Bright Data 2024 review – How good is it?

Bright Data, previously known as Luminati Networks, is one of the larger proxy providers out there. The service provides a comprehensive set of tools, like its Web Unlocker, SERP API, and scraping browser. It also provides you with a centralized proxy manager. But given that Bright Data is more expensive than many of its competitors and the setup isn’t as streamlined as it could be, I wanted to see if its offering is worth the asking price.

We will unpack all of that in this review to see if we can recommend Bright Data in good faith.

If you have the time and want all the details, I recommend reading through the entire review. If you’re stretched for time, you can read a summary of my thoughts below.

Bright Data review summary

Bright Data’s offering is one of the most comprehensive web scraping proxy services. The customization options are practically endless, ensuring that practically every use case is covered. The proxy types on offer are also excellent – with a great selection of mobile proxies. Its centralized dashboard provides everything you need to manage your proxies, although it may be somewhat intimidating to newer users.

All those options come at the cost of some added complexity in the tools provided and their configuration. There are more straightforward options available, but they may not include all the bells and whistles that Bright Data delivers. The service is also more expensive than other solutions out there.

But if you’re looking for the most comprehensive web scraping solution and require granular control over its operation, Bright Data is right up your alley. Recommended.

Bright Data pros and cons

Bright Data pricing

We’re starting with pricing because of the way Bright Data works. You purchase a plan for access to the types of proxy servers you need. The prices vary based on the proxies you buy, with different payment tiers for each plan. So you purchase access to what you need and the bigger the rate plan, the lower the price per GB. You can pay for your rate plan on a monthly or a yearly basis – and going yearly will bag you a 10% discount.

The prices for proxies are as follows:

Residential

Datacenter

ISP

Mobile

Bright Data offers a handy Pay-as-You-Go plan, which can be useful to try the service out or if you’re unsure how much bandwidth you need.

The same pricing structure goes for access to its tools. There are four available.

Web Scraping IDE

Scraping Browser

SERP API

Web Unlocker

Again, a Pay-as-You-Go plan is offered. And, as mentioned above, the bigger the rate plan, the lower the cost per GB or CPM (cost per mile).

You can also forgo web scraping altogether and simply purchase data sets from Bright Data. It offers two plans for data sets: Data Sets and Bright Insights. The main difference between the two is that the data in Bright Insights is pre-analyzed and served via an intuitive dashboard. Whereas its Data Sets are validated, but you need to analyze the data yourself.

Data Sets

It’s pretty straightforward here. Bright Data’s data sets cost $0.001 per record. Larger organizations can contact Bright Data for a tailored plan.

Bright Insights

For structured and pre-analyzed data sets, you can go for Bright Data’s Bright Insights plan. It starts at $400 per month per product category. Data sets with multiple product categories start at $750 per month.

Let’s look at what each of these plans provides in a bit more detail.

Bright Data plans

Residential proxies

When using Bright Data’s residential proxies, you can appear to come from a precise location. Not only can you choose a location based on country or city, but you can select a location by zip code. This allows for web data collection as if you were in that physical location, masking your actual IP address in the process.

Residential proxies are optimized for:

• Bypassing geolocation restrictions
• Web scraping
• Price comparison and market research
• Social media management
• Ad verification
• SEO monitoring
• Security testing

ISP proxies

Bright Data’s ISP Proxies consist of residential IPs purchased or leased from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for commercial use. These IP addresses are identified as being residential IPs, even though they’re not assigned to residential customers. The main benefit ISP proxies have over residential proxies is enhanced bandwidth and speeds.

ISP proxies are optimized for:

• Web data extraction
• Marketing on social media
• AdTech
• Website Testing
• Travel
• SEO

Datacenter proxies

Datacenter proxies resemble VPNs (sans the encryption) in that the IP addresses are assigned to a server. Your traffic is routed through that server, masking your original IP address and spoofing your location.

The main benefits of data center proxies are their fast speeds and reduced cost. Datacenter IP addresses are static and will remain unchanged for as long as you need.

Datacenter proxies are suitable for:

• Competitive and marketing intelligence
• Brand security
• Digital asset protection
• Scanning public databases
• Accessing websites that don’t use sophisticated blocking systems (so they’re not optimal for web scraping)

Mobile proxies

Mobile proxies route internet traffic through a mobile network connection. Mobile proxies use cellphone carrier IP addresses that reach mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. Using mobile proxies enables you to appear like an actual mobile user over 3G/4G/5G/LTE networks from any country and city worldwide.

Mobile proxies are excellent for:

• Mobile ads verification (using a desktop)
• Mobile app user experience
• App quality assurance
• Tracking direct billing campaigns and app promotions

Let’s take a more detailed look at Bright Data’s tools now.

