Bright Data and Oxylabs are the two premium heavyweights in residential proxies. My read of their July 2026 pricing pages: Bright Data is cheaper at entry ($4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, promotional) and claims the larger pool (400M+ vs 175M+ IPs), while Oxylabs offers finer geo-targeting (coordinates, continent) and a lower claimed response time. Both enforce real KYC; Bright Data's is stricter.
Key takeaways
- Entry pricing favors Bright Data: $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go with no commitment, versus an effective $6/GB on Oxylabs' 5 GB Starter subscription (both per official pricing pages, July 2026).
- At volume the two converge at $2.50/GB — Bright Data hits that rate at 798 GB ($1,999/mo), Oxylabs at 1 TB ($2,500/mo).
- Bright Data claims 400M+ monthly residential IPs; Oxylabs claims 175M+. Both are unaudited vendor claims.
- Oxylabs targets by continent, country, state, city, ZIP, coordinates, and ASN, and supports HTTP3; Bright Data covers country, state, city, ZIP, and ASN.
- Compliance is a genuine differentiator: Bright Data restricts its residential network to KYC-verified registered companies, while Oxylabs applies a universal KYC form with risk-based escalation.
- Neither provider suits casual or anonymous use — and that is by design. Both are built for documented, legitimate business data collection.
How we compare
ProxyFacts has not yet run its own benchmark suite against these two networks. Everything below comes from the providers' published pricing, documentation, and policy pages fetched on July 17, 2026, plus independent market research where noted. Performance figures (response time, success rate) are vendor claims and labeled as such. We evaluate providers only for legitimate use cases — price monitoring, SEO rank tracking, ad verification, AI training data, and market research — and we flag compliance posture as a feature, not a nuisance. For how residential proxies fit into that picture generally, start with our best residential proxies guide.
Bright Data vs Oxylabs at a glance
| Bright Data | Oxylabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price (residential) | $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go (50%-off promo, no commitment) | $30/mo for 5 GB ($6/GB effective); PAYG rate not published |
| Best published rate | $2.50/GB at 798 GB ($1,999/mo) | $2.50/GB at 1 TB ($2,500/mo) |
| Pool size (vendor claim) | 400M+ monthly IPs, 195 countries | 175M+ IPs |
| Geo-targeting | Country, state, city, ZIP, ASN (no extra cost) | Continent, country, state, city, ZIP, coordinates, ASN |
| Sessions | Rotating and sticky | Rotating and sticky up to 24 hours |
| Protocols | HTTP/S, SOCKS5 | HTTP/S, HTTP3, SOCKS5 |
| Response time (vendor claim) | About 0.7 s | 0.41 s avg |
| Success rate (vendor claim) | 99.95% | 99.95% |
| Free trial | Yes, no credit card (KYC still required for production residential access) | Once per client, via contact form or support email |
| KYC posture | Strictest: verified registered companies only, human-reviewed | Universal KYC form, risk-based escalation |
| Scraping API pricing | Web Unlocker from $1.50 per 1K requests; free tier 5K requests/mo | Web Scraper API from $0.25 per 1K results; trial up to 2K results |
Sources: Bright Data residential proxies, Oxylabs residential proxy pool, fetched July 17, 2026.
Engineer’s take (Hinata): Settle the KYC question before you compare a single price — it is a binary gate, and if you cannot sign up as a registered company, Bright Data's column is irrelevant however good the rate looks. I would also budget Bright Data at its $8/GB list price and treat the $4.00 promo as upside; letting a forecast depend on a discount with no stated end date is how a cost line doubles overnight. And on GB-billed traffic, the cheapest lever is usually on your side of the wire: blocking images and trimming payloads can save more than the entry-price gap between these two ever will.
Pricing: Bright Data wins at entry, dead heat at scale
Residential proxy pricing
According to Bright Data's residential proxies page (July 2026), pay-as-you-go traffic costs $4.00/GB with no commitment — displayed as a 50%-off promotion from an $8/GB list price. Monthly subscriptions (also shown at 50% off) run:
| Bright Data plan | Monthly price | Traffic | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | none | per GB | $4.00/GB |
| 141 GB tier | $499/mo | 141 GB | $3.50/GB |
| 332 GB tier | $999/mo | 332 GB | $3.00/GB |
| 798 GB tier | $1,999/mo | 798 GB | $2.50/GB |
According to Oxylabs' published pricing (July 2026), residential subscriptions run:
| Oxylabs plan | Monthly price | Traffic | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $30/mo | 5 GB | $6/GB |
| Basic (most popular) | $100/mo | 20 GB | $5/GB |
| Advanced | $500/mo | 125 GB | $4/GB |
| Corporate | $2,500/mo | 1 TB | $2.50/GB |
Oxylabs did not display a pay-as-you-go per-GB rate on the pricing page we fetched — for me that is the first thing to check on any proxy pricing page, because it decides whether you can validate a pipeline without a sales conversation. Top-ups are allowed (Starter/Basic up to 100 GB; Advanced/Corporate up to 2 TB).
