Daniel - September 19, 2019
8 Best Web Scraping Tools
At some point, every business or digital marketer encounters the need to extract a large amount of data from the web - whether it's for competitive analysis, research, or other purposes.
Doing this task manually is not only a time-consuming task but it also increases the chances of making critical errors. To simplify and streamline the data extraction process, users and companies turn to web scraping tools.
Web scraping tools have completely transformed the way we collect and organize website content. But, not all web scraping tools are created equal and only the best are capable of scraping that valuable data you need.
Here, we review the top 8 best web scraping tools on the market, as well as how proxies can help you scale your web scraping tasks.
What is Web Scraping?
If you're on the hunt for the best web scraping tools, then you likely already know what web scraping is. But let's do a quick recap of what web scraping is and how web scraper tools can assist.
Web scraping is the process of extracting data from a website and transforming it into a more usable format. This can be done manually by copying and pasting or by utilizing automated software like a web scraper.
When a web scraper is deployed on a website, it begins by providing the relevant URL(s). It then retrieves and extracts data from the site's HTML code. Once the scraping is done, the web scraping tool outputs the collected data into a usable format.
Web scraping finds extensive application in various business functions, helping with things like:
Lead generation,
Market research,
News monitoring,
Price tracking,
And so much more.
In order to achieve all this efficiently, you're going to need an excellent web scraping tool at your disposal.
8 Best Web Scraping Tools on the Market
1. ScraperAPI
Built with developers in mind, ScraperAPI is a game-changer when it comes to web scraping software. It offers a comprehensive set of features that make the process of web scraping efficient and hassle-free.
One of the standout features of this web scraping API is its ability to handle various challenges faced during web scraping, such as handling browsers, proxies, and CAPTCHAs. With a simple API call, you can effortlessly obtain raw HTML from any website, giving you the flexibility and freedom to extract the data you need.
But perhaps one of the more impressive aspects of this tool is its anti-bot detection and bypassing capabilities. This means you never have to worry about your requests being blocked by websites. The API handles the necessary measures to ensure your scraping activities remain undetected and uninterrupted.
Speed and reliability are crucial when it comes to web scraping, and ScraperAPI excels in both areas. It has the capability to handle any scraping volume, whether it's 100 pages per month or even 100 million pages per month.
Overall, you can expect seamless scraping activities with ScraperAPI.
Key features:
Enables JavaScript rendering
Geolocated rotating proxies
Manages browsers, proxies, and CAPTCHAs
Offers special pools of proxies for specific scraping purposes
Unlimited bandwidth with speeds up to 100Mb/s
Access to over 40 million IPs
Pricing:
ScraperAPI has a 7-day free trial that offers 5,000 API credits, perfect for small-scale projects. In addition to the free plan, a range of paid packages is available:
Hobby for $49 per month
Startup for $149 per month
Business for $299 per month
Professional for $999 per month
Custom
2. Import.io
Import.io is the go-to web scraping tool for those who have no basic knowledge of code and programming.
Thanks to its intuitive design and easy-to-use interface, users can easily build their own datasets by importing data from specific web pages and exporting the extracted data to CSV. Users also have the flexibility to create over 1,000 APIs tailored to their specific requirements.
With Import.io's cloud-based platform, web scraping becomes faster and easier than ever, making it an ideal choice for businesses that require real-time web data updates to stay ahead in their industries.
Users are equipped with a range of powerful features to enhance the web scraping experience. Train the same extractor with multiple different pages, download images and documents along with all the web data in one run, and record sequences of the actions that you need to perform on a website.
What's more, Import.io offers some excellent advanced capabilities like country-specific extraction and XPath and RegEx support that gives you the flexibility to create your own custom extraction rules.
