Bright Data LinkedIn Scraper alternative: the job history, as it is today

Bright Data sells records, and a record is one LinkedIn profile, its page says. Its plans in October 2026:

Its own calculator, step by step, gives a month's bill:

The calculator leaves its free tier out. Its FAQ says the 5,000 free credits a month, about $7.50 of value, are spent first, renew on the 1st and don't roll over; past them, an account with funds goes on at pay-as-you-go rates. It sets no usage limit.

The calculator's steps up to 100,000, Bright Data with its free 5,000 spent first, and Datacircle at its least: Up2Data for 800 profiles a day, 24,000 in a 30-day month, and HarvestAPI past them.

Bright Data costs less at every one of these volumes once its free tier counts. Up2Data's $1.25 is under its $1.50 a record, but only for 800 profiles a day per account, and past them HarvestAPI's $3.70 is more than twice its price. If a profile's current fields are all you need, at any volume, the numbers favor Bright Data. The rest of this page is about the fields they don't cover.

On November 13, 2025, LinkedIn restricted public access to three fields of a profile: position, experience and education. Bright Data's LinkedIn data policy change page says their fill rates dropped from 50 to 64% to about 2%, that it serves them as "sticky data from cache", last refreshed by that date, and that the rest of a profile still refreshes, except the current company's industry, unsupported since August 7, 2025. Its LinkedIn scrapers, its LinkedIn profiles dataset and its employee enrichment dataset are all affected: switching from one to another doesn't help, it says.

Is each request live, or cached? Live. Each request goes to the provider and gets the profile as it is today. Bill Gates's profile, the example in our docs, comes back from each provider with his 3 roles (Gates Foundation, Breakthrough Energy, Microsoft) and his 2 schools (Harvard University, Lakeside School), in our own test runs. Both give each role's title, company, dates, description and skills; Up2Data adds the company's industry and size, HarvestAPI the role's location. Every field of both answers: LinkedIn Profile API and the co-op file's columns in the docs.

On Bright Data, a profile is a POST to api.brightdata.com/datasets/v3/scrape with its LinkedIn profiles dataset ID (gd_l1viktl72bvl7bjuj0), a JSON list of URLs and your key as a Bearer token. Its docs recommend 20 URLs or fewer a request; the call waits up to a minute, then answers 202 with a snapshot ID to poll and download. Through Datacircle, it's Up2Data's own request with your Datacircle key:

curl -X POST "https://api.datacircle.dev/v1/profiles/enrich" \
  -H "Authorization: Token $DATACIRCLE_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Data-Provider: up2data" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates"}'

Or HarvestAPI's, at $3.70 per 1,000:

curl "https://api.datacircle.dev/linkedin/profile?url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates" \
  -H "Authorization: Token $DATACIRCLE_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Data-Provider: harvestapi"

One profile a call, its answer in the response: Datacircle waits up to 45 seconds for the provider, then answers 503, not charged. Every answer carries datacircle_meta: which provider answered, what the call cost, your balance after it. The same call for a whole CSV: in Python or in Node.js. Bright Data has an MCP server; so do we. Use it from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor: add api.datacircle.dev/mcp as an MCP server. More: LinkedIn MCP server.

Through Datacircle, Up2Data answers 422 for a profile it can't reach, private or deleted, and it isn't charged. HarvestAPI bills the lookup, $0.0023 through Datacircle ($2.30 per 1,000). Bright Data's docs say two things: its error codes page says it doesn't charge for failed records, a page that doesn't exist among them (dead_page); its FAQ says records that fail because the input was incorrect are still billed.

• The rest of LinkedIn: companies, jobs, posts, people search, followers, ads and groups, each a scraper of its own, and LinkedIn data pre-collected as datasets.
• Scrapers for 800+ other websites, proxies, and delivery to S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, Snowflake or SFTP.
• Up to 5,000 URLs in one call, no usage limit, 5,000 free records every month, and the lowest price per record at volume: $1.10 per 1,000 at 1 million a month.

If you need LinkedIn companies, jobs or posts, or millions of profiles at the lowest price and their current fields are enough, that's Bright Data. If you need each profile's job history and schools as they are today, at the provider's own price and without a plan, that's Datacircle.

A call that fails is not charged, and every answer says what it cost. Is there a subscription? No. You add funds to your balance and pay per call; funds never expire.

Free: 10M+ U.S. B2B leads, as a flat file. Download it at datacircle.dev. Add $50 to your account: you get $50 of API PLUS the flat file. Or invite 3 people who sign up. What's in it: the B2B data co-op. Every LinkedIn profile API's price: LinkedIn profile API pricing compared.