A simpler Bright Data alternative for LinkedIn data
Bright Data is a serious, respected company. If you want the whole web-data platform, they are a strong pick. If you just want clean LinkedIn data from one small API, with credits that never expire, here is the honest comparison.
✓ CrustAPI credits never expire; Bright Data is pay as you go
✓ one small API, five LinkedIn surfaces, live at the moment you call it
✓ no $250 order minimum like the Bright Data LinkedIn dataset
✗ Bright Data's Scraper API is cheaper at entry ($1.50 vs $1.96 per 1k)
✗ Bright Data's free tier is bigger (5,000/mo vs our 3,000/mo)
→ neither of us returns an email on the LinkedIn profile endpoint
Side by side
Bright Data sells LinkedIn data two ways: a real-time Scraper API and a pre-collected Dataset. They are different products with different tradeoffs, so both are in the table.
| CrustAPI | Bright Data Scraper API | Bright Data Datasets | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Method | Public, logged-out, live per call | Public, logged-out, real-time | Pre-collected database |
| Price per 1,000 | $1.96 at entry, down to $0.65 at volume | $1.50 pay as you go | About $2.50 ($0.0025/record) |
| Free tier | 3,000 credits / month, no card | 5,000 records / month, no card | Sample only |
| Order minimum | None | None | $250 (100K records) |
| Freshness | Live at the moment you call | Real-time | Can be stale between refreshes (one-time to daily) |
| Credit expiry | Never expire | Pay as you go | Pay as you go |
| Scope | LinkedIn: profile, company, posts, jobs, people search | LinkedIn scraper surfaces | LinkedIn plus many other sites |
Bright Data figures from their public pages: LinkedIn Scraper API and LinkedIn Datasets, read July 15, 2026. Something stale? Email support@crustapi.com and we'll fix it.
Where Bright Data wins
We are the new, small option. There are real reasons to pick Bright Data, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
Cheaper at entry. Their LinkedIn Scraper API is $1.50 per 1,000 records pay as you go. Our entry pack works out to $1.96 per 1,000. If price at the first tier is the whole decision, they win that row.
A bigger free tier. Bright Data gives 5,000 records a month free with no card. Ours is 3,000 credits a month. More room to test on their side.
Scale and trust. Bright Data is a large, established company that lists enterprise compliance certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on its site, and there is no dollar minimum on its Scraper API. If you are buying for a big org that needs that paperwork, they have it and we are younger.
Far more than LinkedIn. Their datasets and scrapers cover many sites beyond LinkedIn. We only do LinkedIn (plus Google Search and Maps on the wider CrustAPI platform). If you want one vendor for the whole web, that is them.
Where CrustAPI fits
Credits that never expire
Buy a pack, use it whenever. There is no six-month clock and no monthly burn. Bright Data bills pay as you go, which is fine for steady flow but leaves nothing sitting ready for a project that pauses and restarts. Our terms say the never-expire part in writing.
Live per call, not a stored copy
Every call reads the public page at that moment. A pre-collected dataset is fast and great for bulk, but it can be stale between refreshes. When you need the profile as it reads today, live wins.
No order minimum
The Bright Data LinkedIn dataset starts at a $250 order (100K records). With CrustAPI you can pull one profile or a hundred thousand, no floor. Start on the free tier and grow into a pack when you need it.
One small API, five surfaces
One endpoint, one key, one clean JSON shape: type=profile, company, posts, jobs, and people search. Profiles and companies come back in about a second (roughly 0.8s server time when I tested on July 15, 2026).
Both APIs read the same public, logged-out pages, so the underlying data is comparable. One detail we clean up: LinkedIn shows a fake "8" connections count to logged-out visitors on some profiles. CrustAPI drops that decoy and returns the real value (for example, 500 on the profile below). It is a small thing, but it is the kind of thing we watch.
One profile, one credit
I ran this call on July 15, 2026. You point at a public linkedin.com/in URL and get structured JSON back. One credit per successful call, and private or empty results are free.
The full response also carries linkedinUrl, photo, bannerImage, memberId, honorsAndAwards, and languages. There is no email field on this endpoint, on either API, and we will not pretend there is.
Pricing, and where each one leads
At the very first tier, Bright Data's Scraper API is cheaper per record. The picture changes once credits sit unused, or once you buy volume.
Cheaper at entry, real-time, no minimum. The dataset product is about $2.50 per 1k but needs a $250 order to start.
Starts higher, drops with volume, and nothing ever expires. Credits you buy in January still work in December.
CrustAPI packs, self-serve all the way up, no sales calls: 25k $49 ($1.96/1k) · 100k $149 ($1.49/1k) · 500k $549 ($1.10/1k) · 2.5M $1,999 ($0.80/1k) · 10M $6,500 ($0.65/1k). Free 3,000 credits every month, no card. Prices ex-tax. One credit is one successful result; private or empty results are free, and an enriched people search charges one credit per full profile returned.
A note on how this data is collected
CrustAPI and Bright Data both read public pages while logged out. No accounts, no logins, no fake profiles, no CAPTCHA solving. We only read what any signed-out visitor sees.
Bright Data itself has been on the winning side of two public-data cases worth knowing about. In Meta v. Bright Data (January 23, 2024, Judge Chen), a federal court ruled that "the Facebook and Instagram Terms do not bar logged-off scraping of public data." In X Corp. v. Bright Data (May 9, 2024, Judge Alsup), the court dismissed X's claims on a motion to dismiss, finding attempts to block copying of public data preempted by federal copyright law.
Read those carefully. They are district-court decisions, persuasive rather than nationwide binding precedent, and they turned on those platforms' specific terms. The fair summary is that courts have sided with public-data scrapers, not that "scraping is legal" or that the law is settled. Public, logged-out, no-accounts collection is simply the lane courts have treated most favorably, and it is the lane both of these tools sit in.
This is background, not legal advice; check your own use with a lawyer.
Which should you pick?
See it in three steps
- Sign up. 3,000 free credits a month, no card, so the trial costs nothing.
- Call crustapi.com/v1/linkedin?type=profile&url=... with your key in x-api-key. Full parameters are in the docs.
- Run your real list through both tools, compare the fields and the bill, and keep whichever fits. Your CrustAPI credits wait for you either way.
Common questions
Clay
The LinkedIn data API, on your terms
Bright Data is a fine choice for the whole web. If you want clean LinkedIn data from one small API with credits that never expire, run your own list through ours and let the results decide.
Get 3,000 free credits