Key Features:
Multi-URL training
Auto-optimize extractors
Supports geolocation, CAPTCHA solving, and JavaScript rendering
Google Sheets API support
Scheduled data extraction
Programming language support including JavaScript, NodeJS, Java, C#, Python, Objective-C, Ruby, REST, Go, PHP, and cURL
PII masking
Pricing:
Import.io has a 14-day free trial, as well as four pricing plans:
Starter for $199 per month
Standard for $599 per month
Advanced for $1099 per month
Custom
3. ParseHub
ParseHub is a highly popular and free web scraping tool that comes in a convenient downloadable app format for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
With ParseHub, users can effortlessly access data behind logins, scrape from maps and tables, and manipulate data to suit their requirements. Plus, you won't need any extensive coding knowledge and can start scraping web pages instantly thanks to its intuitive web interface.
You'll also enjoy flexibility in handling your scraped data because ParseHub allows you to download in a variety of formats, including CSV, HTML, Database, and even WordPress.
The tool's robust engine and comprehensive set of features cater to complex web extraction tasks, including support for AMP, multi-level navigation, and table data extraction.
With scheduled scraping and robust data processing capabilities like find and replace operations and field merging, you'll be able to tackle those advanced scraping projects with ease.
Key Features:
Automatic IP rotation
User-friendly graphical interface
Integrates using API and webhooks
Cloud-based for automatically storing data
Regular expressions to clean text and HTML before downloading
Scrape behind login walls
Free desktop download for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Pricing:
ParseHub has an Everyone pricing plan that is available to all users at no cost but with limited features. Other pricing plans include:
Standard for $189 per month
Professional for $599 per month
ParseHub Plus for a custom plan
4. Octoparse
Whether you're unfamiliar with, intimidated by, or simply dislike coding, Octoparse is the web scraping software for you. Its intuitive workflow designer allows you to design your scraper visually and see everything in real-time within your browser.
Octoparse has a great point-and-click screen scraper that allows users to scrape data from behind login and fill in forms, input search terms, and move through infinite scrolls. With just a few clicks, it's incredibly easy to navigate through complex websites and gather your desired information.
Users can also extract data from even the most dynamic and interactive sites thanks to Octoparse's compatibility with websites built in JavaScript. This makes Octoparse a go-to solution for a wide range of applications, whether it's web research projects, real-time website monitoring, or web data extraction for business purposes.
But this intuitive tool also goes beyond traditional web scraping automation. Utilizing the 24/7 cloud solution, you can schedule scrapers to fetch data exactly when you need it or at flexible intervals. Plus, the automatic data export feature ensures a seamless workflow, and Octoparse even supports OpenAPI for easy integration with other applications.
Key Features:
Point-and-click screen scraper for scraping behind login forms, rendering JavaScript, and more
Anonymous web data scraping
Ad blocking for faster data extraction
Customization of web scraping tasks, including cloud-based crawling and automated scheduling
IP rotation and scripting for complex scraping tasks
Pricing:
Octoparse offers a free plan for small, simple projects and three main pricing plans:
Standard for $75 per month
Professional for $208 per month
Enterprise for a custom plan
5. Apify
Apify is another impressive web scraping and automation platform that caters to the needs of developers looking to efficiently extract unstructured or semi-structured data from web pages.
One of the highlights of Apify is its Apify Store, where a host of ready-made scraping tools for popular websites can be found. But a key feature that definitely deserves mention is Apify Proxy, which offers HTTPS support, geolocation targeting, IP rotation, and Google SERP proxies.
Exporting data in XML, JSON, or CSV formats is effortless, and Apify seamlessly integrates with popular platforms like Webhooks, REST API, Keboola, and Zapier.
Apify's cutting-edge web scraping technology revolutionizes the data extraction process, enabling users to effortlessly and rapidly gather detailed data from almost any website.
