Bright Data and Oxylabs are two of the most well-known options in web scraping and data collection infrastructure. Today, we’ll take a look at each provider’s offerings and examine their scraping playgrounds.
By the time you’re finished reading, you’ll be able to answer the following questions.
- What does Bright Data offer?
- What does Oxylabs offer?
- How do they differ?
- How much usage do they cover?
- What do they look like on your infrastructure budget?
Now, let’s take a look at the main offerings from each of these providers.
Bright Data
- Unlocker API: Managed proxies, unblocking and data extraction using a single, centralized API.
- Crawl API: Crawl entire sites and receive AI-friendly data on demand in seconds using a unified crawling API.
- SERP API: Get structured search results instantly with a variety of supported search engines. Supports Google, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo and more.
- Browser API: Power your applications with remote headless browsers. They offer automated scaling and unlimited concurrency. Great for AI agents and other critical infrastructure.
- Scraper APIs: Run pre-built scrapers on-demand for popular domains. Output curated data with instant results.
- Scraper Studio: Build your own scrapers from within their Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Use their AI assistant to automatically generate custom code for your scraping jobs.
- Datasets: Purchase ready-to-use datasets for analytics and AI. Skip scraping entirely.
- Web Archive: Get full web archive data for large-scale extraction and comparison of sites over time. These archives include full HTML with metadata and multimodal data. Roughly 2.5 Petabytes are added to the archive daily.
- Residential Proxies: Route your traffic through a real home network. This makes automated access more difficult to spot.
- ISP Proxies: Use datacenter-grade hardware on a residential connection. Get the performance of a datacenter connection and blend in using a residential network.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: Utilize a dedicated address for your ISP proxy. Nobody uses your hardware but you.
- Datacenter Proxies: High performance hardware on a connection hosted in a datacenter. These proxies are great for medium-difficulty sites.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: A datacenter proxy where you are the only one using the connection.
- Mobile Proxies: Similar to residential proxies but traffic is routed through a mobile data network.
Oxylabs
- Web Unblocker: Unblock websites using proxy rotation and CAPTCHA avoidance. Connects to your software using proxy port integration.
- Web Scraper API: Similar to Web Unblocker but offered as an API. Teams can use custom instructions for extraction and formatting.
- Unblocking Browser: Power AI agents and critical infrastructure using a remote headless browser running in the cloud.
- SERP Data: They do not offer a standalone SERP API. However, the Web Scraper API offers SERP data from Bing and Google.
- Residential Proxies: Route your traffic through a home network.
- ISP Proxies: Run datacenter-grade hardware on a residential proxy network. Gain the performance of a datacenter connection and blend in like a residential device.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: Host an ISP proxy on a dedicated IP address.
- Mobile Proxies: Similar to residential proxies but routed through a mobile network.
- Datacenter Proxies: Route your traffic through a datacenter machine. These connections have performance-grade hardware. However, high-difficulty sites tend to block datacenter IPs by default.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: Manage a dedicated datacenter proxy. Only your traffic goes through the proxy.
Playground demo
Now that we know what these providers offer, let’s take a look at their API playgrounds and get some hands-on experience with their products. Most modern workflows use AI-powered scraping, so we’ll scrape a website and output its data in Markdown format.
Markdown is commonly used in LLM-powered scraping operations because it retains page data while removing HTML, JavaScript and CSS — we retain only the information we need. This allows teams to save on token inputs and makes parsing far more resource and cost efficient. We’ll use Books to Scrape as our target site. It’s built specifically for scraping tutorials and demos.
Bright Data playground
Once you’re signed into your account, click on Proxies & Scraping. You should notice a Playground tab. Click on it.
Bright Data’s playground provides us with access to all of our Bright Data products from within the same user interface (UI). This makes it easy to switch between products like Unlocker API, SERP API and other Bright Data products.
Here, we’re using Bright Data’s Unlocker API. If you look at the code example on your right hand side, there should be a dropdown labeled “Shell.”
If you click on the dropdown, you’ll see the playground’s supported languages. Bright Data supports Python, JavaScript and more.
Next, we’ll generate a simple Python request. Select Python from the dropdown and enter your target URL. You can run the request as-is or you can copy and paste it into a code editor. We want to customize things further, so we’ll copy and paste it.
