Bright Data Review (formerly Luminati Networks)

Do you have a business for which you need to extrapolate data from some Internet sites or apps on a regular basis? Then I bet you would like a proxy that can collect data publicly accessible from external sites in a safe, effective and fast way. If that’s the case, then I think you should check out Bright Data’s products.

Previously known as Luminati Networks (the reason for the name change is easily understood with a simple search for the term “luminati” on Google, but it also reflects the commitment to provide a transparent and ethical solution), Bright Data is among the most important companies and has one of the most advanced business proxy networks in the world. It provides state-of-the-art products for collecting data from the web that can bypass the most sophisticated blocks and obtain reliable data streams at any scale updated in real time, in full compliance not only with the law, but also with ethics. It then allows you to customize your data mining activities down to the smallest detail and provides 24/7 support in various languages.

Its flagship is certainly the 72 million residential proxies, including mobile proxies based on real users’ devices, but there are also many other products to consider, for example the Web Unlocker: a next-generation proxy in able to ensure 100% success thanks to an intelligent blocking system; all manageable comfortably through a sufficiently intuitive dashboard and offered with modular prices, suitable for companies of various sizes. For all the details, read on: everything is explained below.

Index

• Preliminary information
• Bright Data products and prices
• How Bright Data works
  • Account creation
  • Dashboard
  • Setting up and managing proxies
• Bright Data support

Preliminary information

Before we talk to you in detail about  Bright Data and the services the company offers, let me clarify for a moment what we mean when we talk about proxies.

Well, a  proxy server is precisely a server (i.e. a remote computer) that acts as an intermediary between a client, for example your computer or any other device you want to use to access the Internet, and the resources you want to contact. on the web, such as a site to visit.

Having this brokerage, the site (or in any case the remote resource) you contact will not “see” your real IP address or your real geographical position, but that of the server that is acting as an intermediary. In the consumer sphere, such solutions are usually used to overcome geographical restrictions and censorships applied to online browsing in some countries, or to access foreign catalogs of streaming services.

Moving on to the business area, however, proxies can be very useful for all those activities of extrapolation of data from external resources. An example? Imagine having a site that compares the prices of products available on various online stories: a proxy could allow you to extrapolate the prices en masse from the stores in question – and therefore have them available for your site – without revealing your identity, your position and, above all, avoiding bans by anti-bot systems.

Hence the importance of solutions such as those offered by Bright Data, which counts on a network of proxies for companies among the most advanced and stable in the world, with flexible solutions for the collection of data from the Web able to bypass even the more sophisticated locking systems, 24/7 support in various languages and solutions suitable for even the most demanding companies.

In addition to the technical point of view, Bright Data has also made great efforts with regard to the “ethical” side of its work. In fact, the company has decided to say no to resellers, to limit the viable use cases and to make the customer verification process (KYC) extremely accurate and precise.

Clearly we are talking about a solution not within everyone’s reach, neither from an economic point of view (even if there are solutions suitable for various types of purposes and companies), nor from a practical one (since to use some of the tools offered you need to have a minimum of previous knowledge), but you can be sure about the very high level of service guaranteed by Bright Data. Read on to learn more.

Bright Data products and prices

At this point, I would say to get down to business and find out what Bright Data products and prices are.

As already mentioned, the “highlight” of the company are the over 72 million residential proxies, including mobile proxies with 99.9% uptime, response times at the top of the category (1.18 s) and everything you need to collect data in a legal and ethical manner and with ample customization possibilities. There is also a browser extension that allows you to manage proxies with ease.

Then there are data center proxies and other tools, such as the Web Unlocker, which represents a new generation proxy capable of bypassing all blocking systems in an innovative way with 100% success rates. But let’s go in order and see what are the types of proxies offered by Bright Data and their main characteristics.

