Bright Data review (2026): the compliance choice, at list prices

Bright Data pricing (as of October 2026)

Pay-as-you-go

$8.00/GB list; $4.00 with the vendor’s promo code RESIGB50 for three months³

Plans

Starter $499/mo, Growth $999, Scale $1,999; stated list rates $7 / $6 / $5 per GB³

Large volumes

Custom pricing from 1 TB³

Deposit bonus

First deposit matched up to $500³

Free trial

Yes, no card required³

Expiry

Not confirmed

List prices and promotions

Pay-as-you-go lists at $8.00 per GB with no minimum. The pricing page currently offers a code, RESIGB50, that halves that to $4.00 for three months, and Bright Data matches a first deposit up to $500³. Monthly plans start at $499 (Starter), then $999 (Growth) and $1,999 (Scale), with stated list rates of $7, $6 and $5 per GB; above 1 TB, pricing is custom³.

The plan figures don’t reconcile: the gigabytes shown for each plan, multiplied by its stated per-GB rate, don’t equal the plan price. We quote only the stated per-GB list rates and suggest you do the same — and ask for the effective rate, after any promotion ends, in writing.

Even at the promotional $4.00, Bright Data costs four times PacketStream’s flat rate and matches Decodo’s pay-as-you-go^4,5. You don’t buy it for price.

Targeting, protocols and sessions

Targeting

Country, city, ZIP, ASN and carrier³

Protocols

HTTP(S) and SOCKS5³

Sticky sessions

Maximum not confirmed

Related products

ISP and datacenter proxies, Web Unlocker, SERP API, Scraping Browser, scraper APIs³

SERP API

$1.50 per 1,000 requests pay-as-you-go, successful requests only; 5,000 free records a month with no card²

Targeting goes further than anyone here: country, city, ZIP, ASN and mobile carrier, over HTTP(S) or SOCKS5³. We couldn’t confirm a maximum sticky-session length or whether traffic expires, so ask.

The bigger draw for many buyers is the rest of the catalogue: ISP and datacenter proxies, Web Unlocker, a SERP API, Scraping Browser and ready-made scraper APIs from the same account³. If you’ll need an unblocker for hard targets anyway, consolidating on one vetted vendor has real value.

One of those products is cheap. The SERP API returns Google results for $1.50 per 1,000 requests pay-as-you-go, bills only successful requests and includes 5,000 free records a month with no card². That makes it our pick for Google results without a subscription — a far better route to Google than raw residential proxies.

Sourcing, KYC and trust

KYC

Residential only for verified companies after human-reviewed KYC; corporate email required; possible ID and video call; decisions “within 48 hours”¹

Pool claim

400M+ monthly IPs, 195 countries³

Measured pool

885,512 unique IPs globally in March 2024⁶

The KYC process is the strictest we found. You need a corporate email address — Gmail and Outlook are rejected — and Bright Data may ask for ID and a video call; it says decisions come “within 48 hours”¹. Only verified companies get residential access. Individuals and hobby projects are, by design, out.

Bright Data claims more than 400 million monthly IPs in 195 countries³. Proxyway’s March 2024 sample found 885,512 unique IPs globally, about 98.6% of them residential⁶ — a 2024 snapshot, not a current pool size.

Independent performance evidence

Proxyway’s review, updated in May 2026, describes Bright Data’s networks as fast, stable and large⁶. But the residential numbers in that review still come from March 2024, and we found no newer published residential test — most other providers here were tested in April 2026. On infrastructure, 98.96% success at 1.12 s was strong for 2024; Amazon (96.75%) and Instagram (72.50%) show that real targets are harder than test pages⁶.

Third-party figures are snapshots from the stated date, on the tester’s targets and setup; see our methodology for how we use each source.

Pros and cons

Who should pick Bright Data — and who shouldn’t

Pick it if

• You are a company that needs a supplier with documented customer vetting.
• You need ZIP, ASN or carrier targeting at very large scale.
• You want proxies, unblocking and scraping APIs from one vendor.

Skip it if

• You are an individual or can’t provide a corporate email¹.
• You want recent independent performance data — Decodo and Oxylabs were tested in April 2026.
• Price matters. Infatica also verifies every customer, at half the list rate⁷.

Alternatives to Bright Data

• Oxylabs review — the largest measured pool in 2026, from $30/month.
• Infatica review — mandatory ID verification at a lower price.
• Decodo review — recent strong results and pay-as-you-go without company KYC.

For the full picture, see the best residential proxies by use case, the price-per-GB tables and our index of all eleven reviews.