Short version. Buy rotating residential traffic wholesale at $0.59–$0.68 per gigabyte, sell it in 5–20 GB packs at $1.00–$1.50, keep 35–55%. Start with one 500 GB pool ($340), sell activation codes through a Telegram bot or a simple shop, and only integrate an API once you have repeat buyers. Never prepay more traffic than you can sell in a month.
Step 1 — The three models, and which to start with
| Model | You pay | You earn | Who owns the customer | Effort |
|---|
| Affiliate | Nothing | 10% of every payment your referrals make, for life | The supplier | Post a link |
| Prepaid keys (CDKey) | A pool from 500 GB ($340) | Your price minus $0.59–$0.68/GB | You (the buyer redeems a code on the supplier's site) | A shop or a bot that sells codes |
| White-label API | The same pool | The same margin | You, completely: your panel, your hostname | A day of integration |
Start with keys. It proves you can sell before you write code, and the pool you buy is the same one the API draws from later, so nothing is wasted. Add the affiliate link to your content regardless: it costs nothing and catches the buyers who want to deal with the supplier directly.
Step 2 — Four questions that pick your supplier
- What is the minimum, and does unsold traffic expire? Many programmes quote a low rate that only works if you sell it all in 30 days. A pool that keeps is worth several cents per gigabyte more than one that evaporates.
- Is there an API and a custom hostname? Without an API you will hand-provision every customer. Without a CNAME your customers will see the supplier's hostname in their proxy lines and buy from them next time.
- Whose network is it, really? 911 S5, IPIDEA (the old IP2World, 922, PIA S5) and NetNut were all dismantled between 2024 and 2026, and the brands that quietly resold them died the same week. Ask in writing which upstreams the supplier uses and whether any were affected. See what happened to NetNut resellers.
- Can you test for the price of a coffee? Buy one gigabyte retail and run your real targets before you buy a pool. A supplier that will not sell small is telling you something about how they treat small resellers.
How PyProxy answers: entry 500 GB, pool never expires, reseller API with CNAME, upstreams unrelated to the seized networks, retail from a couple of dollars for testing. Details on the white-label page.
Step 3 — The numbers on a real order
The Trade rung, taken all the way through. Nothing rounded in our favour.
| Line | Amount |
|---|
| You buy 1 TB at $0.62/GB | $620 |
| Cut into 100 codes of 10 GB, sold at $12 each ($1.20/GB) | $1,200 revenue |
| Gross margin | $580 (48%) |
| If you sell only 60 codes in the first month | $720 revenue, pool paid off, 400 GB still in stock and not expiring |
| Same order at a supplier whose traffic expires in 30 days, 60 codes sold | $720 revenue, $620 cost, 400 GB lost. Margin $100. |
That last row is the whole argument for non-expiring inventory. It is also why we say buy the rung you can clear, not the cheapest one: a 2 TB pool at $0.59 saves $30 per terabyte over 1 TB at $0.62 and ties up twice the cash.
Step 4 — Pricing your packs
- Small packs carry the margin. 5 GB at $7.50 ($1.50/GB) sells to people testing; 10 GB at $12; 20 GB at $20 ($1.00/GB); 50 GB at $45. Retail brands charge $1.50–$3.00 per gigabyte for small volumes in 2026, so you are still the cheap option.
- Do not undercut your own supplier's smallest pack by much. If you sell far below retail you attract the customers who will churn for ten cents; if you match it, buyers go direct. A gap of 15–25% under the supplier's small-pack price is where resellers stay.
- Bundle, do not discount. Traffic plus setup help, traffic plus a browser profile, traffic plus your own tutorial. The bundle is the reason to buy from you rather than from the network directly.
Step 5 — Where the customers are
- Telegram and Discord. Automation, antidetect-browser, SMM, sneaker and scraping communities ask “which proxies?” daily. A bot that answers with a price and a code wins that thread. This is where most of our resellers live.
- Your own content. A setup tutorial for one antidetect browser, one scraping library or one platform, with your packs at the bottom, brings buyers for years. Search engines and AI assistants both cite specific how-to pages.
- Marketplaces and forums in your language. Non-English markets are under-served; the same $12 code sells in Portuguese, Vietnamese or Turkish with far less competition.
- Software you already sell or support. If you install tools for clients, the proxy line is a natural add-on and you already have their trust.
Step 6 — Support, refunds and the rules
- Write an acceptable-use policy and copy the supplier's into it. Refuse abuse plainly; it protects the pool your other customers use.
- Know what the product cannot do before you sell it: e-mail sign-ups on the big providers are hard for any residential pool, sticky sessions hold up to 30 minutes, some countries are thin. Say so, and sell the use cases that work.
- Refund unused traffic when the fit is wrong. It costs you almost nothing (the gigabytes go back to your pool) and it is the single strongest retention tool a small brand has.
- Test a line yourself before you answer a “country X is not working” ticket. Sixty seconds of curl beats a paragraph of theory.
The mistakes that end proxy resellers
- Prepaying a year to one supplier for a lower rate. See the row on expiring inventory above, then remember the seized networks.
- Promising static residential IPs when the product is rotating with a sticky option. Every refund ticket we have seen from a reseller started with that promise.
- Selling to everyone. A reseller who serves one community well (say, Dolphin Anty users in Brazil) beats one who lists on ten marketplaces.
- Ignoring the upstream question. If you cannot name the networks behind your supplier, you cannot warn your customers, and one day you will not need to.
First pool: 500 GB for $340, one crypto payment, credited immediately. Mint codes the same minute.
Buy a wholesale pool
White-label programme
Related: Reseller & CDKey programme · Reseller API · Affiliate: 10% for life · NetNut alternatives · SOCKS5 proxies
Proxy reselling FAQ
How much money do I need to start reselling proxies?
With an affiliate link, nothing. With prepaid keys or a white-label API you need one wholesale pool: at PyProxy that is 500 GB for $340. Most other programmes ask for a monthly commitment or several hundred dollars that expire after 30 days.
Is reselling proxies profitable?
At $0.59 to $0.68 wholesale and a resale price of $1.00 to $1.50 per gigabyte, gross margin is 35% to 55%. A reseller moving 1 TB a month at $1.00 keeps roughly $380 to $410 before their own marketing and support time. The profit is in repeat customers, not the first sale.
Do I need my own servers or a proxy network?
No. The wholesale supplier runs the network, the gateway and the upstream contracts. You need a way to take payment and a way to hand over credentials: a Telegram bot, a shop, or simply e-mailing activation codes.
Is it legal to resell proxies?
Selling proxy access is legal in most jurisdictions; what customers do with it is their responsibility and yours to police under an acceptable-use policy. Copy the supplier's AUP into your terms, refuse obviously abusive use, and keep refunds simple.
Affiliate or reseller: which is better?
Affiliate if you have an audience and no time: 10% of every payment, forever, no inventory. Reseller if you want to own the customer and the price: higher margin per gigabyte, but you hold stock and do first-line support.
What is the biggest mistake new proxy resellers make?
Prepaying a year of traffic to a single supplier. Three of the largest residential networks were taken down by law enforcement between 2024 and 2026 and their resellers lost everything prepaid. Buy the rung you can sell in a few weeks and keep a second supplier's credentials on file.
