Bright Data (brightdata.com) is trading. On 26 September 2026 its price list sold residential proxies at $8 a gigabyte with no commitment. A coupon cut that to $4 for the first three months. The bigger change for a new buyer came earlier, on 7 July 2026. Since that day the residential network is open only to registered companies that pass a review by a person, and an account on a personal email address cannot get it. If that rules you out, the alternatives table prices five other residential networks on the same day.
The record, with dates
| date | what happened |
|---|---|
| October 2014 | luminati.io describes a peer-to-peer "anonymity network" with "millions of nodes" |
| June 2015 | the Hola VPN FAQ names its paid network for companies: "The name of this commercial VPN is Luminati" |
| 2017 | EMK Capital acquires the company "in partnership with its founders" |
| March 2021 | brightdata.com serves the Luminati homepage, with "72M IPs worldwide" |
| January 2022 | luminati.io redirects to brightdata.com |
| 23 January 2024 | a US federal court grants Bright Data summary judgment on the contract claim Meta brought over scraped data |
| April 2026 | the last archived mobile proxy price: $8 a gigabyte with no commitment |
| 7 July 2026 | new residential access needs a company and a KYC approval |
| 13 August 2026 | the first archived sign that the mobile pricing address redirects to the general proxy price list |
| 26 September 2026 | our check: the site answers, and residential lists at $8 a gigabyte |
Sources: Internet Archive captures of luminati.io, brightdata.com and hola.org, the EMK Capital portfolio page, the court docket, and the Bright Data documentation, all read on 26 September 2026.
What Bright Data sells, and what it costs
The proxy side has three products today: rotating residential, static ISP and datacenter proxies. Next to them sit scraping tools billed per request, such as the Web Unlocker and a search results API. Mobile proxies had their own price page until at least April 2026. By 13 August 2026 that address redirected to the general price list, which shows no mobile price.
Residential, as the price page printed it on 26 September 2026:
| plan | list price per GB | with code RESIGB50 | monthly fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| pay as you go | $8.00 | $4.00 | none |
| 141 GB included | $7.00 | $3.50 | $499 |
| 332 GB included | $6.00 | $3.00 | $999 |
| 798 GB included | $5.00 | $2.50 | $1,999 |
| over 1 TB | custom | custom | by contract |
The coupon runs for three months. Each monthly fee matches its allowance at the coupon rate: 141 GB at $3.50 comes to $493.50, close to the $499 fee. At the $7 list rate the same 141 GB would cost $987. The page does not say whether the fee or the allowance changes when the coupon ends, so ask before you sign.
Static ISP proxies are rented per address per month. A shared address costs $1.80 at 10 addresses and $1.30 at 1,000, and a dedicated one $3.50 at 10 and $2.50 at 1,000. Each address includes 100 GB of traffic a month under a fair usage rule, and more "may" cost extra. ISP traffic is also sold by the gigabyte, from $8 with no commitment to $5 on the $1,999 plan.
Datacenter addresses cost $1.40 shared and $2.20 dedicated at 10 addresses, down to $0.90 and $1.30 at 1,000. By the gigabyte, datacenter traffic costs $0.60 with no commitment and $0.42 on the $1,999 plan with 5 TB included.
The scraping tools start with a free allowance of 5,000 requests a month, on the Web Unlocker and on the search results API alike. After that, both cost $1.50 per 1,000 requests with no commitment.
The fine print that decides the bill
- Monthly plans are billed on the 1st of each month. A plan started in the middle of a month is charged in full on day one and settled pro rata at the end of it.
- The contract, last updated on 16 June 2026, says: "The Subscription Fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable."
- Traffic counts in both directions: request headers and data plus response headers and data.
- Prices show in your local currency as an estimate, but the bill is in US dollars.
- A new account gets its first deposit matched "dollar for dollar, up to $500".
The contract names Bright Data Ltd. of Netanya, Israel, as the seller. Customers in the United States contract with Bright Data, Inc. in New York. Israeli law governs the agreement, with the courts of Tel Aviv-Jaffa as the forum.
Who can still buy residential proxies there
The documentation is plain about the rule of July 2026: "There is no automatic, instant or self-serve path to the Residential network." In practice, five things follow from it.
