DEV Community: YounglBrownh

10+ Free Proxy Lists

YounglBrownh — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 09:29:05 +0000

Here is the ultimate guide to help you find free servers that are available to the public for free. Find out how you can use a free proxy list. Proxy lists display proxy servers that are available for public use. The list is updated after a while to show which proxy servers are active.

We recommend that you thoroughly check the proxy servers provided before using them. Not all of them are safe to use. You can only be guaranteed safety if you pay for the proxy list.

What Are Free Proxy Lists?

A proxy list is a website that contains all the HTTP/ HTTPS/ SOCKS proxy servers. The main goal of the free proxy list is to provide individuals and enterprises with working proxies. The proxy list consists of proxy servers available to the public for free.

A proxy server may help you to hide your IP address, keep your connection secure, and bypass filters and restrictions.

HTTP- Hypertext transfer protocol

HTTP is an application layer protocol that allows internet users to communicate using hypermedia files like HTML. Hypermedia files contain hyperlinks that can access other sources. When you prompt a request using the HTTP protocol, the server does not keep any data.

HTTP clients can communicate with other computers through a different protocol called Transmission control protocol.

HTTPS- Hypertext transfer secure protocol

HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP. The connection is encrypted. Therefore, you can use it to send personal information, bank details, and emails.

The encryption protocol used in this connection is known as the Transport Layer Security or Secure Sockets Layer. The information transferred cannot be intercepted. It can't even happen when you are linked to an insecure network.

SOCKS- Socket secure

SOCKS is a network protocol that routes communication directly to a server if the connection has a firewall. SOCKS proxy servers use the Transmission Control Protocol to communicate with other servers.

10+ Free Proxy List

1. ProxyDB

ProxyDB is a free proxy list with an online database. It is a data center proxy. The data center is not commonly used since it is getting old. The proxy list is not updated regularly. Therefore, it makes the IP unable to meet actual user needs.

The ProxyDB free proxy list supports all the HTTP/ HTTPS/ SOCKS protocols. They require you to donate €10 before they send you the entire proxy list to your email. The Proxy list supports over 140 countries. They also offer anonymous proxies.

2.Hidemy.name

Hidemy.name proxy lists are collected automatically by spider bots from different sites. The proxy list is regularly updated every two minutes. The proxy list is sorted according to protocol type and level of anonymity.

The proxy list supports close to 88 countries. It shows the different levels of anonymity from no anonymity, low, average, to high anonymity. It supports the entire HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocols. The SOCKS version supported includes versions 4 and 5.

The site does not have Google Ads. The site has set a fee of $36 per year to export the entire proxy list.

3.SPYS

SPYS support 171 countries on their list. It also supports different cities in these particular cities. The proxy list has Google Ads on its site. Anonymity options vary from High, Average to none.

SPYA is regularly updated. The updates take place every minute. The types of protocols supported include HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS protocol. These servers are encrypted using secure socket layer technology. The other information displayed on the proxy list includes IP address, Hostname, and speed.

4.FreeProxy.cz

FreeProxy has servers in over 94 countries. They also support regions and cities in these particular countries. They have Google ads on their website. They also offer anonymous proxies. The levels of anonymity include Level 1 (Elite), Level 2 (Anonymous), and Level 3 ( Transparent).

The proxy servers support the HTTP, HTTPS, SOCK4, and SOCK5 protocols. The information on the site is updated after a few hours. However, they offer a disclaimer for you to use their database at your own risk. The proxy list consists of servers designed to be used by the public.

5. Idcloak

The number of countries they support is around 63. They do not support cities. The proxies are categorized as A1, A2, and O1.

A1 proxy servers are identified by Geological databases.

A2 proxy servers are hosted by an internet service provider.

O1 proxies originate from an unknown country.

The proxy list shows you whether the web proxy offers anonymous proxies. Low anonymity shows that your IP address is visible. The other options are medium and high anonymity. The types of protocols supported include HTTP and HTTPS. The information on the site is updated every few hours.

6.Proxynova

Proxynova has the longest list of servers available for public use. The server's list is up-to-date. The site has Softwares that runs tests every 15 minutes to display the active proxy servers available for public use. The information is updated every 60 seconds and stored in the proxy database.

