I'm frustrated with proxy bans in Bright Data, what are people using instead?

If you’re hitting bans with Bright Data, people usually switch based on what they’re scraping and how risky the target is. Common alternatives fall into a few buckets:

1) Other proxy networks

• Oxylabs – often used for large-scale web data collection.
• Smartproxy / Decodo – popular for simpler setups and lower complexity.
• NetNut – known for residential and ISP-style access.
• SOAX – flexible geo-targeting, often used for mid-scale scraping.
• IPRoyal – cheaper option, sometimes good for smaller jobs.
• Webshare – more budget-friendly, especially for datacenter proxies.

2) Scraping APIs / browser automation platforms

If bans are the main issue, many people move from raw proxies to a managed scraping API:

• ScraperAPI
• Zyte API
• Apify
• Oxylabs Web Scraper API
• Bright Data Web Scraper IDE/API (if the issue is just proxy quality, not the platform itself)

These can help because they handle retries, headers, browser fingerprints, and some anti-bot logic for you.

3) Dedicated residential/ISP proxies

For harder targets, people often prefer:

• Residential proxies for broad coverage
• ISP / static residential for more stability and lower ban rates than rotating residential

4) In-house proxy pools

Some teams build their own pool using:

• Cloud instances across regions
• Rotating egress IPs
• Headless browser fleets with careful rate limiting

This is more work, but can be more controllable.

What people usually choose in practice

• Budget / easier sites: Webshare, Smartproxy/Decodo, IPRoyal
• Mid to large scale: Oxylabs, NetNut, SOAX
• Hard anti-bot targets: scraping APIs like Zyte or Oxylabs API, plus browser automation

Important note

If you’re getting banned a lot, it’s often not just the proxy provider. The bigger causes are:

• request rate too high
• fingerprint mismatch
• cookie/session handling issues
• poor geo alignment
• repeated patterns in traffic

If you want, I can suggest the best Bright Data alternative by use case:

• e-commerce scraping
• search engines
• social media
• travel/hotel data
• general site crawling
• cheapest option possible