Bright data browser: Billing, limits and setup

The Bright Data browser is the Browser API (formerly Scraping Browser): fully managed cloud browsers that run your Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium code, so you don’t maintain browser infrastructure or proxy networks. Choose it when you want someone else to run the browsers and proxies behind scrapers you already wrote.

Your Playwright, Puppeteer or Selenium scraper keeps getting blocked, and it needs a real browser at a chosen location. A vendor’s pricing page shows a rate. It does not show how a bill behaves on a light page, a heavy page or an idle session.

Hosted browsers such as the Bright Data browser differ in what they meter and how you connect to them. After reading, you can pick a billing model, a connection model and the tool that fits your job.

Key Takeaways

• Choose Bright Data when your code runs on Selenium: its hosted browser supports Puppeteer, Playwright and Selenium.
• Before launch, check the concurrency and session-lifetime limits behind any “unlimited scale” claim.
• Wayfern refuses an unknown location with close code 4007 instead of falling back, so retry code must handle that close.

What is the Bright Data browser, and what kind of browser is it?

The Bright Data browser is a hosted browser you control from code, over the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) with Playwright or Puppeteer, or over Selenium WebDriver. Bright Data runs the browser and proxy layer while your script sends commands.

Unblocking runs inside that hosted environment: the Browser API docs list “advanced unblocking capabilities” as part of the product.

Your code reaches it with zone credentials, a username and password found in the Overview tab of the Browser API zone, as Bright Data’s quick-start guide shows. In Playwright you attach with connectOverCDP(). In Puppeteer you attach with puppeteer.connect().

That puts it in the same category as Wayfern: programmable, hosted anti-detect Chromium that code drives over CDP, as our anti-detect browser sessions guide describes.

A desktop anti-detect profile manager is a different product from the Bright Data browser. A person runs it and opens many long-lived profiles by hand. If that describes your job, read our Wayfern vs Multilogin comparison.

How is the Bright Data browser billed compared with Wayfern?

The Bright Data browser bills by bandwidth, while Wayfern bills by how long a page stays open and meters residential bandwidth separately.

Case	Bright Data Browser API	Wayfern Browser API
Billing unit	Bandwidth	Open-page time, plus residential bandwidth
Light page	Few bytes, small charge	60-second minimum per page
Heavy page	Charge grows with bytes loaded	Same hourly rate; datacenter egress free
Idle session	Only bytes still transferred	Meter runs while the page is open
Account setup	One zone per product	One credit balance

Check the Bright Data browser pricing and Wayfern’s pricing page for current rates before you estimate a bill.

Wayfern’s pricing page sets the browser at 8 credits per open-page hour, metered per second. Each page has a 60-second minimum. Datacenter egress is free, and residential bandwidth is a second meter at the rate on that page.

If you hold one page open and idle for an hour, Wayfern’s open-page meter runs the whole hour. The page costs 8 credits, plus residential bytes if you chose a residential exit. On a bandwidth meter, the idle hour adds only the bytes the page keeps transferring.

A 5-second visit reverses the comparison. Wayfern bills it as 60 seconds, while a bandwidth meter bills the bytes that visit loaded.

On the Bright Data browser, a heavy page full of images raises the bandwidth bill with every byte. On Wayfern’s default datacenter exit, the same page costs only its open time.

Setup of the Bright Data browser differs too. Bright Data’s quick-start guide has you create a Browser API zone with its own credentials, so the browser is set up as its own product.

The Bright Data browser fits pages that stay open long but transfer little, and teams that already run Bright Data zones.

Wayfern fits heavy pages on the free datacenter exit, short sessions you can predict by time, and one balance across browser, search, scraping and captchas.

What limits sit behind unlimited Bright Data browser claims?

An “unlimited” browser claim is marketing copy; the real ceilings are concurrency caps, session lifetimes and rate limits that you can check before launch. Bright Data’s Scraping Browser repository, for example, says the product supports Puppeteer, Playwright and Selenium “enabling effortless web automation at an unlimited scale.”

Run this checklist against Bright Data’s Browser API documentation:

• The maximum number of browser sessions you can hold open at once.
• How long one session can stay open.
• The request or connection rate the docs allow.
• What your code receives at each limit: a refused connection, a queued session or a closed one.

Then test the Bright Data browser. Open more sessions than you plan to run and log the exact error each one returns.