- You sign up for a registered company and verify a company email domain. Accounts on Gmail, Outlook or iCloud are not eligible.
- You add real money to the balance first. The KYC form does not open in the trial or playground modes.
- You send a company registration document and describe your scraping use case. A person reviews it, with an answer promised "within 48 hours".
- Access covers the use case they approved. Requests to other kinds of sites fail with an "Access denied" error.
- Residential zones created on or before 7 July 2026 keep working, and customers approved before then keep their access.
Without that approval, Bright Data still sells its ISP and datacenter proxies and the Web Unlocker. Its FAQ calls them "alternatives, not a limited or trial Residential mode".
Targeting, sessions and protocols
Residential traffic can be aimed by country, state, city, ZIP code or ASN, the number that identifies an internet provider, at no extra charge. The ISP and datacenter price pages list country targeting. To keep one address for several requests, you add a session name to the username.
The documentation sets a limit on that: "Session idle time is 5 minutes." After five quiet minutes, the next request gets a random new address. SOCKS5 runs on port 22228 on every network, with two limits for residential traffic. It works only toward HTTPS targets for now, and only when the target is a hostname, because "Requests sent with explicit IPs or local IP resolution, are blocked." The SOCKS5 page does not mention UDP.
Where the residential addresses come from
Bright Data says its residential IPs "come from 100% real people who opted in to the network". Its pages do not name every source. Two of its own products show what an opt-in looks like. Bright SDK, a kit that app makers add to their apps, pays those app makers "a fixed daily rate". On a phone that opted in, it "uses your IP address to download a few web pages in the background". EarnApp, which advertises "Passive Income" and cash-outs, carries the Bright Data Ltd. copyright. In 2014, Luminati put it in plainer words: consumers route requests "through other Luminati users". We did not install any of these apps.
What customers report
Trustpilot showed Bright Data at 4.5 from 946 reviews on its page as archived on 3 March 2026. The live page refused our server on 26 September 2026, so we hold no newer count. We have not tested the Bright Data network ourselves, and nothing on this page measures it.
Where Bright Data is the stronger choice
Some buyers should stay where they are. These are the points where the Bright Data offer goes further than ours:
- ZIP code targeting on residential traffic. Our Premium pool, at $1.49 for one GB, targets by country, state, city and ISP, not by ZIP code.
- A larger claimed network: "400M+ monthly" residential IPs, with 11,262,108 in the United States by its own count. We list 30M+ residential IPs in 200+ countries. Neither figure is audited.
- Managed tools: an unblocking API and a search results API with 5,000 free requests a month, plus ready datasets. We do not sell an unblocking API.
- Company paperwork: a master agreement, billing through the AWS Marketplace, and a court ruling on scraping public pages. A procurement team may want all three.
- Static ISP addresses in bulk: a dedicated address costs $2.50 a month at 1,000 addresses, below our $2.70/IP per month.
Where HProxy is different
| Bright Data, 26 September 2026 | HProxy | |
|---|---|---|
| who can buy residential | registered companies after a KYC review | anyone: no documents at sign-up or at an ordinary checkout, card payments screened |
| residential targeting | country, state, city, ZIP code, ASN | Premium, $1.49 for one GB: country, state, city, ISP by AS number, device OS. Lite: country |
| session length | same address until 5 minutes of idle time | Premium: you set 3 minutes to 24 hours |
| SOCKS5 | residential: HTTPS targets and hostnames only; UDP not documented | Premium: SOCKS5 with UDP |
| cheaper rates need | a monthly plan of $499 to $1,999, billed on the 1st | a larger single purchase, no plan, and the balance never expires |
| one gigabyte, no plan | $8, or $4 for three months with the coupon | $0.50/GB on Lite, country targeting |
| mobile proxies | no public price since August 2026 | $1.50 per GB |
| static ISP, dedicated address | $3.50 a month each, smallest plan 10 addresses | $2.70/IP per month, from one address |
| crypto payment | not on the payment list | accepted |
On both networks an address can end early when the device behind it goes offline. Bright Data also targets by ASN, so for ISP targeting the difference is access, not the feature. With us, one person can aim traffic at a single carrier, such as AS 7922 for Comcast or AS 7018 for AT&T, without a company registration or a monthly plan. Premium costs $1.49 for one GB and $1.00 per GB at 1,000 GB+. The carriers our gateway offers today are on the ISP targeting page, and the full price ladder is on our residential price table.
