Bright Data
Residential Proxy Verified May 2026
Bright Data deal: 20% off first month + $5 free trial credit
Bright Data residential proxies — Starter at $499/mo (141 GB, $3.50/GB), Advanced at $999/mo (332 GB, $3/GB), and PAYG at $4/GB. 150M+ IPs, MCP for AI agents.
- Largest residential IP pool
- Web Unlocker for hardest targets
- AI agent integration
- Pre-built scraper library
How Bright Data scored 68/100
6 weighted criteria, each scored out of 10 and published with its reasoning. Featured placements never move a score.
Deal Strength
5.0 /10Code SAAS20 takes 20% off your first month on any Web Unlocker, residential, mobile, ISP or datacenter plan, and new accounts get $5 in free trial credit to test the network first. It is a genuine saving but a one-month one on a usage-metered product, so the real value is the risk-free trial plus a lighter first invoice.
Value for Money
5.0 /10Bright Data sits right at the category norm for residential proxies: pay-as-you-go runs about $4/GB, while committing drops the rate to $3.50/GB on the $499/mo Starter tier (141 GB), $3/GB on the $999/mo tier (332 GB) and $2.50/GB at $1,999/mo. Per-GB pricing is competitive, but high-volume scraping adds up unless you match a plan to real usage.
Capability
10.0 /10Bright Data pairs one of the largest residential proxy pools, 150M+ IPs across 195 countries, with datacenter, ISP and mobile proxies, then layers on Web Unlocker (98%+ unblock success), a SERP API for Google, Bing and beyond, a Puppeteer or Playwright-ready Scraping Browser, pre-built datasets and an MCP server that lets AI agents pull live web data directly.
Time to Value
8.0 /10Most teams are pulling data within hours: the $5 trial credit runs real requests immediately, and Web Unlocker and Scraping Browser drop into existing Puppeteer or Playwright scripts with minimal rework. The one setup step that matters is configuring spend caps up front, because usage-based billing climbs quietly without them.
Trust & Reliability
8.0 /10Bright Data leads the web-data market with 20,000+ customers including Fortune 500 firms and major AI labs, and it publishes a 99.99% uptime SLA that most rivals will not commit to. SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA compliance back its reputation as the reliable default for large-scale scraping.
Flexibility & Exit
5.0 /10Pay-as-you-go carries no monthly commitment, so you can start, pause or scale without a contract, and nothing of yours gets locked away. The catch is the metered model itself: every gigabyte is billable, so costs need spend caps and ongoing attention rather than set-and-forget budgeting.
20% off first month + $5 free trial credit
20% off applies to your first month's subscription on any Web Unlocker, residential, mobile, ISP or datacenter plan when you sign up via the SaaSTweaks link and apply code SAAS20 at checkout. New accounts only, cannot be combined with annual prepay credits, and excludes one-off Web Scraper API runs above the 250 MB free tier.
Affiliate link — same price for you, and it never moves the score.
- Largest residential IP pool
- Web Unlocker for hardest targets
- AI agent integration
- Pre-built scraper library
About Bright Data
Quick answer
Bright Data residential proxies — Starter at $499/mo (141 GB, $3.50/GB), Advanced at $999/mo (332 GB, $3/GB), and PAYG at $4/GB. 150M+ IPs, MCP for AI agents.
Bright Data, in 30 seconds
Bright Data is the largest residential-proxy network on the public market — 150M+ peer-sourced IPs, 72M+ ISP IPs, presence in every UN-recognised country, and the deepest catalogue of pre-built scrapers in the category. In 2026 the platform is also positioning itself as the data layer for AI agents, with an official MCP server, a Browser API for Playwright/Puppeteer flows, and the Deep Lookup agent for natural-language data queries. The trade-off is price: per-GB billing on residential traffic stings any team that does not cap usage in advance.
- 150M+residential IPs
- 195countries covered
- $5free trial credit
- 99.99%contracted uptime
The Bright Data deal, decoded
Two things stack on a new Bright Data account routed through the SaaSTweaks link. First, every signup gets a $5 trial credit — enough to pull roughly 6 GB of residential traffic, or hammer a Web Unlocker target a few thousand times before any card hits the ledger. Second, code SAAS20 drops 20% off the first month's subscription on residential, ISP, mobile, datacenter and Web Unlocker plans. On a typical $499 starter month that is a $100 discount on top of the trial credit.
