Residential Proxies
Residential proxies remain the most sought-after product across all proxy providers. With the industry teeming with proxy providers, users are having a tough time choosing the best service provider for their needs. Moreover, the intricacies involved in assessing their features, reliability, and performance can make the process even more complicated.
To simplify this process, we will explore and compare two big names in the world of residential proxies: Bright Data and NetNut.
In this article, we’ll compare the features, offerings, pricing, ethical compliance, and developer experience, shedding light on the nuances that set them apart to help you choose the ideal provider for your needs.
Introduction to NetNut and Bright Data
NetNut
Established in 2017, NetNut primarily focuses on enterprise users with large-scale scraping requirements, as reflected in its pricing plans and the services it offers.
NetNut offers residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies and two web scraping APIs. While the company is not exactly affordable, it still scales pretty well with prices going as low as $3.6/GB if you choose the annual subscription for its 1TB plan. The company targets businesses and resellers with its dedicated proxy pools, detailed usage statistics, a proxy management API, and sub-users – features that are generally locked for regular users.
Bright Data
Bright Data began as one of the pioneers of residential proxies when the rest of the industry was still pushing datacenter proxies. Currently, the company has become a behemoth in the proxy provider market, putting great emphasis on ethical sourcing and usage of residential proxies, resulting in a highly reliable and trustworthy service.
At present, 95% of Bright Data’s proxy usage is taken up by residential and datacenter proxies. While the company mainly caters to enterprise customers, including Fortune 500 companies, it provides multiple services such as a customizable proxy service, reliable web scrapers for major e-commerce platforms, customized datasets, etc. that a wide range of users can make use of.
It’s worth mentioning that NetNut, while effective, may not be the most user-friendly provider, and its proxy infrastructure experiences more errors compared to top-tier services like Bright Data. Moreover, when targeting America, NetNut provides ISP proxies rather than residential ones.
NetNut vs Bright Data: Points of Comparison
IP Count and Proxy Pool Size
Bright Data holds a significant advantage here. According to the numbers advertised on both websites, Bright Data has over 72 million (6.5 million daily) residential IPs and over 7 million mobile proxies spread over 195+ countries, whereas, NetNut only has 52 million residential IPs spread across 200 countries and 250,000 mobile residential proxies, spread over 100 countries.
Going beyond advertised numbers – using 500,0001 requests for each country pool – Bright Data turned up a balanced proxy pool well-spread over several countries, notably having over 350,000 unique IPs from the US. From a random IP pool (without any location filters applied), for 1 million requests it returned a unique IP count of over 800,000.
In comparison, NetNut returned ~700,000 unique IPs when requests were run without using any location filter – which is slightly lower compared to Bright Data. Using location filters, while NetNut returned more IPs from the US, most of its US pool consists of ISP proxies. NetNut also showed a lower-than-market ratio for its residential proxy count.
For Bright Data especially, this means an extensive and diverse pool of IPs at the users’ disposal, ensuring robust and reliable proxy services even with precise location filters enabled for any location on the planet. In contrast, NetNut’s IP count while comparable to and in some instances more than Bright Data’s, most of its proxies were identified by an IP database to be coming from landline or mobile connections.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Total Residential IPs | 52 million | Over 72 million (6.5 million IPs daily) |
| Geographic Distribution | Spread over 200 countries, 380,000 unique IPs from the US; but most were found to be ISP proxies | Spread over 195+ countries; well-balanced pool over several countries, notably 350,000 unique IPs from the US |
| Random IP Pool (1M requests) | ~700,000 unique IPs | ~800,000 unique IPs |
| Country IP Pool (500K requests) | NetNut returned slightly more unique IPs from the US and UK (most IPs from US were found to be ISP proxies); fewer unique IPs from Germany, India, France, and Australia | Bright Data returned fewer unique IPs from the US, UK, but more from Germany, India, France, and Australia (most of its IPs were found to be actual residential IP addresses) |
Although NetNut showed comparable numbers, Bright Data is the winner here simply because of a higher number of actual residential IP addresses it possesses compared to NetNut.
Response Time and Success Rate
While targeting a global CDN, Bright Data ensured an average success rate of 99.17% and a response time averaging 1.02 seconds. NetNut, on the other hand, gave a subpar success rate of 93.52% and a bad response time of 2.13 seconds on average for several kilobytes of data.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Average Response Time | 2.13 s | 1.02 s |
| Average Success Rate | 93.52% | 99.17% |
As seen above, Bright Data is ahead of NetNut by quite some distance.
