Bright Data Review – Is It Worth in 2024?

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Bright Data is a web data platform and proxy provider. In this review, we will discuss Bright Data’s features, pros and cons, pricing, and use cases to determine whether the platform is the right choice for your proxy and scraping needs.

Features

• Uses SOCKS5 Protocol with a dedicated Proxy Manager.
• Offers customization options, such as Session Control and Geo-Targeting.
• Complies with GDPR laws and regulations, as well as ISO 27001, SOC2, SOC3.
• Provides 24/7 support throughout the year, along with a dedicated account manager.

Pros

• Offers multiple products for web scraping requirements.
• Provides over 72+ million Residential IPs, with coverage in over 195+ countries.
• Ensures extensive API support for both custom and pre-made APIs.

Cons

• Pricing plans are too expensive for small businesses.
• Setup processes are challenging for beginners.

Bright Data is a well-known proxy provider that offers extensive tools and products to users looking for data scraping solutions and proxy services. Here are some of Bright Data’s most popular offerings:

• Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile Proxies
• Scraping Browser
• Web Unlocker
• SERP API
• Web Scraper APIs
• Scraping Functions (IDE)
• Open source Proxy Manager
• Datasets

In this review, we will examine Bright Data’s products in detail to determine whether they are worth the price in 2024. We will consider Bright Data’s benefits, drawbacks, how it works, and how it fares against competitor products.

What is Bright Data?

Bright Data (previously known as Luminati Networks) was founded in 2014 by Ofer Vilenski and Derry Shribman as a division of the Hola VPN company. In 2017, it was acquired by a privately held firm (EMK Capital) and focused on multiple proxy-based products. Or Lenchner has been at the helm of the company since 2018.

The company primarily targets businesses such as academic institutions, financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies. Bright Data aims to serve companies through scalable services that cater to the growing demand for web data. As a result, many leading businesses and companies take advantage of Bright Data’s web data collection capabilities and proxies.

Bright Data fully complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It’s a data protection law in the European Union that protects the personal data and privacy of users. Furthermore, Bright Data has the certification of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), which grants similar rights and protection to California residents. Other important compliance and certifications of Bright Data include CSA STAR Registry, ISO 27001, SOC2, and SOC3.

Bright Data Proxies

Bright Data offers 4 main types of proxy networks. These proxies are distributed across more than 190 countries, and each type is suitable for different use cases. The proxies also come with advanced customization options, regardless of the requirements. Furthermore, they support HTTP/HTTPS and SOCKS5 protocols, and you can access them through various flexible payment plans. Let’s check out all of Bright Data’s proxy networks in detail.

Residential Proxies

With more than 72 million stable residential IPs and promised 99.99% proxy uptime, Bright Data’s Residential proxies are used for accessing public data and bypassing robust blocking technologies and restrictions.

These proxies use residential IPs that are assigned to real home and company networks, making them challenging to detect by websites’ security measures. You can rotate residential IPs without any limitations, and the geolocation targeting capabilities allow you to target the locations based on country, state, city, ASN, and ZIP code.

The cost of subscribing to the Residential Proxies’ service depends on what plan you choose. With the flexible no-commitment plan, you can pay $8.4/GB as you use the service. However, there are other plans like Growth, Business, and Professional, and if you subscribe to the annual plan, you can reduce the cost as low as $5.29/GB.

Bright Data Residential Proxy Advantages

• Vast rotating real-peer IP pool
• Ability to access protected websites
• Wide range of IP locations
• Extremely stable with almost no downtime

Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies are the most accessible proxies because of their affordable cost and high speed. However, websites can easily detect them, and they are not recommended for anonymity. These proxies originate from server farms and are not affiliated with home networks or internet providers. That’s why various websites can block data center IPs more easily. As a result, Datacenter proxies are ideal for data scraping from uncomplicated websites.

