Bright Data starts at $500/month. Smartproxy at $75/month. You are paying for proxies you do not need if your scraping volume is under 10 million requests.
Here is the math on what you actually need.
The Proxy Pricing Trap
Most proxy providers sell on fear: "you'll get blocked without residential proxies." True for some targets. But for 80% of business use cases?
Completely unnecessary.
The sites that block you most aggressively:
- Amazon (bot detection ML-based)
- LinkedIn (session-based auth)
- Google (rate limiting + CAPTCHAs)
- Cloudflare-protected sites
For everything else — job boards, directories, public APIs, e-commerce sites outside Amazon — a basic rotating proxy or Apify's built-in proxy is sufficient.
What Apify's Built-in Proxy Costs
Apify includes proxy access with actor runs. The PAY_PER_RESULT model means:
- You pay per successful result, not per request
- Failed requests (blocks) are not charged
- No monthly proxy bill on top of run costs
For a typical scraping job:
- 1,000 results from a job board: ~$1-2 total
- 10,000 Google SERP results: ~$3-7 total
- 5,000 e-commerce product pages: ~$5-15 total
Compare to Bright Data at $500/month minimum.
When You Actually Need Residential Proxies
Residential proxies are worth it when:
- Target is Amazon at scale (100k+ pages/month)
- Target requires geographic specificity (local business data, geo-blocked content)
- Target has aggressive ML bot detection that tracks browser fingerprints, not just IPs
- You need real browser fingerprints (Puppeteer/Playwright with residential IP)
For everything else, datacenter rotating proxies or Apify's default proxy work fine.
The Architecture That Saves $400/Month
Instead of Bright Data ($500) + custom scraper ($200 dev time/month maintenance):
Use Apify actors + pay-per-result pricing:
| Use Case | Bright Data Cost | Apify Cost | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50k SERP results/month | ~$400 | ~$35 | $365 |
| 10k job listings/month | ~$150 | ~$5 | $145 |
| 5k company profiles/month | ~$200 | ~$8 | $192 |
| 20k product prices/month | ~$300 | ~$20 | $280 |
Monthly total: ~$1,050 vs $68. Same data.
The 3 Actors That Replace Bright Data for Most Use Cases
1. Google SERP Scraper
- Handles CAPTCHA automatically
- Returns structured JSON (title, URL, snippet, position)
- Cost: ~$0.0007 per result
- No residential proxy needed for most queries
2. Contact Info Scraper
- Extracts emails, phones, LinkedIn from any public page
- Built-in proxy rotation
- Cost: ~$0.005 per contact found
- Replaces Hunter.io ($49/month) + proxies
3. Amazon Product Scraper
- Handles Amazon's aggressive bot detection
- Anti-bot measures built in
- Cost: ~$0.003 per product page
- Works for price monitoring at scale
How to Set This Up in 20 Minutes
- Create free Apify account (includes $5 credit)
- Search the actor store for your target site
- Run with default settings first (test mode: 10 results)
- Scale up once you confirm output quality
- Schedule via Apify's built-in scheduler (no cron needed)
Total setup time: 20-30 minutes. No proxy configuration. No IP rotation logic. No maintenance.
Get 30 Pre-Configured Scrapers
The Google SERP, Contact Info, and Amazon scrapers above — plus 27 more — are all included in the Apify Scrapers Bundle.
One-time $29. No subscription. Each actor is pre-configured with optimal settings for cost and success rate.
What proxy provider are you currently using? Drop it in the comments — I can tell you whether you're overpaying.
Related Tools
Pre-built solutions for this use case:
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