Oxylabs vs. Bright Data (for web scraping)

Oxylabs and Bright Data are primarily known for their proxy services. However, they've recently been making significant investments and improvements to their scraping APIs.

But how exactly do their services work, and does their similar background shape their approach?

That’s what we're going to explore in this article.

Oxylabs vs. Bright Data comparison table and summary

As the feature comparison table above illustrates, both companies are fairly similar in their offerings, but they still vary significantly in key aspects such as the size of their API marketplace, their approaches to giving users control over the web scraping process, and their pricing structures.

To kick things off, let’s start with an overview of each service and take a quick look at some of their most distinctive features.

Bright Data

Bright Data, a well-known proxy provider, has carved a place for itself in the web scraping world with its API marketplace, which focuses on providing specialized APIs for popular websites such as Amazon, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Bright Data's ready-made scrapers cover specific sites. For any other page, it sells a separate Web Unlocker API that takes a URL and returns the page's HTML or JSON, or you can build a custom scraper in Scraper Studio, from scratch or from an existing template.

Another standout feature of Bright Data is its Dataset Marketplace, where users can purchase custom datasets from specific websites, eliminating the need to engage in the scraping process altogether.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these features and see how they work from a user’s perspective.

API Marketplace

Bright Data offers a collection of 1,000+ ready-made scrapers for popular categories (e.g. e-commerce, social media, financial).

Using the API endpoints is fairly simple, thanks to the visual API request builder that helps you configure curl requests for Bash, PowerShell, and Windows CMD.

Bright Data also has official Python and Node.js SDKs, with code examples in its docs.

Scraper Studio

Bright Data's Scraper Studio offers a great contrast to its specialized API marketplace. Developers can describe the data they want to an AI agent, or write and debug JavaScript in a browser-based IDE, either from scratch or from an existing template.

After you're done building, you can click on Save to development and access and edit your configuration settings in the My scrapers tab.

While the idea behind the IDE is appealing, the UI isn’t very intuitive, and the whole process can feel a bit clunky at times.

Regarding the UI, it's often not clear for a new user where the information about their scraper and its runs is stored. Following better onboarding UX examples and a less monochromatic color scheme might help users find their way around at a glance.

If you'd rather skip the browser editor, Scraper Studio also has a CLI (@brightdata/cli) for creating and running scrapers from your terminal or a coding agent.

Dataset Marketplace

Bright Data’s Dataset Marketplace is pretty straightforward. You choose the target website from the available list and buy the tailored dataset either through a recurring subscription or a one-time purchase.

Oxylabs

Like Bright Data, Oxylabs made its name in proxies before expanding into web scraping.

Oxylabs has a smaller library of specialized scraping APIs than Bright Data, but it compensates for this with a general scraper API that can be adjusted to target virtually any website.

Additionally, Oxylabs provides an excellent Web Scraper API Playground that makes testing and building your API requests simple.

API Marketplace

Oxylabs' Web Scraper API has dedicated sources for popular sites such as Google, Amazon, and Walmart, and can also scrape any other public page.

Overall, the pricing model and value proposition of the APIs are very clear and easy to understand.

Sending your first request is as simple as hitting the Quick Start button and copying the curl request it provides.

But where Oxylabs really shines is with its Web Scraper API Playground, which we'll explore next.

Web Scraper API Playground

This is Oxylabs' most distinctive feature.

While API playgrounds are not hard to come by, and similar features can be found in products like ScraperAPI, it's rare to see one with both a clean, intuitive UI, and an instant preview of the returned data.

Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API Playground is a great example of what Bright Data should emulate to improve the user experience on its platform.

Oxylabs addresses one of the most common criticisms of Bright Data: its lackluster UI. The playground lets you build a request, preview the result, and copy the code in one place, as illustrated below.

Pricing

Oxylabs

Oxylabs seems to have a more streamlined and productized pricing structure, similar to other services in the industry.

Its pricing depends on the target site, JavaScript rendering, and volume. On the Starter plan, Oxylabs charges $0.50 per 1,000 results for Amazon, $1.00 for Google, and from $1.00 for other non-dynamic sites. With JavaScript rendering, Google costs $1.35 per 1,000 results and other sites $1.50.

Plans start at $30/month.

Bright Data

Bright Data now offers limited self-service plans for scraping APIs, but enterprise plans still involve sales interaction.

This lengthy process can be a major turn-off for users who want to manage everything themselves and start using the product right away without needing specific quotes.

On the lower end, costs are $1.50 per 1,000 records on the pay‑as‑you‑go plan and $1.30 per 1,000 on volume plans starting at $499/mo.

Free plans

Oxylabs gives new accounts $5 in welcome credits, usable on any of its products. At Web Scraper API rates, that covers up to 10,000 Amazon results or about 3,700 Google results with JavaScript rendering.

Bright Data has a free tier of 5,000 records a month. Neither service asks for payment up front, so you can try both without your card being charged.

Apify: an alternative to Oxylabs and Bright Data

Oxylabs and Bright Data sell their own scraping APIs. Apify is a marketplace of 80,000+ ready-to-run tools for AI, called Actors, built by a global community of developers. Some of them do the same jobs as the two providers' scraping APIs:

Beyond scraping, Actors in Apify Store generate leads, monitor social media, track competitors, and connect to the apps and AI agents you already use. If nothing fits, you can build your own Actor in Apify Console's web IDE or locally with the CLI, starting from a template.

G2 calculates a satisfaction score from user reviews. Here's how the three compare:

Conclusion: which tool should you choose?

Both Oxylabs and Bright Data offer reliable scraping, so the decision comes down to scale and how hands-on you want to be.

Bright Data has the larger API marketplace, so it's more likely to have a ready-made API for your target. Its pricing structure, the need to contact an account manager for a quote and the higher entry cost make it a better fit for high-volume users. It pays off most for large-scale, enterprise operations, where prices get more attractive at volume and hands-on account management becomes an asset rather than an overhead.

Oxylabs offers more accessible pricing and a more intuitive UI. It has fewer ready-made APIs, but its general web scraper APIs can cover most other sites. For most self-service users scraping low to moderate volumes, Oxylabs is the easier starting point.

If your project goes beyond what one scraping API covers, check Apify Store before you build anything: the Actor you need may already exist.

Largest marketplace of tools for AI

Thousands of Actors to automate your business. Get real-time web data, track competitors, generate leads, monitor social media, and integrate your apps and agents.

Browse the marketplace Publish an Actor

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