The price starts from $0.069/GB of data if you go for the annual Professional plan, but for the “Pay as You Go” plan, it’s $0.11/GB, which is great compared to Residential proxies. Note that for each Datacenter IP you request, there will be an additional $0.5 to 0.8$ fee. Overall, as cost-effective and fast proxy networks, Datacenter proxies can help users efficiently collect data. Moreover, many small businesses use these types of proxies for brand protection and competitive intelligence.

Bright Data Datacenter Proxy Advantages

• Very affordable compared to other proxies
• Fast data collection speed
• Perfect for collecting data from simple websites

ISP Proxies

ISP proxies are a combination of Residential and Datacenter proxies. They use IP addresses provided by ISPs and assigned to data centers. This allows them to provide the stability and speed of Datacenter proxies while being secure and reliable like Residential proxies. So, the probability of being identified by website blockers is low.

Bright Data offers more than 700,000 static ISP IPs. These IPs are the best option for managing social media or eCommerce accounts that need static IPs.

Providing the best qualities of Residential and Datacenter proxies, the cost of subscribing to ISP proxies is much higher than other types. With the no-commitment plan, you can pay $15/GB in addition to $0.5 for each different IP. However, with the annual plans, you can lower the traffic cost to $9.75/GB.

Bright Data ISP Proxy Advantages

• Very fast response time
• Highly resistant to IP bans
• High-quality Static IPs

Mobile Proxies

Mobile proxies utilize IP addresses from mobile networks that are assigned by mobile carriers. These proxies mimic the behavior of authentic mobile users. Therefore, it’s difficult for websites to detect the user’s real IP address. Using these proxies, you can view websites as a real mobile user and collect data from apps and geo-restricted websites. A Mobile proxy subscriber can employ IP rotation and geo-targeting based on country, city, carrier, and ASN.

Users can take advantage of these proxies for mobile ad verification and app testing. The cost of subscribing to the Mobile proxy service of Bright Data is exactly like Residential proxies.

Bright Data Mobile Proxy Advantages

• Large IP pool of 7 Million
• Ability to bypass toughest restrictions
• Helps in mobile app testing and ad verification

The table below compares all the proxy types offered by Bright Data. These proxies are compared based on IP Pool, the target audience, location coverage, and their use cases.

Proxy Type	IP Pool	Target Audience	Location Coverage	Use Cases
Residential	72 million+	Web scraping professionals	195 countries	Accessing data and web scraping protected sites.
Datacenter	770,000+	Business and brand owners	98 countries	High-speed web scraping from unprotected websites.
ISP	700,000+	Social Media Managers	35 countries	Managing social media accounts and more.
Mobile	7 million+	Business owners and app testers	195 countries	App testing, Ad verification, and more.

Bright Data Scraping

Web scraping is one of the most popular use cases of proxies. Over the years, Bright Data has developed different data scraping solutions alongside proxy services to increase the success rate of scraping and make it easier for users to collect data with the proxies. In this section, we take a look at Bright Data’s scraping products.

Scraping Browser

As the only browser with built-in unlocking features, Bright Data’s Scraping Browser is one of the company’s most impressive products. Available since 2023, Scraping Browser allows users to unlock websites and perform web scraping tasks through a simple browser without the need to grapple with complicated programs and bots.

Scraping Browser is compatible with browser automation APIs like Puppeteer, Selenium, and Playwright. The price is $8.4/GB, but if you subscribe to the Professional annual plan, it can be lowered to $5.29/GB.

Bright Data Scraping Browser Key Features

• Ability to bypass CAPTCHAs and other restrictions
• Unlocking websites without limitation on any scale
• Compatible with popular browser-based libraries
• Browser fingerprinting
• Using the full IP pool and global location coverage of Bright Data
• Proxy management tools such as Cooling Time and IP rotation

Web Unlocker

Web Unlocker emulates a real user to bypass any blocks, CAPTCHAs, and website restrictions. Bright Data calls it a 3-in-1 scraping solution. The 3 parts are website unlocking, proxy management, and JavaScript Rendering.