We only want to make one change here. In the payload, add "data_format": "markdown". This tells the Unlocker API to give us Markdown. Note also that we have "format": "raw". The format and data format fields are distinct. "format" is used to designate the API response format. "data_format" is used to designate the returned page content.
import requests
url = "https://api.brightdata.com/request"
payload = {
"zone": "mcp_unlocker",
"url": "https://books.toscrape.com",
"format": "raw",
"method": "GET",
"data_format": "markdown"
}
headers = {
"Authorization": "Bearer <your-bright-data-api-key>",
"Content-Type": "application/json"
}
response = requests.request("POST", url, json=payload, headers=headers)
print(response.text)
We truncated the output here but this is the first portion of the response. As you can see, we’ve got valid Markdown content — formatted and ready to use.
All products | Books to Scrape - Sandbox
[Books to Scrape](index.html) We love being scraped!
* [Home](index.html)
* All products
* [Books](catalogue/category/books_1/index.html)
* [Travel](catalogue/category/books/travel_2/index.html)
* [Mystery](catalogue/category/books/mystery_3/index.html)
* [Historical Fiction](catalogue/category/books/historical-fiction_4/index.html)
* [Sequential Art](catalogue/category/books/sequential-art_5/index.html)
* [Classics](catalogue/category/books/classics_6/index.html)
* [Philosophy](catalogue/category/books/philosophy_7/index.html)
* [Romance](catalogue/category/books/romance_8/index.html)
* [Womens Fiction](catalogue/category/books/womens-fiction_9/index.html)
* [Fiction](catalogue/category/books/fiction_10/index.html)
* [Childrens](catalogue/category/books/childrens_11/index.html)
* [Religion](catalogue/category/books/religion_12/index.html)
* [Nonfiction](catalogue/category/books/nonfiction_13/index.html)
* [Music](catalogue/category/books/music_14/index.html)
* [Default](catalogue/category/books/default_15/index.html)
* [Science Fiction](catalogue/category/books/science-fiction_16/index.html)
* [Sports and Games](catalogue/category/books/sports-and-games_17/index.html)
* [Add a comment](catalogue/category/books/add-a-comment_18/index.html)
* [Fantasy](catalogue/category/books/fantasy_19/index.html)
* [New Adult](catalogue/category/books/new-adult_20/index.html)
* [Young Adult](catalogue/category/books/young-adult_21/index.html)
* [Science](catalogue/category/books/science_22/index.html)
* [Poetry](catalogue/category/books/poetry_23/index.html)
* [Paranormal](catalogue/category/books/paranormal_24/index.html)
* [Art](catalogue/category/books/art_25/index.html)
* [Psychology](catalogue/category/books/psychology_26/index.html)
* [Autobiography](catalogue/category/books/autobiography_27/index.html)
* [Parenting](catalogue/category/books/parenting_28/index.html)
* [Adult Fiction](catalogue/category/books/adult-fiction_29/index.html)
* [Humor](catalogue/category/books/humor_30/index.html)
* [Horror](catalogue/category/books/horror_31/index.html)
* [History](catalogue/category/books/history_32/index.html)
* [Food and Drink](catalogue/category/books/food-and-drink_33/index.html)
* [Christian Fiction](catalogue/category/books/christian-fiction_34/index.html)
* [Business](catalogue/category/books/business_35/index.html)
* [Biography](catalogue/category/books/biography_36/index.html)
* [Thriller](catalogue/category/books/thriller_37/index.html)
* [Contemporary](catalogue/category/books/contemporary_38/index.html)
* [Spirituality](catalogue/category/books/spirituality_39/index.html)
* [Academic](catalogue/category/books/academic_40/index.html)
* [Self Help](catalogue/category/books/self-help_41/index.html)
* [Historical](catalogue/category/books/historical_42/index.html)
* [Christian](catalogue/category/books/christian_43/index.html)
* [Suspense](catalogue/category/books/suspense_44/index.html)
* [Short Stories](catalogue/category/books/short-stories_45/index.html)
* [Novels](catalogue/category/books/novels_46/index.html)
* [Health](catalogue/category/books/health_47/index.html)
* [Politics](catalogue/category/books/politics_48/index.html)
* [Cultural](catalogue/category/books/cultural_49/index.html)
* [Erotica](catalogue/category/books/erotica_50/index.html)
* [Crime](catalogue/category/books/crime_51/index.html)
Oxylabs playground
Now, it’s time to perform the same job using the Oxylabs Web Scraper API playground. We’ll begin by simply inputting a URL. Make sure to set the Website dropdown to “Any other website.”
Like Bright Data, Oxylabs lets you generate code using a variety of languages — not just Python, JavaScript and Shell. Select Python and copy the resulting code.
