How much bandwidth does web scraping typically use?

Bandwidth usage varies dramatically based on website type and scraping approach.

Typical page sizes by content type:

  • Text-heavy sites (news, blogs): 100-500 KB
  • E-commerce product pages: 1-3 MB (with images)
  • Social media feeds: 2-5 MB (images, videos, ads)
  • Media-heavy sites (galleries): 5-20 MB per page

Scraping approach impact:

  • Headless browser (full page load): 100% of page size
  • Headless with resource blocking: 10-30% of page size
  • HTTP requests only (no browser): 5-15% of page size
  • API endpoint: 1-5 KB per request (most efficient)

Real-world examples:

  • Scraping 10,000 e-commerce products with headless browser: ~20 GB
  • Same scrape with images blocked: ~3 GB
  • Same scrape using HTTP only: ~500 MB
  • Same scrape using product API: ~50 MB

Factors that increase bandwidth:

  • Loading unnecessary assets (images, fonts, analytics)
  • JavaScript-heavy single-page applications
  • Auto-playing videos or animations
  • High-resolution images
  • Multiple failed requests and retries

Optimization opportunities:

Most scrapers waste 80-90% of bandwidth on resources they don't need. A bandwidth calculator helps identify exactly which resources you're loading and which can be safely blocked.

Monthly estimates:

  • Small project (1,000 pages/day): 60-200 GB/month
  • Medium project (10,000 pages/day): 600 GB - 2 TB/month
  • Large project (100,000 pages/day): 6-20 TB/month

These ranges assume moderate optimization. Without optimization, costs can be 5-10x higher.

Try our Proxy Bandwidth Calculator →

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