The tool employs proprietary technology and AI to bypass website-blocking techniques. It is similar to the Scraping Browser, but without the interface. After making a request and including the targeted URL, you will receive the requested data in HTML or JSON. The service costs $3/CPM but you can opt for annual plans to reduce the price to $1.89/CPM.

Bright Data Web Unlocker Key Features

• Ability to bypass blocks, CAPTCHAs, and other website block techniques
• Automated Retries for IP address rotation
• No payment needed for unsuccessful requests
• Takes advantage of the full IP pool and location coverage of Bright Data

SERP API

SERP stands for “Search Engine Result Page”, and the API is designed to scrape data from search engine pages such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can gather any type of structured SERP data, such as news, images, maps, videos, trends, and jobs.

The API returns the result as an HTML or JSON file, and offers a limited live demo on Bright Data’s website for testing the product. The pricing is exactly like Web Unlocker, so the default plan costs $3/mille.

Bright Data SERP API Key Features

• Scraping and monitoring SERPs with fast response time
• Ability to gather any type of SERP data
• Personalization of the search by using different devices and search types
• Target certain locations to get the best results

Web Scraper APIs

With Web Scraper APIs, you don’t need to develop and maintain web scrapers. These APIs provide access to structured web data from many domains, such as Amazon, Airbnb, Crunchbase, and Walmart.

The APIs are categorized into Marketplace, B2B, eCommerce, and other fields, to meet various requirements. You can get information for Web Scraper APIs in NDJSON and CSV formats. The default cost of Web Scraper API is $1/CPM and can be lowered to $0.7/CPM with annual plans.

Bright Data Web Scraper APIs Key Features

• Access to more than 220 APIs in different categories
• Automatic IP rotation and CAPTCHA solver
• Utilizing the wide range of Bright Data’s IP pool and locations
• Unlimited scalability

Scraping Functions (IDE)

To personalize your Web Scraping process, Bright Data offers Scraping Functions (Web Scraper IDE). This is a development environment that helps users create web scraping scripts. As a platform for testing, running, and writing web scraping scripts, Web Scraper IDE also offers ready-made functions and templates to help individual users and companies quickly develop custom scrapers.

The “Pay as You Go” plan offers Scraping Functions at the price of $4/CPM for standard domains and $8/CPM for premium domains. Furthermore, each hour of computing time will cost $0.1.

Bright Data Scraping Functions Key Features

• Ready-made functions and code templates
• Incorporation of Web Unlocker to bypass website blocks
• Easy to use and accessible through Bright Data’s website

The table below compares Bright Data’s scraping solutions based on starting price, target audience, and use cases.

Scraping Solution	Starting Price	Target Audience	Use Cases
Scraping Browser	$8.4/GB	Web scraping professionals	Solving CAPTCHAs and interactive dynamic scraping
Web Unlocker	$3/CPM	Businesses in need of easy web scraping	Bypassing protected websites and market research
SERP API	$3/CPM	Web marketers and SEO professionals	Keyword research, SEO monitoring, and more
Web Scraper APIs	$1/CPM	Data analysts, developers, and more	General web scraping, price monitoring, and more
Scraping Functions	$4/CPM or $0.1/Hour	Companies with in-house data collection teams	Custom scripts for data extraction

Bright Data Features

Bright Data offers the following 5 key features:

1. Proxy Manager

Managing Bright Data proxies is done through the open-source official proxy manager that the company offers for free. It is an advanced tool that helps users speed up the process of extracting data and take complete control of the proxies, location of IPs, and more. Users can download and install Bright Data’s proxy manager from the official website. Here are some of the key features of Bright Data’s Proxy Manager:

• IP rotation and sessions management
• Real-time preview of traffic
• Ability to automatically retry failed requests
• Detailed statistics and logs
• Ability to enable routing of SOCKS5 requests

2. Location Coverage

Bright Data offers Residential and Mobile proxy IPs from 195 countries worldwide. Moreover, the Datacenter IPs are available from 98 countries, and the ISP IPs are from many locations in 35 countries. For precise geo-targeting, after choosing the country, you can limit the IPs based on state, city, ASN, and ZIP code.

