# Unlimited bandwidth residential proxies: where the limit is > 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. Source: https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/unlimited-bandwidth-proxies ## "Unlimited bandwidth" proxies and where the limit really is 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. ![4: Unlimited bandwidth, and four places the limit goes](https://mosaicbrowser.com/covers/unlimited-bandwidth-proxies.webp) An unlimited bandwidth residential proxy is unlimited in gigabytes and limited somewhere else. A residential seller pays for every gigabyte that crosses somebody's home connection, so a flat price only works if the plan caps something the seller can control: how many connections you keep open, how many ports or addresses you get, how fast each one goes, or a fair-use clause that lets the seller decide later. The plan is cheaper than paying per GB only if that other limit is one your work never reaches. ## Where the limit goes Read the terms of an "unlimited" plan for four things. Expect to find at least one of them: - a cap on threads, meaning connections open at the same time, so traffic is free and parallelism is not - a fixed number of gateway ports or static addresses, each one a single exit, with more exits costing more - a line rate on each port or on the whole plan, so heavy use gets slow rather than refused - a fair-use clause with no stated cap, under which the seller can throttle or suspend usage it considers excessive The last one is the hardest to plan around. When the clause has no number in it, the limit is real and you do not know where it is. A fifth thing to check is what kind of proxy it is. Some plans sold as unlimited residential turn out to be static ISP addresses: residential-looking IPs hosted in a data centre, sold per address. That is a different product with different strengths, and it is priced like one ([how per-GB and per-IP pricing compare](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/per-gb-vs-per-ip-proxy-pricing) has the arithmetic). 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) ## A thread is not a browser The cap that surprises people running browsers is threads, because a thread is usually counted as one open connection, and a browser is not one connection. Chrome opens up to six connections to each host for HTTP/1.1, and an ordinary page pulls from dozens of hosts: the site itself, its image servers, fonts, analytics, a tag manager. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 fold many requests into one connection per host, which helps, but a single page load still holds a connection per host it touches at its busiest moment, and a browser keeps some of them alive for reuse afterwards. A plan with a hundred threads is a few browsers at a time, not a hundred. So the question to ask about a thread-capped plan is how many profiles you run at once, at their busiest, not how many you own. In Mosaic every profile is a separate browser with its own proxy connection, so ten profiles open side by side are ten browsers' worth of connections through the proxy, whatever each one is doing. Profiles you have closed use nothing. ## Bandwidth is the cheaper number to know Gigabytes are easier to measure than threads, because a browser's traffic is mostly the pages it loads, and the seller's own usage page counts them. An order dashboard is light; a feed that autoplays video is many times heavier. Run one real profile on its usual work for a week, read the seller's meter at both ends, and multiply by the profiles you open ([how much proxy traffic a profile uses](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-traffic-per-browser-profile) has the method with DevTools as a cross-check). That gives you a monthly figure to set against a per-GB price. If that figure is small, a pay-per-GB plan is likely cheaper than any flat plan, and it has no thread cap to plan around. Unlimited plans earn their price at steady, heavy volume, and on work that can live within the plan's concurrency. ## What to read before paying 1. Find the word the plan uses for its cap: threads, connections, ports, IPs or "fair use". 2. If it is fair use, look for a number. No number means the seller decides. 3. Check whether "residential" means rotating home connections or static ISP addresses. 4. Check whether sticky sessions are offered and how long one lasts, because a profile needs the same exit for its whole session. 5. Run the proxy before you trust an account to it. That last step is the one we do for every proxy, flat-priced or not. Mosaic checks a proxy before every launch and refuses to open a profile behind one that has not answered and tunnelled, and the check records the latency it measured. A throttled port shows up there as a slow path rather than as a mystery later ([how to check a proxy before you use it](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/how-to-check-a-proxy-before-you-use-it) covers the rest of the list). Throttling that only arrives after heavy use is the one limit a single check cannot see, which is why the fair-use clause is worth reading before you buy. ## Questions ### Is unlimited bandwidth on a residential proxy really unlimited? The gigabytes are, usually, but something else is capped instead: concurrent threads, the number of ports or IPs, line speed, or a fair-use clause that lets the seller throttle heavy users. Residential traffic costs a seller money per gigabyte, so the limit has to sit somewhere. ### What is a thread on a proxy plan? Most sellers mean one open connection through the proxy at a time. A browser opens many connections for one page, so a thread cap limits how many browsers you can run at once, not how many requests you make. ### Is an unlimited plan cheaper than paying per GB? Only if your traffic is heavy and steady enough to use the flat price, and only if the cap it moved to does not bind first. Work out your gigabytes per month and your peak number of open browsers before comparing. ### What does fair use mean on a proxy plan? It means the seller keeps the right to slow down or stop traffic it considers excessive, usually without saying where that line is. Read the clause; if it has no number, treat the plan as limited by an amount you do not know. ## Related [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. [How much proxy traffic a browser profile uses](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/proxy-traffic-per-browser-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. [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. [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. [How to check a proxy before you use it](https://mosaicbrowser.com/guides/how-to-check-a-proxy-before-you-use-it): Check that a proxy answers and tunnels, where its exit really is, whether the address is residential or blocklisted, and that the browser stays behind it. [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. [Residential proxy prices, turned into a cost per profile](https://mosaicbrowser.com/blog/residential-proxy-prices-rising): Residential proxy prices are quoted per GB and move with plan size and the market. What an operator budgets is gigabytes per profile, times the rate. [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. ## 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.