By use case · Bright Data vs Apify

Bright Data vs Apify pricing and features compared for teams choosing a scraping platform

The short answer

Bright Data and Apify sell different things. Bright Data is a proxy and data network: you pay per successful record ($1.50 per 1,000 on pay as you go, or $499 a month for 384,000) or per gigabyte of proxy traffic ($8 per GB on pay as you go). Apify is a scraper marketplace and automation cloud: plans from $19 a month buy a dollar allowance that Actors burn at $0.13 to $0.20 per compute unit. Pick Bright Data when the target fights back and you need its IP pool. Pick Apify when someone already built an Actor for your site. If your targets are ordinary public pages and the output goes into an LLM, ClawEngine returns typed JSON from $49 a month for about 50,000 pages.

Clean markdown & JSON · JavaScript rendered · robots.txt respected

Extraction demo

Endpoint: POST /v1/extract · paste a URL, or pick a sample below

POST

Try:

Hit Extract to turn this page into clean, LLM-ready data.

robots.txt respected · public data only ·

Markdown · JSON · structured fields, from one API call. Crawling, rendering and extracting ... Samples are recorded. Your own URL is crawled live.

People compare Bright Data and Apify because both show up when you search for a way to get data off websites at scale, and both have prebuilt scrapers for the big platforms. Underneath, they are built around different assets. Bright Data's asset is its network: one of the largest residential proxy pools in the category, an unlocker that handles CAPTCHAs and fingerprinting, a hosted browser, and a catalog of ready-made datasets. Apify's asset is its Store: thousands of Actors, small programs written by Apify and by independent developers, that each scrape one site or do one job, plus the scheduling, storage and integrations that run them.

That difference shows up first on the invoice. Bright Data meters each product separately, in records, requests or gigabytes, and its monthly plans start at $499. Apify meters compute, so the same 100,000 pages can cost $20 or $500 depending on whether the Actor uses a raw HTTP client or a full browser. Neither model is wrong, but each one punishes a different mistake, and the cheapest choice depends entirely on what your target list looks like. The table below uses prices read from each vendor's own pricing page.

Already leaning one way? Our Bright Data pricing breakdown works through every product meter, and Apify pricing explained shows how compute units turn into a monthly bill. If Firecrawl is the third name on your shortlist, Firecrawl vs Bright Data vs Apify compares all three for AI work.

CRAWL RENDER JS EXTRACT MARKDOWN JSON

Any URL in LLM-ready data out

robots.txt respected public data only

Why it works

Three things that decide Bright Data vs Apify

Is the target defended?

If your target list is full of sites that block datacenter traffic, Bright Data's unlocker and residential pool are the product you are buying, and paying $1.50 per 1,000 successful records is cheap next to a failed crawl. If the sites let you in, you are paying for an unblocking layer you never use.

Does an Actor already exist?

Apify is at its best when someone already maintains a scraper for your exact site. You skip the build and pay for compute. When no Actor fits, you either write one or run a general crawler on Apify, and at that point the comparison is with any other crawl API.

What lands in your pipeline?

Both tools return JSON shaped by whoever wrote the scraper. If the destination is an LLM or a typed table, someone still maps that JSON into your schema. Count that engineering time, because it never appears on either pricing page.

What it handles

Any URL in, clean structured data out

Point ClawEngine at a public page and it crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON in one call. Define a schema for structured fields, and respect robots.txt and Terms of Service by default.

Compares prices read firsthand from each vendor
Explains records and requests against compute units
Prices 100,000 pages a month on each platform
Shows where each vendor clearly wins
Answers the proxy infrastructure question directly
States plainly what ClawEngine does not do

POST /v1/extract extraction result

200 · JSON

{
  "url": "https://example.com/products/atlas",
  "title": "Atlas Field Notebook",
  "markdown": "# Atlas Field Notebook\n\nDurable...",
  "data": {
    "name": "Atlas Field Notebook",
    "price": 24.00,
    "currency": "USD",
    "rating": 4.7
  },
  "links": [ "/products", "/cart" ],
  "metadata": { "rendered": true }
}

JS rendered · boilerplate stripped ✓ robots.txt respected

Head to head

Bright Data vs Apify, side by side

Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page or product page, not a review aggregator. ClawEngine is in the third column, and it is not the right tool for every row.