Once again, we need to customize our script. We remove pprint — we don’t need it. In our payload, we add "markdown": True. Then we just use a regular print statement to view the output.
import requests
# Structure payload.
payload = {
'source': 'universal',
'url': 'https://books.toscrape.com',
'markdown': True
}
# Get response.
response = requests.request(
'POST',
'https://realtime.oxylabs.io/v1/queries',
auth=('<your-username>', '<your-password>'), #Your credentials go here
json=payload,
)
# Instead of response with job status and results url, this will return the
# JSON response with results.
print(response.text)
If you run the code, the site comes back as Markdown. However, teams should note that Oxylabs returns the site with escape characters such as \n (newline). This isn’t inherently wrong but teams should be willing to run cleanup operations as needed.
[Books to Scrape](index.html) We love being scraped!\n\n* [Home](index.html)\n* All products\n\n* [Books](catalogue/category/books_1/index.html)\n + [Travel](catalogue/category/books/travel_2/index.html)\n + [Mystery](catalogue/category/books/mystery_3/index.html)\n + [Historical Fiction](catalogue/category/books/historical-fiction_4/index.html)\n + [Sequential Art](catalogue/category/books/sequential-art_5/index.html)\n + [Classics](catalogue/category/books/classics_6/index.html)\n + [Philosophy](catalogue/category/books/philosophy_7/index.html)\n + [Romance](catalogue/category/books/romance_8/index.html)\n + [Womens Fiction](catalogue/category/books/womens-fiction_9/index.html)\n + [Fiction](catalogue/category/books/fiction_10/index.html)\n + [Childrens](catalogue/category/books/childrens_11/index.html)\n + [Religion](catalogue/category/books/religion_12/index.html)\n + [Nonfiction](catalogue/category/books/nonfiction_13/index.html)\n + [Music](catalogue/category/books/music_14/index.html)\n + [Default](catalogue/category/books/default_15/index.html)\n + [Science Fiction](catalogue/category/books/science-fiction_16/index.html)\n + [Sports and Games](catalogue/category/books/sports-and-games_17/index.html)\n + [Add a comment](catalogue/category/books/add-a-comment_18/index.html)\n + [Fantasy](catalogue/category/books/fantasy_19/index.html)\n + [New Adult](catalogue/category/books/new-adult_20/index.html)\n + [Young Adult](catalogue/category/books/young-adult_21/index.html)\n + [Science](catalogue/category/books/science_22/index.html)\n + [Poetry](catalogue/category/books/poetry_23/index.html)\n + [Paranormal](catalogue/category/books/paranormal_24/index.html)\n + [Art](catalogue/category/books/art_25/index.html)\n + [Psychology](catalogue/category/books/psychology_26/index.html)\n + [Autobiography](catalogue/category/books/autobiography_27/index.html)\n + [Parenting](catalogue/category/books/parenting_28/index.html)\n + [Adult Fiction](catalogue/category/books/adult-fiction_29/index.html)\n + [Humor](catalogue/category/books/humor_30/index.html)\n + [Horror](catalogue/category/books/horror_31/index.html)\n + [History](catalogue/category/books/history_32/index.html)\n + [Food and Drink](catalogue/category/books/food-and-drink_33/index.html)\n + [Christian Fiction](catalogue/category/books/christian-fiction_34/index.html)\n + [Business](catalogue/category/books/business_35/index.html)\n + [Biography](catalogue/category/books/biography_36/index.html)\n + [Thriller](catalogue/category/books/thriller_37/index.html)\n + [Contemporary](catalogue/category/books/contemporary_38/index.html)\n + [Spirituality](catalogue/category/books/spirituality_39/index.html)\n + [Academic](catalogue/category/books/academic_40/index.html)\n + [Self Help](catalogue/category/books/self-help_41/index.html)\n + [Historical](catalogue/category/books/historical_42/index.html)\n + [Christian](catalogue/category/books/christian_43/index.html)\n + [Suspense](catalogue/category/books/suspense_44/index.html)\n + [Short Stories](catalogue/category/books/short-stories_45/index.html)\n + [Novels](catalogue/category/books/novels_46/index.html)\n + [Health](catalogue/category/books/health_47/index.html)\n + [Politics](catalogue/category/books/politics_48/index.html)\n + [Cultural](catalogue/category/books/cultural_49/index.html)\n + [Erotica](catalogue/category/books/erotica_50/index.html)\n + [Crime](catalogue/category/books/crime_51/index.html)
Pricing
Bright Data
- Unlocker API: Starts at $1.50/1,000 requests (Pay-As-You-Go). At scale, it costs $1,999/month for 2,000,000 requests.
- Crawl API: Begins at $1.50/1,000 requests. The top tier costs $1,999/month for 2,000,000 requests.
- SERP API: Starts at $1.50/1,000 requests (Pay-As-You-Go). At scale, it costs $1,999/month for 2,000,000 requests.