Five alternatives, priced the same day
Every rate below comes from each vendor pricing page, read from our server on 26 September 2026, with what the rate requires. A rate you cannot reach is not a price.
| provider | entry rate | lowest published rate | worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oxylabs | $6 per GB: 5 GB for $30 a month | $2.50 per GB: 1,000 GB for $2,500 a month | plan traffic expires after one calendar month; every customer answers a KYC questionnaire |
| Decodo | $4 per GB, pay as you go | $2 per GB at 1 TB a month, enterprise plan | prices plus VAT |
| SOAX | $5 per GB on the free Sandbox plan, tier 1 countries such as the US | from $0.85 per GB on the $3,000 a month plan | ISP targeting on every plan; ASN and ZIP from the $1,500 plan |
| Webshare | $3.50 for 1 GB a month, half a $7 list price | $1.40 per GB: 3,000 GB for $4,200 a month | monthly traffic does not roll over |
| HProxy | $0.50/GB for 1 GB of Lite, country targeting | $0.44/GB at 2,000 GB+ | Premium adds state, city and ISP targeting: $1.49 for one GB, no plan |
Two of these belong together: Oxylabs announced on 20 September 2022 that it had bought Webshare. The Decodo and SOAX rates are before VAT, so where VAT applies the bill is higher than the table shows.
Which one to pick
- You are one person, or a team without a registered company: the Bright Data residential network is closed to you. Pick from the table by the rate you can actually reach.
- You need one carrier or one city, paid per GB without a monthly plan: HProxy Premium targets by AS number, state and city, at $1.49 for one GB.
- You need ZIP targeting, an unblocking API and a contract your legal team signs: Bright Data is built for that buyer.
- You only need rotating traffic by country at the lowest rate: HProxy Lite, at $0.50/GB for one gigabyte and no plan.
Before you commit anywhere, buy the smallest unit and run your own job through it. Our free proxy checker tests HTTP and SOCKS proxies with no sign-up. For the row-by-row cost comparison, read HProxy vs Bright Data, and for other residential sellers, the 9Proxy page.
The limits of this record
We did not buy Bright Data proxies or go through its KYC, so nothing here measures its network. The pool sizes are its own claims, and the Trustpilot figure is from March 2026. Coupons, plans and access rules change fast. Every price here carries the day it was read, and this page is due for a check by 26 December 2026.
Sources
- Bright Data, residential, ISP and datacenter pricing pages, and the Web Unlocker and SERP API pricing pages. Read 26 September 2026.
- Bright Data documentation: "Residential network access policy", "Residential products FAQ", "How to configure your Residential proxy" (modified 2 September 2026), "Proxy and IP rotation control", "SOCKS and SOCKS5 proxies". Read 26 September 2026.
- Bright Data, Master Service Agreement, last updated 16 June 2026. Read 26 September 2026.
- Bright SDK and EarnApp homepages. Read 26 September 2026.
- Internet Archive: luminati.io (4 October 2014, 2 January 2018, 18 January 2021), brightdata.com (17 March 2021), hola.org FAQ (1 June 2015), the Bright Data mobile pricing page (13 April 2026) and the capture index. Read 26 September 2026.
- EMK Capital, portfolio page "Bright Data". Read 26 September 2026.
- US District Court for the Northern District of California, Meta Platforms, Inc. v. Bright Data Ltd., 3:23-cv-00077, order of 23 January 2024, on CourtListener. Read 26 September 2026.
- Trustpilot, review page for brightdata.com, archived 3 March 2026. Read 26 September 2026.
- Verisign, registry record for brightdata.com. Read 26 September 2026.
- Oxylabs, Decodo, SOAX and Webshare residential pricing pages; Oxylabs terms, section 3.7.3, and KYC page; Webshare help center; Oxylabs announcement of 20 September 2022. Read 26 September 2026.
- HProxy, our product catalogue, documentation and compliance page. Read 26 September 2026.
