Bright Data pricing in 2026: Scraper API, datasets and proxies

Bright Data pricing depends on which product you buy. Most developers mean the Scraper API. On October 17, 2026, it was listed at $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, or $499 a month for 384,000 records on the Scale plan, with a free tier of 5,000 records a month (Bright Data). Ready-made datasets are priced per record with a $250 minimum. Proxies are priced per GB.

This post covers each product's list price, what you actually pay for Reddit and X data, and a worked comparison with a per-call API. Every number is dated and linked.

Bright Data pricing at a glance

The site menu also lists Unlocker API and SERP API "from $1/1k req" and Browser API "from $5/GB". You use those products to build your own scraper. They don't sell parsed Reddit or X data.

Scraper API pricing, in detail

The Scraper API is a set of ready-made scrapers. You send URLs or keywords, Bright Data collects and parses the pages, and you get records back as JSON, NDJSON or CSV. The pricing page makes three promises: you "Only pay for what's successfully delivered", there are "no charges for failed deliveries", and the price covers "Proxies, unblocking, parsing included."

The tiers, as listed on October 17, 2026:

• The free tier gives you 5,000 records a month with no credit card.
• Pay as you go costs $1.50 per 1,000 records, with unlimited concurrency and monthly spend limits you set.
• Scale is $499 a month with 384,000 records included, then $1.30 per 1,000. Since $499 ÷ 384 = $1.30, the included records cost the same per 1,000 as the overage.
• Enterprise has custom pricing, with volume discounts, an account manager and an SLA.

Two promotions were live on the day we checked. The pricing page offered "25% off on Scraper API for 3 months" with a code, and the site menu showed Scraper APIs as "Starts from $1 $0.75/1k rec". Promotions change, so budget from the pricing table and count any discount as a bonus.

What counts as a record

A record is one delivered item: one post, one profile or one comment. That's the number to estimate, and on social sites it grows fast. If you collect a Reddit thread with 186 comments, the post plus every comment comes to about 187 records.

Dataset pricing

Datasets are pre-collected data sold as files, so you skip live scraping. When checked on October 17, 2026, the social media datasets page listed "Up to $0.0025 per record" with a "Min Order $250". Its X (Twitter) section had two datasets, posts and profiles, with 34.8 million records between them. You can buy once or set up a monthly, quarterly or biannual refresh.

Here is the math at the listed ceiling price:

$250 minimum ÷ $0.0025 per record = 100,000 records
1,000 records × $0.0025          = $2.50

Datasets fit research and model training, where you need a large historical slice delivered at once. They don't fit a job like "check what was posted in the last hour".

Proxy pricing

If you build your own scraper, Bright Data sells the network instead. When we checked the residential proxy page on October 17, 2026, it listed pay as you go at $8 per GB (shown as $4 per GB with a 50% coupon) and monthly plans at $499 (141 GB), $999 (332 GB) and $1,999 (798 GB). According to the page, plans carry a minimum monthly commitment, prorated in the first month.

Proxies are only part of the bill. You still write and maintain the scraper, run the servers and handle every layout change. Our guide to how to scrape Reddit covers what that involves now that Reddit is closing RSS and limiting Old Reddit.

What Reddit and X data costs on Bright Data

Bright Data's social scrapers cover Reddit (posts by URL, subreddit or keyword, plus comments) and X (posts and profiles), billed at the Scraper API's per-record rate. At pay as you go:

1,000 Reddit posts                = 1,000 records × $1.50 / 1,000 = $1.50
1 thread, post + 100 comments     = 101 records   × $1.50 / 1,000 ≈ $0.15
50,000 tweets a month             = 50,000 records × $1.50 / 1,000 = $75.00
Free tier                         = first 5,000 records each month at $0

Bright Data pricing next to a per-call API

ChatterAPI charges per call, not per record, and each call returns a page:

• Reddit search: 2 credits for a page of up to 25 posts.
• Thread export: 3 credits for the post plus a page of about 100 comments.
• X tweet search: 3 credits for a page of about 20 tweets.
• Plans: Starter $19 a month for 25,000 credits ($0.00076 per credit), up to Scale at $149 for 240,000 (pricing, checked October 17, 2026).

Below is a real thread export, recorded from a test key on October 7, 2026 and trimmed to the post and one of its 101 comments:

curl "https://api.chatterapi.com/v1/reddit/threads/1wdihhj" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CHATTERAPI_KEY"

{
  "data": {
    "post": {
      "id": "1wdihhj",
      "title": "What CRM should a small business use?",
      "subreddit": "CRM",
      "score": 52,
      "numComments": 186
    },
    "comments": [
      {
        "id": "p97byh3",
        "fullname": "t1_p97byh3",
        "author": "New_Dimension_5894",
        "body": "Since you're a small B2B team I'd seriously consider Monaco as an AI native CRM...",
        "score": 8
      }
    ],
    "reportedCommentCount": 186
  },
  "page": { "nextCursor": null, "hasMore": false }
}

On a live key, that one page returned the post and 101 comments for 3 credits. Here are both side by side at list prices on October 17, 2026:

Thread, post + 101 comments
  Bright Data pay as you go: 102 records × $1.50 / 1,000  ≈ $0.153
  ChatterAPI Starter:        3 credits   × $0.00076       ≈ $0.0023

1,000 Reddit posts from search (full pages)
  Bright Data pay as you go: $1.50
  ChatterAPI Starter:        40 pages × 2 credits = 80 credits × $0.00076 ≈ $0.061

1,000 tweets from search (full pages)
  Bright Data pay as you go: $1.50
  ChatterAPI Starter:        50 pages × 3 credits = 150 credits × $0.00076 ≈ $0.114

Read the caveats before you compare, because for some workloads they change the answer:

• Per-record pricing costs the same for every item. A ChatterAPI page costs the same whether it holds 25 posts or 2, so a very narrow query pushes up the cost per item.
• The free allowances are different. Bright Data's 5,000 free records reset every month. ChatterAPI gives 100 credits once at signup, enough for about 50 search pages.
• Both have monthly floors. ChatterAPI's paid plans start at $19, and unused monthly credits expire at renewal. Bright Data's pay as you go has no stated minimum.
• Delivery works differently. Bright Data takes up to 5,000 URLs per call and can deliver to a webhook or cloud storage. ChatterAPI returns one page per request, right away, which suits code and AI agents that need an answer now.
• Coverage is different too. Bright Data covers dozens of sites, while ChatterAPI covers Reddit and X only.

When Bright Data's pricing is the better deal

If you need tens of millions of historical records in one file, a dataset at up to $0.0025 per record is hard to match by calling any live API page by page. If Reddit and X are two of many networks you collect from, having one vendor and one contract is worth something. And if your job fits inside 5,000 records a month, the free tier costs nothing.

There's a sharper objection as well. On r/redditdev, someone asked whether Reddit's API shutdown would hit Bright Data and similar services, and one of the most upvoted replies said "Services like those are literally why Reddit is shutting down the Public API" (u/shiruken). That applies to every third-party source, ChatterAPI included. Whoever you buy from, keep your own copy of what you fetch. Then a change in supply stops new data but leaves your history intact.

Our Bright Data alternative page compares features in a table, and Apify pricing runs the same math for Apify.

Price your Reddit and X workload

Estimate how many items you need per month, divide by items per call, and price both sides with the numbers above. Then test with real calls. Sign up with Google for 100 free ChatterAPI credits with no card. That covers 33 full thread exports, and every response shows exactly what it cost.