Here are the top 5 countries with the most IPs available:

1. India – 5 Million+
2. United States – 4 Million+
3. Brazil – 2 Million+
4. Russia – 1.5 Million+
5. Great Britain – 1 Million+

3. Integrations

Users can seamlessly integrate Bright Data’s proxies with third-party software. There are more than 50 different software that are compatible with Bright Data’s proxies. This includes popular web scraping tools and automation software. Here are some of the most important programs that can be used alongside Bright Data’s proxies:

• Playwright
• Selenium
• AdsPower
• Puppeteer
• XLogin
• BrowseScan

There are detailed guides on Bright Data’s website on how to integrate the proxies with various software.

4. IP Pool Size

Bright Data offers one of the largest pool sizes compared to other proxy providers. Most of them are Residential IPs, but the number of Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile IPs is impressive as well.

Here is the number of IPs for each type of Bright Data proxy available:

• Residential Proxies: 72,000,000+ IPs
• Mobile Proxies: 7,000,000+ IPs
• Datacenter Proxies: 770,000+ IPs
• ISP Proxies: 700,000+ IPs

5. Data Security

Bright Data hosts its systems in multiple Availability Zones at Amazon Web Services. Due to this, the data is kept secure and available to users at all times. Bright Data’s security model is designed based on international standards like ISO 27001, ISO 27018, and OWASP Top 10.

All the traffic and user data is encrypted, and the company conducts external security audits and tests regularly. Bright Data tracks all user activities using audit logs. These logs help Bright Data make sure to take advantage of the platform in compliance with company policies and laws.

Furthermore, the company can help users with audit logs. Providing support and troubleshooting is quite easy using audit logs because the steps taken by users are clear, and the problem can be identified faster.

Here are a few more security measures that put Bright Data above many other proxy providers:

• Periodic security training for developers
• Multiple layers of defense mechanisms, such as DDoS mitigation
• Bug bounty program for security researchers
• Backing Up user data every 5 minutes

Bright Data Pricing

Bright Data offers its services through various pricing plans. So users have the ability to choose the best plan according to their budget and requirements. The platform provides every service and product through these 4 plans:

• Pay as You Go: This is the best option for users who want to utilize the proxies for low-volume tasks. With this plan, there won’t be any commitment to the service, and you’ll pay based on how much you use it. This plan is the most expensive one if you count the cost per GB, but it offers flexibility.
• Growth: This plan is suitable for small businesses with moderate usage. This is the best option if your overall usage is 50 to 100 GB/month, as you can pay less per GB. For example, the Growth Plan for Residential Proxies costs $499/month for an overall 69 GB of traffic, which lowers the cost of each GB to $7.14. Moreover, if you choose to pay annually, you can get the plan with 77 GB of traffic and the cost of $6.43 per GB.
• Business: To get larger traffic, you can opt into the Business plan. It’s mostly suitable for larger operations that need extensive requirements. For instance, with the business plan for Residential and Mobile proxies, you can get 158 GB of traffic for $999/month, which is $6.3/GB. With the annual payment, you can increase the traffic to 176 GB, which lowers the cost to $5.67/GB.
• Professional: Companies with large-scale operations can get the Professional or Enterprise plan for $1999 monthly. For example, if you choose the plan for Mobile proxies, it will offer 339 GB of traffic ($5.88/GB). If the user chooses the yearly payment, 377 GB of traffic will be available at $5.29/GB, which is the lowest cost among all the plans.

The table below compares the cost of Residential, Datacenter, ISP, and Mobile proxies offered by Bright Data, based on the pricing plan.

Proxy Type	Pay as You Go	Growth	Business	Professional
Residential	$8.4/GB	$6.43/GB	$5.67/GB	$5.29/GB
Datacenter	$0.11/GB	$0.085/GB	$0.075/GB	$0.069/GB
ISP	$15/GB	$11.25/GB	$10.05/GB	$9.75/GB
Mobile	$8.4/GB	$6.43/GB	$5.67/GB	$5.29/GB

Compared to other proxy providers, Bright Data offers its services at above-average prices, especially if you want to stick with the Pay as You Go plan. However, for users who need extensive proxy services and want to use Business or Professional plans, the cost is more affordable.