The discount is monthly, not annual, and stops after billing cycle one. Bright Data already runs an annual-prepay rebate (usually 10–15% baked into the order form) that does not stack with SAAS20. Pick whichever yields the bigger first-month dollar saving, then re-evaluate at renewal — most teams pocket more from the 20% one-shot than from a year-one prepay.
How Bright Data pricing actually works
Bright Data sells five proxy products and three data products, each on its own meter. There is no single "Bright Data plan" — you stack what you need and pay per-GB or per-request on each meter. The pay-as-you-go option exists on every product but the per-unit rate sits roughly 40% above subscription pricing.
| Product | Starter rate | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Residential proxies | ~$5.04/GB on $499/mo plan | Stealth scraping, geo-locked sites |
| ISP proxies | ~$11.25/GB on $500/mo plan | Static IPs with residential trust |
| Datacenter proxies | From $0.45/GB | Bulk crawling of unguarded targets |
| Mobile proxies | ~$8.40/GB on $500/mo plan | Mobile-first sites, app testing |
| Web Unlocker | ~$1.05 per 1k requests | JS-heavy or Cloudflare-protected sites |
| Web Scraper API | From ~$0.79 per 1k records | Pre-built scrapers for 100+ sites |
The starter subscription on residential is $499/month for ~99 GB at roughly $5.04/GB. The next tier ($999/month) drops the per-GB rate to about $4.20. Enterprise contracts at six figures land closer to $3/GB. Datacenter is by far the cheapest meter and should carry any traffic that does not strictly need a residential IP.
Practically, plan in advance. A 2 KB HTML page costs about $0.00001 in residential traffic — 100,000 pages is a $1 spend. A 500 KB page (modern JS app with images) is $0.0025 — 100,000 pages is $250. The same crawl on datacenter proxies is around $22. Pick the right meter for the job and Bright Data is competitive; pick the wrong one and the bill multiplies tenfold.
Where Bright Data outclasses smaller proxy vendors
Pool size is the headline. 150M+ residential IPs across 195 countries puts Bright Data ahead of every competitor in raw geographic coverage. Country-level targeting is standard; city-level granularity is available in 50+ countries; ASN-level targeting is supported on most ISP and datacenter ranges. For projects that need a Brazilian IP from a specific carrier in São Paulo, only Bright Data and Oxylabs reliably deliver.
The Web Unlocker is the second edge. It is a managed proxy that bundles automatic CAPTCHA solving, JavaScript rendering, fingerprint rotation and retry logic into a single endpoint. You pay per successful request, not per GB, and Bright Data eats the cost of failed unlocks. On Cloudflare-protected and DataDome-protected targets, the Web Unlocker hits 95%+ success rates where unmanaged residential proxies sit at 40–60%.
The 2026 AI layer matters if you build agents. The official Bright Data MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor pull live web data without writing scraper code. The Deep Lookup agent translates "find the LinkedIn URLs of all CTOs at Series B SaaS companies in Berlin" into a structured pipeline that returns a CSV. Both are still expensive at scale, but the developer-time savings are real for prototype work.
Bright Data vs Oxylabs vs Smartproxy vs Apify
| Dimension | Bright Data | Oxylabs | Smartproxy | Apify |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential pool | 150M+ IPs | 175M+ IPs | 65M+ IPs | None native |
| Entry residential price | $499/mo | $300/mo | $50/mo | n/a |
| Pre-built scrapers | 120+ datasets | 20+ scrapers | Limited | 5,000+ actors |
| AI agent support | MCP + Deep Lookup | OxyCopilot | None | Apify MCP |
| Best for | Enterprise scale, hardest targets | Enterprise + EU compliance | SMB, predictable budgets | Developers, marketplace |
Bright Data wins on raw capability: biggest pool, deepest targeting, hardest-target unblock rates. Oxylabs wins on enterprise SLAs and compliance posture (the company is GDPR-native, EU-headquartered and pursues the cleanest peer-consent narrative). Smartproxy wins on price and onboarding for teams under 100 GB/month. Apify wins on developer ergonomics — code your scraper, deploy it, sell it to others — but you still need a proxy provider underneath.