The proxy list displays servers available in many countries. It also shows the cities these proxy servers are located in.

The site shows which proxy servers are anonymous. Transparent servers display your IP address. Anonymous servers hide your IP address but show you are using a proxy. Elite servers do not show you are using a proxy server.

7.Premproxy

The proxy list displays proxy servers from several countries and the cities the servers are located. This particular proxy list has no Google Ads on its site.

It offers anonymous proxies. High or Elite anonymous does not show its proxy address while the Anonymous server does. The proxy servers are sorted by the protocol they support. The Proxy list is updated on an hourly basis. The regular updates help the public to know which servers are working.

8.Hidester

Hidester supports countries like Korea, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. It does not display the cities supported. It supports anonymous servers. The levels of anonymity used include Elite, Anonymous, and transparent.

The types of proxy servers include HTTP, HTTPS, SOCK4, and SOCk5.It does not support Google proxy. The site has no Google Ads. The site recommends that you thoroughly check the parameters of the proxy servers provided before using them. You should confirm the anonymity, response time, location, and functionality.

9.Open Proxy

Open Proxy supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It also supports the SOCK4 and the SOCK5 servers. The number of countries they support is close to 124. The list also displays servers from unknown countries. However, it does not display the cities.

Open Proxy offers anonymous proxies. The Proxy anonymity options available include elite, anonymous, and transparent. The site has Google ads on it. The proxy list can be downloaded as a text file. However, the premium option would cost you $59.99 every year.

10.ProxyScrape

The proxy list is sorted according to protocols. The protocols available in this proxy list include HTTP, SOCK4, and SOCK5. Its protocol supports a different number of countries. HTTP supports around 27 countries. SOCK4 supports around 73 countries. SOCK5 supports only 6 countries. The proxy list has anonymous servers. However, it can only display anonymity for the HTTP servers.

The HTTP servers are encrypted using the secure socket layers technology. The SOCKS servers are not encrypted. The list is updated regularly. It is updated after a few minutes.

Conclusion

Free proxy lists are not safe to use. However, they can help you find some relatively safer proxy servers that can help to keep you anonymous on the internet.

Some of the parameters you can check in this free proxy list include location, anonymity, response time, protocol, and export options.

Best Web Scraping Tools – Ultimate Web Scraper List!

YounglBrownh — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 06:59:34 +0000

Are you planning on starting a new web scraping project, and you are looking for the best web scraping tools to use? Come in now and discover the best tools, including tools meant for non-coders.

While you can develop your own web scraping tool from scratch for your web scraping tasks, it is wise to say that doing so will not only be a waste of your time but every other resource you put into it unless you have a tangible reason. Instead of going that route, you need to look into the market for already existing solutions to use. When it comes to web scraping tools, then you need to know that there are many of them in the market.

However, not all of them are equal. Some have proven to work better than others; some are more popular than others, while the learning curve of each of the tools is also different. So is the platform and programming language support, as well as what they are meant for. However, we can still reach an agreement on the best web scraping tools in the market, and each of these will be discussed below. The list comprises tools developed for those with programming skills and non-coders.

Web Scraping Tools for Coders

Web scraping was originally the task of coders as codes need to be written before a site can be scraped, and as such, there are a good number of tools in the market specifically created only for coders. Web scraping tools for coders are in the form of libraries and frameworks which a developer will incorporate into his code to get the required behavior from his web scraping.

Python Web Scraping Libraries

Python is the most popular programming language for coding web scrapers because of its simple syntax, learning curve, and the number of libraries available that eases the work of developers. Some of the web scraping libraries and frameworks available to Python developers are discussed below.

Scrapy

Scrapy is a web crawling and web scraping framework written in Python for Python developers. Scrapy is a full framework, and as such, it comes with everything required for web scraping, including a module for sending HTTP requests and parsing out data from the downloaded HTML page.

