What Is Bright Data?

Bright Data is a web-data powerhouse built for teams that need reliable access to public information at scale. The platform began as a proxy network, but in 2025 it looks more like an end-to-end data-access layer: 150 million residential IPs in 195 countries, automated unblocking APIs, hosted scraping browsers, ready-made datasets, and even a new free tier that lets AI agents browse the live web without getting stuck on CAPTCHAs.

Put simply, Bright Data gives developers, marketers, analysts, and AI builders the plumbing they need to collect—or interact with—public web data while the service quietly handles IP rotation, geo-targeting, fingerprinting, and compliance hurdles.

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Key Features

Massive Proxy Network

Bright Data’s core is its multi-layer proxy infrastructure. You can tap into residential, ISP, datacenter, or mobile IPs, swap locations down to a ZIP code, and enjoy 99.99 percent uptime. That breadth makes it useful for ad-verification, price monitoring, SEO audits, and any project that fails the moment a site blocks a single request.

Web Unlocker & SERP API

If configuring headers and solving CAPTCHAs is not your thing, Web Unlocker does it for you. Send a URL and the API returns clean HTML/JSON while auto-rotating IPs, spoofing fingerprints, and paying only for successful responses. The same logic powers the SERP API for Google, Bing, and other engines—handy when you need parsed rank data without wrangling proxies.

Browser & Crawl APIs

Some sites require scrolling, clicks, or JavaScript rendering. The Browser API spins up remote Playwright, Puppeteer, or Selenium sessions on Bright Data’s infrastructure so your code can behave like a real user—sans the DevOps headache. For site-wide harvests, Crawl API maps an entire domain and delivers content in Markdown, HTML, or plain text, complete with scheduling and webhook support.

Dataset Marketplace

Need LinkedIn data by lunchtime? The Dataset Marketplace offers pre-collected public data—LinkedIn profiles, company pages, e-commerce listings, social posts—starting at about $250 for 100 K records. You can buy once, subscribe to updates, or bundle multiple sets for volume discounts. It is a quick win when scraping from scratch is overkill.

The Web MCP (Free Tier)

Announced in August 2025, The Web MCP opens Bright Data’s unlocker tech to autonomous AI agents. The free tier grants up to 5,000 requests per month, supports LangChain, CrewAI, and LlamaIndex, and offers Rapid and Advanced modes for either speed or full browser control. Think of it as a gateway for your LLM to read the live web without tripping security wires.

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Pricing: How Much Does Bright Data Cost?

• Proxy Network: Pay-as-you-go starts at $8 per GB, currently discounted to $4 per GB for residential traffic. Subscription bundles drop as low as $2.50 per GB (798 GB for $1,999/month). Datacenter and ISP IPs begin around $0.90–$1.80 per IP monthly.

• Web Unlocker & Scraper APIs: Usage-based billing begins at roughly $1.5 per 1,000 results. Growth and Business plans (from $499/month) cut that rate below a dollar per 1K.

• Datasets: Pre-built datasets start near $250 for 100 K records, with big discounts for quarterly or monthly refreshes.

• Web MCP Free Tier: 5 K monthly requests at no cost; higher volumes roll into paid plans.

Bright Data also tosses in $25–$50 free credits for new accounts, plus seven-day trials on most products, so you can test before budgeting long term.

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FAQ

Is Bright Data legal and compliant?

Yes—Bright Data sources residential IPs through an opt-in model, provides a Trust Center, and lets you filter out GDPR “right to be forgotten” domains. Still, you must ensure your own use case respects local data-privacy laws.

Do I need coding skills?

Not necessarily. The Control Panel offers point-and-click wizards for crawls, while datasets and the new Web MCP Rapid Mode can be consumed with a single cURL command.

How does Bright Data compare to building my own proxy pool?

Running proxies in-house means buying IP blocks, handling abuse reports, and reacting to new bot defenses. Bright Data bakes those headaches into the subscription so your team can focus on parsing data, not troubleshooting 403 errors.

Will the free tier be enough for my AI agent?

If you are prototyping or running a hobby project, 5,000 monthly requests may be plenty. Production-grade agents will likely need a paid volume tier, but the free plan is perfect for proof-of-concepts.

What support options exist?

All plans include 24/7 chat and email. Higher-tier subscriptions unlock a dedicated account manager, premium SLA, and audit logs—valuable for enterprises with strict compliance needs.

Bright Data in 2025 feels less like a simple proxy vendor and more like a platform for turning the open web into structured, actionable fuel for your business or AI project. The flexible pricing, battle-tested infrastructure, and expanding free options make it worth a spin—whether you need one GB of data or an always-on firehose.