Overall, there are proxy providers with cheaper plans, but some of the affordable options don’t provide premium services like large IP pools and advanced security measures.

Performance and Reliability

Providing a reliable connection is the ultimate goal of a great proxy service. Bright Data has an impressive track record that shows strong results for the performance of 72 Million+ residential IPs. With a claimed 99.95% success rate for Residential proxies, Bright Data holds the highest success rate of any residential proxy provider.

Furthermore, with a promised response time of approximately 0.7s and 99.99% network uptime, Bright Data provides fast and reliable connectivity. Datacenter proxies’ performance is even more impressive, with a nearly 0.24s response time.

To confirm these metrics, the BestProxyFinder website has performed a few tests. According to this source, the response time from a client and a US server was between 56ms and 78ms with an average download and upload speed of 31 and 15 Mbps. In addition, this site confirms the above 99% success rate and network uptime.

Customer Support

With 24/7 live support, Bright Data’s experts are always available to help users solve an issue or guide them to find a suitable service and product to use. According to Trustpilot reviews, customers are happy with the quality of customer support. The steps to utilize some of Bright Data’s services and products are quite complex, and this is considered a weak point for the provider.

So, having strong customer support and an extensive collection of guides is very important in this case. Overall, there are 4 ways to seek help and find the answers to your questions:

1. Contact Support: Bright Data’s 24/7 support team is accessible through the website form. When you fill out the form and open a support ticket, the team usually responds within 15 minutes. In the form, you should specify your email address, the subject, the product, and the request description. You can also attach files to demonstrate your problem.
2. Contact Sales: If you need guidance on plans, pricing, or payment issues, you can contact your account manager by email. You can get a response within 2 business days, which is not ideal.
3. Smart AI Agent: Bright Data’s Smart AI agent can address common questions from users. The AI can be accessed easily from the search bar of Bright Data’s website. Type your question or subject and the smart Chabot can help you.

4. Documentation: Bright Data provides extensive documentation for all of its proxy network services and scraping solutions. Furthermore, users can learn about APIs, datasets, and integrations. You can find many guides on how to use different products and handle proxy services without seeking direct help from the support team.

Use Cases

Bright Data’s services are available for multiple needs, and the main requirements are mentioned below:

1. Web Scraping: Extracting data from various websites using bots and automatic tools is called web scraping. Using Bright Data proxies and data scraping products, users can collect data without website blocks and IP bans.
2. Market Research: Many businesses employ proxy services in order to analyze data, consumer behavior, and overall market conditions. Offering a service to anonymously access competitor websites, and analyze products and pricing is one of Bright Data’s main appeals.
3. Ad Verification: Online brands take advantage of proxies to ensure that digital ads are displayed correctly to different audiences around the world. The large IP pool and location coverage of Bright Data make it easy for users to verify the ads in different regions.
4. Social Media Management: Social media managers usually manage multiple accounts at the same time. To have regular access to social media websites, they need reliable IPs that won’t be blocked. Bright Data’s ISP proxies help in this situation.
5. App Testing: Many companies utilize mobile proxies to ensure their apps perform well for all users from different locations. Moreover, with the scalability and low response time of Bright Data’s proxy services, developers can test their apps in various network conditions, such as times of high traffic, to stabilize the performance.

Many small and large-scale companies have shared their positive experience with Bright Data products. For instance, “Xiaolong Shi”, the crawler engineer at Bitget, a cryptocurrency exchange company, strongly recommends Bright Data’s products to companies in the finance industry.

In another recommendation, Kingston Brass Inc., a plumbing supply store, clearly stated that they have gained unique and comprehensive insights into their market space using Bright Data proxies. There are many more similar success stories from businesses that benefited greatly from these services.

How Bright Data Source IPs?

