A Bright Data alternative for social media scraping

100,000 subreddit pages cost $3,120 a month on Bright Data and $59 here

Calls

10k10,000100k100,000500k500,0001M1,000,000subreddit pages

Bright Data

$360$3,120$15,600$31,200

Pay as you goScale plan, a monthScale plan, a monthScale plan, a month

LurkAPI

$9$59$225$450

Starter packGrowth packScale pack2 × Scale packs

$351 less for the same 10,000 subreddit pages$3,061 less for the same 100,000 subreddit pages$15,375 less for the same 500,000 subreddit pages$30,750 less for the same 1,000,000 subreddit pages

• Even with its 60%-off code, good for 3 months, 100,000 subreddit pages cost over $1,200 a month there.

Bright Data charges $1.50 per 1,000 records, and a record is one extracted item, so every post on a page counts. On LurkAPI the page is one call, and packs never expire.

brightdata.com

An answer in under a second, not a job to collect

AIMultiple's benchmark timed Bright Data's social scrapers at 8 s on average, and a subreddit's posts run there as a job you check back on. Here a subreddit page answers in 0.92 s.

A single profile or post by URL can come back in the same request there, typically in seconds, its docs say.

Bright Data's: 8 s average for its social scrapers, from AIMultiple's benchmark. Ours: the median of successful calls in production over the 7 days to October 26, 2026, for the call nearest theirs.

1. 

   LurkAPI

   $59Growth pack

   A page of posts is 1 credit, however many it holds. 16 platforms, Meta's Ad Library and any web page included.

2. 

   ScrapeCreators

   $1884 × $47 packs

   Bills by the call too, so a page of posts is one credit there as well.

3. 

   Apify

   $200/moScale plan, for Instagram profiles

   Bills per result like Bright Data, from a store of scrapers for nearly any site.

4. 

   EnsembleData

   $200/moBronze plan, for TikTok profiles

   One unit buys 10 TikTok posts, on monthly plans whose units reset every day.

Each price is the cheapest published buy of 100,000 profile lookups, as of October 31, 2026.

Questions before you switch

How much does Bright Data's scraper API cost?

$1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go, or $499 a month for 384,000 and $1.30 per 1,000 after. Each post, comment, profile or ad it returns is one record.

Is Bright Data free?

Up to 5,000 records a month with no card, about 200 subreddit pages. They reset on the 1st, don't roll over, and stop once you're on Scale.

Is there a cheaper Bright Data alternative?

Yes. LurkAPI bills the call, not each post, so 100,000 subreddit pages cost $59 instead of $3,120 a month.

How fast is Bright Data's scraper API?

It publishes no figure, but AIMultiple's benchmark measured its social scrapers at 8 s on average. LurkAPI answers a subreddit page in 0.92 s.