Apify vs Bright Data: platform or infrastructure?
Published prices compared, with the arithmetic shown. Last checked . Prices only: we have not tested reliability, speed or output quality.
At a glance
| Apify | Bright Data | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | proxies and unblockers | proxies and unblockers |
| Free tier | $5 of prepaid usage per month, no credit card. | Unlocker and SERP APIs: 5K requests/month free, no card (as stated on their pricing pages). Browser API page lists a 1 GB monthly free tier. |
| Entry paid price | from $19/mo | from $499/mo |
| MCP / agent support | Yes | Yes |
| Verification | partial verification | full verification |
| Official pricing page | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) | Pricing (opens official site in a new tab) |
Analysis
This is a platform-versus-infrastructure comparison. Apify is a marketplace and serverless platform: you run an “Actor” (a scraper) and pay for the Actor's own price plus compute plus any proxy use. Bright Data sells the unblocking and proxy layer directly, priced per request or per GB.
Proxy-level prices, side by side
- Unblocking a page. Apify Unblocker: $1.50 per 1,000 requests on Free/Starter, $1.25 on Scale ($199/month) and $1.00 on Business ($999/month). Bright Data Web Unlocker: $1.50 pay-as-you-go and $1.30 on its $499 plan. The Apify figure excludes the compute and Actor charge for whatever runs the request, so the all-in Apify cost is higher.
- Google SERP. Apify's SERP proxy is $2.50 per 1,000 (Free/Starter) falling to $1.70 (Business). Bright Data's SERP API is $1.50 per 1,000 pay-as-you-go. Bright Data is 1.7x cheaper before any Apify compute.
- Residential proxy. Apify: $8.00 per GB (Free/Starter) to $7.00 (Business). Bright Data: $8.00 per GB list pay-as-you-go. Equal at the entry tier on list prices.
What Apify adds, and why we cannot give a per-page number
Apify's value is the Store: ready-made Actors for specific sites, each priced by its author (pay per event, pay per result, or usage). A per-page figure for “Apify” does not exist, so we leave it null instead of picking one Actor and calling it typical. Apify's subscription is also prepaid usage that expires monthly: the Starter plan's $19 is spendable credit, not a fee on top.
Free tiers
Apify: $5 of platform usage every month, no card. Bright Data: 5K requests per month free on Unlocker and SERP pages, no card.
Verdict
If you need a finished scraper for a named site (maps, social, e-commerce), Apify's Store gets you there faster. If you are building your own crawler and need raw unblocking, SERP or proxies, Bright Data's request-priced products have clearer all-in numbers and, on the published rates, lower SERP cost.
Price ladders from the data
Effective price per unit at each published plan (monthly spend shown). Overage and assumption-based rows are excluded here; see each vendor page.
Protected / anti-bot page
Apify
- $1.50 Free/Starter (Unblocker) · pay as you go component only
- $1.25 Scale (Unblocker) · $199/mo component only
- $1.00 Business (Unblocker) · $999/mo component only
Bright Data
- $1.50 Unlocker PAYG · pay as you go
- $1.30 Unlocker Scale ($499) · $499/mo
SERP query (structured search results)
Apify
- $2.50 Free/Starter (SERP proxy) · pay as you go component only
- $1.70 Business (SERP proxy) · $999/mo component only
Bright Data
- $1.50 SERP PAYG · pay as you go
- $1.31 SERP Scale ($499) · $499/mo
Residential proxy bandwidth
Apify
- $8.00 Free/Starter · pay as you go
- $7.00 Business · $999/mo
Bright Data
- $8.00 PAYG (list) · pay as you go
What we could not verify
- Apify: Per-result prices are set per Actor (pay-per-event etc.). No honest platform-wide per-page figure; left null.
- Bright Data: Billed per GB; page weight varies, so no per-page figure computed.; Not stated on page.