> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://doc.thordata.com/doc/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://doc.thordata.com/doc/faq/product-problem/multimodal-dataset/laion-offers-free-multimodal-data-why-collect-custom-with-thordata.md).

# LAION offers free multimodal data—why collect custom with Thordata?

Public sets win on cost but tend to be stale, narrow in domain, and imperfectly deduplicated; Thordata's custom collection targets your chosen domain, language, and time window for fresher, more relevant data (pay-as-you-go on residential proxies and the Web Scraper API) — ideal for vertical models like e-commerce and near-real-time use, not for general pre-training where large public sets are more economical. Versus Bright Data's and Oxylabs' custom-dataset services, Thordata's minimums and delivery barriers are lower, a budget substitute for small teams; those needing full governance documentation should stay with the larger vendors.