Three observations from these numbers:
- Below roughly 125 GB/month, Bright Data is consistently cheaper. Its $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go rate matches Oxylabs' 125 GB Advanced tier rate — without any commitment.
- The floor is identical. Both bottom out at $2.50/GB, but Bright Data gets there at 798 GB/month versus 1 TB for Oxylabs.
- Bright Data's headline rates are promotional. The page frames $4/GB as 50% off an $8/GB list price. Promos can end; Oxylabs' tier prices carry no such asterisk.
Market context: Proxyway's Proxy Market Research 2026 (data collected March–April 2026) found residential pricing has stabilized after 2023–2025 declines of up to 75%, and notes Oxylabs removed long-running discount codes while revising permanent plans down roughly 25% — so Oxylabs' listed prices are closer to what you actually pay. The same report cites Bright Data at roughly $300M annualized revenue growing 50% year over year on AI demand.
For a wider look across more providers, see our proxy pricing comparison.
Network size and performance claims
Bright Data claims 400M+ monthly ethical residential IPs across 195 countries; Oxylabs claims 175M+ residential IPs. Both are vendor claims — neither figure is independently audited, and "monthly IPs" counted over a month is not directly comparable to a point-in-time pool. Treat the gap as directional: Bright Data markets the bigger network.
On speed, the claims flip. Oxylabs publishes a 0.41 s average response time claim; Bright Data cites roughly 0.7 s. Both claim a 99.95% success rate. Until we run our own tests, we would not choose between them on these numbers alone — vendor-measured benchmarks use vendor-chosen targets. If I had to pick one performance signal, it would be success rate against my own target list during a trial, not headline latency.
Two documented technical differences do stand out:
- Protocols. Oxylabs supports HTTP(S), HTTP3, and SOCKS5; Bright Data lists HTTP/S and SOCKS5. HTTP3 support is rare and can matter for targets that fingerprint transport behavior.
- Session length. Oxylabs documents sticky sessions up to 24 hours. Bright Data offers sticky and rotating sessions but does not publish a comparable maximum on the page we fetched.
Geo-targeting: Oxylabs is more granular
Both providers include fine-grained targeting at no extra cost — a real advantage over budget providers that gate city or ASN targeting behind higher tiers.
- Oxylabs: continent, country, state, city, ZIP code, coordinates, and ASN.
- Bright Data: country, state, city, ZIP code, and ASN.
Coordinate-level and continent-level targeting are Oxylabs exclusives here. For ad verification work — confirming that geo-targeted campaigns actually render in the right place — coordinate targeting is a meaningful edge. For most price monitoring and SEO tracking, country and city targeting are enough, and both providers deliver that.
Free trials and onboarding
- Bright Data: free trial with no credit card required, per its residential proxies page. The catch: production access to the residential network still requires passing KYC, so the trial is not a shortcut around verification.
- Oxylabs: a free trial of the residential pool is available once per client, requested via contact form or support@oxylabs.io. No explicit money-back guarantee is stated on the residential product page.
Neither trial is friction-free, and that is consistent with how both companies position themselves: enterprise vendors that want to know who you are before you touch residential IPs. If you want an instant, anonymous trial, neither provider is built for you — and given what unvetted proxy traffic does to the ecosystem, we consider that a feature.
Scraping APIs: different pricing models
If your real goal is data rather than raw proxy access, both vendors sell managed unblocking products. The pricing models differ enough to change the math:
- Oxylabs Web Scraper API: per-result pricing from $0.25 per 1K results — you pay only for successful results. The free trial includes up to 2K results, no credit card required (source).
- Bright Data Web Unlocker: per-request pricing, pay only for successful requests. Free tier of 5K requests/month with no credit card; pay-as-you-go at $1.50 per 1K requests; a $499/mo Scale plan includes 383K requests with additional requests at $1.30 per 1K (source).
Headline rates are not directly comparable — Oxylabs' $0.25 per 1K is a "from" price that varies by target, and Bright Data's $1.50 per 1K covers unlocking-grade requests. Bright Data's 5K-requests-per-month free tier is the more generous ongoing sandbox; Oxylabs' 2K-results trial is one-time. Bright Data also advertises a first-deposit matching bonus up to $500. If I were building a price-monitoring pipeline today, I would prototype on both free tiers against the real target list before buying raw proxy bandwidth — self-built unblocking logic is maintenance you keep paying for, and it rarely pencils out at small scale.
Compliance and KYC: both strict, Bright Data strictest
This is where the two most clearly diverge, and it should drive your choice as much as price.
Bright Data operates the strictest residential-access policy of the major providers. According to its KYC FAQ and network access documentation, residential network access is limited to verified companies that pass a human-reviewed KYC: you sign up as a registered company, verify a corporate email domain, and describe your use case. The process may include an intro video call and government-issued ID of the point of contact.
Oxylabs requires every customer to complete a KYC form at signup (business and contact details, use case), per its KYC and safety policy. Risk-based escalation can add ID verification, compliance calls, and risk questionnaires, and the compliance team monitors usage after onboarding. Oxylabs is a member of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative.
