Bright Data vs Scrapeless

Bright Data

Pay only for successful requests, $1.50 per 1,000 on Web Unlocker and SERP. No public status page or incident history.

Scrapeless

Hosted streamable HTTP MCP at api.scrapeless.com/mcp with header auth, plus a stdio package, both in the official MCP registry. llms.txt quotes Deep SerpApi at $0.1 per 1,000 while the plan data charges $1 per 1,000 for Google Search.

Bright Data

1. Connect with OAuth or keep the ?token= URL out of logs and shared configs
2. Add groups= or tools= to the MCP URL only for the extractors you need. The full set is 69 tools
3. Retry reject_block errors, since each attempt uses a different peer. Certificate and DNS errors fail the same way twice
4. Back off on a 429 sr_rate_limit. Bright Data throttles a target whose success rate drops
5. Use the batch tools for up to 10 searches or scrapes in one call

Scrapeless

1. Use scrape_markdown for reading pages and save the browser_* tools for clicks and logins, since browser time bills by the hour
2. Call browser_close when done so the session and its billing stop
3. Set limit on crawl_start. Unset, it defaults to 10,000 pages
4. Crawls are asynchronous. Call crawl_start, then poll crawl_result with the returned id
5. Set SCRAPELESS_API_KEY for the stdio server. Older guides use SCRAPELESS_KEY, which still works as a fallback