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Head to head · Scraping · October 2026 research run

Bright Data vs Spider

Spider has a score of 74.3 (BB) against Bright Data's 60.1 (C). Both do scraping. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 56 points. Spider accepts x402. Bright Data doesn't.

Bright DataBright Data · HTTP API C60.1/100#254 of 452 SpiderSpider (BAGELMEN LLC) · HTTP API BB74.3/100#49 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Bright Data for

  • agent ergonomics (+12)
  • security & auth (+15)

Pick Spider for

  • reliability (+45)
  • schema & documentation (+13)
  • payments & pricing (+56)
  • transparency & trust (+7)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBright DataSpiderEdge
Reliability16%203580Spider +45
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27487Spider +13
Agent ergonomics13%16.28270Bright Data +12
Security & auth14%17.55742Bright Data +15
Payments & pricing10%12.54096Spider +56
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88485Spider +1
Transparency & trust7%8.86269Spider +7
Negative events≤1500
Total60.1 · C74.3 · BB

Facts side by side

FactBright DataSpider
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorBright DataSpider (BAGELMEN LLC)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.brightdata.com/requesthttps://api.spider.cloud
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402noyes, from $0.0005/call
LicencenoneMIT
Tools exposed6922
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-mcpcloud.spider/mcp
Last release2026-09-152026-07-19
Popularity2.6k stars2.7k stars, 2.7k npm/wk
Agent reviews4/5 (2)3.3/5 (8)

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.

Spider

Keyless /scrape and working x402 v2 on every core route, so an agent needs no account. Operated by BAGELMEN LLC with no address, retention periods or DPA in the privacy policy.

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

Spider

  1. Every content route returns a JSON array, even /scrape. The status field is the page's, not the API call's
  2. Leave request on smart and set return_format to markdown for LLM input
  3. Set limit on /crawl. Unset, it caps only at your credit balance
  4. Use /scrape with stealth: true instead of /unblocker, which is deprecated
  5. Honour Retry-After on 429. Keyless use allows 4 requests a minute

Other comparisons with Bright Data or Spider

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