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Quick answer: Bright Data vs Oxylabs comes down to volume. Oxylabs is the better buy for a team that wants a plain monthly plan and a way out: its residential starter is $6 per GB for 5 GB at $30 with no coupon, it gives you five free datacenter IPs, and it refunds self service plans within three days. Bright Data is the better buy for volume, coverage and hard targets: a 400 million IP residential pool against 175 million, free city and zip targeting, a success only Web Unlocker with a 5,000 request free tier, and a catalogue that runs from proxies to datasets. Below is every price we could read from both vendors' own pages on September 5, 2026, including the four places where each vendor's menu disagrees with its own plan cards.
Residential proxies: the starter plan tells you everything
Both vendors price residential traffic per GB and both put a number in the navigation that is not the entry price.
- Oxylabs. Navigation: "starts from $2.5/GB". Pricing page hero: "starts from $6/GB". Plan cards: Starter 5 GB at $6 ($30 a month), Basic 20 GB at $5 ($100), Advanced 125 GB at $4 ($500), Corporate 1 TB at $2.50 ($2,500). The $2.50 is the $2,500 a month tier.
- Bright Data. Navigation: 50 percent off, from $2.5/GB. Page meta description: from $5.88/GB. Plan cards: pay as you go $8, $499 for 141 GB, $999 for 332 GB, $1,999 for 798 GB, each halved for three months with code RESIGB50. The $2.50 is the $1,999 tier with the coupon.
Put the ladders side by side and the picture is clear. At 20 GB a month Oxylabs charges $100; Bright Data pay as you go is $160, or $80 for three months on the coupon and $160 after. At 125 to 141 GB, Oxylabs is $500 and Bright Data is $499, with Bright Data at roughly half that for the first three months. At 800 GB to 1 TB, Bright Data's $1,999 beats Oxylabs' $2,500 outright. Oxylabs wins below 100 GB, they tie in the middle, and Bright Data wins at the top, before you count the coupon, which only helps Bright Data and only for a quarter.
One structural difference matters more than a dollar a GB: Oxylabs publishes a list of targets its residential network blocks, including all Apple domains, banking, some Google domains, government sites, streaming, ticketing and mailing. Bright Data's pricing pages publish no such list but require KYC before residential use. If your target is on Oxylabs' list, the price comparison is moot.
Compare Bright Data plans on the live pricing page
Datacenter proxies: nearly identical, one has a free tier
- Shared, per IP. Oxylabs $1.20 per IP from 10 IPs ($12 a month). Bright Data $1.40 per IP for 10 IPs ($14), falling to $0.90 at 1,000. Oxylabs' menu says from $0.70 per IP; that rate is not on the page at any quantity we could read up to 3,000.
- Dedicated, per IP. Oxylabs $2.25 per IP from 3 IPs ($6.75), across 188 countries. Bright Data $2.20 per IP for 10 IPs ($22), falling to $1.30 at 1,000.
- Shared, per GB. Oxylabs $0.59 per GB from 20 GB ($11.80). Bright Data $0.60 pay as you go, $0.51 on the 1 TB plan, $0.42 on 5 TB.
- Free IPs. Oxylabs gives five free datacenter IPs on signup. Bright Data gives none, but matches your first deposit up to $500.
Both apply fair use to "unlimited" bandwidth on per IP plans; Bright Data states 100 GB per IP per month, pooled. For a small fixed set of IPs, Oxylabs' three IP dedicated minimum at $6.75 is the lowest entry price either vendor offers, and the five free IPs mean a test costs nothing.
Unblockers and scraper APIs: different meters
This is where the two are hardest to compare, because they meter differently. Bright Data's Web Unlocker charges per request, only on success: 5,000 free a month, then $1.50 per 1,000 pay as you go, or $499 for 383,000. Oxylabs' Web Unblocker charges per GB: $5, currently discounted 40 percent to $3 per GB, with a free trial. Whether requests or gigabytes is cheaper depends entirely on page weight; a 200 KB page at $3 per GB is about $0.60 per 1,000 requests, cheaper than Bright Data, while a 2 MB JavaScript heavy page is $6 per 1,000, four times dearer. Measure your target's response size before choosing.
On ready made scrapers, Oxylabs' Web Scraper API starts at $0.25 per 1,000 results on plans from $49 a month; Bright Data's Scraper APIs list $0.75 per 1,000 records, down from a struck through $1. Bright Data's catalogue is broader, with 800 plus site templates, datasets from $250 per 100,000 records and a Data Firehose, none of which Oxylabs matches. Oxylabs has a newer Fast Search API for AI workflows and a Headless Browser at $4.70 per GB against Bright Data's Browser API at $5.
