Best Bright Data Alternatives in 2026 (Proxies, Pricing & APIs)

Bright Data is the largest web data platform in the market: a residential pool it describes as roughly 150 million IPs, a Web Unlocker, a Web Scraper API with per-site record schemas, and a dataset marketplace. It has also become easier to start with than its reputation suggests: the scraper products have a flat published price, a free monthly allowance and no card requirement. This guide is for the cases that price and shape still do not fit: plain pages where $1.50 per 1,000 buys unblocking you do not need, residential volumes between pay-as-you-go and a $499 plan, and known platforms where a documented endpoint replaces the record-mapping step entirely.

Is Bright Data actually the wrong tool?

Stay with Bright Data if you need the largest proxy network, a Web Unlocker and Web Scraper API with unlimited concurrency, or its dataset marketplace, and you want a flat per-record price you can budget: $1.50 per 1,000 records or requests pay-as-you-go, $1.30 per 1,000 beyond the roughly 384,000 included in the $499 Scale plan, 5,000 free a month with no card, and pay only for success. Residential proxies are $4 per GB pay-as-you-go at the current promotion ($8 list), or $499, $999 and $1,999 a month for 141, 332 and 798 GB. Look at alternatives when:

• $1.50 per 1,000 is above your target. Decodo's Web Scraping API runs $0.30 to $0.50 per 1,000 standard requests and $1.20 to $1.50 for premium with rendering; Oxylabs quotes $0.25 to $1.35. If your pages are plain, Bright Data's flat rate prices in unblocking you do not need.
• The residential plans are too big a step. After $4 per GB pay-as-you-go, the first plan is $499 a month. Decodo sells 3 GB at $3.75 per GB.
• You do not need a proxy at all. For known platforms, a documented endpoint returns the fields; the Web Scraper API returns records you still map into your schema per site.
• You want a recurring free tier on structured output. Bright Data's 5,000 free records a month is generous for the enterprise group; Crawlora's 2,000 credits a month are structured JSON.
• You are evaluating on promotional pricing. The residential rates shown are marked 50% off list. Budget on list ($8 per GB pay-as-you-go) unless the promotion is in your contract.

What to look for in a Bright Data alternative

• Per-1,000 price: Bright Data $1.50 PAYG, $1.30 on Scale; Decodo $0.30 to $1.50 by class and rendering; Oxylabs $0.25 to $1.35 by plan and target; Crawlora a fixed credit weight per endpoint.
• Residential $/GB: Bright Data $4 promotional PAYG ($8 list), $499 a month minimum plan; Decodo $4 PAYG, $2.75 to $3.75 plans from 3 GB; Oxylabs from $6.
• Free tier: Bright Data 5,000 records or requests a month, no card; Oxylabs 2,000 results; Decodo 2,000 requests; Crawlora 2,000 credits a month.
• Concurrency: unlimited on Bright Data's paid scraper plans; Decodo 10 / 25 / 50 rps; ask Oxylabs per tier.
• Promotional versus list: which price is in your contract, and for how long?
• Datasets: do you need the marketplace, or would a documented endpoint you call yourself be cheaper than a $250-minimum dataset order?

The best Bright Data alternatives in 2026

1. Crawlora — the endpoint, not the record

Bright Data's Web Scraper API returns records; you still decide what an Amazon record looks like in your system and re-map it when Bright Data's schema for that site changes. A structured platform API publishes the schema per endpoint and keeps it stable. Google Search, Google Maps, Amazon, TikTok, LinkedIn company pages and the rest of the catalog return documented JSON at one fixed credit weight each, billed only on success, with proxies and unblocking behind the endpoint. There is no proxy zone to configure and no dataset order minimum.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/google/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword": "web scraping api", "language": "en", "country": "us", "limit": 10}'

{
  "code": 200,
  "msg": "OK",
  "data": {
    "result": [
      { "position": 1, "title": "Example result", "website_name": "Example", "link": "https://example.com/", "Snippet": "Snippet text shown under the result." }
    ]
  }
}

When to choose it: your targets are known platforms. See Crawlora vs Bright Data. It is not a proxy network or a dataset marketplace; for custom crawlers on arbitrary sites, you still want one of the vendors below.

2. Oxylabs — the enterprise peer

Oxylabs is the like-for-like: Web Scraper API from $49 a month (Micro, up to 98,000 results at $0.50 to $1.35 per 1,000) through Starter $99, Business $999 and Custom+ from $0.25 per 1,000, a 2,000-result free trial, residential from $6 per GB, and 24/7 support with an account manager on every plan. Its per-result price can undercut Bright Data's $1.50 on plain targets and exceed it on rendered ones; ask for a number on your targets. See Oxylabs alternatives.