Features
ASN/ZIP Targeting
The first point of comparison when it comes to features is IP Targeting. While Bright Data offers city, country, region, and ASN targeting, NetNut only offers country, state, and city-level targeting.
What exactly is ASN/ZIP targeting and why would you need it?
ASN and ZIP code targeting go beyond typical geo-targeting to provide an even more detailed level of control and customization for internet traffic, allowing users to interact with online content or services as if they were accessing them from specific ZIP codes or network providers.
Here’s why this level of granularity is needed:
- Load Balancing: Distributing traffic across different ASNs or ZIP codes can help balance the load on servers, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.
- Extracting Region-Specific Content: For applications like web scraping or crawling, ASN or ZIP code targeting allows users to scrape localized data from specific regions or from servers associated with certain ASNs. Beyond precision, ASN/ZIP targeting enhances operational efficiency by eliminating irrelevant data, particularly crucial when dealing with vast datasets.
- Ad Verification: Some websites may use ASN or ZIP code targeting to verify the display of ads in specific geographic regions or on networks associated with certain ASNs. Matching ASN here acts as an anti-geoblock.
- Security and Privacy: Organizations often implement security measures and filters at the network level. ASN/ZIP targeting enables the selection of proxies that align with the target website’s accessibility requirements, reducing the likelihood of detection or blocks.
This approach transcends one-size-fits-all methodologies, enabling users to better plan scraping strategies, select appropriate IPs or proxies, and mitigate risks. For users engaged in web scraping or data mining, this means not only accuracy but relevance in the extracted data, a critical aspect in the age of information overload.
Here’s how NetNut and Bright Data differ when it comes to IP targeting, in general.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| IP Targeting Features | City, state, and country-based targeting | City and country-based targeting, with additional fine-grained ASN/ZIP targeting |
| ASN/ZIP Targeting | Not available | Both ASN and ZIP targeting options, available to all, providing detailed control and customization for internet traffic |
| Coverage | Global coverage but consists of fewer IPs compared to Bright Data, hence can’t access as many locations | Can access almost any location on the planet since its network consists of IPs from almost every region |
Hence when it comes to IP targeting, Bright Data offers a lot more granularity compared to NetNut.
Scalability
Both offer sub-user management, with both credential and IP whitelisting for authentication. There are no limits on the number of sub-users or whitelisted IPs, and you can drill down further and set a custom TTL and IP whitelisting on a per-sub-user level. This is ideal for companies that have a large number of employees or departments, allowing them to seamlessly integrate proxies across teams without having to create separate accounts.
The major difference here is a barrier to entry. NetNut is clearly aimed towards enterprise use cases and offers only strict traffic-based plans (you have to buy GB of traffic) that start at $20/GB for only 5 GB of data, with no Pay-as-you-Go (PAYG) option. This means anything you operate that uses NetNut proxies will stop working once traffic is used up until you manually top it up (or set it to auto-renew).
Bright Data on the other hand offers a credit-based plan that switches over to PAYG (per GB) once you use up credits for the month, meaning your proxy usage is never hindered – and it offers far friendlier plans when you get to that enterprise-level $500-$1000/mo range, offering more GB of traffic for your buck than NetNut.
The other benefit of Bright Data’s approach is that it allows for tighter, individualized settings for each access point (better security).
We’re leaning towards Bright Data for the friendlier pricing and lower barrier to entry, as well as better enterprise pricing at the higher tiers. Bright Data also wins points for convenience, just for the seamless switching over to pay-as-you-go once you run out of traffic.
Regardless, the fact that both offer unlimited sub-users and IP whitelisting with no additional charge per IP/user, like many other proxy providers, is a breath of fresh air.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Limitations | Traffic-based plans only. Once used up, service stops, unless you buy more. | Credit-based plan, and once they’re used up, it switches over to pay-as-you-go per GB of traffic, meaning your operations are never hindered or require manual topping up. More convenient. |
| Individualized Settings | Limited individualized settings for each access point. | Allows tighter, individualized settings for each access point via the Proxy Manager app. |
| Flexibility in Plans | Not very flexible. Traffic-based plans only. | Open-ended approach – can have PAYG as well as credit-based plans with PAYG fallback. |
Configuration
NetNut’s configuration is streamlined — it uses a single entry gateway with parameters appended to the username to specify proxy type, location, and sticky sessions.
To quickly get you going from the Dashboard itself, NetNut provides the Proxy Generator, which generates code snippets for a chosen programming language, proxy type, and country combination.
This tool is somewhat limited, and doesn’t allow you to pick a City, start a static/sticky session, or simply export the list of proxies in the HOST:PORT:USERNAME:PASSWORD format, which you can then plug into your Node.js or Python script and call it a day.
