The Bright Data alternative for the sites you crawl again and again
Where the bill comes down
- An easy page costs as much as a hard one there: Web Unlocker is $1.30–1.50 per 1,000 requests whatever the page. Here a plain page is 1 credit, from $0.14 per 1,000, and only the pages that need more pay more.
- Repeat visits to a protected site get cheaper: one browser visit earns a session, and the rest of the site is read with it at 2 credits a page, from $0.28 per 1,000.
- It knows what changed: every run is compared with the last, page by page and field by field, and a page is only called removed once two runs agree. Web Unlocker returns today’s page; comparing it with yesterday’s is up to you.
- The data lands in your database: 18 destinations, including Postgres, BigQuery, Pinecone and Kafka. Bright Data delivers scraper results to a webhook, cloud storage or Snowflake.
Bright Data pricing and MeshArc pricing
Web Unlocker charges one rate per successful request. MeshArc charges by how a page had to be read.
| Bright Data Web Unlocker | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 5,000 requests a month | 1,000 credits once, no card |
| Monthly plans | Scale $499 with 383,000 requests, then $1.30 per 1,000; Enterprise on request | Starter $29, Growth $99, Scale $349; Enterprise from $1,500 |
| Without a plan | $1.50 per 1,000 requests | Not offered: credits come with a plan |
| What is billed | Successful requests, at one rate | Pages by how they were read; blocked pages, 404s and unchanged pages are free |
| Per 1,000 pages | Bright Data Web Unlocker | MeshArc Growth | MeshArc Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain page | $1.30–1.50 | $0.20 | $0.14 |
| Protected site, once a session is earned | $1.30–1.50 | $0.40 | $0.28 |
| Page that needs a browser | $1.30–1.50 | $0.79 | $0.56 |
| Browser from a residential address | $1.30–1.50 | $3.17 | $2.23 |
What each one does
| Bright Data | MeshArc | |
|---|---|---|
| Price of a page | One rate per request (Web Unlocker) | By how it was read, from 1 credit |
| Failed requests billed | No: pay only for success | No, and 404s and unchanged pages are free too |
| Crawl a whole site from one address | Yes, with its Crawl API | Yes, with sitemap sections and a schedule |
| What changed since the last run | As a managed service, or built on its APIs | Built into every crawl, down to the field |
| Delivery | Webhook, S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, Snowflake, SFTP | 18 destinations, including Postgres, BigQuery, vector stores and Kafka |
| Proxies to rent | Yes: residential, datacenter, ISP and mobile | No |
| Ready-made scrapers and datasets | Yes | No |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes, 17 tools |
Where Bright Data is the better choice
If most of what you read is hard, so that every page needs a browser from a residential address, Bright Data’s flat rate is lower than our residential mode. It also rents proxies and sells ready-made scrapers for the big platforms and whole datasets, which MeshArc does not. Use it for those; use MeshArc for the sites you crawl again and again.
Switch without rewriting your list
- Start from the site, not the URL list: give a site or a sitemap section; MeshArc finds the pages and keeps to the scope.
- Run it once beside what you have: each page reports the mode it took and what it cost, so you can see which pages ever needed unlocking.
- Put it on a schedule: later runs report only what changed.
- Point the output: at one of 18 destinations, or read it from the API.
Comparing with someone else?
Frequently asked questions
Who are Bright Data’s competitors?
For proxies, other proxy networks such as Oxylabs. For reading pages, scraping APIs such as ZenRows, ScrapingBee, Scrapfly and Zyte; the compare page puts them side by side. For crawling the same sites on a schedule and knowing what changed, MeshArc.
How much does Bright Data cost?
Web Unlocker is $1.50 per 1,000 requests pay as you go, or $499 a month for 383,000 requests and $1.30 per 1,000 after, with a free tier of 5,000 requests a month. The Web Scraper API is priced the same per 1,000 records, and the Scraping Browser at $8 a GB. Figures from brightdata.com, read on 1 October 2026.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Bright Data Web Unlocker?
For ordinary pages, yes: MeshArc reads a plain page from $0.14 per 1,000 and a protected site, once a session is earned, from $0.28. For pages that need a residential browser every time, Bright Data’s flat rate is the lower one.
Does MeshArc bill failed requests?
No. A blocked page, a 404 and a page that has not changed since the last run cost nothing, and every response says what it was charged.
Try it on the site you unlock most
See which pages really needed the expensive way in.