Bright Data
Ranked 2 of 4 web scraping APIs by recommenders
Recommended for scraping at scale, with a large residential IP network and hosted browser. Main caveat: its SDK and proxy software have been installed on devices without users' consent.
Recommended for scraping at scale, with a large residential IP network and hosted browser. Main caveat: its SDK and proxy software have been installed on devices without users' consent.
42 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 32
- approval share
- 24%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Large residential IP network
“hundreds of millions of residential ips, human browser fingerprints, custom browser binaries”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Precursor” “try services like Bright Data or Apify that have a ton of residential IPs”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Onlyrecipe 2.0 – I added all features HN requested – 4 years later” “Their residential IPs service is one of the best ones”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Someone at BrowserStack Is Leaking Users' Email Address” Gets past sites that block scraping
“If you want to access data from websites which prevent it, you gotta use”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: Scaling a targeted web crawler beyond 500M pages/day” “You need proxies (Zyte, BrightData, OxyLabs, etc.) to scrape at scale”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Scraped 300k Japan real estate listings and created map-based metrics” “They are comically good at scraping a lot of things on the internet”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests” Seen as more compliant and transparent
“BrightData is actually much more compliant and malicious actors wouldn't be allowed access.”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat” “The rep was refreshingly transparent about where they get the data”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Disrupting the Largest Residential Proxy Network”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Installed on devices without consent
“has installed them on smart TVs made by Samsung and LG, millions of them, unknown to the people who purchase and use the TVs”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Countries are competing to see which can carry out mass surveillance the best” “the company that basically hacked unsuspecting chrome extension users to become residential proxies”
Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Nearly Half of LG Smart TV Apps Contain Residential Proxy SDKs” “turning their network into a brightdata exit node and they had no idea / did not consent to it”
Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Disrupting the Largest Residential Proxy Network” - Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “F-Droid: "Keep Android Open"”
SDK hidden in mobile apps
“Bright Data SDK is included in so many legitimate mobile apps and games and does similar stuff”
Comment from 27 Nov 2025 in “Is your Android TV streaming box part of a botnet?” “Bright Data specifically offers a sdk that app developers can use monetize free games.”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “LWN is currently under the heaviest scraper attack seen yet” “they license their “SDK” to app developers, who launder the liability on their behalf”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Price of a bot army revealed across online platforms” - Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Read This Before You Buy That TV Streaming Stick”
Shady sourcing and easy access
“ive used brightdata and all you need is a credit card and you're good to go It is shady AF.”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat” “sells you shady "high quality residential IPs" that you can rotate to scrape the web”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Someone at BrowserStack Is Leaking Users' Email Address” Still detected and blocked by sites
“block DNS and any actual attempts at outbound traffic to platforms like bright data”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “Evading Residential Proxy Networks” “Bright Data ranks #1 on Foil's leaderboard [1], but is still detected.”
Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Precursor”
Other web scraping APIs people recommend
The three most recommended other web scraping APIs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firecrawl | 17 | 10 | 63% | 10 | — | — |
| Bright DataThis page | 10 | 32 | 24% | 5 | — | — |
| Apify | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| Jina Reader | 5 | 1 | 83% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 43 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They are comically good at scraping a lot of things on the internet”
“Traditional proxy providers (Bright Data, Oxylabs, Smartproxy, Proxybase) give you raw IPs or massive unparsed HTML blobs”
“they are a (the?) primary offender running the LG TV “residential proxy” (botnet)”
“instead of gatekeepers in the form of brightdata, firecrawl, cloudflare and the likes”
“Google is banning sideloading but happily hosting apps using the Bright SDK.”
“just the largest residential proxy provider”
“ive used brightdata and all you need is a credit card and you're good to go It is shady AF.”
“BrightData is actually much more compliant and malicious actors wouldn't be allowed access.”
“block DNS and any actual attempts at outbound traffic to platforms like bright data”
“companies like BrightData that install spyware on your smart gadgets”
“Bright Data ranks #1 on Foil's leaderboard [1], but is still detected.”
“hundreds of millions of residential ips, human browser fingerprints, custom browser binaries”
“they move to residential proxies to try and evade that”
“has installed them on smart TVs made by Samsung and LG, millions of them, unknown to the people who purchase and use the TVs”
“They are well known for doing shady things”
“the company that basically hacked unsuspecting chrome extension users to become residential proxies”
“runs a botnet for web scraping”
“The big privacy scraping company called themselves The Luminati.”
“saying it's bordering on circumvention of fundamental assumptions about Internet routing and IP address leasing”
“Both are causing a dynamic that will lock down the internet evermore for everything straying slightly from the corporate-approved line.”
“their idle bandwidth is resold”
“If you want to access data from websites which prevent it, you gotta use”
“Now I remember these scumbags. Hijacked HolaVPN I think.”
“Their hosted browser service is one of the best ones out there.”
“Their residential IPs service is one of the best ones”
“sells you shady "high quality residential IPs" that you can rotate to scrape the web”
“has also recently leaked private data, although they did email customers to warn them”
“It uses your phone as a botnet node while the app is open, and pays the app developer.”
“turning their network into a brightdata exit node and they had no idea / did not consent to it”
“have similar tactics but are based in a different location”
“The rep was refreshingly transparent about where they get the data”
“Of course brightdata doesn't get touched.”
“They are doing this exact scheme on an industrial scale.”
“Bright Data specifically offers a sdk that app developers can use monetize free games.”
“they license their “SDK” to app developers, who launder the liability on their behalf”
“try services like Bright Data or Apify that have a ton of residential IPs”
“You need proxies (Zyte, BrightData, OxyLabs, etc.) to scrape at scale”
“Bright Data SDK is included in so many legitimate mobile apps and games and does similar stuff”
“using those as a "opt-in" signal to use the user's device for those 30 seconds”
“blocks their own proxy when you point it to brightdata.com”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.