is in [Chrome preconnected before we started measuring](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/chrome-preconnects-before-you-measure). Sellers differ on rounding, on whether upload counts, and on whether a failed connection is billed. Those are written on each seller's own pricing or help page, and that page beats any forum thread. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer. [How it works: Provider minting](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers) ## Why a profile is not your everyday browser Your own browser has a warm cache. The logo, the fonts and the big script bundle of a site you visit daily were downloaded weeks ago and are read from disk. A separate browser profile has a separate cache, so its first visit to every site downloads all of it again, through the proxy. That has three consequences for a profile library: 1. A new profile is at its most expensive in its first days, while its cache fills. 2. Clearing a profile's cache resets it to that state. Mosaic has a Clear cache action, per profile and in bulk, and the next visit after it pays full price. 3. Ten profiles on the same site each download that site once. Separate caches are part of keeping profiles apart, so the cost is the point, not a fault. Warm-up counts too. Mosaic's warm-up robot browses a profile in its own browser, with its own proxy, so it has history and cookies before the site that matters sees it. Every page in a warm-up plan goes through that profile's exit and onto the same bill. Mosaic's check of a proxy before each launch also goes through the proxy, which is small next to a page load but not zero. ## How to measure one profile The test profile should be an ordinary one, opened on the sites the others will open, at the hours they will be open. There are three places to read its bytes and each answers a different question. ### DevTools, for one page Open DevTools on the Network tab before the page loads (Cmd+Option+I on a Mac, F12 on Windows), then load it. At the bottom you get two figures, **transferred** and **resources**. Transferred is the compressed size that came over the wire, and that is what a seller meters. Resources is what those bytes unpack to, which is why it is usually the larger number. Then tick **Disable cache** and reload: that is a cold visit, which is what a new profile pays. Untick the box and reload once more for the warm figure. The gap between those two readings is the extra a profile costs in its first week. DevTools only counts the tab it is attached to, and only while it is open. Use it to find out which page is expensive. Don't use it for a week's total. ### chrome://net-export, for the whole browser `chrome://net-export` writes every network event to a JSON file: all tabs, plus whatever the browser does on its own. Leave the privacy option on its default, which strips cookies and credentials, start logging, browse for an hour, and stop. The file opens in Chromium's NetLog viewer. Reading it is slow work next to DevTools, but it is the only one of the three that shows you requests no tab asked for. ### The seller's usage page, for the bill Your bill comes from the seller's meter, so that is the number to trust. A week of the test profile running alone gives a clean reading, and a sub-user or separate plan keeps it apart if your seller offers either. Day eight's usage minus day one's, over seven, is a day. Thirty of those is a month. Mosaic can also put an inspector in the path, for when the question is which requests make up that number. Settings › Network routes every launch through Proxyman, Charles, mitmproxy, Fiddler or Burp; each request shows up there with its size, and the profile still browses from its own exit. ## How much proxy traffic you need, from one profile to a plan From one profile's figure to a plan is four lines of arithmetic: 1. Take one profile's measured month. 2. Multiply by the profiles you open in a month. Leave out the ones that sit in the library unopened, because they move no bytes. 3. Add the warm-up runs you have planned for new profiles. They go out through the same exits. 4. Add a margin. A site that ships a new script bundle makes every profile download it again, cold. As a worked example, and not a forecast, take the two round assumptions from the cost post: twenty profiles at 0.5 GB is 10 GB a month, and the same twenty at 3 GB is 60. Too much? Closing the tabs nobody is reading helps most with dashboards, since those poll. Clear a profile's cache only when you mean to start it over. Video feeds belong in the profiles whose work is video. Putting several profiles behind one exit would fit a cheaper plan too, at a price: every site then logs those profiles arriving from one address. [Forty profiles on forty exits](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/forty-profiles-forty-exits) is the long version of that warning. Mosaic doesn't sell proxy traffic, so the plan you sized is bought from your own seller. Paste one of its gateway lines into Mosaic as a [provider](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers) and every profile mints its own session on that plan. ## Questions ### How many GB of proxy traffic does one browser profile use? We can't give you one figure, and a seller's table can't either. It depends on the sites. Signing in to a seller dashboard and reading the orders page is light. Scrolling a feed that autoplays video is many times heavier. Your seller's usage page, read on day one and day eight of a test week, gives you your own number. ### Does the number of profiles change how much traffic I need? Yes, by multiplying it. Each profile keeps its own cache, so ten profiles opening one dashboard every morning download it ten times. Profiles you never open cost nothing; count the ones you use. ### Is DevTools' transferred figure the same as what my proxy seller bills? Close, for that one tab: it counts compressed bytes over the wire. It does not see other tabs, Chrome's own background requests or connection overhead, so the seller's meter usually reads a little higher, and the seller's figure is the one you pay. ### Does warm-up use proxy traffic? Yes. Mosaic's warm-up robot browses each profile in its own browser through that profile's own proxy, so every page it opens is counted by your seller like any other visit. ## Related [What a proxy costs per profile per month](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-cost-per-account): Proxy cost per account depends on how the seller bills. Worked sums for per-GB, per-IP and per-port plans at one, ten and a hundred profiles. [Why residential proxies cost what they cost per GB](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/why-residential-proxies-cost-more): Residential proxies are expensive because every gigabyte crosses somebody's home connection. For a browser profile, count working sessions, not gigabytes. [Residential proxy: an exit on a home internet connection](https://mosaicbrowser.com/glossary/residential-proxy): A residential proxy sends your traffic out through an address an ISP assigned to a home connection, so sites see a household rather than a data center. [Provider accounts: one gateway line, one exit per profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/features/proxy-providers): Paste your proxy seller's gateway line once and Mosaic mints a separate session for every profile, so each one browses from its own exit address. [Same proxy session on multiple profiles: forty profiles, forty exits](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/forty-profiles-forty-exits): The same proxy session on multiple profiles means one exit IP for all of them. A batch of ours did it in September 2026; now every profile mints its own. ["Unlimited bandwidth" proxies and where the limit really is](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/unlimited-bandwidth-proxies): An unlimited bandwidth residential proxy still has a limit. It moves to threads, ports, speed or a fair-use clause, and the terms say which one. [The proxy bill is usually bigger than the browser bill](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-bill-bigger-than-browser): Past a couple of dozen profiles, the exits cost more each month than the anti-detect browser. That is why we price per month, not per profile. [Per-GB vs per-IP proxy pricing for long-lived profiles](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/per-gb-vs-per-ip-proxy-pricing): Per GB vs per IP proxy pricing over a year: a light profile is cheaper per GB, a busy one per IP, and the crossover is lifetime gigabytes against months. ## Mosaic, on your own computer The browser this blog is about: its own Chromium, fingerprints from real machines and a proxy exit per profile. Free holds 3 profiles. Pro is $49 a month for any number. Mosaic is a desktop app Email yourself the link and open it on your computer.