Scraping browser

There are two ways to use Bright Data’s Scraping Browser:

As an automated headless browser controlled by high-level APIs like Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium.
Using a bundled version of the open-source Chromium Web browser (Chrome-based browser) through Bright Data’s proxies.

However you choose to use it, it can handle full page loads and has some tricks up its sleeve to manage automated website unlocking operations like:

• CAPTCHA solving
• Browser fingerprinting
• Automatic retries
• Selecting headers
• Cookies, & Javascript rendering

When used as a headless browser (i.e., controlled through APIs), it is nonetheless seen as a heedful browser that can handle page interactions (hovering, changing pages, clicking, screenshots, etc.).

Web scraper IDE

Built on Bright Data’s unblocking proxy solution, its Web scraper IDE is a fully hosted cloud solution used to build scalable scrapers in a JavaScript coding environment easily. Out of the box, it includes preset functions and code templates from major websites, easing deployment while reducing development time.

The scraped data can be delivered in JSON, NDJSON, CSV, or Microsoft Excel. As with the Scraping browser, the Web scraper IDE can handle:

• CAPTCHA solving
• Browser fingerprinting
• Automatic retries
• Selecting headers
• Cookies, & Javascript rendering

SERP API

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Pages, and Bright Data’s SERP API is used for – you guessed it – scraping search engine results. Because search engines tend to change their structure and algorithms, scraping search engine results can be tricky. But SERP API will automatically adjust to SERP changes and provide you with real user results that can be sourced through various tailored search parameters.

Bright Data stands behind the accuracy of the results and states that by using its SERP API, you will never get blocked. SERP API can easily be integrated into any 3rd party crawler software, and it delivers its search results in either JSON or HTML format.

Use cases for using Bright Data’s SERP API are:

• Organic keyword tracking
• Brand protection
• Price comparisons
• Market research
• Copyright infringement detection
• Ad intelligence

Web unlocker

Web unlocker is much like Scraping Browser, except it isn’t meant to be used with APIs (Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium). Instead, you send a single proxy request to the target website, and Web Unlocker returns clean HTML/JSON. Between your request and the return, Web Unlocker’s algorithms handle everything, from finding the best proxy network to customizing headers, fingerprinting, and taking care of CAPTCHAs.

Web Unlocker uses Bright Data’s proxy infrastructure while providing three key features:

• Request management: It uses retry logic and CAPTCHA resolution to get close to a 100% success rate.
• User emulation: Web Unlocker provides user emulation at the network, protocol, browser, and OS levels.
• Content verification: The collected data is automatically validated using request timing, data types, and response content, ensuring you only collect high-quality and reliable data.

Data sets

If you don’t want to put effort (or money) into web scraping, you can buy data sets from Bright Data. Bright Data already maintains several commonly requested data sets, so if your requirements aren’t too esoteric, there’s a good chance you can find what you need in its bank of pre-built data sets.

If not, you have the option of requesting a custom data set.

The data you get from Bright Data is validated, so it’s reliable and compliant with data protection laws. You can choose to format your data sets in JSON, ndJSON, or CSV formats, and they can be delivered via Snowflake, Google Cloud, PubSub, S3, or Azure.

Bright insights

As mentioned in the pricing section, the data you get with the Bright insights plan is structured and analyzed and is served through a dashboard that lets you sort and sift through the data as you please.

Bright Insights enables organizations to:

• Track products and categories
• Monitor and optimize pricing
• Analyze ranking metrics
• Track competitor promotions and ad spend
• Analyze sales volumes and trends

Bright Insights takes you straight to the web scraping finish line and provides actionable data and insights.

The web UI

Zones

Regardless of which Bright Data product or service you purchase, it shows up in its Web UI. By default, it lists the proxies you’ve bought, but you can also access your datasets and Scraper IDEs by clicking the “stacked squares” icon.

Each proxy type listed is considered a Zone, Bright Data’s name for the specific set of parameters you have chosen to use for a set of proxy requests. For each proxy type, you can create a set of settings for a specific use case using that proxy. You can save up to 50 zones per proxy.

Clicking a proxy in your list displays its configuration options and access parameters. Here’s an example using Residential Proxies.

The Configuration page lets you modify your zone settings for this proxy type. This includes things like selecting between a shared or dedicated IP address for your residential proxy, targeting specific countries, and choosing whether you want to allow scraping using ports other than HTTP and HTTPS (80 and 443).

The Access parameters page provides you with your proxy’s hostname and port, your username, and password (proxy authentication). It enables you to allow or block specific IP addresses and/or hosts.