Practical consequences:
- Registered companies with clean use cases clear both. Expect Bright Data's process to take longer and require more documentation.
- Freelancers and individuals will struggle with Bright Data's company-only residential policy; Oxylabs' form-first approach is more likely to work, though escalation is possible.
- Anyone hoping to stay anonymous should not apply to either — and should reconsider the plan. Sneaker botting, ticket scalping, account farming, credential or paywall circumvention, and personal-data harvesting are against both providers' policies and against ProxyFacts's editorial standards. We only evaluate these tools for lawful business data collection; see is web scraping legal for the broader picture.
Support
Neither provider publishes support SLAs on the pages we reviewed, and ProxyFacts has not yet measured response times first-hand, so we will not rank them on support quality. What is documented: Oxylabs routes residential trial requests through a contact form or support@oxylabs.io, implying human-mediated onboarding, and its compliance team stays engaged post-onboarding. Bright Data's KYC process can include a live intro call, which in practice means a named human touchpoint from day one. Both are enterprise-support postures rather than ticket-queue-only operations — but treat that as inference from onboarding documentation, not a tested claim.
Strengths and weaknesses
Bright Data pros
- Cheapest documented entry point: $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go, no commitment (promo pricing, July 2026)
- Largest claimed pool: 400M+ monthly residential IPs across 195 countries (vendor claim)
- Reaches the $2.50/GB floor at lower volume (798 GB vs 1 TB)
- Web Unlocker free tier of 5K requests/month, no credit card
- Strictest KYC in the industry — a trust signal for compliance-sensitive enterprises
Bright Data cons
- Headline prices are framed as a 50%-off promotion from an $8/GB list price
- Residential access is company-only: individuals and unregistered freelancers are effectively excluded
- No published HTTP3 support or coordinate-level targeting
- Slower claimed response time (about 0.7 s vs 0.41 s — both vendor claims)
Oxylabs pros
- Most granular geo-targeting: continent, country, state, city, ZIP, coordinates, ASN
- HTTP3 support alongside HTTP(S) and SOCKS5
- Documented sticky sessions up to 24 hours
- Non-promotional tier pricing; Proxyway notes permanent plans were revised down about 25%
- KYC form plus risk-based escalation is more accessible to smaller legitimate operators
Oxylabs cons
- No pay-as-you-go per-GB rate published on the pricing page we fetched
- Entry tier is pricier: $6/GB effective on the 5 GB Starter plan
- Smaller claimed pool (175M+ vs 400M+ — vendor claims)
- Trial requires contacting sales or support; no explicit money-back guarantee on the residential page
Which should you choose? By use case
- Price monitoring at moderate volume (under about 100 GB/mo): Bright Data. Its $4.00/GB pay-as-you-go undercuts every comparable Oxylabs tier, with no lock-in.
- SEO rank tracking: near tie; Oxylabs if you need long sticky sessions (up to 24 hours documented) or HTTP3, Bright Data if budget rules.
- Ad verification: Oxylabs. Coordinate-level and continent-level targeting are documented differentiators for verifying geo-targeted campaigns.
- AI training data at scale: Bright Data. The larger claimed pool, the $2.50/GB rate at 798 GB, and a business visibly scaling on AI demand (per Proxyway's 2026 research) fit large-corpus collection.
- Market research by a small registered business: Oxylabs. The $100/mo Basic tier (20 GB) is a realistic starting commitment, and onboarding is form-first rather than company-verification-first.
- Managed scraping without proxy plumbing: test both APIs — Oxylabs' one-time 2K-results trial and Bright Data's recurring 5K-requests-per-month free tier cost nothing to compare on your actual targets.
Verdict: Bright Data vs Oxylabs
4.5/5
Bright Data
Best entry pricing and largest claimed pool — company KYC required for residential access
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Oxylabs
Most granular geo-targeting and HTTP3 — trial available on request, once per client
This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our tests and rankings are independent and never influenced by partners.
FAQ
Is Bright Data or Oxylabs better for a small team? It depends on legal structure more than budget. A registered company that can pass Bright Data's KYC gets the cheapest entry rate ($4.00/GB pay-as-you-go). A freelancer or very small operator is more likely to clear Oxylabs' form-based onboarding, starting at $30/mo for 5 GB. Full details in our Oxylabs review and Bright Data review.
Are the pool size numbers trustworthy? They are vendor claims and we label them as such. No independent audit verifies either 400M+ or 175M+, and counting methodologies differ. Proxyway's 2026 market research puts the median advertised residential pool across 13 benchmarked providers at 54M IPs — both of these providers advertise far above that median.
Do either of these providers allow sneaker bots or account creation? No, and neither do we cover those uses. Both providers' compliance programs exist to screen out exactly that traffic. ProxyFacts evaluates proxy infrastructure only for legitimate purposes such as price intelligence, SEO monitoring, ad verification, and AI training data collection.
Where do these two sit in the wider market? They are the premium tier. Mid-market alternatives like Decodo and IPRoyal undercut both on entry price with lighter (though still real) verification — see our best residential proxies pillar for the full field.