• Data Center Proxy– Bright Data offers one of the largest and most effective data center-based proxy networks. The latter is made up of over 770,000 IP addresses belonging to over 3,000 subnets around the world, with an uptime of 100%. They represent a relatively cheap solution, but valid only for extrapolating data from sources that do not have particularly sophisticated protection systems. Being based on data center IPs and not residential IPs (i.e. real users), they are in fact more prone to being recognized and blocked by anti-bot systems. Data center proxies do not rotate by default, but rotation rules can be set via the Bright Data Proxy Manager ( more on that later ). Data center proxy IPs are divided into shared IPs (addresses shared among multiple customers, in order to reserve a fixed range of IPs in rotation or to purchase individual shared IPs, with unlimited bandwidth) and exclusive IPs (to be used exclusively for your own purposes). Support for the SOCKS5 protocol should be highlighted.
• Residential proxies– the best solution for most online data capture tasks. A network of residential proxies is made up of IP addresses of real home computers, which, precisely because they are identified as computers belonging to real users, allow information to be extracted from the Web without incurring blocks or bans, even when there are systems involved. particularly sophisticated protection. Bright Data’s residential proxy network is made up of over 72 million real IP addresses from 195 countries and various cities around the world, with an uptime of 99.9%. The latter are rented or purchased from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for commercial use and are divided into shared IPs (cheaper but shared among multiple customers) and exclusive IPs (i.e. groups of residential IPs to which you have exclusive access for your data collection needs; ideal for certain use cases where there may be blocks caused by the use of duplicate IPs). Read more here.
• Static Residential Proxies– Bright Data also offers Static Residential Proxies, with over 110,000 IPs assigned by ISPs around the world, ensuring 100% uptime and zero blocking from security systems. Read more here.
• Mobile proxy– Bright Data has mobile proxies on its side, i.e. proxy servers based on mobile devices of real users, ideal for stealing data from particularly complex targets (e.g. some services or apps that only work from mobile), with the possibility of count on over 7 million IPs worldwide under 4G / 3G network and specify the duration of the sessions. Bright Data also offers an option to have private mobile proxies with 3-30 IPs reserved for the requesting company. Also in this case, the support for the SOCKS5 protocol should be emphasized. Read more here.
• Web Unlocker– this is the “next-gen” of proxies, with a 100% success rate. In short, the Bright Data Web Unlocker is an automated system that automatically rotates the profiles of various browsers and takes care of everything necessary (cookies, fingerprints and other identifiers) to overcome any blocking systems; after which it extracts and verifies the validity of the data obtained, in order to provide the company with an always accurate result. It can even handle JavaScript. It is a truly unique tool of its kind, able to incredibly facilitate the life of the company that uses it (in fact, it does all the work by itself). Read more here.

Residential proxy prices start at $ 25 / GB, $ 300 / month ($ 15 / GB) or $ 3,240 / year ($ 13.5 / GB) with 7-day business trial and refund within 3 days for individual users. You can pay with PayPal, credit card, wire transfer, AliPay and Payoneer. You can get an estimate of the prices of the services you need using the special calculator made available by Bright Data: you can find it here, and there is also the possibility of contacting a consultant for more precise information before using the service.

In addition to proxies, as mentioned, other interesting services are also available, such as the Search Engine Crawler: a solution that allows you to extract the results of searches made on various search engines in bulk. It provides granular control over search parameters and allows you to pay only for successful searches. It costs $ 5 / CPM , $ 500 / month, or $ 5,400 / year . Read more here.

Then there is the Data Collector, a complete Web scraper integrated with Bright Data proxies, which allows you to extract data from various sources (eg. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon and Tripadvisor ) or even customized URLs through templates. preset: you choose one of the preset templates, enter the URL from which to retrieve the data and then return the data in the form of a JSON, CSV or XSLX file; all without having to program anything on the user side: the work is carried out entirely by the Bright Data Data Collector. It is also possible to customize the presets through a browser extension, which allows you to manually select the elements that you consider relevant within the websites (showing a preview of the obtained data). But there is also a virtual IDE in which to code if you are able to do so. Prices for the service are $ 5 / CPM, $ 500 / month or $ 5,400 / year. Read more here.

Finally, mention should definitely be made of the Bright Data API for managing code-side proxies. These are particularly complete APIs, with granular controls on every aspect of the work to be done and able to really meet any need, even the most advanced and particular ones.

How Bright Data works

At this point, I’d say take action and take a closer look at how Bright Data works. Here, then, is a general overview of the registration process for the service and the use of some of its most important functions.

Account creation

To start using Bright Data, just connect to the official website of the service and click on the Start now button, in order to access the registration form, in which you must enter First name (name), Last name (surname), Work email (address work email), Company size (size of the company, intended as the number of employees) and Vertical (sector to which it belongs). Once you have completed everything, you must check the box relating to the terms of use and Privacy Policy and press the Create account button.

In the new page opened, it is then necessary to indicate the password to be used to access the service and go on, by pressing the Create account button. Finally, to permanently create the account, you must verify your identity by opening the confirmation link that arrives via email. You will then be greeted by the initial Bright Data wizard, through which you can immediately start activating the services of your interest and complete the recognition process to gain access to them.