There is a concern among users that the IPs from proxy providers can be unethically sourced with the consent of the IP users. Unethically sourced IPs can have legal consequences for the users. So, Bright Data has made sure to address the source of IPs offered in its proxy services.

Bright Data implements a software development kit (SDK) into the applications of its partners. When users install the app, they can choose to watch ads in order to continue using the app or opt into Bright Data’s network. This way, they allow Bright Data to use the IP as a proxy.

The company won’t collect any user data and ensures the security of the IP owner and proxy user. The IP owners only need to have the device idle and connect it to the internet while it has enough battery power or it is plugged in. Once the SDK is implemented, it helps with user retention.

Bright Data Datasets

For users who don’t want to deal with proxy services, web scraping tools, or coding, pre-built datasets are helpful. Bright Data has a large collection of ready-made datasets that can contain the data you need. The datasets are divided into various categories, such as business, eCommerce, real estate, Social Media, and finance, and Bright Data regularly updates them.

Any company or individual that needs data collection from a popular website can potentially find it in Bright Data’s Datasets for easy access. The cost of subscribing to a dataset marketplace or custom datasets, which you can create using an automated platform, starts at $300/month. Alternatively, you can access the Datasets with a one-time payment that starts from $500 for the dataset marketplace and $1000 for custom datasets.

Bright Data Pros and Cons

Let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of Bright Data below.

Bright Data Advantages

Bright Data has 5 main advantages for users.

• Huge IP Pool and Diverse Location Coverage: Bright Data offers 72 million+ residential IPs, which is more than most proxy providers. These IPs are from many locations in 95+ countries, making IP rotation much more effective.
• Impressive performance: With promises of 99.99% uptime, 99.95% success rate, and nearly 0.7s response time, Bright Data offers one of the fastest and most reliable proxy services around the world.
• Wide range of products and customization options: Bright Data offers products for almost every web scraping and web data need. The products are customizable for your specific applications.
• 24/7 customer support: The support team is accessible even on holidays. In addition, users can find their questions in the extensive documentation section that is equipped with a smart AI chatbot.
• Powerful data security measures: Bright Data employs multi-layered security measures to ensure that all data is encrypted and inaccessible to potential hackers.

Bright Data Disadvantages

There are 2 cons to using Bright Data, as listed below.

• Relatively expensive compared to other providers: Bright Data’s proxy services are not cheap, especially for short-term use. Companies that utilize the platform’s services in the long term will find its offerings to be affordable.
• Complicated setup process: Bright Data provides advanced features like session control, traffic routing, and location targeting, which are difficult to use for novices and beginners. Residential and Mobile proxies need precise configuration. Moreover, using Web Scraper IDE is challenging, and companies need expert teams to deal with it.

To sum up, Bright Data succeeds at the most important objective of all proxy providers, offering a reliable and fast connection. Additionally, the wide range of data scraping products, a large IP Pool, and powerful security protocols are attractive offerings for users. However, Bright Data’s high short-term cost and difficult setup process are deterrents for small businesses.

How Bright Data Compares with Competitors

The table below compares Bright Data with Oxylabs, Smartproxy, and IPRoyal, based on the available IP Pool, location coverage, cost, security measures, and customization options.

In addition to Bright Data, you should consider the pros and cons of its competitors to make an informed decision. Oxylabs is another proxy service that comes very close to Bright Data in terms of security and customization, and it offers a larger IP pool. Smartproxy and IPRoyal are cheaper options that provide decent services and are more suitable for beginners.

Bright Data Verdict

Based on our experience, Bright Data is one of the top proxy providers of 2024, and we strongly recommend it. The platform offers multiple products that cater to every web scraping requirement and offer versatility through customization. Furthermore, Bright Data provides flexibility in its pricing plans. However, considering the pricing structure and the scalability of operations, the services and products are more suited for companies and businesses, rather than individuals.

Bright Data receives the Geekflare Innovation Award due to its strong security measures, ethically sourced top-tier IPs, and reliable high-speed connections. It is an ideal solution for businesses and enterprises that don’t want to compromise on security and versatility when scraping vast amounts of web data.