Apify vs Bright Data(2026)
Apify is better for teams that need huge library of pre-built scrapers (no code needed). Bright Data is the stronger choice if largest and most reliable proxy network. Apify is freemium (from $29/month) and Bright Data is paid (from from $1.50/1K requests).
Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.
By Bikram NathLast updated
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Apify
Apify is a cloud platform for web scraping, data extraction, and browser automation used by 130,000+ developers. Its Actor marketplace offers thousands of pre-built scrapers, while the SDK and Crawlee library let you build custom crawlers — with proxies, headless browsers, scheduling, storage, and an API all handled for you.
Starting at $29/month
Visit ApifyBright Data
Bright Data is an enterprise-grade web data platform offering one of the largest proxy networks (residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile), plus Web Scraper APIs, a Web Unlocker, SERP API, and ready-made datasets. It is built for high-volume, compliance-conscious data collection.
Starting at from $1.50/1K requests
Visit Bright DataHow Do Apify and Bright Data Compare on Features?
| Feature | Apify | Bright Data |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | $29/month | from $1.50/1K requests |
| Actor marketplace (thousands of ready scrapers) | ✓ | — |
| Crawlee open-source crawling library | ✓ | — |
| Datacenter + residential proxies | ✓ | — |
| Headless browser pool (Playwright/Puppeteer) | ✓ | — |
| Scheduling and webhooks | ✓ | — |
| Dataset + key-value storage | ✓ | — |
| REST API and SDK | ✓ | — |
| Anti-blocking and fingerprinting | ✓ | — |
| Residential, datacenter, ISP and mobile proxies | — | ✓ |
| Web Scraper API | — | ✓ |
| Web Unlocker (anti-bot bypass) | — | ✓ |
| SERP API | — | ✓ |
| Ready-made datasets | — | ✓ |
| Proxy Manager | — | ✓ |
| Compliance and KYC controls | — | ✓ |
Apify Pros and Cons vs Bright Data
Apify
Bright Data
Deep dive: Apify
When to choose Apify
Apify is the right choice when the team needs to run web scrapers at scale without managing browser infrastructure, proxy pools, or scheduling logic. Its Actor model, where each scraper is a containerized unit that can be published, versioned, and shared, is a genuine differentiator. The Apify Store contains thousands of pre-built Actors for common targets like Google Search, Amazon product pages, Instagram profiles, and real estate listings, meaning many scraping tasks can be solved without writing a single line of code. For custom scraping, Apify's Crawlee open-source library, which powers most Actors, provides a production-grade crawling framework with automatic retry, request queuing, and browser fingerprint rotation. Choose Apify when the team needs to scrape multiple different sites, when the scrapers need to run on a schedule with monitoring, or when the output feeds into a data pipeline or AI application. Avoid it when the scraping target is a single, simple API that can be called directly, or when the team has existing scraping infrastructure on dedicated servers and the migration cost outweighs the managed benefit.
Real-world use case
A solo developer building a price comparison SaaS deploys 8 Apify Actors to scrape product prices from e-commerce sites every 6 hours. Each Actor is configured via input JSON with the target URLs, CSS selectors, and output format. The scraped datasets are automatically pushed to Apify's Dataset storage and pulled into a PostgreSQL database via a webhook that triggers a Next.js API route. The developer uses 3 pre-built Store Actors for Amazon, Flipkart, and Google Shopping, and writes 5 custom Actors using Crawlee with Playwright for sites that require JavaScript rendering. The free tier's monthly compute credit covers about 50,000 page loads with datacenter proxies. As the product grows to tracking 10,000 products, the monthly cost scales to roughly per month on the Personal plan. The tradeoff: each Actor's compute consumption varies based on the target site's complexity, proxy type, and rendering requirements, making cost prediction difficult until the Actor has run for several billing cycles.
Hidden gotchas
Compute unit pricing is the main source of billing surprises. One compute unit equals one second of Actor runtime with 1 GB of memory. Actors that use Playwright or Puppeteer for full browser rendering consume significantly more compute units per page than those using plain HTTP requests with Cheerio. A Playwright-based Actor can consume 10 to 50 times more compute units per page than an HTTP-based one, and many Store Actors default to browser rendering even when the target page does not require JavaScript execution. Switching an Actor from Playwright to CheerioCrawler can reduce costs by 90 percent but requires understanding the target page's rendering requirements. Residential proxy bandwidth is billed separately from compute units and is not included in any plan's base pricing. A scraping job that routes through residential proxies for anti-bot bypass can generate a proxy bill that exceeds the compute bill. Store Actors maintained by third parties may add per-result fees on top of the platform's compute charges, and these fees are disclosed in the Actor's pricing tab but are easy to miss during initial evaluation. Dataset storage has a retention period tied to the plan: data older than 7 days on the free plan is automatically deleted, which can silently break pipelines that process historical data.