Dashboard

Once the initial setup is completed, you can start working with the Bright Data dashboard, which at first glance may seem a bit distracting – given the many tools to which it gives access – but over time it is certainly comfortable and functional: on the other hand there are instructions on what to do in every corner of it and it is available in many languages, including English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

From the dashboard you can manage every aspect of Bright Data at 360 degrees, with the possibility of having a complete overview of your profile and the status of the service (you can see the uptime of each service in real time and receive notifications via e- mail if something stops working temporarily), manage plans and payments, adjust your account settings and details, set up and authorize proxies, view usage statistics, and request support assistance.

Speaking of the statistics, those provided by Bright Data really deserve a special mention: there are, in fact, very easy to consult visual graphs that support very granular filtering options both in terms of time periods to consider (for example it is possible analyze the statistics of the last hours and those of previous years), both as metrics (bandwidth usage, requests, IPs used, error rate, etc.); all with the possibility to analyze the overall data or the individual services offered and to connect the Proxy Manager, which allows for even more granular tracking. Just use the checkboxes and drop-down menus for each chart and, in just a few clicks, you instantly get the information you need.

The security is another strong point of Bright Date, which allows you to keep the accesses and zone control (with warnings in case of unidentified accesses), and supports the ‘ two-factor authentication (2FA) to make more secure the’ account and avoid compromise or identity theft.

Everything is easily accessible from the left sidebar. Going more specifically, by selecting the Dashboard item you can access the dashboard with all your services and related statistics; going to Proxies you can set up proxies; Data Collector gives access to tools to extract data from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, Amazon and many other sites; API & Integrations provides access to APIs and extensions to integrate Bright Data into various services; by selecting the Proxy manager item it is possible to access the Bright Data Proxy manager to manage all proxies in a unified manner; Proxy Chrome Extension allows you to install the Bright Data Chrome extension, while in the Support center there are all the options to contact Bright Data support.

Moving to the bottom of the sidebar there are then the icons to view the status of the service, access messages, view the Knowledge base, manage your account settings and plans and payments. As mentioned, there really is everything you need, which is always just a click away.

Setting up and managing proxies

To set up proxies in Bright Data, a so-called zone has to be created. To proceed in this sense, you must therefore select the icon dedicated to Proxies from the side menu of the dashboard, then click on the Add Zone button and indicate the type of proxy to use (eg residential or mobile proxy ).

Then you need to type in the name to be assigned to the zone, choose a tariff plan and an IP type (shared or exclusive) from those available, add any additional authorizations (eg. Country, State, City and ASN ), indicate any additional ports to be use in addition to those HTTP / HTTPS and confirm the creation of the zone by pressing the Add Zone button. To make the choice easier, there is a text box at the top, where by typing the address of the site from which to extrapolate the data, you get automatic suggestions on the best proxies to use.

Once the zone has been created, if necessary, it is necessary to go through the Bright Data approval process which, as mentioned, has a very restrictive KYC. However, by providing all the required information, you can quickly get access to all the tools you need.

The next step, once the zone is activated, is to integrate the proxies with the usual hostname code: port, but in the Bright Data dashboard there are also dynamic code examples for all major programming languages. You can also get advanced codes with DNS resolver or user agent options to use.

By accessing the section Proxy of the dashboard, it is also possible to modify the parameters, view the statistics or delete your own proxies using the icons that appear in their correspondence on mouseover.

And for proxy management? In this case, Proxy Manager comes in handy: a great open source software available for Windows, macOS and Linux for the simplified management of Bright Data proxy networks. Provides detailed logs updated in real time with proxy activities, allows better management of rotation settings compared to the Web panel, allows you to enable the SOCKS5 protocol (where supported) and allows you to take advantage of the Proxy Waterfall function. The latter means that when you make a request to a website, it first goes through the least effective (and cheap) proxy network, then, in case of failure, it moves the request to more advanced and expensive proxies: this is a good solution, but it must be taken into account that it slows down the data extraction process and obviously requires the activation of multiple IP networks at the same time. But the list of its functions could go on and on: my advice is to download the program and have fun exploring all its features.Read more here.

Bright Data support

In case you need more information on Bright Data products or direct support, you can count on many resources made available by Bright Data itself.

If you want to learn more about how the products work, you can take a look at the official FAQ, where there are answers to the most frequently asked questions by users; or you can watch Bright Data webinars that show in video and text format how to get started with Bright Data, how to install and use Proxy Manager and much more.

If, on the other hand, you already use Bright Data and need direct help, you can count on a 24/7 support service available in various languages. For example, you can take advantage of the live chat with guaranteed response times in 25 minutes and the ticket system (accessible from the section Support Center of the dashboard) to solve your doubts and problems in the shortest possible time. Support is also available via phone, email and WhatsApp.