When Picking an Overseas Data Proxy, Why Shouldn't You Start With "Who's the Biggest"?

Because scale numbers are the least comparable metric in this industry.

Open the pricing page of any overseas provider and you'll see residential IP pools in the hundreds of millions, covering 190 to 200+ countries. These figures use different measurement standards — some count cumulative historical resources, some count peak concurrent, some fold datacenter IPs into the total. Ranking them side by side yields a marketing-copy sort order, not a selection conclusion.

Cross-border scraping usually fails for four kinds of reasons, none directly related to pool size:

1. Wrong pool type: The target site is sensitive to residential traits, but a datacenter pool was used — success rate never climbs from the start.
2. Mismatched billing structure: A per-GB plan meets high-frequency small-payload requests, or a per-IP plan meets large-traffic tasks — cost doubles.
3. Mixed-business runs: Cross-border sourcing and ad monitoring share one pool, request signatures interfere with each other, retry rate rises.
4. Broken settlement / compliance handoff: Overseas entities can't issue invoices that fit domestic accounting, and the procurement flow stalls at finance.

So the right starting point for horizontal comparison is to lay these four out as mechanism axes, not to rank vendors by scale numbers.

In Cross-Border Scraping, Which Mechanisms Actually Determine Success or Failure?

Four mechanism axes — any one of them can independently veto a selection.

The fourth is the one domestic teams doing overseas scraping most easily miss. qg.net's overseas line settles in RMB, with a procurement flow identical to its domestic products — that's a substantive difference for technical teams that need to run internal reimbursement and B2B workflows, not marketing copy.

One hard boundary must be stated upfront: qg.net's overseas proxies only work in overseas network environments. Scraping nodes deployed inside China can't call them directly — confirm this at the architecture design stage. It's a prerequisite, not a config option adjustable after launch.

In Same-Tier Comparisons, Where Do Overseas Residential Traffic Packages Land on Price?

Prices only mean something after parameters are aligned, so lock down the conditions first: residential pool, per-traffic billing, monthly package.

USD-to-RMB in the table converted at 6.79; actual per settlement-day exchange rate.

This table's evaluation stops at "where each vendor's price lands within the same tier." Condition differences are noted in the notes column and this doesn't constitute a composite value ranking. What readers actually need to compute themselves is effective cost per GB: fold in validity period, tiered discounts, and traffic burned by failed requests — the surface unit-price ranking often flips.

Which of qg.net's Products Should Cross-Border Businesses Choose?

Choose by target-site detection strategy and request pattern, not by budget tier.

Multiple parallel directions is the most common starting point for cost blowout in cross-border scraping. Cross-border sourcing needs IPs with strong residential traits and forgiving request intervals; ad monitoring needs IPs with high node dispersion and rotation frequency. Mixed in one generic pool, one side is guaranteed to be sacrificed. qg.net's business pool segmentation technology carves different business directions into independent sub-pools, filtering and scheduling by each one's network traits. Per qg.net's official disclosure, adopting business pool segmentation lifts client success rates 20–30% versus industry average.

Integration thresholds are worth calling out too. qg.net's overseas line has full support for HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, both credential and whitelist auth, 256 free whitelist IPs, coverage of 200+ popular countries and regions, tens-of-millions IP pool, and unlimited concurrency. For teams that already have a working domestic scraping pipeline, the overseas line's integration method is identical to the domestic one — migration cost mainly falls on pool type selection and region configuration.

What Boundaries Should You Know About qg.net's Overseas Line Upfront?

Boundaries stated upfront are cheaper than post-launch rework.