Swipe to compare all columns →

What you are comparing	Bright Data	Apify	ClawEngine
What it is	Proxy network, unlocker, hosted browser, scraper APIs and ready-made datasets, each sold as its own product	Scraping and automation cloud with a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers called Actors	One API that crawls, renders JavaScript and extracts typed fields in a single call
Entry price	Pay as you go with no monthly fee. Monthly plans start at $499	$19/mo Starter ($17 billed annually)	$49/mo Hobby ($24/mo billed annually)
Free tier	5,000 records or requests a month on the Scraper API and Unlocker	$5 of usage a month, no card	No free plan
Billing unit	Per successful record, per request or per GB, depending on the product	A dollar allowance spent on compute units (1 GB of memory for 1 hour)	Pages, with rendering included
Scraper API price	$1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go. Scale $499/mo for 384,000, then $1.30 per 1,000	Set by each Actor. Apify's Website Content Crawler estimates $0.20 per 1,000 pages over raw HTTP and $0.50 to $5 with a headless browser	$0.98 per 1,000 on Hobby, $0.40 on Startup, $0.27 on Scale
Compute or plan tiers	Pay as you go, Scale $499, Enterprise by quote	Starter $19 at $0.20/CU, Scale $199 at $0.16/CU, Business $999 at $0.13/CU	Hobby $49, Startup $99, Scale $399, Enterprise $798
Residential proxies	$8/GB pay as you go. $499 for 141 GB, $999 for 332 GB, $1,999 for 798 GB	$8/GB on Starter, $7.50 on Scale, $7 on Business	Not sold. We do not run a proxy network
Hosted browser	Browser API at $8/GB pay as you go, or $499/mo for 71 GB	Any Actor can run a headless browser, billed as compute	Rendering included in the page price
Defended targets	The strongest of the three. Unlocking is the core product	Depends on the Actor and the proxies it uses	Out of scope. We do not defeat anti-bot systems
Output	JSON and dataset files shaped per scraper	JSON, CSV and Excel datasets shaped by the Actor	Clean markdown or typed JSON that matches your schema
Best for	Large, defended targets and teams that need IPs or finished datasets	Known platforms where a maintained Actor already exists, plus scheduled automation	Ordinary public sites feeding RAG, agents and analytics
Main gotcha	Every product has its own meter and plans start at $499	Compute cost swings with Actor weight, so forecasting from a page count is unreliable	No free plan, and defended sites are not supported

US list prices in USD, read on each vendor page. Bright Data runs frequent promotional codes on proxies and scraper APIs, so check its page for a current discount before buying. Apify plan prices are prepaid usage, not a flat fee for unlimited runs.

Why ClawEngine

One API that crawls, renders and extracts

Not a raw HTML dump, not a headless browser fleet to run, and not a brittle parser to maintain. One call crawls a public page, renders its JavaScript and returns clean markdown or typed JSON, built for RAG pipelines and AI agents.

LLM-ready output

Clean markdown or typed JSON with the boilerplate stripped, so the data drops straight into a vector store, a prompt or an agent without a cleanup step.

JavaScript rendered

Each page loads in a real browser environment before extraction, so single-page apps and client-rendered content come back complete, not as an empty shell.

Compliance-first

ClawEngine works on public, permitted data only. It respects robots.txt and site Terms of Service and honors crawl-delay, so responsible scraping is the default.

Code examples

The version of this job with no proxy zone or Actor to pick

If your targets are public pages that do not block you, the whole job is one request. Rendering and typed extraction are part of the call, robots.txt is respected, and the output is already in your schema.

curl Crawl a catalog and return typed product JSON

curl https://clawengine.ai/v1/crawl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLAWENGINE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "url": "https://example-store.com/collections/all",
    "max_pages": 500,
    "render": true,
    "schema": {
      "name": "string",
      "price": "number",
      "currency": "string",
      "in_stock": "boolean",
      "sku": "string"
    }
  }'

# No proxy zone, no Actor, no compute units to estimate.
# You get one typed record per product page.

Bright Data vs Apify, the questions buyers ask

What is the difference between Bright Data and Apify?

