Apify vs Bright Data: platform vs proxies, priced (2026)
Apify is a scraping platform: you pick or write an Actor, and Apify runs it, stores the results, and schedules the next run. Bright Data is proxy and unblocking infrastructure: you bring your own scraper and buy IPs, successful requests, or finished datasets. On raw proxy price Bright Data is cheaper, at $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go for residential traffic against $8/GB on Apify's Starter plan. On everything wrapped around the proxy, Apify is the one you do not have to build. Both figures verified 2026-09-09 on the vendors' own pricing pages.
What changed since this page was last checked
Every number below was re-read on the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-09. Four things moved since the previous version of this comparison:
- Apify Starter is $19/month, not $29. It carries $19 of included platform usage and $0.20/CU, or $17/month billed annually (apify.com/pricing).
- The Apify Store is past 70,000 Actors. The store page now reads "70,000+ ready-to-run tools called Actors" (apify.com/store).
- Bright Data datacenter bandwidth is $0.60/GB pay-as-you-go, down from the ~$0.90/GB this page previously listed (datacenter proxy pricing).
- Bright Data mobile proxies are billed per IP, not per GB. Any per-GB mobile figure, including the one this page used to carry, describes a product Bright Data does not sell that way.
What is the actual difference between Apify and Bright Data?
Apify sells the machine that runs the scraper. Bright Data sells the network the scraper goes out through, plus scraper-shaped APIs on top of it. You can buy either without the other, and plenty of teams buy both.
| Apify | Bright Data | |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | Managed runs, storage, scheduling | IPs, successful requests, datasets |
| Prebuilt scrapers | 70,000+ Store Actors | Scraper APIs for 800+ sites |
| Where code runs | Apify's serverless containers | Your machines |
| Storage | Datasets, key-value stores, request queues | None; you persist the response |
| Open source | Crawlee (Python and JavaScript) | Proxy manager and MCP server |
| Billing unit | Compute units, plus per-event Actor charges | GB, IPs, or 1,000 successful results |
| Entry price | $0 with $5 monthly usage | $0 with 5K free records on most APIs |
| Cheapest paid tier | $19/month | Pay-as-you-go, no monthly minimum |
Sources: apify.com/pricing and brightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper, both read 2026-09-09.
Which one has better proxy infrastructure?
Bright Data does, and it is not close. This is their product; on Apify it is a line item.
Bright Data claims "400M+ monthly proxy IPs from 195 countries," 1.3M+ ISP proxies, and 1.3M+ datacenter IPs on its proxy types page, with a further "7M+ Mobile IPs" on the mobile pricing page. Apify publishes no pool size at all: its residential proxy docs describe country and US-state targeting and say pricing is measured per GB, with no IP count anywhere on the page.
The price gap points the same way. Residential traffic costs $8/GB subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 on Apify's Free and Starter plans, against $4.00/GB subject to change · verified 2026-09-09 pay-as-you-go on Bright Data.
| Proxy type | Apify | Bright Data |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | $8/GB (Free, Starter), $7.50/GB (Scale), $7/GB (Business) | $4.00/GB PAYG with code RESIGB50, list $8/GB; $2.50/GB at $1,999/month |
| Datacenter, bandwidth | Not sold per GB | $0.60/GB PAYG, $0.42/GB at $1,999/month |
| Datacenter, per IP | 30 IPs included on Starter, then $1/IP | Shared $1.40/IP at 10 IPs, $0.90/IP at 1,000; dedicated $2.20 to $1.30/IP |
| ISP (static residential) | Not offered | $1.80/IP at 10 IPs, $1.30/IP at 1,000 |
| Mobile | Not offered | Sold per IP, not per GB |
| Google SERP | $2.50/1,000 (Free, Starter), $1.70/1,000 (Business) | $1.50/1,000 requests PAYG, $1.30/1,000 on the $499 plan |
Apify figures from apify.com/pricing; Bright Data figures from its proxy network, datacenter and SERP pricing pages. All read 2026-09-09.
Two cautions on the Bright Data column. The residential rates are a running 50%-off coupon, so budget against the $8/GB list price if you are forecasting past the promotion. And the mobile pricing page returned two different per-IP figures in the same session, so read it yourself before committing.
What does each one cost?
