Bright Data is one of the largest proxy and web-data platforms: residential/datacenter proxies, a Web Unlocker that defeats anti-bot, a SERP API and ready-made datasets. Pricing depends on the product — per GB for proxies, per successful request for the APIs. Here's how to estimate it, and when something cheaper fits better.
| Product | Billed by | ≈ Pay-as-you-go |
|---|---|---|
| Datacenter proxies | per GB / per IP | from ~$0.10/GB |
| Residential proxies | per GB of traffic | ~$5–$15/GB |
| Web Unlocker | per successful request | ~$1–$3 / 1,000 |
| SERP API | per successful request | ~$1–$3 / 1,000 |
Bright Data offers a free trial with credits and pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum on many products — so you can run a real job and read the exact GB / per-request cost before committing. Use the trial to measure bandwidth per page; that single number decides whether residential proxies are worth it versus a cheaper datacenter pool or a flat-rate scraper.
1. Sign up at brightdata.com and verify your account.
2. Pick a product (Web Unlocker is the simplest for scraping protected sites).
3. Create a zone — you get a proxy host, port, username and password.
4. Route requests through the proxy endpoint.
Fetch a page through the Web Unlocker proxy:
Bright Data is powerful but priced for scale. For small or mid-size jobs, ScraperAPI bundles proxies + rendering into a simpler per-request credit model that's easier to predict. If you want LLM-ready markdown instead of raw HTML, Firecrawl is purpose-built for that. Only need search results? SerpAPI or Brave Search are cheaper and simpler. Reach for Bright Data when you need a massive, reliable residential network for high-volume or hard-to-scrape targets.
Yes — a free trial with credits, plus pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum on many products. That lets you measure real per-GB and per-request cost before committing.
By product: datacenter proxies are cheapest, residential proxies are billed per GB (~$5–$15 pay-as-you-go, lower with commitment), and the Web Unlocker / SERP APIs are billed per successful request (~$1–$3 per 1,000).
Almost always GB usage. Heavy pages, images and JavaScript rendering consume far more bandwidth than plain HTML. Measure GB-per-page during the trial and cache aggressively.
Bright Data has the larger proxy network and more products, priced for scale. ScraperAPI is simpler and more predictable for small-to-mid jobs with a single per-request credit model. Start with ScraperAPI unless you specifically need Bright Data's residential scale.
Not affiliated with Bright Data. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.