Bright Data is infrastructure: proxies, an unlocker, a hosted browser and scraper APIs, each billed by records, requests or gigabytes. Apify is a platform: a marketplace of prebuilt Actors plus the cloud that runs them, billed in compute units. Bright Data sells access to hard targets. Apify sells ready-made scrapers and the automation around them.

Is Bright Data better than Apify?

For heavily defended sites, yes. Bright Data's unlocker and residential network are its core business, and it bills only successful records. For everything else it depends on whether an Apify Actor already covers your target. A maintained Actor plus Apify scheduling is usually faster to ship and cheaper at small volume, because Bright Data's monthly plans start at $499.

Is Apify cheaper than Bright Data?

At low volume, usually. Apify starts at $19 a month and its own Website Content Crawler estimates $0.20 per 1,000 pages over raw HTTP. Bright Data's scraper API is $1.50 per 1,000 records on pay as you go. Once Apify Actors need a headless browser and residential proxies, the estimate rises to $0.50 to $5 per 1,000 plus $7 to $8 per GB, and Bright Data can come out cheaper.

How much does Bright Data cost?

Bright Data prices each product separately. The Web Scraper API and Web Unlocker are $1.50 per 1,000 successful records or requests on pay as you go, or $499 a month for about 384,000, then $1.30 per 1,000. Residential proxies are $8 per GB pay as you go, or $499 for 141 GB. Each product has a 5,000-a-month free tier.

How much does Apify cost?

Apify has a free plan with $5 of monthly usage, Starter at $19 a month, Scale at $199 and Business at $999, about 10 percent less on annual billing. Each plan price is prepaid usage. Actors burn it at $0.20 per compute unit on Starter, $0.16 on Scale and $0.13 on Business, and residential proxies cost $7 to $8 per GB.

Which has better proxy infrastructure, Apify or Bright Data?

Bright Data. Proxies are its main business, with residential, datacenter, ISP and mobile networks across 195 countries and an unlocker built on top. Apify Proxy covers datacenter and residential IPs and is good enough for many Actors, but teams that keep getting blocked often route Apify Actors through Bright Data rather than the other way round.

What does 100,000 pages a month cost on Bright Data vs Apify?

On Bright Data's scraper API, 100,000 successful records is $150 on pay as you go. On Apify, a general crawler costs roughly $20 over raw HTTP or $50 to $500 with a headless browser by Apify's own estimate, drawn from a $19 or $199 plan allowance. On ClawEngine it fits the $99 Startup plan with schema extraction included.

Is Bright Data or Apify better for AI training data?

For buying finished data, Bright Data, because it sells ready-made datasets and you skip scraping entirely. For collecting from a list of public sites, Apify's Website Content Crawler outputs markdown that suits LLMs. If you need typed fields rather than page text, a schema-based crawl API saves the mapping step on either.

Does Bright Data or Apify charge for failed requests?

Bright Data says you pay only for successful records and requests on its scraper API and unlocker. Apify bills compute whether or not the Actor finds what it was looking for, because the meter is memory and time rather than results. Some Store Actors are priced per result instead, which shifts that risk back to the developer.

What is a good alternative to Bright Data and Apify?

Depends on which half you are replacing. For hard targets, Oxylabs and Zyte compete with Bright Data directly. For prebuilt scrapers, there is no real substitute for the Apify Store. For crawling ordinary public sites into clean markdown or typed JSON, ClawEngine and Firecrawl publish simple per-page prices and need no proxy setup.

Good questions

Questions about Bright Data vs Apify

Yes. Apify Actors accept custom proxy URLs, so a team can run an Actor on Apify and route its traffic through a Bright Data residential zone. People do this when an Actor works well but Apify Proxy struggles on one target. You then pay twice: Apify compute for the run and Bright Data per GB for the traffic, so price both before you commit.

Apify, for most people. Running a Store Actor is filling in a form and pressing start, and the results download as a spreadsheet. Bright Data has a no-code scraper and ready-made datasets too, but its account is organized around zones, products and credentials, which reads more naturally to an engineer.

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Point ClawEngine at a public page and one call crawls, renders the JavaScript and extracts clean markdown or typed JSON, ready for your RAG pipeline or AI agent. Public, permitted data only.

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Crawl · render JS · extract markdown & JSON · robots.txt respected, public data only