Apify charges a monthly fee that is also a prepaid usage credit. The $19 on Starter is not an access fee: it buys $19 of compute, proxy, and storage usage, and you pay more only past that.
| Apify plan | Monthly | Annual | Included usage | CU rate | Concurrent runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | $5 | $0.20 | see note |
| Starter | $19 | $17/mo | $19 | $0.20 | 32 |
| Scale | $199 | $179/mo | $199 | $0.16 | 128 |
| Business | $999 | $899/mo | $999 | $0.13 | 256 |
Note on Free-plan concurrency: Apify's own two sources disagree. apify.com/pricing lists 5 concurrent runs on Free; docs.apify.com/platform/limits lists 25. Both read 2026-09-09. Plan for 5 and treat anything above it as a bonus. The paid tiers agree on both pages.
Bright Data has no plan fee at the bottom. You pay per unit, and the $499/month tier is a volume discount rather than a gate.
| Bright Data product | Pay-as-you-go | $499/month tier |
|---|---|---|
| Web Scraper API | $1.50/1,000 records | 384,000 records, then $1.30/1,000 |
| Web Unlocker | $1.50/1,000 successful requests | 383,000 requests, then $1.30/1,000 |
| SERP API | $1.50/1,000 requests | 380,000 requests, then $1.30/1,000 |
| Scraping Browser | $8/GB | 71 GB included |
| Residential proxy | $4.00/GB (list $8) | 141 GB at $3.50/GB |
| Datacenter proxy | $0.60/GB | 1 TB at $0.51/GB |
Read 2026-09-09 from brightdata.com/pricing/web-scraper, /web-unlocker, /serp, /scraping-browser and /proxy-network. Our Apify pricing guide breaks down the compute-unit side in more detail.
Which is cheaper for 10,000 Google Maps places a month?
Close to a tie on the data itself, and the difference is the platform fee.
The most-used Google Maps Actor on Apify, compass/crawler-google-places, has been pay-per-event since March 2025 and prices each scraped place by your plan's Store discount tier: $0.004 on Free, $0.003 on Starter, $0.002 on Scale, $0.0015 on Business. Bright Data's Web Scraper API, which covers Google Maps among its 800+ sites, charges $1.50 per 1,000 records pay-as-you-go. So Apify matches that $1.50 rate only on the $999/month Business plan; on Starter the same 1,000 places cost $3.00. Both rates verified 2026-09-09.
| Volume per month | Apify (Starter, $0.003/place) | Bright Data (PAYG, $1.50/1,000) |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 places | $30 of charges; $19 is covered by the plan's included usage, so ~$30 all in | $15, no plan fee |
| 100,000 places | $300 of charges, of which the first $19 is included, so ~$300 | $150 |
Arithmetic on the published rates above, not a benchmark run. Both sides have caveats: the Apify Actor says "from $1.50," and extras such as place details, reviews, and contact enrichment charge as separate events; Bright Data bills only successful records but you still store and schedule the output yourself.
Bright Data is roughly half the price on this workload, and it stays half as you scale, because the per-record rate dominates once you are past the $19 of usage the Apify plan includes. Apify closes the gap only on the Business plan, where the Store discount reaches $0.0015 per place — but that plan costs $999/month, so it pays back only if you are also using the platform for scheduling, storage, and other Actors. If Google Maps volume is the whole job, Bright Data is the cheaper invoice. If you want the walkthrough on the Apify side, see how to scrape Google Maps.
Which should you pick?
| If this is true | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You have no servers and no scraper | Apify | Store Actor, a form, a schedule, a dataset export |
| You already run scrapers on AWS or GCP | Bright Data | Buy only the IPs; nothing to re-platform |
| Mobile IPs or ISP proxies are a hard requirement | Bright Data | Apify sells neither |
| Residential bandwidth is your biggest line item | Bright Data | Half the per-GB rate at the same volume |
| You want runs, storage, and scheduling on one bill | Apify | Prepaid usage covers all three |
| You are standardizing on Git, CI, and Crawlee | Apify | apify push, containers, and a deploy path |
| You would rather buy the data than crawl it | Bright Data | Dataset marketplace |
| You are wiring scrapers into an LLM agent | Apify | Actors exposed over MCP; see use MCP servers |
When Bright Data is the better default
Four cases where recommending Apify would be the wrong answer:
- Mobile or ISP proxies. Apify does not sell them. There is no workaround inside the platform.