Six Bright Data products you will actually use
- Residential Proxies: The flagship — 150M+ peer-sourced IPs with country, city and ASN targeting. Use for anti-bot-protected sites where the IP must look like a real consumer connection. Sticky sessions hold for up to 60 minutes.
- ISP Proxies: 72M+ static residential IPs hosted in datacenters with home-ISP IPs. Faster and more stable than rotating residential, with better trust scores than pure datacenter. Best for account-based scraping where IP consistency matters.
- Web Unlocker: Managed unblock-as-a-service that bundles proxy selection, fingerprinting and CAPTCHA solving. Pay per successful request. The right call for ad-hoc one-off scrapes where engineering time costs more than the per-request fee.
- Web Scraper API: 120+ pre-built scrapers for sites like LinkedIn, Amazon, Indeed, Walmart and Crunchbase. You hit an endpoint, you get structured JSON. Saves weeks of brittle parser maintenance, but the per-record price stings at high volume.
- Browser API: A managed browser endpoint compatible with Playwright and Puppeteer. The browser runs on Bright Data infra with proxy and unblock built in. Best for JS-heavy targets that defeat raw proxy approaches.
- Datasets: Pre-collected, refreshed datasets for common targets — LinkedIn profiles, company data, ecommerce listings. Buy by the row instead of crawling yourself when refresh frequency is low and the data is already aggregated.
Five Bright Data mistakes that drain budgets
- No spend cap configured. Default is unlimited. A misbehaving scraper can rack up four-figure bills overnight on residential.
- Residential when datacenter would do. Crawling unguarded targets on residential is paying $5/GB for traffic that costs $0.45/GB on the right meter.
- Downloading images. Default scraper config grabs every asset. Page weight balloons from 50 KB to 500 KB. Block images at the proxy or browser level.
- Pay-as-you-go past 50 GB. The PAYG rate is roughly 40% above subscription. Anyone past 50 GB/month should be on a $499 subscription minimum.
- Ignoring sticky sessions. Each new IP burns trust on protected targets. Hold a session for 10–60 minutes when scraping account-gated content.
Decision matrix: when Bright Data is the right call
| Situation | Bright Data fit |
|---|---|
| Crawling 100+ countries with city-level targeting | Strongest fit — pool size unmatched |
| Monthly residential traffic above 100 GB | Strong fit — subscription pricing wins |
| Scraping Cloudflare/DataDome-protected sites | Strong fit — Web Unlocker has highest unblock rate |
| Building AI agents that need live web data | Strong fit — MCP + Browser API stack |
| SMB, $50–$200/month proxy budget | Weak fit — Smartproxy or Webshare cheaper |
| Compliance-heavy EU public-sector data work | Mixed — Oxylabs has the cleaner posture |
What's included
- 150M+ residential IPs across 195 countries
- 72M+ ISP proxies with static residential trust
- City and ASN-level targeting in 50+ countries
- Web Unlocker with automatic CAPTCHA solving
- Browser API for Playwright/Puppeteer
- 120+ pre-built scrapers (LinkedIn, Amazon, Indeed, etc.)
- Official MCP server for Claude/ChatGPT
- Deep Lookup agent for natural-language queries
- Sticky sessions up to 60 minutes
- Spend cap controls to prevent runaway bills
- Pay-as-you-go and subscription pricing options
- 99.99% contracted uptime SLA
Bright Data pricing
Verified May 2026. Vendor's published rates at the time we checked — always confirm at checkout.
| Plan | Price | Term | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (Residential) | $499/mo (20% off first month = $399) | monthly | ~99 GB residential traffic · ~$5.04/GB effective rate · 150M+ IP pool access · Country, city, ASN targeting · Sticky sessions up to 60 min |
| Advanced (Residential) | $999/mo | monthly | ~332 GB residential traffic · ~$3/GB effective rate · All Starter features · Higher volume allocation · Priority support |
| Pay-as-you-go | $4/GB (residential) | per-GB | No minimum commitment · ~40% premium over subscription · Ideal for testing or <50 GB/mo · Flexible scaling · All product types available |
How to claim it
4 steps. The last one is the part most people skip.
- 1
Open Bright Data through the link on this page
It carries our referral tag. The price you pay is identical either way, and it never changes the score on this page.
- 2
Enter the code SAAS20 at checkout
Paste it into the promo or coupon field before you pay. If the field is hidden, it is usually behind an "Add promo code" link on the payment step.