It is open-source and free to use. Scraping also provides a way to save data. However, Scrapy does not render JavaScript and, as such, requires the help of another library. You can make use of Splash or the popular Selenium browser automation tool for that. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsaqVQ4NIEU"]

PySpider

PySpider is another web scraping tool you can use to write scripts in Python. Unlike in the case of Scrapy, it can render JavaScript and, as such, does not require the use of Selenium. However, it is less matured than Scrapy as Scrapy has been around since 2008 and has got better documentation and user community. This does not make PySpider inferior. In fact, PySpider comes with some unrivaled features such as a web UI script editor.

Requests

Requests is an HTTP library that makes it easy to send HTTP requests. It is built on top of the urllib. It is a robust tool that you can help to create more reliable web scrapers. It is easy to use and requires fewer lines of code.

Very important is the fact that it can help you handle cookies and sessions as well as authentication and automatic connection pooling, among other things. It is free to use, and Python developers make use of it to download pages before using a parser to parse out the required data.

BeautifulSoup

[su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnn2kIqPH7o&t=436s"] BeautifulSoup makes the process of parsing out data from web pages easy. It sits on top of an HTML or XML parser and provides you with Python ways of accessing data. BeautifulSoup has become one of the most important web scraping tools in the market because of the ease of parsing it provides.

In fact, most web scraping tutorials use BeautifulSoup to teach newbies how to write web scrapers. When used together with Requests to send HTTP requests, web scrapers become easier to develop – much easier than using Scrapy or PySpider.

Selenium

[su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cddyhdb1GDw"] Scrapy, Requests, and BeautifulSoup won’t help you if a website is Ajaxified – that is, it depends on AJAX requests to load certain parts of a page through JavaScript. If you are accessing such a page, you need to make use of Selenium, which is a web browser automation tool. It can be used to automate headless browsers such as headless Chrome and Firefox. Older versions can automate PhantomJS.

Node.JS (JavaScript) Web Scraping Tools

Node.JS is becoming a popular platform for web scraper as well, because of the popularity of JavaScript. It equally has a good number of tools for web scraping but not as many as Python. The two most popular tools for the Node.JS runtime are discussed below.

Cheerio

[su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTxo83RtmPY"] Cheerio is to Node.JS what BeautifulSoup is to Python. It is a parsing library that parses markup and provides an API for traversing and manipulating the content of a web page. It does not have the capability of rendering JavaScript, and as such, you will need a headless browser for that – it only task is to provide you a jQuery – like API for parsing out data from web pages. It is flexible, fast, quite easy to use.

Puppeteer

[su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q9CNtwdawA"] Puppeteer is one of the best web scraping tools you can use as a JavaScript developer. It is a browser automation tool and provides a high-level API for controlling Chrome. Puppeteer was developed by Google and meant for only the Chrome browser and other Chromium browsers. Unlike Selenium,which is cross-platform, Puppeteer is meant only for the Node environment.

Web Scraping APIs

Coders that do not have experience using proxies to scrape hard-to-scrape websites or those that do not want to worry about proxy management and solving Captchas simply make use of a web scraping API that either help them extract data from websites or download the whole web page for them to scrape. The best web scraping APIs are discussed below.

AutoExtract API

Proxy Pool Size: Undisclosed
Supports Geotargeting: yes, but limited
Cost: $60 per 100,000 requests
Free Trials: 10,000 requests within 14 days
Special Functions: Extract specific data from websites

AutoExtract API is one of the best web scraping APIs you can get in the market. It was developed by Scrapinghub, the creator of Crawlera, a proxy API, and lead maintainer of Scrapy, a popular scraping framework for Python programmers.

AutoExtract API is an API-powered data extraction tool that will help you extract specific data from websites without having prior knowledge of the websites – meaning, no site-specific code is required. AutoExtract API has support for extracting news and blogs, e-commerce products, job posting, and vehicle data, among others.

ScrapingBee

Proxy Pool Size: Not disclosed
Supports Geotargeting: Yes
Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API credits
Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
Special Functions: Handles headless browser for JavaScript rendering

ScrapingBee is a web scraping API that will help you download web pages. With ScrapingBee, you do not have to think of blocks, but on parsing out data from the downloaded web page returned as a response to you by ScrapingBee.

ScrapingBee is easy to use and requires just an API call. ScrapingBee makes use of a large pool of IPs to route your requests through and avoid getting banned. It also helps out in handling headless Chrome, which isn’t a simple thing, especially when scaling a headless Chrome grid.

