Comparison

ProxyMonkey vs Bright Data

The biggest name in the industry. Enormous pool, compliance paperwork, enterprise pricing.
Residential, small volume

ProxyMonkey, 50 GB+$1.00/GB

Bright Data, list$8.40/GB

Difference8×

List prices checked 2026-08-06. Their negotiated and plan-based rates are lower — check their pricing page.

Bright Data is the incumbent, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Their pool is bigger than ours, their targeting is more granular, and if you need a signed DPA and a named account manager, they have those and we do not.

What you pay for that is roughly an order of magnitude on the per-gigabyte rate, plus the parts of an enterprise sales process you may not want — minimum commitments, plan tiers, and a quote conversation before you learn the real number.

If you are an indie developer, a student, or one person with a scraper, you are not their customer and their pricing reflects that. That gap is the entire reason ProxyMonkey exists.

Line by line

Rows where they win are marked as such. There are some.

Feature and price comparison between ProxyMonkey and Bright Data
What you are comparingProxyMonkeyBright Data
Residential, small volumeYes:$1.50/GB, no commitment≈$8.40/GB list pay-as-you-go
Residential, 50 GB+Yes:$1.00/GB on any single top-upCheaper on a monthly plan, tier depends on commitment
Minimum to startYes:$5, no plan, no expiryPartly:Pay-as-you-go available; plans start much higher
Pool size12M+ residential IPsYes:Substantially larger. This one is theirs.
Targeting granularityCountry, state, cityYes:Country, state, city, ASN, carrier and more
Compliance paperworkNone. We are three people and a status bot.Yes:KYC, DPA, use-case review, the full set
Crypto paymentYes:CoinGate and Cryptomus, ~70 coinsNo:Not offered as a standard payment method
Per-request usage logYes:Every request: timestamp, host, status, bytes in, bytes out, cost. CSV export.Partly:Check their dashboard docs — most show aggregate GB by day, not per request.
IP network type publishedYes:ASN and network type shown for every IP you are given.Partly:Not published as a per-IP field. You can whois it yourself.
Support channelYes:Public Discord with the people who run it, plus email.Partly:Ticket system, and a sales rep above a certain spend.
RefundsYes:Unused balance back within 7 days, asked onceGoverned by their terms and your contract

Claims in our column are things we control and can be held to. Claims in theirs come from their public pages, or say what is not published rather than guessing. Prices last checked .

The honest recommendation

Which one should you actually buy?

Pick Bright Data if…

  • You need a signed DPA, a compliance review, or an account manager with a phone number.
  • You need ASN-level or carrier-level targeting that we do not offer.
  • Your volume is high enough that their negotiated rate beats our list price.
  • Someone in procurement needs a vendor that a Gartner analyst has heard of.

Pick ProxyMonkey if…

  • You are spending your own money and $8/GB is not happening.
  • You want to start today with $5 and no conversation.
  • You want to see the byte count for every request rather than a daily total.
  • You want to pay in crypto.

Questions about this comparison

Is ProxyMonkey a Bright Data reseller?

No. Different pools, different infrastructure, no commercial relationship.

Are your residential IPs the same quality?

On the sites most people are actually scraping, you will not notice a difference. On the hardest targets, a bigger pool wins more often, and theirs is bigger. We would rather say that than pretend.

Start with $5 and find out on your own targets. That is cheaper than either of us arguing about it.

Why is the price gap so large?

Most of it is the company around the product: sales, compliance, support tiers, marketing. Those are real costs and Bright Data serves customers who need them. We do not have them, and we do not serve those customers.

Think a row here is unfair or out of date? Say so in Discord — we would rather fix it than be caught with it. See also why we are cheap and still legit.

The community layer

Ask people who have used both.

Plenty of the channel came from somewhere else. Ask them what actually changed, rather than reading another vendor's comparison table.

Join the Discord

4,200+monkeys in the Discord

  • Help from humans

    Post your error, get an answer. Usually in minutes, usually from someone who has hit the same wall.

  • A status bot that tells on us

    Pool health, incidents and maintenance posted automatically. Including the bad days.

  • Deals and free traffic

    Bonus GB drops, early access to new pools, and the occasional giveaway for a good bug report.

Join the Discord4,200+ monkeys, free to lurk