Bright Data also provides a basic curl command that can be used to test your configuration. The example command scrapes IP address information for the proxy being used from lumtest.com. If everything is working correctly, your output should be similar to this:

{"ip":"XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX","country":"IT","asn":{"asnum":XXXX,"org_name":"Wind Tre S.p.A."},"geo":{"city":"Naples","region":"72","region_name":"Campania","postal_code":"80147","latitude":40.867,"longitude":14.2385,"tz":"Europe/Rome","lum_city":"naples","lum_region":"72"}}%

This represents the most basic example as a proof-of-concept, of course, and the idea is to build apps or scripts that can scrape much higher volumes of data and deliver the results in a specified format.

The proxy manager

The Proxy Manager is where all the fun happens. It’s an open-source desktop UI that enables you to automate your proxy flows by setting up custom rules, routing options, allow/block listing IPs, etc.

The Proxy Manager can be installed locally at no cost (Bright Data provides an installer for Windows and a script for other platforms), or you can choose to run it in Bright Data’s cloud (paid option). Once installed, it can be accessed from a Web browser.

To start using the Proxy Manager, you need to create what’s called a port. A port contains the specific rules, routing, configuration options, allow/block-listed IPs, etc.

Here’s a simple example of how to create a port:

1. Click the Start button or the Add new port button. The new port dialog is displayed. You’re prompted to select between using Bright Data’s proxy network or user-defined external proxies. If you go with external, you must add the proxy IP address(es) and port(s).
2. After making your selection and clicking Next, you’re prompted to choose between using a browser or scraper code (issuing commands via a terminal). I selected Browser (Puppeteer/Selenium).
3. After clicking Create proxy port, your port is created, and an example command is displayed for you to test your freshly created port.
4. Clicking Close takes us back to the Proxy Manager Dashboard, where our port is displayed along with some logs (showing the results of the test command, which I ran).

Port options

Clicking on our port displays some additional information and configuration options. Let’s look at these options.

Logs

By default, the port’s logs are displayed, and you can sort the logs according to the field of your choice.

Targeting

As its name indicates, the Targeting page allows you to narrow down your scraping targets by specifying things like country, state, city, zip code, ISP, etc.

IP control

The IP control page enables you to configure things like IP pool size, IP rotation, DNS lookup parameters, etc.

Rules

The Rules page is where you configure your custom rules that will apply to this port. Above is an example rule that will bypass the proxy for .mp4 media. You can create as many rules as you like.

Browser

On the Browser page, you can customize your scraping browser’s headers, timezone, and resolution and turn WebRTC on or off.

General

The General page allows you to configure general options relative to this port – essentially, all other settings that didn’t neatly fit in the other categories.

Once you’ve configured your port, you’re ready to go. My example port is configured to use the scraping Browser. I have the option to automate it using Puppeteer or Selenium, or I can use the bundled Chromium browser and proceed with my scraping manually.

Clicking the Browser button to the left of my configured port in the Proxy Manager Dashboard launches Chromium and runs the default test command.

Google scraping example

Bright Data proxies can serve various use cases, from marketing intelligence to cybersecurity, brand protection, travel, etc. Depending on your use case, you may need to install additional packages (such as scrapy) and some coding knowledge will be required.

Here’s an example (with corresponding code) of me scraping google for sunglasses reviews.

For more complex use cases, Bright Data provides tutorials on how to set up your proxies for a wide variety of use cases on its website.

Support

There are three ways to get support from Bright Data:

Account Manager

When you sign up for Bright Data, you’re automatically assigned an Account Manager. Clicking on the Settings icon of the main dashboard provides you with their name and a direct email link to contact them for support.

Support link in Dashboard

Clicking the Support link in the Dashboard will (unsurprisingly) take you to Bright Data’s Support page, where you have two additional support options:

• Knowledge base: You can search Bright Data’s comprehensive knowledge base to find answers to common questions. You can do this through the Web interface or the pseudo-chat interface on the bottom right. The obtained results are the same.
• Email Support: From here, you can also choose to email their Support department

I emailed Bright Data from its Support page, and I got a friendly and well-informed response within five minutes. I was impressed. Bright Data’s support is excellent.

Do I recommend Bright Data?

Yes, I do. It’s an excellent service with more options than I can count. Whatever your use case, Bright Data has you covered. You can tailor your proxies’ behavior to your needs and obtain all the data you need.

Its prices may be higher than others, but its offering is proportionally more robust. So, if you can get through the service’s slightly more complex setup, it’s well worth it. And if you run into any snags, Bright Data’s support is timely and knowledgeable – its support reps will help you through any issues you encounter.

The final word is that Bright Data is highly recommended.