Is Bright Data legal to use?
Bright Data only collects publicly available data and operates under GDPR, CCPA, and SEC compliance with a Know Your Customer process for all users. They have a dedicated Compliance & Ethics team and require an Acceptable Use Policy, but legality of any specific scraping project depends on the target site's ToS and your jurisdiction.
How much does Bright Data cost?
Pricing starts at $1 per 1,000 requests for Web Access APIs and $2.50/GB for residential proxies (currently 50% off from $5). Datasets start at $250 per 100K records, and managed enterprise services start around $1,500/month.
Does Bright Data have a free tier?
Yes — the Bright Data MCP server and Discover API are free, and all other products offer a free trial with no credit card required. Production usage requires a paid plan.
What's the difference between Bright Data and Oxylabs or Apify?
Bright Data has the largest residential proxy network (400M+ IPs vs. ~100M at Oxylabs) and bundles proxies, scraper APIs, and pre-built datasets in one platform, whereas Apify focuses on scraper marketplaces and Oxylabs is more proxy-centric. Bright Data also leads on compliance infrastructure with a dedicated KYC and ethics program.
Can Bright Data be used for AI agents and LLM training?
Yes, this is a major use case — they offer a free MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, an Agent Browser, ready-made LLM training datasets, and video/audio data feeds for VLA model training. It integrates with Claude, LangGraph, OpenAI, and Google ADK.
Does Bright Data work with Puppeteer and Playwright?
Yes, the Browser API (Scraping Browser) is fully compatible with Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium so you can use existing automation scripts with built-in unblocking. Pricing for Browser API starts at $5/GB.
What sites does Bright Data have pre-built scrapers for?
They offer Scraper APIs and Datasets for 250+ popular domains including LinkedIn, Amazon and other eCommerce sites, social media platforms, real estate sites, and ChatGPT. You can also build custom scrapers in Scraper Studio.
Is Bright Data good for small projects or just enterprises?
It's optimized for enterprise scale (20,000+ customers, $1,500/mo managed services, dedicated account managers), but pay-as-you-go API pricing from $1/1k requests does make smaller projects feasible. Hobbyists may find simpler tools like ScrapingBee more cost-effective.