Scraper API

Proxy Pool Size: over 40 million
Supports Geotargeting: depend on the plan chosen
Cost: Starts at $29 for 250,000 API calls
Free Trials: 1,000 API calls
Special Functions: Solves Captcha and handles browsers

With over 5 billion API requests handled every month, Scraper API is a force to reckoned with in the web scraping API market. Its system is quite functional and can help you handle a good number of tasks, including IP rotation using its own proxy pool with over 40 million IPs.

Aside from IP rotation, Scraper API also handles headless browsers and will help you avoid dealing with Captchas directly. This web scraping API is fast and reliable, with a good number of Fortune 500 companies on their customer list. Pricing is reasonable too.

Zenscrape

Proxy Pool Size: over 30 million
Supports Geotargeting: Yes, limited
Cost: Starts at $8.99 for 50,000 requests
Free Trials: 1,000 requests
Special Functions: handles headless Chrome

Zenscrape will help you extract data from websites hassle-free at an affordable price – they even have a free trial plan just like others for you to test their service before making a monetary commitment.

Zenscrape will download a page for you as it appears to regular users and can handle geo-targeting content based on the plan you choose. Very important is the fact that it handles JavaScript rendering perfectly as all requests are executed in headless Chrome. It even supports popular JavaScript frameworks.

ScrapingAnt

Proxy Pool Size: Undisclosed
Supports Geotargeting: Yes
Cost: Starts at $9 for 5,000 requests
Free Trials: yes
Special Functions: Solves Captcha and renders JavaScript

Scraping sites with strict anti-spam systems is a difficult task as you have to deal with a good number of obstacles. ScrapingAnt can help you handle all of the obstacles and get you the required data you need to scrape effortlessly.

It handles JavaScript execution using headless Chrome, deals with proxies, and helps you avoid Captchas. ScrapingAnt also handles custom cookies and output preprocessing. It has friendly pricing as you start using its web scraping API with as little as $9.

Best Web Scraping Tools for Non-coders

In the past, web scraping requires you to write codes. This is no longer true as some tools have been developed for web scraping specifically targeted at non-coders. With these tools, you do not need to write codes to scrape required data from the Internet. These tools can be in the form of installable software, a cloud-based solution, or a browser extension.

Web Scraping Software

There are many software in the market that you can use to scrape all kinds of data online without knowing how to code. Below are the top 5 choices in the market right now.

Octoparse

Pricing: Starts at $75 per month
Free Trials: 14 days of free trial with limitations
Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, SQLServer
Supported OS: Windows

Octoparse makes web scraping easy for everyone. With Octoparse, you can quickly turn a full website into a structured spreadsheet with just a few clicks. Octoparse requires no coding skills as what’s required from you are just points and clicks, and you will get the required data. Octoparse can scrape data from all kinds of websites, including Ajaxified websites with strict anti-scraping techniques. It makes use of IP rotation to hide your IP footprints. Aside from their installable software, they have a cloud-based solution, and you can even enjoy 14 days free trial. [su_youtube url="https://youtu.be/6TWJ2LKGWQk"]

Helium Scraper

Pricing: One-time purchase – starts at $99 with 3-month major updates
Free Trials: Fully functional 10 days trial
Data Output Format: CSV, Excel
Supported OS: Windows

Helium Scraper is another software you can use to scrape websites as a non-coder. You can capture complex data by defining your own actions – for coders; they can run custom JavaScript files too. With a simple workflow, using Helium Scraper is not only easy but also fast as it comes with a simple, intuitive interface. Helium Scraper is also one of the web scraping software with a good number of features, including scrape scheduling, proxy rotation, text manipulation, and API calls, among other features. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUuSQAw9UcA"]

ParseHub

Pricing: Desktop version is free
Data Output Format: JSON, Excel
Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux

ParseHub comes in two versions – a desktop application that is free to use and a cloud-based scraping solution that’s paid and comes with additional features and requires no installation to use. ParseHub desktop application makes it easy for you to scrape any website you want, even without coding skills. This is because the software provides a point-and-click interface, which is meant for training the software on the data to be scraped. It works perfectly for modern websites and allows you to download scraped data in popular file formats.

