Bright Data vs ScrapingBee
Bright Data is a Proxy & data infrastructure, while ScrapingBee is a Scraping API. Bright Data fits best for: Companies scraping heavily protected sites at scale that need the strongest proxy and unblocking infrastructure. ScrapingBee fits best for: Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure.
| Bright Data | ScrapingBee | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Proxy & data infrastructure | Scraping API |
| Starting price | Pay as you go | $19/mo |
| Free tier | Web Unlocker / MCP: 5,000 free requests per month (per official MCP docs and pricing page as indexed by search); first deposit matched up to $500 in promo credits (docs) | 1,000 free API credits trial, no credit card |
| Pricing model | per GB (proxies) and per 1K successful requests (Unlocker/SERP/Scraper APIs) | credits per successful request |
| AI extraction | ||
| Structured JSON | ||
| JS rendering | ||
| Proxies / anti-bot | ||
| API | ||
| No-code UI | ||
| Open source | ||
| MCP server | ||
| Best for | Companies scraping heavily protected sites at scale that need the strongest proxy and unblocking infrastructure. | Developers who want a predictable, easy scraping API that handles rendering and proxies without managing infrastructure. |
| Visit Bright Data | Visit ScrapingBee |
Why choose Bright Data
- Residential, ISP, datacenter and mobile proxy networks
- Web Unlocker with automatic CAPTCHA/anti-bot handling
- Browser API (hosted headless browsers)
- SERP API and site-specific Web Scraper APIs
Watch out for
- Pricing is complex and spread across many products
- Overkill and expensive for small projects
- Promotional vs list prices make cost comparison tricky
Why choose ScrapingBee
- Headless Chrome rendering with JS scenarios
- Rotating and premium/stealth proxies
- AI extraction via natural-language ai_query
- CSS/XPath extract rules to JSON
Watch out for
- JS rendering is on by default and costs 5x a plain request
- Premium/stealth proxies multiply credit costs quickly
- Hobby plan has low credits once JS + premium proxy are used
Our product
Only need structured JSON from pages?
BestAIScraper's extraction API takes a URL and a list of fields and returns typed JSON. Pay per use, no subscription.
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