- Browser API: Pricing begins at $8/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. The highest tier costs $1,999/month for 399 GB.
- Scraper APIs: Begins at $1.50/1,000 requests. The top tier costs $1,999/month for 2,000,000 requests.
- Scraper Studio: Starting at $1.50/1,000 requests. At scale, teams pay $1.00 per thousand requests. All plans require teams to pay for compute time as well.
- Datasets: Pricing starts at $2.50/1,000 records. At scale, this drops to $1.00 per thousand.
- Web Archive: $0.20/1,000 HTMLs. Teams can contact Bright Data for enterprise discounts as well.
- Residential Proxies: $8.00/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $1,999/month for 798GB.
- ISP Proxies: $18.00/month for 10 IPs. $1,300/month for 1,000 IPs.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: $35/month for 10 IPs $2,500/month for 1,000 IPs.
- Datacenter Proxies: $14/month for 10 IPs. $900/month for 1,000 IPs.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: $22/month for 10 IPs. $1,300/month for 1,000 IPs.
- Mobile Proxies: $8.00/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $1,999/month for 399GB.
Oxylabs
- Web Unblocker: $75/month for 8GB. $660/month for 88GB.
- Web Scraper API: $49/month for 98,000 results. $249/month for 622,500 results.
- Unblocking Browser: $300/month for 50GB. $1,410/month for 300GB.
- SERP Data: Included with Web Scraper API.
- Residential Proxies: $8.00/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $600/month for 86GB.
- ISP Proxies: $16/month for 10 IPs. $2,200/month for 2,000 IPs.
- Dedicated ISP Proxies: $16/month for 5 IPs. $2,200/month for 1,000 IPs.
- Mobile Proxies: $9/GB for Pay-As-You-Go. $600/month for 80GB.
- Datacenter Proxies: $12/month for 10 IPs. $180/month for 200 IPs. Bandwidth-based options are available as well.
- Dedicated Datacenter Proxies: $6.70/month for 3 IPs. $3,600/month for 3,000 IPs.
How they stack up
Products and features
| Category | Bright Data | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| Unblocking solution | Unlocker API (API-based, request-driven) | Web Unblocker (proxy port integration) |
| API-based scraping | Unlocker API, Crawl API, Scraper APIs | Web Scraper API |
| Browser-based scraping | Browser API (remote headless browser) | Unblocking Browser (remote headless browser) |
| Playground experience | Unified playground covering multiple products | Separate Web Scraper API playground |
| SERP access | Dedicated SERP API with multiple engines | SERP data available via Web Scraper API (no standalone SERP API) |
| Crawling capabilities | Dedicated Crawl API for site-wide crawling | Supported via Web Scraper API instructions |
| Custom scraper builder | Scraper Studio with IDE and AI-assisted code generation | No visual scraper builder |
| Datasets | Ready-to-use datasets available | Not offered |
| Web archived data | Full web archive product available | Not offered |
| Proxy types offered | Residential, ISP, datacenter, dedicated datacenter, dedicated ISP, mobile | Residential, ISP, dedicated ISP, datacenter, dedicated datacenter, mobile |
| Pricing transparency | Broad pricing tiers published publicly | Clear entry pricing, enterprise tiers vary |
Product pricing breakdown
Please not that both of these providers offer scale and enterprise options as well. The table below outlines publicly available usage and pricing information.
| Category | Bright Data | Oxylabs |
|---|---|---|
| Unblocking pricing model | Per request | Per GB |
| Entry-level unblocking | $1.50 per 1,000 requests (PAYG) | $75/month for 8 GB |
| Unblocking at scale | 2M requests for $1,999/month | 88 GB for $660/month |
| Scraping API pricing | Per request | Per result |
| Scraping API scale | Up to 2M requests per month | Up to 622,500 results per month |
| Entry-level remote browsing | PAYG from $8/GB | $300/month for 50 GB |
| Browser-based scraping at scale | Up to 399 GB for $1,999/month | Up to 300 GB for $1,410/month |
| Dataset pricing | From $2.50 per 1,000 records (drops to $1.00 at scale) | N/A |
Conclusion
Bright Data and Oxylabs are both built to solve the same core problem: Reliable access to web data. However, their approaches and product catalogues are quite different. Oxylabs focuses much more on scraping itself. Bright Data’s focus is on providing data — whether you want to scrape it or purchase packages.
Teams who need low barrier to entry or throughput at scale should choose Bright Data. Oxylabs provides a viable solution for teams willing to pay a premium to avoid thinking about scale mechanics.s tends to be stronger for teams who need features like OxyCopilot, Unblocking Browser or dedicated IP addresses.