# Bright Data Alternative – $1/GB PAYG | QuantumProxies.io

A Bright Data alternative at $1/GB instead of $8/GB pay-as-you-go, with a $5 minimum, no monthly commitment, and no $1,999/month tier to reach the cheap rate.

Bright Data lists residential proxies at $8.00 per GB pay-as-you-go, and its $2.50/GB rate requires a $1,999 monthly commitment. QuantumProxies Residential Basic is $1.00 per GB with a $5 minimum, no plan and no commitment — eight times cheaper on the rate a new account actually pays.

## The verdict: QuantumProxies

On the number that decides your bill, QuantumProxies wins by the widest margin of any comparison we publish. Bright Data has the bigger catalogue. It also has the most expensive entry price in our entire pricing index.

- Eight times cheaper to start: $1.00/GB against $8.00/GB pay-as-you-go.
- No $1,999/month commitment required to reach a competitive rate.
- Our cheapest rate is $0.80/GB — below Bright Data's $2.50/GB floor, and without a monthly contract.
- $5 minimum order, no plan, no renewal date.

## QuantumProxies vs Bright Data: what a gigabyte costs

| What you actually pay | QuantumProxies Residential Basic | Bright Data |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price per GB | $1.00 / GB | $8.00 / GB |
| Minimum to start | $5 (5 GB, no subscription) | $8 (1 GB, pay-as-you-go rate) |
| Pay-as-you-go without a plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest advertised rate | $0.80 / GB | $2.50 / GB |
| What that cheapest rate requires | A 1 TB purchase ($800). No monthly contract. | a $1,999/month commitment |

Competitor prices verified 2026-09-08. Bright Data figures are advertised list prices from its public pricing page, recorded in our residential proxy pricing index on the verification date shown above; promotional discounts are excluded from the pay-as-you-go column because they are temporary and conditional. QuantumProxies figures are from our live plan catalogue. All prices in USD, excluding VAT.

## Other Bright Data alternatives, compared on price

Switching away from Bright Data usually means shortlisting three or four providers, not one. This is the rest of our pricing index: every residential provider we track, the rate a new account pays, the cheapest rate each one advertises, and what that cheapest rate costs to unlock. We name them and we do not link to them — the index itself records a source page for every figure, so any of it can be checked without taking our word for it.

| Provider | Pay-as-you-go per GB | Cheapest advertised rate | Minimum to start |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuantumProxies — Residential Basic | $1.00 | $0.80 | $5 minimum, no subscription |
| DataImpulse | $1.00 | $0.80 | $5 (5 GB); $0.8/GB from 1 TB, custom pricing from 5 TB |
| PacketStream | $1.00 | $1.00 | $50 minimum purchase, no subscription, balance never expires (single flat rate) |
| Proxy-Cheap | $2.60 | $0.78 | UNVERIFIED: homepage card reads '$2.60 $0.78/GB' and the JS-only product page could not be read (404 + bot challenge), so it is not clear whether $0.78 is a promo or a bulk tier; PAYG, no monthly commitment |
| Webshare | $3.50 | $1.40 | monthly plan, no PAYG top-up (1 GB plan at $3.50/GB, cancel anytime); $1.40 tier requires a 3,000 GB/mo plan |
| Proxy-Seller | $3.50 | $2.20 | $220/mo (100 GB plan) for $2.20/GB; page advertises 'From $1.30/GB' for custom/enterprise volumes via sales ('save up to 30% on large projects') |
| Decodo | $4.00 | $2.00 | $11.25/mo (3 GB at $3.75/GB); $2.00 tier requires the 1,000 GB/mo enterprise plan |
| SOAX | $5.00 | $0.85 | none (Sandbox $0/mo at $5.00/GB); $0.85 tier requires the $3,000/mo Enterprise plan |
| NodeMaven | $5.00 | $2.20 | none (PAYG from 2 GB at $5.00/GB); $2.20 tier requires the 1,000 GB monthly plan (PAYG 1,000 GB is $2.45/GB) |
| ProxyEmpire | $7.00 | $3.00 | none (PAYG 1 GB); $3.00/GB list ($1.50 with EMPIRE50) requires the 1,000 GB Enterprise plan at $3,000/mo list ($1,500 promo); custom 5 TB+ 'From $0.75/GB' |
| IPRoyal | $7.35 | $1.75 | none; $1.75/GB only on subscription from 10 TB (PAYG bulk is $1.84/GB from 10 TB) |
| Oxylabs | No pay-as-you-go rate | $2.50 | no PAYG; $30/mo (5 GB Starter at $6/GB); $2.50 tier requires $2,500/mo (1 TB Corporate) |
| NetNut | No pay-as-you-go rate | $0.00 | NOT VERIFIABLE on 2026-09-08: netnut.io/pricing/ and netnut.io/residential-proxies/ both returned a page titled 'Seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation' (HTTP 200 via Cloudflare, no pricing content). Re-check by hand before publishing. |

Competitor prices verified 2026-09-08. Sorted by pay-as-you-go rate, lowest first. That is an arithmetic order, not a ranking: providers publishing no pay-as-you-go rate appear last, and nothing here scores quality, success rate or support. Figures are advertised list prices taken from each provider's own public pricing page on the verification date shown above, in USD, excluding VAT.

