Bright Data alternative: Web Scraper vs Bright Data
Bright Data sells scraping as metered infrastructure: proxies by the gigabyte or IP, and APIs by the thousand requests or records. Web Scraper Cloud is one plan priced by concurrent scraping capacity, with the sitemap built visually in a free browser extension and datacenter proxies included.
Reviewed October 2026 Every claim below links to a current vendor page.
You want one predictable monthly fee, a visual builder, and unlimited URL credits rather than a record allowance.
You want proxies or an unblocking API for scripts you already run, or ready-made datasets instead of collecting data yourself.
Web Scraper vs Bright Data: features and pricing
Compare how Web Scraper and Bright Data handle setup, Cloud automation, integrations, proxies, and scaling. Web Scraper Scale is compared with Bright Data Web Scraper API Scale, the highest self-service plan each vendor prices publicly.
| CAPABILITY | Web Scraper Scale, $200 per month | Bright Data Web Scraper API Scale, $499 per month |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and creation | ||
| Where scrapers are built | Visual sitemap builder in a browser extension Free extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, with no code or desktop application required. | Control Panel and API Pre-built scrapers are set up in the Control Panel or called from code; custom scrapers need the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| Time to a working scraper | Faster than writing code Point at the data on the live page, or let the AI Sitemap Wizard map it, then check the result in the data preview. | Pre-built, or Scraper Studio Pre-built scrapers run from the Control Panel or an API call; custom ones need the separately priced Scraper Studio, built from a prompt or in its JavaScript IDE. |
| Skills needed | Browser skills No programming language or HTML parsing to learn. | Dashboard or API calls Pre-built scrapers run from the Control Panel or by API; custom scrapers need a prompt or JavaScript in the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| AI-assisted setup | AI Sitemap Wizard Maps repeated listing data, detects pagination and infinite scrolling, and follows item links to collect fields from detail pages. | Form setup only on this plan Pre-built scrapers are configured through a form; building a scraper from a prompt needs the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| Manual selector control | Advanced Sitemap Builder Point and click, AI selector generation for listing and detail pages, and 10+ selector types for data, navigation, and clicks. | Output field selection only Pre-built scrapers are closed; custom extraction code needs the separately priced Scraper Studio IDE. |
| Logins and site setup | Website State Setup Signs in or sets location, language, or currency before scraping, only when that state is missing, with passwords encrypted in Cloud. | No logins; some location inputs Policy bars collecting data behind logins; some scrapers take a ZIP code or country. |
| Ready-made starting points | Sitemap Marketplace Ready-made sitemaps maintained by Web Scraper, available at no additional cost. | Prebuilt scrapers and datasets Hundreds of domain scrapers, plus datasets sold per 1,000 records. |
| When a website changes | Update a selector Fix the sitemap by point and click and sync it to Cloud, with nothing to redeploy. | Maintained by Bright Data Pre-built scrapers are maintained by Bright Data; custom scrapers can use Self-Healing in the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| Cloud automation | ||
| Cloud execution | Web Scraper Cloud Runs sitemaps created in the Web Scraper extension remotely after sync or import. | Managed collection Jobs run on Bright Data infrastructure. |
| Queue, link following, and storage | Built into every job Cloud queues URLs, follows links and pagination, retries failed pages, and keeps results for 60 days. | Built into collections Collections queue inputs, discovery endpoints find pages by category or keyword on supported sites, and results are delivered as snapshots. |
| Scheduling | Daily, interval, and custom CRON Intervals as short as 1 minute, with a selectable time zone and driver, proxy, and priority set per schedule. | Scheduler in Scraper Studio Scheduling is documented for the separately priced Scraper Studio; Scraper API runs are triggered from your code or Zapier. |
| Rendering and execution modes | Full JS and Fast drivers Full JS loads pages in a full browser environment; Fast skips page JavaScript to scrape faster. | Included in the record price JavaScript rendering and unblocking are part of the Web Scraper API price. |
| Retry behavior | Automatic retries of empty or failed pages Retries use a different proxy IP and browser fingerprint, and do not consume URL credits. CAPTCHAs and bot check pages are solved automatically. | Pay per success Billing is per delivered record, but records that fail because of an incorrect input are still billed. |
