Bright Data Rate Limits

Overview

Handle Bright Data rate limits and concurrent request limits. Unlike traditional API rate limits, Bright Data limits are per-zone and based on concurrent connections and requests per second. The Web Scraper API trigger endpoint is limited to 20 requests/min and 60 requests/hour.

Prerequisites

• Bright Data zone configured
• Understanding of async/await patterns
• p-queue or similar concurrency library

Instructions

Step 1: Understand Bright Data Rate Limits

Product	Concurrent Limit	Per-Minute	Notes
Residential Proxy	Based on plan	No hard cap	Charged per GB
Web Unlocker	Based on plan	No hard cap	Charged per request
Scraping Browser	Based on plan sessions	No hard cap	Charged per session
SERP API	Based on plan	No hard cap	Charged per search
Web Scraper API (trigger)	N/A	20/min, 60/hr	Async collections
Datasets API	N/A	20/min	Snapshot requests

Step 2: Implement Concurrent Request Limiter

// src/brightdata/limiter.ts
import PQueue from 'p-queue';

// Match concurrency to your Bright Data plan limits
const scrapeQueue = new PQueue({
  concurrency: 10,       // Max concurrent proxy requests
  interval: 1000,        // Per second
  intervalCap: 20,       // Max 20 requests per second
  timeout: 120000,       // Kill after 2 min
  throwOnTimeout: true,
});

export async function queuedScrape(url: string): Promise<string> {
  return scrapeQueue.add(async () => {
    const client = getBrightDataClient();
    const response = await client.get(url);
    return response.data;
  });
}

// Monitor queue health
scrapeQueue.on('active', () => {
  console.log(`Queue: ${scrapeQueue.size} waiting, ${scrapeQueue.pending} active`);
});

Step 3: Exponential Backoff for Proxy Errors

// src/brightdata/backoff.ts
export async function scrapeWithBackoff(
  url: string,
  config = { maxRetries: 5, baseDelay: 2000, maxDelay: 60000 }
): Promise<string> {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= config.maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      const client = getBrightDataClient();
      const response = await client.get(url);
      return response.data;
    } catch (error: any) {
      const status = error.response?.status;
      const luminatiError = error.response?.headers?.['x-luminati-error'];

      // Only retry on transient errors
      const retryable = [502, 503, 429].includes(status)
        || error.code === 'ETIMEDOUT'
        || luminatiError === 'ip_banned';

      if (attempt === config.maxRetries || !retryable) throw error;

      const delay = Math.min(
        config.baseDelay * Math.pow(2, attempt) + Math.random() * 1000,
        config.maxDelay
      );
      console.log(`[${luminatiError || status}] Retry ${attempt + 1} in ${delay.toFixed(0)}ms`);
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('Unreachable');
}

Step 4: Web Scraper API Rate Limiter

// src/brightdata/trigger-limiter.ts — 20/min, 60/hr for trigger endpoint
const triggerQueue = new PQueue({
  concurrency: 1,
  interval: 60000,       // Per minute
  intervalCap: 20,       // 20 triggers per minute
});

let hourlyCount = 0;
setInterval(() => { hourlyCount = 0; }, 3600000); // Reset hourly

export async function rateLimitedTrigger(
  datasetId: string,
  urls: string[]
): Promise<any> {
  if (hourlyCount >= 55) { // Leave buffer
    throw new Error('Approaching hourly trigger limit (60/hr). Wait before triggering.');
  }

  return triggerQueue.add(async () => {
    hourlyCount++;
    const response = await fetch(
      `https://api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/trigger?dataset_id=${datasetId}&format=json`,
      {
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
          'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN}`,
          'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        },
        body: JSON.stringify(urls.map(url => ({ url }))),
      }
    );
    return response.json();
  });
}

Step 5: Batch URLs to Minimize Triggers

// Instead of triggering per-URL, batch into single triggers
async function batchTrigger(urls: string[], batchSize = 100) {
  const batches = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < urls.length; i += batchSize) {
    batches.push(urls.slice(i, i + batchSize));
  }

  console.log(`Triggering ${urls.length} URLs in ${batches.length} batches`);

  for (const batch of batches) {
    await rateLimitedTrigger('gd_dataset_id', batch);
  }
}

Output

• Concurrent request limiter matching plan limits
• Exponential backoff handling X-Luminati error headers
• Web Scraper API trigger rate limiter (20/min, 60/hr)
• URL batching to minimize trigger count

Error Handling

Signal	Meaning	Action
HTTP 429	Concurrent limit exceeded	Queue requests with p-queue
HTTP 502 + ip_banned	IP blocked by target	Retry (auto-rotates IP)
HTTP 502 + target_site_blocked	Anti-bot blocked	Switch to Scraping Browser
ETIMEDOUT	Connection timeout	Retry with longer timeout
Hourly trigger limit	60 triggers/hr exceeded	Batch URLs into fewer triggers

Resources

• Bright Data Proxy Limits
• Web Scraper API Limits
• p-queue Documentation

Next Steps

For security configuration, see brightdata-security-basics.