How is proxy bandwidth measured and how do I use less of it

On traffic-billed plans, usage is the total bytes that pass through the proxy in both directions — your request headers and body going out, and the full response coming back, including images, CSS, fonts and scripts.

What actually consumes it

For a typical web page, the HTML is a small fraction of the transfer. Images and JavaScript bundles are usually 80–95% of it. If you are only parsing text, you are paying for the other 90% and throwing it away.

Cutting usage

Block what you do not parse. In a headless browser, abort requests for images, media, fonts and stylesheets. This is the single biggest saving available.

Ask for compression. Send Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br. HTML compresses to roughly a quarter of its size.

Use HEAD when you only need to know a page exists.

Do not re-fetch. Store an ETag or Last-Modified value and send a conditional request; unchanged pages come back as an empty 304.

Prefer the API. If the target exposes a JSON endpoint, it will be a fraction of the size of the rendered page.

Stop early. If the field you need is in the first few kilobytes, stream the response and close the connection once you have it.

Watching your usage

Live consumption is on the Traffic Usage page in the Dashboard. Check it after the first hour of any new job rather than at the end of the month.