ScrapeStorm

Pricing: Starts at $49.99 per month
Free Trials: Starter plan is free – comes with limitations
Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, Google Sheets, etc.
Supported OS: Windows, Mac, Linux

ScrapeStorm is different from the other desktop applications described above as its uses of point and click interface comes only when it’s unable to automatically identify data required. ScrapeStorm makes use of AI to intelligently identify specific data points on web pages. ScrapeStorm is fast, reliable, and easy to use. When it comes to OS support, ScrapeStorm provides support for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It supports multiple data export method and makes it possible to scrape at an enterprise level. Interestingly, it is built by an ex-Google crawler team. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj40xTFi_UI"]

WebHarvy

Pricing: One-time purchase – starts at $139 for a single license
Free Trials: 14 days of free trial with limitations
Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, XML, JSON, MySQL
Supported OS: Windows

WebHarvy is another web scraping software you can install on your computer to help you handling scraping and extracting data off web pages. This software allows you to scrape with writing a single line of code and give you the choice of saving scraped data either in a file or a database system. It is a powerful visual tool you can use to scrape all kinds of data from web pages such as emails, links, images, and even full HTML files. It comes with intelligent pattern detection and crawls multiple pages. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O-u_7BgODI"]

Web Scraper Extensions

The browser environment is becoming popular among web scrapers, and there are a good number of web scraper tools you can install as extensions and add-ons on your browser to help you scrape data from websites. Some of these are discussed below.

Web Scraper Extension

Pricing: Free
Free Trials: Chrome version is completely free
Data Output Format: CSV

Webscraper.io browser extension (Chrome and Firefox) presents one of the best web scraping tools you can use to extract data out of web pages easily. It has been installed by over 250 thousand users, and they found it incredibly useful. These browser extensions do not require you to know how to code as it makes use of a point and clicks interface. Interestingly, it can be used to scrape even the most modern website with lots of JavaScript triggered actions.

Data Miner Extension

Pricing: Starts at $19.99 per month
Free Trials: 500 pages per month
Data Output Format: CSV, Excel

Data Miner extension is available only for Google Chrome and the Microsoft Edge browser. It can help you scrape data from pages and save the scraped data in a CSV or Excel spreadsheet. Unlike in the case of the extension provided by Webscraper.io that’s free, Data Miner extension is only free for the first 500 pages scraped in a month – after that, you need to subscribe to a paid plan for you to use it. With this extension, you can scrape any page without thinking about blocks – and your data is kept private. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrq5E0zagGw"]

Scraper

Pricing: Completely free
Free Trials: Free
Data Output Format: CSV, Excel TXT

Scraper is a Chrome extension probably designed and managed by a single developer – it does not even have a website of its own like the others above. Scraper is not as advanced as the rest of the browser extensions described above – However, it is completely free. The major problem associated with Scraper is that it requires its users to know how to use XPath as that’s what you will be using. Because of this, it is not beginner-friendly.

SimpleScraper

Pricing: Free
Free Trials: Chrome version is completely free
Data Output Format: JSON

SimpleScraper is another web scraper available as a Chrome extension. With this extension installed on your Chrome browser, web scraping is made easy and free, as you can turn any website into an API. This extension will help you extract structured data out of web pages very fast, and it works on all websites, including those rich in JavaScript. If you need a more flexible option, you can go for their cloud-based solution, but that one is paid.

Agenty Scraping Agent

Pricing: Free
Free Trials: 14 days free trial – 100 pages credit
Data Output Format: Google spreadsheet, CSV, Excel
IP Rotation Service

With Agenty Scraping Agent, you can go ahead, scraping data from web pages without thinking of blocks. This tool isn’t free, but they offer a free trial option. This browser extension was developed for the modern web and, as such, does not have a problem scraping JavaScript-heavy websites. Interestingly, it also works quite great on old websites. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov1nva1XmCg"]

Proxies for web scraping

The truth is, unless you are using a web scraping API, which is generally considered expensive, proxies are a must. When it comes to proxies for web scraping, I will advise users to make use of proxy providers with residential rotating IPs – this takes away the burden of proxy management from you. Below are the 3 best IP rotation service in the market.