Key Features:
Automatic parsing and error handling
Apify Store with ready-made actors
Supports CSS selector, IP rotation, geolocating, CAPTCHA solving, and Javascript rendering
Intelligent IP rotation
Supports Google Sheets API
XML, CSV, and JSON data formatting
Pricing:
Apify offers a free plan for small, simple projects and four main pricing plans:
Starter for $49 per month
Scale for $499 per month
Business for $999 per month
Enterprise for a custom plan
6. Bright Data
Bright Data emerges as a top-notch web data platform, catering to a wide range of industries and businesses seeking high-quality data for informed decision-making.
Accessible through a cloud-based platform on their website, Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE excels in reliability, boasting the highest quality data, impressive uptime, and faster data retrieval. Flexibility is also a strong suit, with premade solutions, scalability options, and the ability to customize to specific requirements.
With support for IP rotation, geolocating, XPath selector, CAPTCHA solving, and JavaScript rendering, Bright Data empowers users to tackle various scraping challenges effortlessly. Scheduling crawls or triggering them via API is easy, and the platform seamlessly connects to major storage platforms.
Although, while Bright Data offers a cost-effective solution for paying per page load, it falls short in terms of providing extensive IDE support and documentation for users wanting to develop their own data collectors.
Key Features:
Supports XPath selector, IP rotation, geolocating, CAPTCHA solving, and JavaScript rendering
Supports Google Sheets API
Fully hosted cloud environment
Ready-made functions and templates
Built-in debug tools
Built-in proxy and unblocking
Pricing:
Bright Data has a non-commitment Pay As You Go plan, as well as three main pricing plans:
Growth for $500 per month
Business for $1000 per month
Enterprise for a custom plan
7. Diffbot
Diffbot is a cutting-edge data extraction tool that offers a unique approach to capturing web data without traditional web scraping techniques.
By leveraging machine vision algorithms and natural language processing, Diffbot achieves great accuracy and speed in content identification and extraction. This tool automatically detects, crawls, parses, and structures web pages into various categories such as articles, products, comment threads, and more.
Diffbot's ML/AI-powered scraping platform serves as a Knowledge-as-a-Service, minimizing the need for extensive manual coding. Users can point out web content, parse full-text articles, and extract structured data from any URL quickly and efficiently.
A big plus is that Diffbot Extract works with any human language thanks to its basis in computer vision. This means users can confidently extract data from web content written in any language, expanding the possibilities of data extraction.
Key Features:
APIs for images, videos, articles, products, and discussions
Customized crawling controls
Natural language processing APIs
HTML, XML RDF, CSV, and JSON data formatting
Datacenter Proxies, Bulk Extract, Custom SLA, and Knowledge Graph
Pricing:
Diffbot offers a 14-day free trial and 1,000 free API calls. The more comprehensive plans are:
Startup for $299 per month
Plus for $899 per month
Enterprise for a custom plan
8. Grepsr
Our final web scraping tool is Grepsr, another great solution for effortless web scraping. As a web automation platform, it offers a user-friendly web scraper tool that enables easy extraction of web data.
Beyond just scraping, Grepsr excels in transforming complex web data into a well-organized format, empowering businesses to make informed decisions more efficiently. The quality-assured datasets and automation capabilities allow users to automate their data scraping tasks while ensuring reliability and accuracy.
A great feature of Grepsr is its versatility across industries and use cases. It takes into account the legal requirements, data categories, terms, and regulations of the data source, ensuring ethical and responsible data extraction practices.
Even for non-technical users, Grepsr provides an intuitive interface that enables them to easily get to grips with data acquisition.
But despite being a great data scraping tool, especially for beginners, it falls short with its availability as there are no free trials or a free version.
Key Features:
API ready
Support for dynamic content and JavaScript-based sites with infinite scrolling, lazy loading, pagination, and more
Advanced IP rerouting
IP rotation and auto throttling
Security features such as Cloud Proxies integration
Customized data requirements
Pricing:
Grepsr offers flexible pricing for all data use cases. They provide custom solutions tailored to the unique data needs and scale of your business.
