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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Bright Data vs ScrapingBee

Bright Data has a score of 60.1 (C) against ScrapingBee's 59.3 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points.

Bright DataBright Data · HTTP API C60.1/100#254 of 452 ScrapingBeeScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) · HTTP API C59.3/100#268 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Bright Data for

  • schema & documentation (+14)
  • agent ergonomics (+14)
  • security & auth (+20)

Pick ScrapingBee for

  • reliability (+35)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBright DataScrapingBeeEdge
Reliability16%203570ScrapingBee +35
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27460Bright Data +14
Agent ergonomics13%16.28268Bright Data +14
Security & auth14%17.55737Bright Data +20
Payments & pricing10%12.54040even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88485ScrapingBee +1
Transparency & trust7%8.86264ScrapingBee +2
Negative events≤1500
Total60.1 · C59.3 · C

Facts side by side

FactBright DataScrapingBee
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBright DataScrapingBee (Oxylabs group)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.brightdata.com/requesthttps://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
Licencenonenone
Tools exposed6918
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryio.github.brightdata/brightdata-mcpnot listed
Last release2026-09-152026-09-11
Popularity2.6k stars132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Bright Data

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

ScrapingBee

Dedicated Google, Amazon, Walmart, YouTube, ChatGPT and Gemini endpoints next to the general HTML API. remote-mcp.txt says the hosted MCP only takes the key as ?api_key= in its URL.

Before you call either

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

ScrapingBee

  1. Send render_js=false for static pages and files. It cuts the cost from 5 credits to 1
  2. Use mode=auto with max_cost=25 to stop it escalating to 75-credit stealth requests
  3. Keep the MCP URL with ?api_key= out of logs and shared configs
  4. Back off exponentially on 429 from the MCP, since its concurrency is shared across customers
  5. Expect 404 and 410 from the target to be billed. Other failures aren't

Other comparisons with Bright Data or ScrapingBee

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