| Concurrency model | Concurrent scrapers Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers and scales with no set ceiling; add capacity at any time. A single job can expand to up to 5 concurrent scrapers. | Unlimited concurrency Stated on the Web Scraper API pricing page. |
| Data and integrations | ||
| Data cleaning | Parser, with no code Regex, replace, HTML stripping, virtual columns, and timestamp conversion, previewed on sample records and applied in Cloud. | Field selection only Pre-built scrapers return structured fields; fields can be dropped, but values are not transformed. |
| Data quality checks | Thresholds on every job Minimum records, maximum failed or empty pages, and minimum filled fields, with suggested values from a previous run. | Success-rate threshold A scraper is flagged when its success rate drops below your threshold; no record-count or fill-rate checks. |
| API | Cloud API with an OpenAPI description Manage sitemaps, jobs, and schedules, and download results, with code examples for every programming language. | Full platform API Every product is API-driven. |
| Webhooks | Job status webhooks Sent when a job finishes, stops, or fails, with job and sitemap IDs and an optional custom ID, and retried if your endpoint does not respond. | Delivery and status webhooks Results, or a notice with the snapshot status, can be sent to your endpoint when a job finishes. |
| Data export formats | CSV, XLSX, JSON Each scraping job's data can be downloaded in all three formats. | JSON, NDJSON, JSONL, CSV, Parquet Parquet is available for files delivered to storage. |
| Export integrations | Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Google Cloud, Azure The complete dataset is sent after each job finishes. | S3, Google Cloud, Azure, Snowflake, SFTP, and more Also Pub/Sub, Alibaba Cloud OSS, email, Zapier, Make, and an n8n community node. |
| Notifications | Email and in-app alerts Alerts when a job fails or misses its data quality thresholds, with email and in-app channels set per alert type. | Success-rate emails Emails when a scraper success rate drops below your threshold and when it recovers; completion and delivery-problem emails come with the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| Image and file handling | Image export Downloads images during the scraping job using the Image selector and delivers the files to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. | Page files, not images Raw HTML, WARC archives, or screenshots can be delivered with the records; image downloads need the separately priced Scraper Studio. |
| Scale and pricing | ||
| Plan compared | Scale, $200 per month $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month. | Web Scraper API Scale, $499 per month The Scale plan, with 384,000 records included. |
| What the plan fee buys | Unlimited URL credits The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity, and page volume does not change it. | A record allowance Records beyond the allowance are billed as overage. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies | From $0.03 Fast driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 4.3M URLs. | $1.30 Rendering and proxies are included in the per-record price, so plain pages cost the same. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies | From $0.05 Full JS driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 2.2M URLs. | $1.30 One record per URL on a scraper that collects by URL. Records beyond the allowance cost the same. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies | From $0.681 Full JS driver plus residential traffic, sold separately at $2.50 per GB. | $1.30 Residential proxies are listed among the features included in the price. |
| Unused capacity | No credit ceiling Unlimited URL credits leave no balance to forfeit at the end of a cycle. | Allowance resets monthly Unused records do not roll over, and records beyond the allowance are billed as overage. |
| Included datacenter proxies | US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies Included at no additional cost. | Included in the record price Automated proxy management is part of the Web Scraper API; standalone datacenter proxies start at $0.90 per IP. |
| Residential proxies | Available at $2.50 per GB In 47 locations, billed on bandwidth used. | Included in the record price Residential proxies are listed among the Web Scraper API features. |
| Third-party fees | Marketplace sitemaps at no extra cost They run on your own plan, with no separate per-result charge. | Datasets sold separately Ready-made datasets are priced per 1,000 records. |
| Cloud data retention | 60 days Scraped data stays available to download from Cloud for that period. | 16 to 30 days Snapshots can be downloaded for 30 days per the Scraper API guides, or 16 days per the download API reference. |
1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Reasons to choose Web Scraper
One plan from build to delivery
Scraping, datacenter proxies, CAPTCHA and bot protection bypass, scheduling, parsing, and delivery sit inside one Cloud plan, with no per-record overage to reconcile.
