October 26, 2026

Bright Data pricing · what 100,000 records cost, and when Scale costs less than pay as you go

Bright Data’s Web Scraper API is free for 5,000 records a month, then $1.50 per 1,000 records on pay as you go. Scale is $499 a month billed monthly. Scale costs less from about 333,000 records a month.

The short answer

Pick Bright Data’s free tier if you need fewer than 5,000 records a month. A record is one structured result from a web page, such as one product’s name, price and rating. The free tier costs $0 a month.

Pick pay as you go if you need between 5,000 and about 333,000 records a month. It costs $1.50 per 1,000 records with no monthly fee, so 100,000 records cost $150 a month.

Pick Scale if you need more than about 333,000 records a month. Scale is $499 a month billed monthly and includes 384,000 records.

Pick Firecrawl if you want open web pages, pages that don’t block bots, turned into plain text for an AI app. Firecrawl Standard is $99 a month billed monthly for 100,000 pages.

Notebook sketch of a price ladder with three steps labelled free 5,000 records, pay as you go $1.50 per 1,000 and Scale $499 a month, with a sticky note on the top step that says from about 333,000 a month — Three steps, and the volume where each one starts to cost less.

The three Bright Data tools that share one price list

Bright Data sells tools that collect data from websites. Three of them use the same price pattern.

The Web Scraper API is a scraping API, a web service you send a page address to, and it sends back the page’s data as structured fields. It works through ready-made scrapers for named sites, such as Amazon products and LinkedIn job listings, and a tool that builds a scraper for another site. It bills per record.

The SERP API returns search engine results pages, the list of links a search engine shows for a query. It bills per request, one call to the API.

The Unlocker API fetches pages from sites that block bots. It handles CAPTCHAs, the “prove you are human” puzzles a site shows when it suspects a bot. It also bills per request.

The Web Scraper API price includes residential proxy data, CAPTCHA solving and output as JSON, a standard file format for named fields. A proxy is a middle server that sends your requests from another IP address, the number that identifies a connection on the internet. A residential IP is an address that belongs to a home internet connection. Bright Data says it charges only for successful deliveries.

Bright Data also rents proxies on their own, on separate price pages. The math below leaves them out.

What each plan costs on the three APIs

Plan	Web Scraper API	SERP API	Unlocker API
Free	5,000 records a month	5,000 requests a month	5,000 requests a month
Pay as you go	$1.50 per 1,000 records	$1.50 per 1,000 requests	$1.50 per 1,000 requests
Scale, $499 a month billed monthly	384,000 records, then $1.30 per 1,000	380,000 requests, then $1.30 per 1,000	383,000 requests, then $1.30 per 1,000

You can cancel Scale at any time. Concurrency is the number of requests that run at the same time. Pay as you go and Scale both have no limit on it.

The Web Scraper API and SERP API also have an Enterprise plan with a custom price. None of the three APIs has a yearly billing option.

Sketch of three index cards pinned side by side labelled Web Scraper API, SERP API and Unlocker API, each with the lines free 5,000, $1.50 per 1,000 and Scale $499 a month, and a yellow marker stripe across the three Scale lines showing 384,000, 380,000 and 383,000 included — Same prices on all three, with a slightly different Scale allowance.

What 5,000, 100,000 and 500,000 records cost

The math: for the Web Scraper API:

5,000 records a month: $0 on the free tier.
100,000 records a month: 100 × $1.50 = $150 a month on pay as you go.
384,000 records a month: $499 a month billed monthly on Scale. Pay as you go would cost 384 × $1.50 = $576 a month.
500,000 records a month: Scale at $499 plus 116 × $1.30 = $150.80, so $649.80 a month billed monthly. Bright Data prices 500,000 records at $650 a month. Pay as you go would cost $750 a month.

Pay as you go and Scale cost the same at about 333,000 records a month, since $499 ÷ $1.50 per 1,000 records is about 333 blocks of 1,000. Below that, pay as you go costs less. Above it, Scale costs less.

The SERP API and Unlocker API follow the same math with requests in place of records.

Hand drawn line chart with records a month on the bottom axis and dollars a month on the side, a straight rising line labelled pay as you go $1.50 per 1,000 and a flat line at $499 labelled Scale, the two crossing at a circle marked about 333,000 — The two lines cross at about 333,000 records a month.

How a Bright Data record compares with a Firecrawl page

A Bright Data record is one structured result, a set of named fields. A Firecrawl credit buys one page returned as clean text. So the two prices count different things.

Firecrawl adds 4 credits a page for JSON output, named fields like a record. So one structured page on Firecrawl costs 5 credits.

For plain text from 100,000 open pages, Firecrawl Standard at $99 a month billed monthly costs less than Bright Data at $150 a month on pay as you go. For 100,000 structured results, Firecrawl needs 500,000 credits, its Growth plan at $399 a month billed monthly, and Bright Data at $150 a month on pay as you go costs less.

Sketch of two piles side by side, on the left a stack of plain text pages labelled Firecrawl 1 credit a page, on the right a set of filled in forms with fields for name, price and rating labelled Bright Data 1 record, with a sticky note between them that says JSON on Firecrawl is 5 credits a page — A page of text and a record of fields are priced as different units.

What a test on sites that block bots found

Proxyway, a site that reviews proxy services, tested 11 scraping APIs on sites that block bots and published the results on September 17, 2024. Proxyway ran the test and did not say who paid for it. Proxyway says it uses paid referral links, and it runs Bright Data coupon codes, so it earns money when readers buy Bright Data.

In that test, Bright Data Web Unlocker, the product priced as the Unlocker API, got 97.90% of requests through. Oxylabs got 98.50% and Zyte got 98.38%. Bright Data did not fail a single run, and no other API in the test managed that. It ranked second slowest on speed.

Firecrawl was not in the Proxyway test.

What a Bright Data customer said in Bright Data’s own story

Bright Data published a customer story about Kernel, one of its customers, on August 10, 2026. In that Bright Data customer story, Marcus Henglein, co-founder and head of product and engineering at Kernel, said:

“Reaching production with Bright Data was extremely easy. Compared to other alternatives we could see value within days and we no longer had to deal with 429 hell.”

A 429 is the error code a site sends back when it gets more requests than it allows and refuses the rest. The story is Bright Data’s own marketing, so read it as a customer’s view picked by the vendor.

What to do this week

Count the records or search requests you need in a month, and round up.

If the number is under 5,000, start on the free tier. If it sits between 5,000 and about 333,000, use pay as you go. If it passes about 333,000, price Scale at $499 a month billed monthly. Start on Bright Data and set a monthly spend limit before the first run.

If you only need open pages as plain text for an AI app, start on Firecrawl and compare one week of output.

Try Bright Data

Next · Bright Data alternatives ranks five other tools · Firecrawl vs Bright Data splits the two by job · Firecrawl pricing prices every Firecrawl plan.

Sources · Bright Data Web Scraper API pricing, Bright Data SERP API pricing and Bright Data Unlocker API pricing · Firecrawl pricing and Firecrawl billing docs · Proxyway scraping API report, September 17, 2024 · Bright Data customer story on Kernel, August 10, 2026 · Proxyway coupon codes page, October 26, 2026.