Bright Data also offers streamlined configuration via gateway servers (they call this the “Super Proxy”), and all BD proxy products use it.
Similar to NetNut, Bright Data also provides an interactive widget to generate dynamic code snippets for Python, Node.js, PHP, and so on – and includes several helpful presets (to quickly set up a sticky residential session, for example). In a crucial difference vs. NetNut, the Bright Data widget does allow you the full range of proxies filtered by location and also exports them in the HOSTNAME:PORT format.
If you require more advanced proxy management and customization or manage complex IP rotations, you can do so via Bright Data’s open-source Proxy Manager app. The sheer number of advanced features and configurations made possible by the app makes it ideal for pretty much any use case. Via the app, you have access to:
- Fine-grained selection of countries and regions to target
- Determining user access to each proxy using white/blacklists.
- Fully customizable IP rotation – complete with automatic User-Agent header rotation.
- Robust, centralized metrics/logging on a per-request level for enhanced performance tracking of all IPs in use.
- Waterfall Rotations – Route requests through multiple proxy networks while setting custom rules to optimize costs.
- Efficient bandwidth management via regex-based and custom rules to selectively block data.
- Need more proxies? You can just add your own external proxies from any other vendor to the Proxy Manager – giving you centralized control over your entire fleet of proxies.
The Proxy Manager app can run on-prem as a Windows/Linux binary – meaning you retain full control over permissions, management, and monitoring – or, as a managed solution on Bright Data’s Cloud as a web app, giving you the privilege of live, 24×7 server status monitoring by Bright Data, guaranteeing uptime.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Configuration Approach | Streamlined proxy configuration, with the Proxy Generator widget to quickly generate code snippets for NodeJS, Python, cURL, etc. | Streamlined proxy management in the control panel, with export and code snippet generation possible through its interactive widget. Complex rotation strategies possible via open-source Proxy Manager app |
| Configuration Features | Filter IPs based on country/region/city and session type, customize IP rotation, and user access control. | Fine-grained country, region, city, and ASN targeting, user access control, customizable IP rotation, sticky session management, robust metrics/logging, waterfall rotations, efficient bandwidth management |
| Proxy Manager App | Not available | Available for advanced customization and management of proxies |
| Export Options | Cannot copy or download a proxy list with each entry in the HOST:PORT (or similar) format. | Can export gateway addresses via the interactive widget, and the Proxy Manager app handles everything else. The latter can run on-prem (Windows/Linux) or as a managed solution on Bright Data’s Cloud as a web app. |
In essence, Bright Data’s combination of streamlined proxy configuration, the far more useful interactive widget, and the Proxy Manager app together offer users a robust and flexible solution for setting up and managing proxies, providing a clear advantage over the more constrained options offered by NetNut.
Auto-Rotation
If you have a task that involves consistent data extraction or monitoring, what you’d need is a stable IP address for an extended period with minimal disruptions. That’s precisely what you get from Bright Data’s residential peers – ideal for these tasks. Bright Data’s non-time limited sessions with auto-rotation per request, or per session, brings dynamism to your data scraping needs.
For NetNut, it’s possible to rotate IPs per request or keep an IP for as long as it’s available. Specifying custom sessions isn’t available and that’s a serious disadvantage when compared to Bright Data.
Bright Data wins here by its sheer number of quality residential proxies alone. Should you opt to rotate, you’re guaranteed to get a superior proxy each time you opt for a new IP whether it’s per request or per session. Plus, Bright Data provides the option of getting dedicated IPs which means more stability for bigger projects spanning hours.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Session Stability | Depends on IP availability, configurable auto-rotation per request | Non-time limited sessions with configurable auto-rotation per request, or per session |
| Suitable for | Web scraping, market research, and social media automation | Ideal for consistent data extraction or monitoring tasks requiring stable IPs for extended periods |
| Flexibility and Adaptability | Not flexible enough since it doesn’t provide custom sessions | Offers a higher level of flexibility and adaptability with auto-rotation, providing dynamic proxy performance |
| Static IPs | Present | Present |
In a nutshell, Bright Data’s peers with auto-rotation, whether per request or per session, offer a level of flexibility and adaptability that NetNut can’t quite match.
User/Developer Experience
When it comes to user or developer experience, one major drawback for NetNut is its inadequate documentation.
