Getting started with Web Unlocker

Learn about Bright Data’s Web Unlocker solution, how to get started, and some tips for best use.

Bright Data’s Web Unlocker

Web Unlocker is one of our proxy-unlocking solutions and is designed to help you focus on your data collection while we take care of the full proxy and unblocking infrastructure for you. 

You send a single proxy request with the target website and we'll return to you a clean HTML/JSON back. It’s that simple. 

Behind the scenes, our Web Unlocker’s intelligent algorithm takes care of the entire ever-changing flow of finding the best proxy network, customizing headers, fingerprinting, CAPTCHAs, and more.

Best for

• • Scraping data from any website without getting blocked
  • Emulating real-user web behavior and targeting websites that use sophisticated detection methods
  • Teams that don’t have a scalable unblocking infrastructure in-house 
  • Paying only for successful requests  

Please note: Web Unlocker is not made for use on browsers or 3rd party tools like Adspower, Puppeteer, Playwright, or Multilogin (MLA). If you need a solution that interacts with a browser and uses tools like this, check out our Scraping Browser solution, or review our other web data products that can give you complete data sets.

SERP: If you are looking for an unlocking solution specifically for search engines, check out our SERP API.

Quick start

1. Sign in to your Bright Data control panel
   • If you haven’t yet signed up for Bright Data, you can sign up for free, and when adding your payment method, you’ll receive a $5 credit to get you started!
2. Create your new Web Unlocker proxy
   • Navigate to ‘My Proxies’ page, and under ‘Web Unlocker’ click ‘Get started’
     
   • Note: If you already have an active proxy, simply choose ‘Add proxy’ at the top right

3. In the ‘Create a new proxy' page, choose and input a name for your new Web Unlocker proxy zone
   Note: Choose a meaningful name for your zone, as it cannot be changed once created.
   

4. Special features
   • Premium Domains - Some domains are more challenging to unblock than others, so we offer a separate premium pricing tier for these domains. Once enabled, the premium price will be reflected in the "Estimated cost" section. 
     Note: Even after enabled, only specific requests to these domains will be priced differently. Requests to other domains will be kept at the default lower tier. 
5. Geolocation targeting
   
   • By default, the Web Unlocker unlocking solution takes care of all of this, but if you’d like to customize it yourself, you can force your Unlocker request to use a specific Country, State, City, and ASN, if you add these options here. 
6. To create and save your proxy, click ‘Add proxy’

A note on Account verification:

If you haven’t yet added a payment method, you’ll be prompted to add one at this point in order to verify your account. If it’s your first time using Bright Data, then you’ll also receive a $5 bonus credit to get you started!

Be advised: You will not be charged anything at this point and this is solely for verification purposes.

7. Sending your first Web Unlocker request
   
   After verifying your account above, you can now send your first request.
   
   In your proxy zone’s ‘Access parameters’ tab, you’ll find your API credentials which include your Username (Customer_ID), Zone name (attached to username), and Password
   
   
   
   

• • Copy the ‘Base CURL’ test example in the black code block on that page and paste it into your CMD prompt
  • It should look like the following but with your credentials already swapped in:
    

    curl--proxy brd.superproxy.io:22225 --proxy-user brd-customer-<CUSTOMER_ID>-zone-<ZONE_NAME>:<ZONE_PASSWORD> "https://lumtest.com/myip.json" 

  • Press ‘Enter’ to send your request and if it’s successful, the expected output should look like the following:
    

    {"ip":"ALLOCATED_IP","country":"PK","asn":{"asnum":203020,"org_name":"HostRoyale Technologies Pvt Ltd"},"geo":{"city":"Islamabad","region":"IS","region_name":"Islamabad","postal_code":"44040","latitude":33.7233,"longitude":73.0435,"tz":"Asia/Karachi","lum_city":"islamabad","lum_region":"is"}}

    Note: Web Unlocker autonomously manages all headers/cookies in the request to get the best results so if you attach headers to the request, they will be disregarded. Read more about headers management.
  • Now, simply try it with any domain you would like to target, replacing  “https://lumtest.com/myip.json” with your target domain. That’s it!

Additional Info and Resources

Dynamic Proxy Integration Tutorial 

An in-depth interactive display of all our API use cases, integrations, and advanced configurations

API Documentation

Explore more advanced API documentation and see more use cases and features 

Monitoring Web Unlocker Usage and Statistics

You can fully monitor your proxy usage and statistics live and also see a history per day/month

User Permissions 

Easily add, remove, and change user permissions for the control panel and API

Quick Troubleshooting

Occasionally, you might encounter an unexpected status code or issue in response to your Web Unlocker request. Check out our tips for common troubleshooting

Pricing & Billing

See more about how your requests are calculated and priced
Note: Unlocker only charges for successful requests