Wayfern publishes its ceilings, so you can check them the same way:

• Wayfern’s limits page gives each link token a cap of 1 to 100 connections, with a default of 10.
• The same page lists a default of 120 requests a minute per client IP. It also lists scrape at 60, search at 30, captcha at 20 and /mcp at 120 a minute.
• For plan concurrency, the pricing page lists 20 pages open at once on Developer, 100 on Business and 400 on Scale. Enterprise goes up to 1,000.
• At zero credits, calls are refused and open sessions are closed.

Wayfern’s pricing page states the zero-credit rule this way: “Hard stop at zero. Nothing runs on credit you did not buy. Auto top-up is off until you turn it on.”

A long job that outlives its balance loses its browsers mid-run. Check your balance before a launch and decide whether you want auto top-up on.

How do you connect Playwright to the Bright Data browser, and what changes on Wayfern?

You connect Playwright to the Bright Data browser by passing a zone WebSocket URL to connectOverCDP(), and you reach Wayfern by passing a link token URL to the same call. Playwright’s documentation says the method “attaches Playwright to an existing browser instance using the Chrome DevTools Protocol.” Switching vendors changes only the endpoint, the auth and the location parameters.

1. Copy your Bright Data zone credentials. Bright Data’s quick start says “You can find your credentials in the Overview tab of your Browser API.” Put the zone username and password in the WebSocket URL on brd.superproxy.io:9222 (copy the exact string from that tab) and keep both in environment variables, not source files.
2. Point connectOverCDP() at the zone with the first block below.
3. To switch to Wayfern, mint a link token and use the second block. Location goes in the URL as country, region, city, isp and a sticky session id.
4. Wait for the first message. The same reference describes a JSON connected message with a connectionId, then plain CDP. Opening the socket starts the session, and there is no create-session REST call. The cold start is about 45 to 50 seconds, longer with a residential exit, so set a connection timeout above 60 seconds.

import { chromium } from "playwright";

const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  // CHANGES: endpoint, and auth (zone credentials inside the URL)
  `wss://${process.env.BRD_USER}:${process.env.BRD_PASS}@brd.superproxy.io:9222`,
);
const page = await browser.contexts()[0].newPage();
await page.goto("https://example.com");

import { chromium } from "playwright";

const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  // CHANGES: endpoint, auth (link token), location (country)
  `wss://api.wayfern.com/ws?token=${process.env.LINK_TOKEN}&country=US`,
);
const page = await browser.contexts()[0].newPage();
await page.goto("https://example.com");

Success looks the same on both: page.goto() resolves and you read the page. Every line after the connection stays unchanged.

Two failures show up at connection time. HTTP defines 407 as “Proxy Authentication Required”, so a 407 from Bright Data means the zone username or password was rejected. Recopy both from the Overview tab and check that the zone is active.

On Wayfern, an unknown location closes the socket with code 4007. Check the country, region and city codes against the catalog in the API reference.

To try the Wayfern side, follow the Wayfern quickstart and mint a link token for your project.

How do exit selection and sticky sessions work on the Bright Data browser and Wayfern?

Exit selection decides which IP address a site sees, and a sticky session keeps that address the same across one flow.

The Bright Data browser builds the exit into the product. You connect with the zone’s username and password, and the proxy layer stays on Bright Data’s side.

Wayfern puts the exit in the connection URL. Wayfern’s API reference says the default is a datacenter exit.

For a residential exit you add country (an ISO-3166 code), region, city or isp, and a session id holds one residential IP for the whole flow. Per connection, proxy=own|residential|none picks between your own proxy, a Wayfern residential exit and no proxy.

The reference also describes the failure path: “Every code is checked against the live catalog before the browser is handed over; an unknown location is refused with close code 4007 instead of falling back to the wrong place.”

const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  "wss://api.wayfern.com/ws?token=LINK_TOKEN&country=US&region=CA&session=run42",
);

This holds one California residential IP for every request under run42. If you request a region or city that isn’t in the catalog, the socket closes with code 4007, and you see the error before any page loads from the wrong place.

A session that moves between IPs is easy to spot. Wayfern’s use-case page puts it this way: “A cookie issued to one IP and replayed from another is an easy signal for a site to read.”

What do fingerprint management and unblocking actually do, and where do they stop?

Fingerprint management picks the values a page can read about your browser, and unblocking bundles the steps that follow a block: a new exit IP, a captcha solve, a retry.

A fingerprint is the stack of answers the browser gives a site: screen size, fonts, graphics stack, operating system. Sites compare those answers with each other and with the exit IP, so one mismatch can give a session away.