This is not to say that NetNut doesn’t have info on proxy setup, integrations, etc. They do have these and also a lengthy FAQ section but certain information is withheld from the users. You won’t get to know if you’re able to create sub-users as a non-reseller, how you can target cities, or how you can manage proxy rotation, whether you can set intervals at all, etc. Users are expected to get all this information by contacting support, which can be very off putting for users who prefer diving into the documentation for all the necessary information. Even opting for a free trial requires users to contact support.
Bright Data, in comparison, provides extensive documentation, web data masterclass, videos, blogs, webinars, code snippets for multiple programming languages, and plenty of presets to help users who are developers. The information on Bright Data’s website is, in fact, more than sufficient.
NetNut has very expensive plans, with very high entry-level plans starting at $300 per month for 20GB traffic (at a rate of $15/GB). Besides a high starting price, the provider also lacks quality residential proxies when it comes to its US pool – which is almost entirely made up of ISP proxies.
NetNut provides a dashboard that, like Bright Data, lets you track your usage, buy subscriptions, keep track of multiple subscriptions, download invoices, and access information. However, unlike Bright Data, you don’t get functionalities like setting usage limits, topping up your plans, etc. You also lack the ability to get visualizations of your usage. Pieces of information related to managing proxies that are supposed to be found in the dashboard can be misleading or missing entirely. For example, the number of supported locations mentioned in the dashboard exceed the locations actually supported, making it misleading for the user. Plus, even though the functionality of targeting a city is supported, no information is given regarding how the user can do it.
In contrast, Bright Data uses the concept of “Zones.”
Zones are essentially shared ecosystems, in which users can have multiple active plans for a specific service and manage them all in the same dashboard. Users can also track usage across multiple zones in customizable graphs. Having detailed usage statistics on a per-proxy and per-zone level on one screen with proper visualization makes it relatively easier to keep track of usage and manage your subscription which would be complicated if you had to download reports in CSV format.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| User-Friendliness | Not very user-friendly when it comes to giving information. Lack of information in the documentation section as well as the dashboard | Fleshed out documentation section, packed with information |
| Documentation and Support | Documentation and FAQ present but sometimes relevant information might be difficult to find or missing altogether | Extensive documentation, web data masterclass, videos, blogs, webinars, and code snippets; may be too detailed for regular users |
| Subscription and Proxy Management | Traffic-based plans, proxy management via a widget that lets you choose a programming language, proxy type, country, and target URL. Information provided can be slightly misleading | Uses the concept of “Zones” for multiple active plans, providing a unified dashboard for easier management and tracking of usage |
| Tracking and Usage Statistics | Doesn’t provide any visualization, dashboard only provides numbers | Uses “Zones” for tracking usage across multiple plans, offering detailed statistics on a per-proxy and per-zone level in one screen |
Pricing
Both NetNut and Bright Data have multiple plans and tiers for their residential proxy service.
NetNut’s residential proxies are on the pricier side – costing more than even Bright Data’s residential proxies for entry-level plans. This provider offers monthly subscriptions tiered as per traffic. The rotating residential IPs have a starting price of $300 for 20GB of traffic (at a rate of $15/GB) and the entry tier for static residential proxies costs $350 for 20GB of traffic (at a rate of $17.5/GB).
The service gets cheaper as you scale up. For example, for rotating residential proxies the rates go down to as low as $4/GB for 1TB of data. As for static residential proxies, the rates drop to $5/GB for the 1TB plan.
Since the service gets cheaper as you scale up, it’s a great option for large-scale scraping projects.
Bright Data, on the other hand, provides a great deal of flexibility. Most of our plans are pay-as-you-go. You’d only have to commit if you are scaling up and opting for a larger plan. Bright Data’s tariff begins with a no-commitment pay-as-you-go plan, charging $8.4 per GB of traffic. Also, there is a micro plan charging as low as $10 per month or $5.04/GB. In addition, there is an option to opt for our free trial.
What makes Bright Data really stand out is the ability to customize the features. You can tailor each plan to your proxy usage by ticking off certain functionalities. Each add-on will add to your cost, but you’ll have fine-grained control over exactly what you want.
NetNut’s higher-tiers offer slightly lower rates compared to Bright Data, but in terms of functionality, Bright Data packs a lot more features compared to NetNut. Plus, our proxy network is currently available at a 40% discount, offsetting the cost.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| Pricing Model | Tiered per traffic, steep entry-level price, price gets lower as you go up the tiers | Pay-as-you-go with customizable plans |
| Starting Price | $15 per GB, capped at 20GB monthly traffic | $8.40 per GB with a no-commitment pay-as-you-go plan, $10 per month for a micro plan ($5.04/GB) |
| Plan Flexibility | Larger plans increase traffic and not much else | Highly customizable plans, add-ons available for fine-grained control over features |
| Cost vs. Functionality | Besides more traffic and attractive rates, higher tiers offer not much else in terms of features. | Cheaper entry-level plans but more expensive, but offers extensive customization and additional features, currently available at a 40% discount; free trial option available for testing |
Ethical Compliance
When it comes to ethical compliance, NetNut provides no assurances. The company doesn’t provide any clear information regarding its ethical compliance and the regulations it adheres to.