Web Scraper pricingNo engineering to start collecting
Sitemaps are built visually in the browser extension, or mapped by the AI Sitemap Wizard, so a non-developer can define and preview the extraction, then check it with a test scrape in Cloud.
Web Scraper extensionRecords stop being the meter
The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity with unlimited URL credits, so the number of records a page yields does not change the bill.
Web Scraper pricingWeb Scraper Scale vs Bright Data Web Scraper API Scale
Bright Data prices each product separately rather than selling one plan. Its Web Scraper API is the closest equivalent to Web Scraper Cloud, so its highest published self-service tier is used here.
Web Scraper Cloud · Scale
$200 per month
Or $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month
- Capacity
- Unlimited URL credits
- Concurrency
- Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers, scales with no set ceiling; a single job can use up to 5
- Proxies
- US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies included; residential in 47 locations at $2.50 per GB
- Plan limitation
- Capacity grows by adding concurrent scrapers, at a lower price per scraper as you add more; residential proxy traffic is billed on usage
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- From $0.03
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- From $0.05
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- From $0.681
Bright Data · Web Scraper API Scale
$499 per month
The Scale plan, billed monthly. Other products are billed separately.
- Capacity
- 384,000 records included
- Concurrency
- Unlimited concurrency on this tier
- Proxies
- Included in the record price, residential too
- Plan limitation
- Records beyond the allowance bill as overage, and unused records do not roll over
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- $1.30
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- $1.30
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- $1.30
The two prices do not buy the same unit
Bright Data meters successful records, with proxies and unblocking included in the record price, so the invoice tracks output volume. Web Scraper charges for concurrent scraping capacity, with unlimited URL credits and datacenter proxies included.
- A Bright Data record is one extracted item, so its figure assumes a scraper that returns one record per URL; a listing page that yields many records costs more.
- Proxies and unblocking are included in the Bright Data record price, so no proxy cost is added.
- 1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Bright Data sells proxies, an unblocking API, and remote browsers that plug into scrapers you already maintain, along with ready-made datasets. They suit teams that write their own code or would rather buy data than collect it.
Switching from Bright Data
Can a Bright Data scraper be imported?
Scrapers move over as Web Scraper sitemaps built in the free browser extension, where the AI Sitemap Wizard maps listing pages for you. Many common targets also have a ready-made Marketplace sitemap that you can import into Web Scraper Cloud.
Do we need to buy proxies?
No. US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies are included at no additional cost, and residential proxies in 47 locations are available at $2.50 per GB when a target website requires them.
What happens to our per-record budget?
It becomes a fixed plan fee that buys concurrent scraping capacity with unlimited URL credits, so the record count a page yields no longer changes the bill.
How does data reach our systems?
Results are retrieved through the API or delivered to Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure after each job. Webhook notifications report job status and identifiers.
See it applied to your use case
Compare Web Scraper with other tools
Most teams shortlist two or three tools. These pages cover the same capabilities and plan tiers.
Try it on the website you want to scrape
Use the 7-day free trial, with no credit card required, to run Web Scraper Cloud on the website you need data from.
This comparison reflects publicly available information and our understanding of the products as of October 2026. Features, pricing, and other details may change over time, so we recommend verifying current information directly with each provider before making a decision. All product names, trademarks, logos, and brands belong to their respective owners and are referenced solely for identification and comparison purposes. No affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied.