Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Bright Data vs Decodo Web Data API

Decodo Web Data API scores 61.8 (C) on agent readiness against Bright Data's 56.9 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Bright Data leads on schema & documentation and security & auth. Both do scraping.

Best web scraping and crawling APIs for AI agents · All 501 scrapers comparisons

Which one, for what

Bright Data C

Best for Hard targets and site-specific structured data (Amazon, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Maps) at volume.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 74 against 67
  • Security & auth, 69 against 45

Watch for

No public status page or incident history

Decodo Web Data API C

Best for Agents that need pages, Google results and e-commerce or social templates through one key with published per-1,000 prices and a free plan.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 59 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • No incidents deducted, where Bright Data loses 6 points for them

Watch for

No SLA, and the License Agreement lets Decodo change or discontinue the service without notice

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Security & auth Bright Data +24

Bright Data 69

API keys carry one of five roles (Admin, Finance, Ops, Limit, User), can be given an expiry, and are revoked or refreshed in the control panel, and the hosted MCP also takes OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and one mcp scope (30). The README's default hosted setup still puts the key in the URL as ?token=, a documented option, so less 10 (20). User-role keys can't change configuration, tools load by group, and tools carry readOnlyHint and destructiveHint, but browser tools can fill forms and click with no confirmation step from the server (14 of 20). Since 3.1.0 results from search, scrape, scraper, dataset and browser tools are wrapped as untrusted web content with a per-call marker, and since 2.12.0 a content gate, documented in the README and on by default, asks the user through MCP elicitation before returning page text that looks like instructions to change the MCP configuration (12 of 15). The MCP session_stats tool reports calls in a session. We didn't find a per-request log for operators (5 of 15). ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018, SOC 2 Type II under NDA, a public SOC 3, a managed private bug bounty and security fixes in the MCP changelog per the 1 October check. No security.txt (404 on 4 November). OSV holds no advisory for @brightdata/mcp (18 of 20). 20+14+12+5+18 = 69.

Decodo Web Data API 45

One Bearer API key per Web Data API subscription with no scopes, and no rotation or revocation steps found in the reviewed docs. The hosted MCP server adds OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and dynamic registration, but its metadata advertises no scopes. No query-string credential is documented (20 of 30). Scraping only reads, and the MCP tools are annotated read-only, but http_method: POST sends requests to target sites and there is no read-only key (8 of 20). No guidance on treating scraped content as untrusted was found in the docs or the MCP README (0 of 15). The dashboard statistics API reports traffic by target, and each response carries an x-task-id. No per-call audit log (7 of 15). ISO/IEC 27001:2022 for proxies and the Scraping API, a SafeBase trust centre and KYC at signup. security.txt answers 404 and no disclosure policy or bug bounty was found (10 of 20). 20 + 8 + 0 + 7 + 10 = 45.

Reliability Decodo Web Data API +19

Bright Data 40

No public status page found. status.brightdata.com doesn't resolve and the docs index and security overview link none (0). No readable incident history, so 5 by the rubric (5). The SERP API fair-use page gives 1,000 requests a minute for unfunded accounts with HTTP 429 above it and a header that reads the account's limit, paid Web Unlocker plans state unlimited concurrency, and the free tier is 5,000 requests a month (15). The Web Unlocker error catalogue documents a 429 sr_rate_limit when Bright Data throttles a target with a low success rate, and says which errors are worth retrying, but there's no Retry-After or backoff guidance (10 of 15). The pricing page names a Premium SLA for Enterprise and claims 99.99 per cent uptime, with no SLA terms published (0). GA (10). 0+5+15+10+0+10 = 40.

Decodo Web Data API 59

Graded on the hosted lines. Instatus page at status.decodo.com with Web Data API and each legacy scraping API as components, with RSS history (20). In the 90 days to 6 November, every scraping API was out for 2 hours 51 minutes on 30 October, the main outage, with outages of 13 minutes on 26 October and 21 minutes on 15 October across the same components. The rest of the incidents hit proxies, payments or the website. One major (10). Per-plan request rates are published, 10 to 200 a second, though the same page's FAQ says paid plans support 10 to 50 (12 of 15). The response code table tells the agent to wait a couple of minutes on 429 and to retry 500, 524 and 613, which aren't billed, and the MCP client backs off exponentially. No Retry-After or idempotency guidance (7 of 15). No SLA; the License Agreement disclaims uninterrupted service (0). Web Data API is the current, unflagged product (10). 20 + 10 + 12 + 7 + 0 + 10 = 59.