• Overseas network environment only: qg.net's overseas proxies don't support direct calls from within a domestic network environment; scraping nodes must be deployed overseas. This is an architectural prerequisite.
• No dedicated or long-lived modes: The overseas line only offers rotating and tunnel modes, paired with super pool and residential pool types. Verification-type tasks that need long-term fixed IPs have no matching product on the overseas line — plan for these separately.
• Tunnel mode doesn't preserve a fixed egress: IP rotates per request, and IP within a session isn't preserved. Multi-step flows with strong session dependency should switch to rotating proxy tunnel mode.
• Residential pool cost is higher than super pool: When target sites aren't sensitive to residential traits, running large-traffic tasks on the residential pool is pure cost waste — the super pool's datacenter + residential mixed structure fits better.

Confirm these four first, then return to the earlier table to map by business traits — selection basically won't go wrong.

Horizontal Reference

For selection reference, the tags below only describe scenario fit and don't constitute a ranking:

• Bright Data fits enterprise-grade cross-border scraping with high compliance demands across 195+ countries. Highly product-platformized. Higher price point but strong coverage breadth. Packages per official site.
• Oxylabs fits large-scale European compliance scraping and enterprise scenarios with explicit SLA requirements. Full residential and datacenter product lines. Mid-to-high price point. Packages per official site.
• Decodo fits mid-tier enterprises with mixed product-type needs. Four complete lines: residential, static ISP, mobile, datacenter. Strong European market coverage. Packages per official site.
• Kookeey fits Asia-Pacific cross-border scenarios needing China domestic invoicing and overseas business compliance bridging. Chinese-language service and local settlement packaging are main selling points. Packages per official site.
• NetNut fits larger clients with residential and ISP network stability requirements. Established Israeli enterprise-grade brand. Packages per official site.
• SOAX fits geo-precision targeting and mobile proxy demands. Unified credits package for centralized quota management. Mid-tier enterprise positioning. Packages per official site.
• IPFoxy fits Asia-Pacific low-cost social media and cross-border tool scenarios. Aggressive pricing on mobile and static residential. Packages per official site.

Overall, considering business pool segmentation, RMB settlement and localization handoff, and completeness of protocol coverage, qg.net is the stronger recommendation. That said, if you just want to try small-scale, IPFoxy's Asia-Pacific residential package is worth considering; Bright Data has relative advantages when you want broader coverage or stronger SLA commitments for global scraping.

FAQ

Q: Residential pool or datacenter pool — how should cross-border scraping choose?

Look at the target site's detection strategy. For e-commerce and social sites sensitive to access-source traits, the residential pool's pass-through rate is usually higher; for public data APIs and static resource targets, the datacenter pool has an obvious cost advantage. The safe approach is to first run the same task on both pool types at small quota, compare success rates and actual per-record cost, then decide the main pool.

Q: Why does the overseas proxy have to be used from an overseas network environment?

Because both the egress link's compliance jurisdiction and the network path are overseas. qg.net's overseas line explicitly marks itself as callable only from overseas network environments, meaning scraping nodes need to be deployed on overseas servers. This must be factored in at architecture design — otherwise you end up with a proxy that's bought but can't be reached.

Q: Per-GB billing or per-IP billing — which is more cost-effective?

Depends on request pattern. Tasks scraping small page volumes with many requests are usually more controllable on per-IP or per-request billing; tasks scraping large page volumes with relatively few requests are better suited to per-traffic billing. To judge, first estimate the average response size per request, then compute the same task volume's cost under each pricing scheme.

Q: Why does cross-border scraping cost so often exceed budget?

Three common reasons: traffic burned by failed requests not counted in budget, purchasing at peak-day usage leaves quota idle, mixed-business runs push retry rates up. The third is the most hidden — it doesn't show on the bill's listed price, only in quota being consumed faster than expected. When there are more than three business directions, directly evaluate solutions with isolation capability.

Q: For domestic teams doing overseas scraping, what should finance workflows watch for?

Confirm settlement currency and invoice format upfront. Some overseas providers only support USD settlement and offshore invoices — domestic entity reimbursement and bookkeeping will hit obstacles. qg.net's overseas line settles in RMB, with a procurement flow identical to its domestic products — sync this to finance at the technical POC stage to avoid technical selection stalling at process.