Bright Data’s Browser API introduction describes running your code on managed cloud browsers, “eliminating the need to maintain your own browser infrastructure, proxy networks, or anti-bot handling logic.” Its GitHub repository lists “built-in proxy management, CAPTCHA solving, and advanced website unblocking.”

The viewport works the same way: the real window is resized, “nothing is emulated and no script runs in your pages.”

Captcha solving is a separate call at 1 credit per successful solve, according to Wayfern’s pricing.

Wayfern’s identity model has a clear limit. Its own comparison with Multilogin says: “Wayfern has no customer-facing persistent profiles at all. No named profiles, no cookie import or export, no per-vector fingerprint switches.” Save and restore cookies and storage in your own code between runs.

For observability, Wayfern’s dashboard live view is read-only and updates up to 5 frames a second. Session replays are off by default and cost no credits. Retention is 1 day on Developer and packs, 7 days on Business, 30 on Scale and 90 on Enterprise.

Bright Data browser or Wayfern: which should you choose?

Choose the Bright Data browser if you run Selenium or already hold a Bright Data account, Wayfern if you drive CDP code and want one balance, and a desktop profile manager if a person runs the profiles.

1. Bright Data, if you use Selenium or WebDriver. Bright Data’s repository says its browser “supports Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium”.
2. Bright Data, if you already run an account there. Its quickstart asks for an account and an active Browser API zone, which you may have. If you need very large residential coverage, compare Bright Data’s published pool figures against the countries and cities you target. Our Bright Data alternatives comparison covers the same split.
3. Wayfern, if you drive Playwright or Puppeteer over CDP. Wayfern’s homepage says “Search, captchas and MCP share one balance”, so browser, scrape, search, captcha and MCP calls draw on one pool of credits.
4. A desktop profile manager such as Multilogin, if a person manages many long-lived profiles. You get per-vector fingerprint switches and saved identities. Our Wayfern vs Multilogin comparison says: “If hand-managing identities is the job, Multilogin is doing that job and Wayfern is not.”

The honest catch on Wayfern: the browser is Chromium only, on linux-x64, and it presents a desktop device with no mobile emulation. Mobile layouts and Firefox targets need a different tool.

Neither the Bright Data browser’s marketing nor Wayfern’s predicts how your targets behave. Run both on your own targets and compare the results.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a hosted browser and an anti-detect profile manager?

A hosted browser runs on the vendor’s servers and your code drives it over the Chrome DevTools Protocol with Playwright or Puppeteer, as Bright Data’s Browser API docs describe. An anti-detect profile manager is a desktop app a person operates, with many long-lived profiles and per-vector fingerprint switches. Pick by who operates it: code or a person.

Is Bright Data Scraping Browser the same as the Browser API?

Scraping Browser and Browser API are the same Bright Data product, and the docs now use the Browser API name. The older name still appears on the product’s GitHub repository. Treat them as one product when you compare features and prices.

Does the Bright Data browser support Selenium?

The Bright Data browser supports Selenium, Puppeteer and Playwright. That makes it the safer pick when an existing Selenium suite is the starting point. Test your own scripts against a zone before you commit, because framework support doesn’t tell you how a given target behaves.

Does Wayfern have a free trial?

No. There is no free tier or free trial. The cheapest self-serve options are the Developer plan or a credit pack, and the pricing page lists current rates. Size a test run before you buy, and compare profile managers in our Wayfern vs Multilogin comparison.

Which step should you take next?

Today: Write down your average page weight in MB, your session length in minutes and your peak concurrent pages. Check each number against the billing unit and limits of the bright data browser and of Wayfern.

This week: Run the same Playwright script against both endpoints. Change only the endpoint, auth and location parameters shown in the two connection blocks. Use your own target sites, within their terms and the law, for public-data collection, testing, monitoring or research.

Before launch: Confirm limits and rates on each vendor’s pricing and docs pages, because both change.

Then create a Wayfern account, follow the quickstart in the docs, mint a link token and connect with connectOverCDP(). Credits are paid and there is no free tier, but credit packs on the pricing page work without a plan, so the smallest pack is enough to run your test.

Sources

Bright Data Scraping Browser: CAPTCHA-Solving Cloud Browser · Introduction to Bright Data’s Browser API · Scraping Browser by Bright Data - GitHub · Anti-Detect Browser Sessions over CDP | Wayfern · Run your first browser session - Bright Data Docs · Pricing - Credits for Browsers & the Web Data API | Wayfern · Limits | Wayfern Docs · API Reference - CDP, Web Data & Search | Wayfern. Every other source is linked where the article cites it.