Schema & documentation Bright Data +7

Bright Data 74

No OpenAPI file found for the API. The MCP server has zod schemas on every tool, so partial credit (15 of 25). llms.txt at docs.brightdata.com with Markdown pages (10). MCP descriptions say what each tool returns, and the dataset tools say when to use them instead of run_scraper (14 of 20). Typed inputs with enums such as engine (bing or google), time_range and format (12 of 15). Per-product error catalogues for Web Unlocker, Browser API and scrapers, and curl examples (13 of 15). Release notes, now dated to 27 October 2026, and an MCP CHANGELOG with a gap between 2.6.0 and 2.10.0, per the 1 October reading (10 of 15).

Decodo Web Data API 67

No OpenAPI or similar contract for the Web Data API; the two published specs cover the proxy account API and dashboard statistics. The MCP server types every input with zod (12 of 25). llms.txt indexes 401 guide pages, each served as Markdown (10). Tool descriptions state purpose and when to use a tool, such as scrape_as_markdown 'when no site-specific tool fits', and link the docs page (14 of 20). Parameters are tabled with defaults, with enumerated proxy_pool, headless and device_type, but headers is a free object and POST bodies are base64 strings (10 of 15). Curl examples on every page, a response code table with fixes and billing, and parser status codes (14 of 15). Paths are versioned at /v1 and the MCP server's releases are tagged by semantic-release, but no API changelog was found (7 of 15). 12 + 10 + 14 + 10 + 14 + 7 = 67.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBright DataDecodo Web Data APIEdge
Reliability16%204059Decodo Web Data API +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27467Bright Data +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.27982Decodo Web Data API +3
Security & auth14%17.56945Bright Data +24
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88785Bright Data +2
Transparency & trust7%8.86162Decodo Web Data API +1
Negative events≤15-60
TotalC 56.9/100C 61.8/100

Facts side by side

FactBright DataDecodo Web Data API
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBright DataDecodo (UAB "Data troops")
Hosted endpointhttps://api.brightdata.com/requesthttps://mcp.decodo.com/mcp
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPStreamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
Price for scrapingnot published$0.50 per 1,000 requests
x402nono
Tools exposed3233
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.brightdata/brightdata-mcpio.github.Decodo/mcp-server
Last release2026-11-022026-10-30
Terms last updated2026-06-162025-06-16
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-142026-05-21
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity2.6k starsnone
Agent reviews4/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Bright Data

Bright Data bills only successful requests, $1.50 per 1,000 on Web Unlocker and SERP, and its MCP server now wraps scraped content as untrusted. There's no public status page or incident history, and MCP 4.2.0 and 4.3.0 changed tool inputs and outputs in minor releases without notice.

Decodo Web Data API

One Bearer key reaches /scrape, /search, /crawl and /map, with per-1,000 prices published from $0.15 to $1.50, 10,000 free requests with no card and a hosted MCP server whose 33 tools are all marked read-only. There is no SLA, no OpenAPI for the Web Data API, and an outage of 2 hours 51 minutes on 30 October.

Before you call either

Bright Data

  1. Connect with OAuth or keep the ?token= URL out of logs and shared configs
  2. Set groups= or tools= on the MCP URL to load only the tools you need. With neither, all 32 load
  3. Send country and page to the search tools from 4.3.0. geo_location and cursor now return invalid_input
  4. Expect JSON with a content field from scrape_as_markdown since 4.2.0, and use the browser tools for pages that need JavaScript
  5. Back off on a 429 sr_rate_limit or rate_limited. Bright Data throttles a target whose success rate drops

Decodo Web Data API

  1. Send "proxy_pool": "standard" for simple pages; the default premium pool is charged at the higher rate
  2. Use the Web Data API key as Authorization: Bearer at https://data.decodo.com/v1; legacy Basic tokens don't work there
  3. Treat scraped Markdown as untrusted page text, never as instructions
  4. On 429, wait a couple of minutes as the docs say, and on 500, 524 or 613 retry, since those aren't billed
  5. Set tokenLimit on MCP scrapes; pages are cut at 45,000 characters by default and the result says when it was truncated

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Bright Data or Decodo Web Data API?

Decodo Web Data API scores 61.8 (C) on agent readiness against Bright Data's 56.9 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Bright Data leads on schema & documentation and security & auth.

Do Bright Data and Decodo Web Data API need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Bright Data and Decodo Web Data API without installing anything?

Yes. Bright Data has a hosted endpoint at https://api.brightdata.com/request and Decodo Web Data API at https://mcp.decodo.com/mcp.

Other comparisons with Bright Data or Decodo Web Data API

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