Bright Data Alternatives: 7 Cheaper and Sharper Options, Dated

Bright Data is the coverage leader in our dataset — the only provider publishing a 400M+ residential pool. It is also, at the entry tier, a 50% promo hiding an $8.00/GB list rate. If you are not scraping rare locations at enterprise scale, a cheaper alternative exists for your exact shape of job. Here is the field, priced on the same date.

The comparison

All prices read from vendor pages on 2026-09-19. “Starting price” is the smallest purchasable plan; promo rates carry their list price.

Read 2026-09-19. Promo prices show the list rate they are discounted from. Units differ by design — per GB for residential, per IP for datacenter/ISP, plan-plus-usage for SOAX.

The best Bright Data alternative, by use case

Budget entry: IPRoyal (from $1.75/GB)

Half of Bright Data’s promo rate, and the page states no contracts and that residential traffic never expires. You give up what is not published: session types and a free tier. For a first paid GB at the lowest published price, this is the row. Full review.

Flat-rate simplicity: Decodo ($3.75/GB at 3 GB)

No coupons, no list-versus-sale theatre. The rate on the 3 GB plan is the rate you pay, stepping down to $2.75/GB at 100 GB. A free trial on monthly plans and 14-day money-back make it the lowest-risk switch from Bright Data. Full review.

Self-serve value: Webshare ($3.50/GB at 1 GB, promo)

The same 50%-off shape as Bright Data’s promo, but with a dashboard you operate alone and 10 free datacenter proxies to start. City/ZIP/ASN targeting is published, and volume drops to $1.40/GB at 3,000 GB.

Cheapest live test: ProxyEmpire ($1.97 trial)

If you want to run real requests before committing anything meaningful, a $1.97 trial is the cheapest live test in the dataset. The catch is on the pricing page: every rate is 50% off list (code EMPIRE50) and pool size is not published.

Enterprise tooling: Oxylabs (from $6.00/GB)

The enterprise-shaped alternative — residential plus web scraper API from $49/mo, web unblocker from $9.40/GB, SOCKS5 from $8/GB. You pay more per GB and get managed tooling and a rep instead of a pool-size figure. Full review.

Deepest targeting: SOAX (ASN+ZIP on Scale/Enterprise)

When the job is “traffic from a specific ISP in a specific ZIP code,” SOAX is the only provider in the dataset publishing ASN+ZIP targeting. The price shape is different — $200/mo plan plus metered usage from $3.00/GB — so it only makes sense for jobs that need the depth. Pool size is not published.

What the table doesn’t tell you

• Promo maths is the same everywhere. Bright Data, Webshare and ProxyEmpire all publish 50%-off entries off $7–8/GB lists. When comparing “cheaper than Bright Data,” compare list rates, not sale rates — or you are comparing two discounts against each other.
• Not published is a feature of the honest table. IPRoyal does not publish session types or a free tier; Oxylabs, ProxyEmpire and SOAX do not publish pool sizes; Rayobyte publishes no pool size either. Those gaps are findings, not fill-in-the-blanks — the policy is on How we test.
• Coverage is the only reason to stay. The 400M+ pool and free geo targeting are the things no alternative matches on paper. If your scrape list is three common countries, you are paying for coverage you never use.

Who wrote this

Written by the Runein operator — the same person who pays for and runs these tools. Corrections and vendor price changes go to [email protected] and are re-read, re-dated and logged. Disclosure: some links on this page point to vendor official sites; if we later add affiliate links, buying through one may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what we recommend.