Bandwidth Limits

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This article discusses bandwidth limits, bandwidth overage charges, bandwidth caps, and prepaid bandwidth.

Available Bandwidth

ProxyMesh free trials have a fixed bandwidth limit of 100 megabytes ("MB"). A trial account expires 30 days after signup, or when the 100MB usage limit is reached.

ProxyMesh paid account plans include specific amounts of available bandwidth – measured in gigabytes ("GB") – in the price of the plan. 

ProxyMesh 10 plan – 10 gigabytes (GB) of bandwidth are included.

ProxyMesh 20 plan – 20 gigabytes (GB) of bandwidth are included.

ProxyMesh 50 plan – 50 gigabytes (GB) of bandwidth are included.

ProxyMesh 100 plan – 100 gigabytes (GB) of bandwidth are included.

There is no actual limit to the amount of bandwidth you can use in a paid account. That's because, if you use more than the GB amount available under a given plan, you are charged for the overage at your plan rate on your next bill.

Or – under the ProxyMesh 100 Plan only – you can purchase prepaid bandwidth at a reduced rate to cover any expected overage. (See Prepaid Bandwidth below.) With overage charges or prepaid bandwidth, you will not lose access to the proxy servers if you exceed your plan bandwidth.

Setting Bandwidth Limits

If you wish to avoid overage charges, without purchasing prepaid bandwidth, you can set a cap on bandwidth usage in your account, as shown in the screen illustrated below. As detailed in the sections below, you can set a cap, or limit, on either monthly usage or all-time usage, that is, over the entire life of your account.

When you reach the monthly or total bandwidth limits you have set, you will still have access to the proxy servers, but your requests will receive a 509 error code ("You have exceeded your bandwidth limit"). This response will continue until your next invoice is processed or you remove or increase your bandwidth cap. (See Removing or Changing a Bandwidth Limit below.

Calculation of Bandwidth Usage

Only whole GB are used in calculating your monthly bandwidth usage. Fractions of a GB can carry over to the next month's calculation. For example, if you use 3.406 GB for the month, your bandwidth usage would show as 3 GB for the current month, and the .406 GB would carry over to the next month and be reflected on your dashboard.

Bandwidth Overages

If you use more bandwidth than is available in a given plan, you will not lose access to the proxy servers, but you will be charged for the overage at your plan rate on your next bill. (See also Prepaid Bandwidth below).

Monthly Bandwidth Limit

If you have set a monthly cap based on your standard bandwidth level, and you go over the cap this month, you will receive 509 response codes ("You have exceeded your bandwidth limit...") until your next bill. You will be unable to use any more bandwidth and the servers will not process your requests for the remainder of the billing cycle. At the start of your next billing cycle, the counter will reset, allowing you to use up to your limit in bandwidth again. (See also Removing or Changing a Bandwidth Limit below.)

Total Bandwidth Limit

If you set a total bandwidth cap, then you will not be able to use more than that amount of bandwidth over all time.

For example, if you cap your total bandwidth at 10GB, then as soon as you reach that amount, you cannot use any more bandwidth, and will receive 509  response codes, unless you change the bandwidth limit.

Reaching Bandwidth Limits

If you have set a monthly bandwidth limit and have reached that cap, you will continue to have access to the proxy servers, but for the remainder of the billing cycle, until the counter resets, you will receive 509 error responses to your requests.

If you have set a total bandwidth limit, and have reached that cap, you will also receive 509 error responses to your requests.

Removing or Changing a Bandwidth Limit

You can remove or change the monthly or total bandwidth limits at any time on the Set Bandwidth Limit screen. On that screen, set the value of the cap to 0. Within 5 minutes after you change the setting to 0, the proxy servers will start accepting and processing your requests again.

You also have the option of increasing or decreasing either the monthly or the total bandwidth cap at any time by resetting the value as needed on the Set Bandwidth Limit screen.

Actual Bandwidth Usage

Since bandwidth limit checks are updated once per hour, your actual bandwidth usage may exceed the limit until the next hourly update.

Sub-Accounts

The bandwidth limit is per account, so a limit applied to a parent account does not apply to sub-accounts. The sub-account limits must be individually set by the parent account for each sub-account.

Prepaid Bandwidth

Prepaid bandwidth is only available in the ProxyMesh 100 plan. If you're on the ProxyMesh 100 plan, your dashboard displays a link on the right side, labeled "Buy Prepaid Bandwidth," where you can buy an unlimited amount of bandwidth at a reduced rate.

When you purchase prepaid bandwidth, any existing bandwidth usage that's over the included amount of 100GB will be immediately covered by the prepaid bandwidth. Whatever is left of the prepaid bandwidth will cover future usage until it runs out. In addition, any unused prepaid bandwidth carries over across billing periods.

Data Compression

You can speed transmission and help to control bandwidth usage by including compression headers in your requests. Compression may be especially useful for high-traffic research with sizeable amounts of data per request. Although our proxies strip out identifying headers, they do not alter the content of your request. A compression header you send to the remote server will be passed through the proxy, so that the proxy will send back the requested data in compressed format.

On the command line, you can pass a compression header with cURL, like this:

-H "Accept-Encoding: gzip"

Although the request example is for gzip, the server may apply a different compression method.

With the appropriate compression headers, your requests should be successful. Please see HTTP Compression for reference information.

Email Alert

When you hit a limit, you will receive an alert email notifying you that you've exceeded your bandwidth limit. That's in addition to 509 messages. This prevents surprises and you can find out quickly if you need to adjust your limits.