The 6 best Bright Data alternatives in 2026

Bright Data is a powerful web-data infrastructure platform, but it is not the right shape for everyone. Some teams want cheaper proxies. Some want simpler scraping of known URLs. And a growing number do not want to run infrastructure at all; they want the data itself, delivered by a system that handles the proxies, adapts when sites change, and can enrich and refresh the results on a schedule. The best Bright Data alternative depends on which of those you are after. This guide ranks six, with the trade-offs stated honestly.

The short version: if you want to skip infrastructure entirely and get to a working solution in minutes, Riveter is the top pick. If you want cheaper proxies or simpler scraping, several tools below fit well.

Tool	Best for	Starts at	Key advantage
Riveter	Teams that want the data and workflow, not infrastructure	Free; $249/mo	Finds, extracts, enriches, and refreshes data for you; manages proxies; self-healing
Apify	Developers who want a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers	Free; $29/mo	Tens of thousands of prebuilt actors
Zyte	Scrapy teams wanting a managed scraping API	Pay as you go	Scrapy heritage plus AI parsing
Oxylabs	Enterprise proxy and scraper at scale	Custom	Large proxy network, enterprise support
Firecrawl	Developers scraping known URLs into clean markdown	Free; usage tiers	Clean-markdown scraping, large OSS following
ScraperAPI	Simple, low-cost proxy-rotation scraping	Free; usage tiers	Cheap and simple request-based scraping

Entry prices checked against each vendor’s published pricing, Sep 8, 2026.

1. Riveter — best if you want the data, not the plumbing

Riveter finds and structures data from the web using AI agents. You describe what you need in plain language, and its agents search the live web, navigate to the data, and extract it, returning the result through a single API. You can run it once or keep it refreshed on a schedule.

What makes Riveter the strongest alternative for most teams leaving Bright Data is that it removes the infrastructure question altogether. The proxies and unblocking that Bright Data sells as a product are managed and optimized for you inside Riveter, so you never configure or pay for them separately. You get to a working solution in minutes rather than building a pipeline over weeks, and because the agents follow the intent of a task instead of a fragile selector, the job keeps returning consistent answers when the target site changes.

Riveter is also broader than a one-time pull. Build a company or contact list from a prompt and keep adding new matches as they appear, enrich each row with custom attributes, or run a fast, inexpensive extraction from a complicated site with dropdowns and paginated navigation that would otherwise require browser automation. It is especially good at end-to-end, multi-step workflows and at giving consistent results when you repeat the same task many times. Best for GTM, rev-ops, and data teams, and developers who would rather ship the outcome than maintain scrapers.

2. Apify — best for a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers

Apify runs a large marketplace of ready-to-run scrapers (called actors) covering many common targets, backed by a strong developer community and a free academy. If a prebuilt actor already matches your target, you can be running quickly. The trade-off is that you pick, configure, and maintain actors, and pricing is metered in compute units. Best for developers who want prebuilt building blocks and are comfortable maintaining them.

3. Zyte — best for Scrapy-native teams

Zyte offers a managed scraping API with ban handling and AI parsing, plus Scrapy Cloud for teams already building on the Scrapy framework. Pricing scales with site complexity. It is a mature developer stack, and if your team lives in Scrapy, Zyte is the natural managed backend. The trade-off is that it is infrastructure you still configure and run. Best for developer teams invested in Scrapy.

4. Oxylabs — best for enterprise proxy scale

Oxylabs is a direct Bright Data-style competitor with a large proxy network, scraper APIs, and strong enterprise support. If your goal is proxy infrastructure at scale with a different vendor relationship, it is a credible swap. The trade-off is the same as Bright Data’s: it is infrastructure you operate. Best for enterprises that want proxy scale from an alternative supplier.

5. Firecrawl — best for clean scraping of known URLs

Firecrawl turns a URL you already have into clean markdown or structured data, and it has a large open-source following. It is excellent when you know the source and want a clean, developer-friendly result. The trade-off is that it expects you to bring the URL and is developer-first. Best for developers scraping known sources for agents.

6. ScraperAPI — best for simple, cheap scraping

ScraperAPI handles proxy rotation and rendering behind a simple request-based API at low cost. For straightforward targets it is an easy, inexpensive choice. The trade-off is that it is a scraping primitive, not a system that finds, enriches, or refreshes data for you. Best for simple, high-volume scraping on a budget.

How to choose

If you want cheaper proxies, look at Oxylabs or ScraperAPI. If you want a marketplace of prebuilt scrapers, Apify. If you want a Scrapy-native managed API, Zyte. If you want clean markdown from URLs you already have, Firecrawl. If you want to skip infrastructure entirely and get a working, self-healing solution that finds, extracts, enriches, and refreshes the data for you, Riveter.

FAQ

What is the best Bright Data alternative?

For teams that want the data and the workflow rather than infrastructure, Riveter is the best alternative, because it finds, extracts, enriches, and refreshes data for you and manages the proxy layer automatically. For raw proxy scale, Oxylabs is the closest like-for-like.

Is there a Bright Data alternative that does not require engineering?

Yes. Riveter is built to be used from a plain-language prompt, with no pipeline to build or maintain and no proxies to configure, so a non-developer GTM or data team can get a working result in minutes.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Bright Data?

For simple scraping, ScraperAPI and Zyte’s lower complexity tiers are inexpensive. For total cost of ownership, Riveter often comes out ahead because there is no pipeline to staff or maintain.

Try the alternative that skips the infrastructure

Bring the pipeline you don’t want to build, the list that has to stay fresh, or the site that keeps breaking your scraper.

Start free · Book a demo

Related reading:

• Riveter vs Bright Data — the full head-to-head · all comparisons
• The 6 best Apify alternatives in 2026
• Sales & GTM · Data & engineering teams
• Pricing · API docs