# 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. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingbee
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingbee.md (~1,700 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingbee.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/bright-data-vs-scrapingbee.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

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 Data: grade C, 60.1/100, rank #254 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/bright-data.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/bright-data.json
- ScrapingBee: grade C, 59.3/100, rank #268 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scrapingbee.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scrapingbee.json

## 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

| Category | Weight | Bright Data | ScrapingBee | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 70 | ScrapingBee +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 60 | Bright Data +14 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 68 | Bright Data +14 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 57 | 37 | Bright Data +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 40 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 84 | 85 | ScrapingBee +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 64 | ScrapingBee +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **60.1 · C** | **59.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Bright Data | ScrapingBee |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Bright Data | ScrapingBee (Oxylabs group) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.brightdata.com/request` | `https://app.scrapingbee.com/api/v1/` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | none |
| Tools exposed | 69 | 18 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.brightdata/brightdata-mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-11 |
| Popularity | 2.6k stars | 132 stars, 49k npm/wk, 72k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (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

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