Bright Data, in contrast, is a big advocate of the ethical usage of residential proxies for the collection of data. Bright Data has blogs and articles explaining their process of ethically sourcing IPs and their stance on ethical data collection practices.
NetNut does not mention how it sources its residential proxies.
Bright Data, in comparison, has provided ample information on its site regarding their ethical practices. From the information given on Bright Data’s website, we can gather that its IPs are obtained via Bright SDK, giving all the necessary information to potential peers prior to signing up and users may personally opt out any time they want.
Here’s a comparison of both providers based on key parameters related to ethical compliance.
| Criteria | NetNut | Bright Data |
| IP Sourcing | Information unavailable | Uses Bright SDK, providing full details beforehand, and allows users to opt-out |
| Incentives | Unclear | Offers payment per GB, ad-free experiences, and ensures traffic routing doesn’t disrupt device functionality |
| Security/KYC | Residential proxies require KYC and it’s done via an online KYC form | Bright Data includes compliance officers for rigorous checks and approval of peers, requires compliance officer approval before onboarding |
| Abuse Prevention | Not much information is given | Automated checks, manual checks by compliance officers, and tools to prevent network abuse |
| Reseller Policy | Tries to lure resellers by providing detailed usage statistics for sub-users. Exclusive functionality like proxy-management API for resellers only. | Prohibits network or service reselling, detects violations promptly, and terminates accounts accordingly |
| Data Protection Laws | No mention of compliance to any well-known regulatory body. | Complies with GDPR and CCPA |
While NetNut lacks transparency, Bright Data’s commitment to transparency to the wider population comes as a stark contrast.
- If someone’s Personal Identifiable Information (PII) like an email address is inadvertently collected through Bright Data’s products from publicly available sources, we promptly notify the individual affected and provide them the means to delete their information from the company’s platform.
- We take this a step further by allowing verified email users to access a searchable database from where they can manage their online presence and if required, take steps to remove their PII from the public web.
Customer Service
Both NetNut and Bright Data around-the-clock 24/7 customer support and both provide dedicated account managers.
NetNut provides support through email, or Skype during Israeli work hours, whereas Bright Data provides support via a ticket system, email, WhatsApp, and Telegram.
NetNut only supports English, Russian, and Chinese, while Bright Data ensures industry-standard multilingual support for global users, along with dedicated account managers for certain plans. Both companies provide dashboards to help you monitor network performance and usage in real time.
Compared to NetNut, Bright Data goes the extra mile by providing frequent feature releases and personalized customization based on your needs – be it a custom dataset, a feature request for your scrapers, or any proxy-related queries. While NetNut is rapidly expanding its proxy pool, at present it has its limitations – slow speed and lower success rates.
Conclusion
To sum up, Bright Data’s residential proxy is superior to NetNut when it comes to IP count, the diverse feature set, the presence of dedicated IPs, and a patented, ethically sourced proxy network consisting of real residential IP addresses.
NetNut boasts a huge proxy pool but most of its IPs are sourced from ISPs – with the US pool severely lacking real residential IP addresses. Both NetNut and Bright Data offer high scalability and attractive rates at higher tiers, but certain features like detailed usage metrics make NetNut more attractive to resellers and Bright Data’s plethora of features, fine-grained proxy configuration, and dedication to transparency and ethics make it a perfect fit for enterprise customers. Also, Bright Data’s affordable starting plans are more accessible to regular users compared to NetNut, whose steep pricing at lower tiers can be a deterrent for regular users.
What is the rest of the industry saying?
- As per G2 Score, Bright Data currently sits at #4 in the G2 Proxy Network category – not surprising at all, given that it is adopted by Fortune 500 companies – while NetNut ranks #7, which is commendable in the industry, but Bright Data is the clear winner here by quite some distance.
- On Trustpilot, Bright Data boasts an impressive 4.5/5 rating based on 676 reviews, indicating a pretty strong vote of confidence from the user community. NetNut, on the other hand, has a 4.2/5 rating based on 70 reviews, reflecting its niche status among regular users, not surprising given its steep pricing for entry-tier plans.