Bright Data is the largest and most heavily marketed proxy network in the industry, and it prices accordingly. At $8.00 per gigabyte pay-as-you-go it is the most expensive entry rate among the ten providers in our pricing index — eight times what the cheapest tier of the market charges. That gap is why "bright data alternative" is one of the highest-volume comparison queries in this category, and why the answer for most teams is simply a cheaper gigabyte.

## An 8x gap on the rate that actually applies

Bright Data does offer pay-as-you-go, which is more than some competitors manage, and it lists at $8.00 per gigabyte. Our Residential Basic is $1.00. On a modest 100 GB month that is $800 against $100 — a difference large enough to fund the rest of your stack. The $2.50/GB Bright Data advertises is real, but it is attached to a $1,999 monthly commitment, which means an annual obligation of nearly $24,000 before the discount applies at all.

## The promotional rate is not the rate

Bright Data periodically runs an introductory discount on pay-as-you-go traffic. We deliberately exclude promotional pricing from the comparison column, on both sides, because an introductory rate expires and the list price is what you renew at. Our $1.00 is not an introductory rate — it is the standing price of Residential Basic, and it has been the standing price since we launched the tier.

## What Bright Data is genuinely better at

Bright Data runs the largest residential network in the market and the broadest product catalogue around it: web unlockers, scraping browsers, prebuilt dataset marketplaces, SERP infrastructure and enterprise compliance tooling. If you need several of those under one contract with one vendor relationship, that breadth is a real advantage and we do not have an equivalent to all of it.

## But you pay for the catalogue whether or not you open it

The catalogue is bundled into the entry price. If what you actually need is rotating residential bandwidth pointed at a handful of targets — which is what most teams searching for an alternative need — you are paying an eightfold premium for products you will never enable. Buying the narrow thing you need from a provider that specialises in it is not a downgrade; it is the same gigabyte without the surcharge.

## We do cover the parts developers actually ask for

Where our catalogue does overlap, it is not an afterthought. We publish a Scraper API with ready-made collectors, a SERP API, an Extract API, and an MCP server so agents can call the whole thing directly — which is what people are looking for when they search for a Bright Data MCP alternative. All of it bills from the same balance as your proxies, with no separate plan.

## What you get for $1.00 per GB

Real ISP-assigned residential addresses across 200+ countries, rotating and sticky sessions, HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5 included on every plan, and country-level targeting. The entry order is $5 for 5 GB. There is no subscription, no renewal, and no minimum term — you buy bandwidth and it is yours to use within the plan's validity window.

## Volume pricing that does not need a signature

Our rate falls with size: 500 GB costs $450, or $0.90 per GB, and 1 TB costs $800, or $0.80 per GB. That $0.80 is below the $2.50 Bright Data advertises as its cheapest published rate, and unlocking it means buying a terabyte once rather than committing to $1,999 every month for a year.

## Crypto, no KYC, and no VAT on crypto payments

Card and PayPal work, and so do Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Monero and roughly 300 other cryptocurrencies, with automatic activation on confirmation and no KYC. Crypto and account-balance payments carry no VAT, while card, PayPal and Stripe add 22% — so the payment method you pick is itself worth about eighteen percent of the total.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Is there a free Bright Data alternative?

Not one that works at scale. Free proxy pools are shared and heavily blocked. The practical alternative is a low entry price rather than no price: QuantumProxies Residential Basic starts at $5 for 5 GB, which is $1.00 per gigabyte with no subscription.

### Is there an open-source Bright Data alternative?

Open-source tools such as Scrapy or Crawlee replace the scraping framework, not the proxy network — you still need residential IP addresses to route requests through. QuantumProxies supplies the network, and works with any open-source scraper over HTTP, HTTPS or SOCKS5.

### Is there a Bright Data MCP alternative?

Yes. QuantumProxies publishes an MCP server that exposes our search, scrape, crawl and collector tools directly to AI agents and assistants, billed from the same account balance as your proxies. It is installable from npm and needs no separate plan.

### How much cheaper is QuantumProxies than Bright Data?

Eight times cheaper at the entry point: $1.00 per GB against Bright Data's $8.00 per GB pay-as-you-go list price. At 1 TB our rate is $0.80 per GB, below the $2.50 Bright Data advertises as its lowest published tier.

### Do I need a monthly commitment to get Bright Data's lowest price?

Yes. As recorded in our pricing index on the verification date shown on this page, Bright Data's $2.50 per GB tier requires a $1,999 monthly commitment. Our $0.80 per GB rate requires a one-off 1 TB purchase of $800 and no recurring obligation.

### What is a cheaper alternative to Bright Data's Web Unlocker?

QuantumProxies runs a web unlocker as a forward proxy on the same account, alongside a Scraper API with ready-made collectors for common targets. Both bill per use from your existing balance rather than as a separate subscription.

## So: is QuantumProxies the better Bright Data alternative?

Yes, for anyone buying residential bandwidth rather than an enterprise data platform. Bright Data's scale and catalogue are real, and if you need the whole platform under one contract it is a defensible choice. But if you need gigabytes, you are choosing between $1.00 and $8.00 for the same kind of address — and at that spread the decision makes itself. Start with $5 and measure it against your current success rate.