When to choose it: you want an enterprise vendor and a named contact from the first plan.

3. Decodo — the same infrastructure class at a $19 floor

Decodo, formerly Smartproxy and Oxylabs' sibling in the Tesonet group, publishes a full rate card: Web Scraping API from Free (2,000 requests) through $19, $49 and $99 with $0.30 to $1.50 per 1,000 by proxy class and rendering and 10 to 50 requests a second, and residential at $4 per GB pay-as-you-go or $3.75 to $2.75 per GB on 3 to 100 GB plans. Against Bright Data's $499 first residential plan, Decodo's 3 GB plan is the mid-market option. See Decodo alternatives.

When to choose it: your volume does not justify a $499 plan and you can live with published rate limits.

4. Zyte — unblocking priced by difficulty

Zyte's API leads independent anti-bot benchmarks and prices per request by how hard the target is, which fits custom Scrapy crawlers better than a flat per-record rate. See Zyte alternatives.

5. ZenRows, ScrapingBee, Scrape.do — small-scale generic scraping

For arbitrary URLs at a few thousand pages a month, ZenRows (5,000 free credits a month, from $16), ScrapingBee (from $19) and Scrape.do (1,000 free calls a month, from $29) are cheaper than any enterprise product. See ZenRows alternatives, ScrapingBee alternatives and Scrape.do alternatives.

6. Apify and Firecrawl — a different unit of work

Apify sells prebuilt Actors with scheduling and storage; Firecrawl sells any-URL-to-markdown for agent context. Neither is a proxy network; both replace the "build a scraper on top of proxies" step for their use cases. See Apify alternatives and Firecrawl alternatives.

7. Crawlee, Scrapy — bring your own proxies

Crawlee and Scrapy are free frameworks that still need a proxy source, which could be Bright Data's own pool at $4 per GB. The saving is the scraper-API margin, not the bandwidth bill.

Bright Data's pricing, in plain terms

• Web Scraper API: $1.50 per 1,000 records pay-as-you-go; Scale $499 a month including about 384,000 records with additional records at $1.30 per 1,000; 5,000 free records a month, no card; pay only for successful deliveries; unlimited concurrency on paid plans.
• Web Unlocker: $1.50 per 1,000 requests pay-as-you-go; $1.30 per 1,000 beyond roughly 383,000 on Scale; 5,000 free requests a month; no minimum commitment on pay-as-you-go.
• Residential proxies: $4 per GB pay-as-you-go at the current 50% promotion ($8 list); Starter $499 a month for 141 GB; Professional $999 for 332 GB; Enterprise $1,999 for 798 GB.
• Datasets: sold per dataset with order minimums; check the current minimum on the dataset you need.
• Enterprise: custom.

The scraper products are now easy to price and easy to start: a flat number, a free monthly allowance, no card. The residential side still steps from pay-as-you-go straight to $499 a month, and the advertised per-GB rates are promotional. Crawlora's model is one fixed, documented credit weight per endpoint, billed only on success, with 2,000 free credits a month and no proxy plan to size.

Bright Data vs Crawlora: feature by feature

How to choose

1. Sort your targets into known platforms and everything else. Platforms go to a structured API; that usually shrinks the proxy question by more than half.
2. For the rest, estimate what share needs unblocking. Mostly plain pages favour Decodo's $0.30 to $0.50 or Oxylabs' lower band; mostly hard pages make Bright Data's flat $1.50 with unlimited concurrency competitive.
3. If you buy residential bandwidth, compare on list price, not promotion, and note the $499 first plan against Decodo's 3 GB at $3.75.
4. If a dataset order is the alternative, price the endpoint calls to build it yourself before paying the minimum.
5. If unblocking hard custom targets is the whole job, add a Zyte quote.

Known platforms, no proxy zone, no dataset minimum

Documented endpoints, normalized JSON, proxies and unblocking handled behind the endpoint, billed only on success. 2,000 free credits a month, no card.

Try the PlaygroundCrawlora vs Bright Data

Next steps

Check the platform catalog for your targets and the API docs for each endpoint's credit weight. For arbitrary URLs, the Free Web Scraper shows what a generic fetch returns with no signup.

Sources

Related reading

• Apify Alternatives — when an actor marketplace is or isn't the right shape.
• Firecrawl Alternatives — when AI-native crawling to markdown fits better.
• ScraperAPI Alternatives — when a generic scraper is the right fit.
• Is Web Scraping Legal in 2026? — the legal basics before you collect at scale.