Key Factors to Consider When Choosing Web Scraping Tools
The ideal web scraping tool is the one that suits an individual user's or business's specific data extraction requirements.
So, to help you make a decision as to which of the above web scraping tools is best for you, here are a few things you need to consider:
1. User-friendliness
While most data scraping tools provide tutorials for easy usage, not everyone has the same scraping tasks or uses the same web browser.
Some users may prefer a scraping tool compatible with Windows, while others may require one that works seamlessly with macOS.
The user interface of the scraper should be intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing users to engage with the tool without spending significant time learning the application.
2. Transparent pricing structure
Pricing plays a big role in choosing a web scraping service. Some tools offer free plans with limited functionality, while paid plans often provide more extensive features.
Avoid providers with hidden costs that may surprise you later on. Look for explicit details and clear communication regarding the features and pricing offered by the tool.
3. Quality of data
Since most web data is unstructured, cleaning and organizing it is key for effective analysis.
Look for a web scraping provider that offers tools and features to aid in data cleaning and organization, such as ParseHub. The quality of the data scraped will directly impact the accuracy and reliability of your analysis, so prioritize this factor when making your decision.
4. Supported data formats
Web crawling and scraping involve working with popular data formats.
The most widely used format is comma-separated values (CSV), so the ideal web scraping tool should be capable of handling CSV files.
Another popular format is JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), which is both machine-readable and easily understandable for humans.
5. Performance and speed
A reliable web scraping tool should be able to establish an application programming interface (API) connection with any website and utilize multiple proxies effectively.
The good news is, all of the above-discussed web scraping tools have this capability.
It's also best for the extractor to be available as a browser extension and to support rotating proxies.
6. Customer support
Having access to reliable customer support is always beneficial when using a web scraping tool. The top web scraping solutions often provide 24/7 customer support as part of their base offerings.
Good customer support ensures that you can receive assistance promptly in case of any issues or queries. This will help significantly in eliminating frustration and delays.
How Can Proxies Help With Web Scraping?
If you're serious about web scraping, then you'll quickly realize the essential role that proxy management plays in any web scraping project's success.
One of the most challenging tasks in web scraping is scaling, but proxies are the key tools in scaling web scrapers.
Here are just some of the ways proxies can help with web scraping:
Enhanced reliability: By using a proxy, especially a pool of proxies, you can crawl and scrape websites without the fear of being banned or blocked.
Increased privacy and security: Proxies shield your IP address and identity, protecting against potential risks associated with web scraping.
Expanded scope and opportunities: Proxies open up new possibilities for web scraping. They allow you to access geo-restricted and localized content, explore diverse data sources, and overcome errors and timeouts that could hinder scraping efforts.
Now you know the benefits of using proxies alongside your web scraping activities, but now you need to find the best proxies.
The answer? Proxyrack!
Experience worry-free and cost-effective web scraping with our range of HTTP, SOCKS 5, and UDP proxies. Scrape or crawl any amount of data effortlessly with no compromises or budget constraints.
No more worrying about IP blocks thanks to our residential proxies. And the perfect solution to scaling the time-consuming task of web scraping? Our datacenter proxies.
Put web scraping tools to good use with a powerful and reliable proxy from Proxyrack today!
Find the perfect Proxy Product.
FAQs
What are the different types of web scrapers?
There are three main types of web scrapers: browser-based, cloud-based, and hybrid.
Browser-based scrapers run directly from your web browser, offering secure and private data extraction.
Cloud-based scrapers operate on separate cloud servers. They are ideal for high-volume scraping and can be accessed through downloadable applications.
Hybrid scrapers combine the features of browser-based and cloud-based scraping for more versatility.
How do web scraping tools work?
Web scraping tools are software (otherwise known as bots) that are designed to sift through databases and extract data.
Although the specific methods may vary depending on the software or tool being used, all web scraping tools follow the basic principle of identifying unique HTML site structures, extracting and transforming content, storing scraped data, and extracting data from APIs.