- Bandwidth-heavy residential scraping. A 500 GB month costs $4,000 of residential proxy usage on Apify's Starter rate of $8/GB. The same 500 GB on Bright Data is about $1,500 on its $999/month plan (332 GB included, $3.00/GB with the RESIGB50 coupon; $1,503 once the 168 GB of overage is added), or $2,000 straight pay-as-you-go at $4.00/GB. Even at Bright Data's undiscounted $6/GB list rate on that plan it is $3,000. All rates read 2026-09-09.
- You already own the stack. If your scrapers, queues, and warehouse exist and work, Apify's bundled storage and scheduling is a second copy of things you have.
- Procurement wants a network SLA. Bright Data sells IP products with the contract shape enterprise buyers ask for.
Can you run both?
Yes, and the split is usually orchestration on one side and IPs on the other. Run the schedule, the retries, and the dataset on Apify, and route only the targets that keep failing through Bright Data's Web Unlocker or residential pool from inside your Actor. Actors accept an external proxy configuration, so this needs no platform migration. It costs two invoices and buys you Apify's cheap default proxies for the easy 90% of targets.
Developer workflow, in one line each
Apify: build with Crawlee locally, deploy with apify push or GitHub, operate from Console with schedules and webhooks, export from datasets or push to integrations.
Bright Data: point your existing HTTP client or Playwright script at a proxy endpoint or an API, and keep owning parsing, persistence, and orchestration.
The Apify Free plan gives $5 of monthly usage with no card. That is around 3,300 Google Maps places at the rate above, which is enough to compare real output against whatever you run now.
For other head-to-head comparisons, see Apify vs Firecrawl and the comparisons hub. Our Bright Data review covers their product line on its own terms.
Apify is a managed scraping platform: it runs your Actor, stores the results, and schedules the next run. Bright Data is proxy and unblocking infrastructure plus scraper APIs: you bring your own compute and buy IPs, successful requests, or finished datasets. Apify bundles the workflow; Bright Data assumes you already have one.
It depends on which unit dominates your bill. Residential proxy traffic is $8/GB on Apify's Starter plan and $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go on Bright Data (both verified 2026-09-09), so bandwidth-heavy work is cheaper on Bright Data. For prebuilt scrapers it depends on your plan: Apify's Google Maps Actor is $3.00 per 1,000 places on Starter against Bright Data's $1.50 per 1,000 pay-as-you-go, and Apify only reaches $1.50 on the $999/month Business plan. Apify's $19/month plan fee doubles as $19 of usage credit.
Free is $0 with $5 of included usage. Starter is $19/month, or $17/month billed annually, with $19 of included platform usage at $0.20 per compute unit. Scale is $199/month at $0.16/CU and Business is $999/month at $0.13/CU. Verified on apify.com/pricing, 2026-09-09.
Yes, on every axis they publish. Bright Data claims 400M+ monthly proxy IPs across 195 countries, plus ISP and mobile products Apify does not sell at all. Apify publishes no pool size and offers datacenter and residential only. If proxy breadth is the requirement, Bright Data is the specialist.
Web Unlocker is an unblocking API billed at $1.50 per 1,000 successful requests pay-as-you-go, dropping to $1.30 per 1,000 on the $499/month plan (verified 2026-09-09). Apify has no separately priced equivalent: rotation and fingerprinting are handled inside Actors and Crawlee, with proxy usage billed against your plan credit.
Apify Store lists 70,000+ ready-to-run Actors, most of them built by third-party developers. Bright Data advertises Scraper APIs for 800+ sites, all built and maintained in-house. Apify wins on coverage of long-tail targets; Bright Data's smaller set is first-party and uniformly supported.
Yes. Run orchestration, storage, and scheduling on Apify, and configure your Actor to route the hardest targets through Bright Data's residential pool or Web Unlocker. Actors accept an external proxy configuration, so nothing needs re-platforming. You pay two invoices and keep Apify's cheaper default proxies for easy targets.
Yes, if your bottleneck is operations rather than IPs. Port your parsing into Crawlee or find a Store Actor that already covers the target, then deploy with apify push. Validate cost and output on the Free plan's $5 monthly credit before moving production traffic.