Pricing breakdown
The free plan includes worth of compute units per month, which covers roughly 50,000 simple HTTP-based page loads or 5,000 Playwright-based page loads. The Starter plan at per month includes of compute units. The Scale plan at per month includes of compute units plus priority support. Compute unit cost varies: datacenter proxy requests consume the base rate, while residential proxy requests add approximately .50 per GB of bandwidth on top. A realistic workload of scraping 50,000 pages per month with Playwright and datacenter proxies consumes roughly to in compute units. Adding residential proxies for 20 percent of requests adds approximately per month for 2 GB of bandwidth.
Deep dive: Bright Data
When to choose Bright Data
Bright Data is the right choice when proxy reliability and geographic coverage are the primary requirements, not the scraping framework itself. It operates the largest proxy network in the industry with over 72 million residential IPs across every country, making it the go-to for enterprise teams that need to access geo-restricted content, SERP data, or e-commerce prices from specific regions reliably. The Web Unlocker product handles anti-bot bypass automatically, including CAPTCHA solving, browser fingerprinting, and cookie management, so the team can focus on data extraction rather than evasion engineering. Choose Bright Data when the targets are heavily protected sites like Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, or airline booking engines that block most scraping attempts. It is also the right pick for compliance-sensitive operations: Bright Data has a published compliance program and KYC verification that some enterprise procurement teams require. Avoid Bright Data when the scraping target is lightly protected, when budget is the primary constraint, or when the team wants an all-in-one platform with built-in scheduling and data storage like Apify.
Real-world use case
An enterprise competitive intelligence team uses Bright Data's Web Unlocker to collect pricing data from 200 competitor product pages across 8 countries daily. Each request is routed through residential proxies in the target country to get localized pricing. The team's existing Python scripts make HTTP requests through Bright Data's proxy endpoint, parse the HTML with BeautifulSoup, and store the results in a PostgreSQL database. The Web Unlocker handles everything between the HTTP request and the target site: proxy selection, retry logic, CAPTCHA solving, and header management. The team processes about 200,000 requests per month. The tradeoff: the monthly bill is approximately , which is significantly more than Apify or ScrapingBee for the same volume. The team pays the premium because the success rate on these heavily protected sites is above 99 percent, compared to 60 to 70 percent with cheaper alternatives.
Hidden gotchas
Pricing tiers are complex and product-specific. Bright Data offers multiple products, datacenter proxies, residential proxies, ISP proxies, mobile proxies, Web Unlocker, SERP API, and ready-made datasets, each with different billing models. A team that starts with datacenter proxies and later switches to Web Unlocker for better success rates may see their costs increase 5 to 10x per request. The KYC verification process required for residential and mobile proxy access can take 1 to 3 business days, blocking time-sensitive projects. Bandwidth is metered on residential proxies, and a single image-heavy page can consume 2 to 5 MB per request, meaning a scraping job that processes pages with product images burns through bandwidth much faster than expected. The self-service dashboard shows real-time usage but does not provide projected billing for the current period, making cost management reactive rather than proactive. The Proxy Manager open-source tool, which manages proxy rotation locally, requires Docker and has a non-trivial setup process. Ready-made datasets are pre-scraped data sold by volume, but the freshness guarantee varies by dataset, and some datasets are refreshed weekly rather than daily, which may not meet real-time pricing use cases.
Pricing breakdown
Datacenter proxies start at /bin/zsh.10 per GB with no per-request fee. Residential proxies start at .04 per GB with per-request pricing varying by volume. Web Unlocker starts at .50 per 1,000 requests for simple pages and .00 per 1,000 for JavaScript-rendered pages. SERP API starts at .50 per 1,000 searches. A team making 200,000 Web Unlocker requests per month for simple HTML pages would pay approximately per month. Adding JavaScript rendering on 30 percent of requests pushes the total to approximately per month. The minimum commitment on most products is for annual plans with a discount, or pay-as-you-go with no minimum.
Should You Use Apify or Bright Data?
For most teams, Apify is the better default: it offers huge library of pre-built scrapers (no code needed) and is freemium (from $29/month). Choose Bright Data instead if largest and most reliable proxy network matters more than compute-unit pricing can get hard to predict at scale. There is no universal winner — the right pick depends on your budget, team size, and whether you value huge library of pre-built scrapers (no code needed) or largest and most reliable proxy network more.
Choose Apify if…
- •Huge library of pre-built scrapers (no code needed)
- •Generous free tier with $5 monthly credits
- •Build custom scrapers or use ready ones
Choose Bright Data if…
- •Largest and most reliable proxy network
- •High success rate on hard-to-scrape sites
- •Strong compliance and legal posture