- 3
Confirm the discount before you pay
The order summary should show the reduced amount. If it does not, stop and tell us — we re-test listings that stop working.
- 4
Check what happens at renewal
20% off applies to your first month's subscription on any Web Unlocker, residential, mobile, ISP or datacenter plan when you sign up via the SaaSTweaks link and apply code SAAS20 at checkout. New accounts only, cannot be combined with annual prepay credits, and excludes one-off Web Scraper API runs above the 250 MB free tier.
Where Bright Data wins and loses
What works
- Largest residential IP pool 150M+ peer-sourced IPs across 195 countries with city and ASN-level targeting precision that competitors cannot match.
- Web Unlocker for hardest targets Managed proxy with automatic CAPTCHA solving and fingerprint rotation hits 95%+ success on Cloudflare/DataDome sites where raw residential proxies fail 40–60% of the time.
- AI agent integration Official MCP server and Deep Lookup agent let Claude and ChatGPT pull live web data without writing scraper code, cutting prototype time significantly.
- Pre-built scraper library 120+ ready-to-use datasets for LinkedIn, Amazon, Indeed, Walmart and Crunchbase eliminate weeks of parser maintenance.
- Flexible product stacking Mix residential, ISP, datacenter, mobile and Web Unlocker meters on a single account; pay only for what you use on each product.
- Strong first-month deal 20% off first month via SAAS20 code plus $5 trial credit stacks to ~$105 savings on entry $499 plan, with no annual prepay lock-in.
What doesn't
- Per-GB billing can spiral Residential traffic at $5/GB burns budgets fast if you download images or misconfigure scrapers; requires strict spend caps and traffic auditing.
- Pricing clarity is weak Five proxy products and three data products each meter separately with different per-unit rates; no single 'plan' makes cost prediction difficult for new users.
- Discount does not stack with annual prepay SAAS20 code and annual-prepay rebate are mutually exclusive; you must choose one, limiting long-term savings optimization.
The bottom line
Bright Data is the closest thing web scraping has to an all-in-one utility: 150M+ residential IPs across 195 countries, a 99.99% uptime SLA, and a full stack of Web Unlocker, SERP API, and Scraping Browser tools that competitors sell piecemeal. Per-GB metering means costs need active management, and the SAAS20 discount only covers month one, which keeps it a confident Buy rather than a runaway one.
Bright Data residential proxies start at about $4/GB on pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum. Committed plans lower the rate: $3.50/GB on the $499/mo Starter tier (141 GB included), $3/GB on the $999/mo tier (332 GB), and $2.50/GB on the $1,999/mo Business tier (798 GB). Web Unlocker, SERP API, and datasets are priced separately.
Yes. New accounts receive $5 in free trial credit, enough to run live requests across the residential proxies, Web Unlocker, and Scraping Browser and confirm the network works for your target sites. It is a genuine test rather than a production allowance, so plan to move onto pay-as-you-go or a monthly plan once you validate the setup.
For serious web scraping, yes. Bright Data offers the deepest product suite and the most reliable proxy network on the market, backed by a 99.99% uptime SLA and 20,000+ customers. The main reason to look elsewhere is budget: per-GB billing makes it pricey for casual, low-volume use, where a cheaper flat-rate provider may serve you better.
Bright Data and Oxylabs are the two premium leaders in the proxy and web-data space, with similar residential pricing near $3-4/GB and comparable enterprise reliability. Bright Data edges ahead on breadth, with a larger network, more pre-built scrapers and datasets, and an MCP server for AI agents, while Oxylabs is often praised for support. Both are far above budget proxy providers.
The main drawback is cost management. Bright Data bills per gigabyte, so heavy or poorly optimized scraping can produce large, unpredictable invoices, and the SAAS20 discount only applies to your first month. Setting spend caps and matching a monthly plan to actual usage is essential; teams that skip this step often overpay compared with a fixed-rate alternative.
Yes. Bright Data ships an MCP server that lets AI agents and LLM apps fetch live, unblocked web data directly, alongside a Scraping Browser controllable via Puppeteer or Playwright and Web Unlocker for bypassing anti-bot defenses. This makes it a common data layer for retrieval-augmented AI, price monitoring, and agents that need real-time information from public sites.