Refunds, commitments and the fine print
- Refunds. Oxylabs: self service plans only, within three calendar days of the first transaction, under 20 percent of traffic used, up to 15 business days to arrive. Bright Data: no refund policy on any pricing page we read; unused monthly commitment does not roll over while the account is active.
- Billing. Bright Data bills commitments on the 1st, prorates mid month joins by active days, and counts headers and retries as bandwidth. Oxylabs bills monthly through Stripe and lets self service customers top up from the dashboard.
- Verification. Bright Data requires KYC for residential and mobile and lists billing blocks for card and login country mismatches. Oxylabs publishes a KYC policy and a residential sourcing handbook.
- Coupons. Bright Data's headline residential price depends on a three month code. Oxylabs' does not, although its Web Unblocker discount is also promotional.
Which one to pick, by job
- Under 100 GB of residential traffic a month: Oxylabs, on price and on the refund window.
- Protected targets where a plain proxy fails: Bright Data Web Unlocker, because you pay for success and the first 5,000 requests are free.
- City or zip level targeting: Bright Data, where it is included free on residential.
- A handful of dedicated datacenter IPs: Oxylabs, three IPs for $6.75 plus five free.
- Anything on Oxylabs' blocked target list: Bright Data, by elimination.
- A lead list rather than infrastructure: neither. A managed scraper or our lead generation service will cost less than either subscription, and our automation team runs both vendors for clients who want the pipeline built rather than the proxies, with email infrastructure for the outreach that follows.
If the deciding factor is coverage rather than the lowest starter price, start with Bright Data's free tier and its deposit match, and read our full pricing breakdown and Bright Data review before you commit to a plan. For cheap fixed IPs from either vendor, our datacenter proxy comparison prices five providers.
Coverage, sessions and support
Both vendors publish the same kind of promises and the differences are in the details. Bright Data lists 400 million plus residential IPs across 195 countries with country, state, city, zip and ASN targeting free, a proxy manager, SOCKS5 through that manager, a real time network status page and a 99.99 percent uptime claim on its enterprise tier. Oxylabs lists 175 million plus residential IPs across 195 locations with free continent, country, state, city and zip targeting, unlimited concurrent sessions, 3 proxy users and 10 whitelisted IPs on every self service residential plan, sticky sessions, HTTP, HTTP3 and SOCKS5, an average 0.6 second response time and a 99.95 percent success rate claim. On datacenter, Oxylabs' dedicated pool covers 188 countries with country targeting and its shared pools cover 38 to 44 countries; Bright Data quotes country level targeting across its 1.3 million pool. Both hold ISO 27001 certification and both run 24/7 support, with Oxylabs assigning a dedicated account manager on every listed plan. The menu figures for ISP proxies, $1.30 per IP at Bright Data and $1.20 at Oxylabs, are navigation prices we did not verify against a plan card for this article, so treat them the way you should treat every other menu price from either vendor.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below about 100 GB of residential traffic a month, yes: Oxylabs' Starter is $6 per GB at $30 for 5 GB and its Basic is $100 for 20 GB, against Bright Data's $8 per GB pay as you go. Around 125 to 141 GB the two cost the same, $500 versus $499, and at 800 GB to 1 TB Bright Data's $1,999 beats Oxylabs' $2,500. Bright Data's three month 50 percent coupon shifts the low end temporarily.
Bright Data publishes 400 million plus residential IPs and 1.3 million plus datacenter IPs; Oxylabs publishes 175 million plus residential IPs and a 1.9 million plus dedicated datacenter pool across 188 countries. Both figures are the vendors' own as of September 5, 2026. Pool size matters less than whether your target is blocked, and Oxylabs publishes a list of blocked residential targets that Bright Data does not.
Oxylabs refunds self service plans if you ask within three calendar days of the first payment and have used less than 20 percent of the traffic or results, with up to 15 business days to process. Bright Data's pricing pages describe no refund policy and state that unused monthly commitments do not roll over. Bright Data's pay as you go plans carry no commitment, which is the safer way to test it.
Bright Data's Web Unlocker charges per successful request, $1.50 per 1,000 pay as you go with 5,000 free a month, and handles fingerprinting, retries and CAPTCHAs. Oxylabs' Web Unblocker does similar work but charges per GB, $3 with the current 40 percent discount. For heavy pages the per request model is usually cheaper; for light pages the per GB model can win. Check your target's average response size.
Bright Data requires a KYC call before enabling residential or mobile proxies, and its Web Unlocker does not. Oxylabs publishes a KYC policy and a residential proxy sourcing handbook, and it lists categories of websites its residential network will not serve, including banking, government, streaming and ticketing.
Oxylabs gives five free datacenter IPs on signup and offers free trials on its Web Scraper API and Web Unblocker. Bright Data offers 5,000 free Web Unlocker requests a month with no card, lists free tiers on SERP API and Scraper APIs, and matches a new customer's first deposit up to $500.