Bright Data

IP Pool Size: Over 72 million
Locations: All countries in the world
Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 40GB
Cost: Starts at $500 monthly for 40GB

Luminati is arguably the best proxy service provider in the market. It also owns the largest proxy network in the world, with over 72 million residential IPs in Luminati proxy pool. It remains one of the most secure, reliable, and fast. Interestingly, it is compatible with most of the popular websites on the Internet today. Luminati has the best session control system as it allows you to decide on the timing for maintaining sessions – it also has high rotating proxies that change IP after every request. It is, however, expensive.

Smartproxy

IP Pool Size: Over 10 million
Locations: 195 locations across the globe
Concurrency Allowed: Unlimited
Bandwidth Allowed: Starts at 5GB
Cost: Starts at $75 monthly for 5GB

Smartproxy owns a residential proxy pool with over 10 million residential IPs in it. Their proxies work quite great for web scraping thanks to their session control system. They have proxies that can maintain session and the same IP for 10 minutes – this is perfect for scraping login-based websites. For regular websites, you can use their high rotating proxies that changes IP after every request. They have proxies in about 195 countries and in 8 major cities around the globe.

Crawlera

IP Pool Size: Not specific – tens of thousands
Location: Few
Bandwidth Allowed: Unlimited
Cost:Starts at $99 for 200,000 requests

Crawlera helps you focus on data by helping you to take care of proxies. Unlike in the case of Luminati, Crawlera is deficient when it comes to the number of IPs it has in its system.

However, unlike in the case of Luminati that you can be hit by Captchas, Crawlera makes use of some tricks to make sure web pages you requested are return – However, they do not have proxies in all countries and cities in the world as Luminati has. Their pricing is based on the number of requests and not on consumable bandwidth. Read more, Best Scraping Proxy API to rotate IP proxies for Concurrent requests automatically

Web Scraping Services

There are times that you wouldn’t even want to be involved in scraping the data you need – all you need is the data delivered to you. If you are in such a condition right now, then the below web scraping services are your surest bet.

Scrapinghub

Scrapinghub has made themselves an authority in the web scraping industry as they have tools both free or paid meant for use by web scraper developers. Aside from providing these tools, they also have a data service that you will only describe the data required, and they send you a quote. This service alone has been used to power over 2000 companies.

ScrapeHero

ScrapeHero is another web scraping service provider that you can contact for your data – if you do not want to go through the stress of scraping them yourself. Compared to Scrapinghub, ScrapeHero is a much younger company – However, they are quite popular among businesses. Frome ScrapeHero, you can get real estate-related data, research, and journalism, as well as social media data, among others. You also need to contact them for a quote.

Octoparse Data Scraping Service

Octoparse is known for providing a cloud-based solution for web scraping and also a desktop application. Aside from these two, they also have a data scraping service where they proudly provide scraping services to businesses. Frome them; you can get social media data, eCommerce, and retail data, as well as job listing and other data you can find on the Internet.

PromptCloud

If you do not want to bother yourself with web scrapers, proxies, servers, Captcha breakers, and web scraping APIs, then PromptCloud is the service to choose. With them, you only need to submit your data requirement and wait for them to deliver it – pretty fast, in the required file format. From them, you get cleaned data from web pages without any form of technical hassles. They provide a fully managed service with a dedicated support team.

FindDataLab

FindDataLab is a web scraping service provider that can help you extract data from the Internet as well as help out with price tracking and reputation management. With their web scraping service, any website into data in the required format. All that’s required from you is to describe the data you need, and you will be contacted and provided a quote.

Conclusion

Looking at the list of web scraping tools ranging from the tools meant for coders and the ones for non-coders, you will agree with me that web scraping has become easier.

And with the number of tools available to you you, you have a good number of choices that if some of the tools do not work for your use case, others will work. You no longer have a reason not to make insight from data as a web scraper can help you pull them out of web pages.

Source: Bestproxyreviews.com

Free Proxies

YounglBrownh — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 06:56:23 +0000

Who doesn’t want anything for free? What if you get a chance to use the internet for free? Free proxies or public proxies are the thing for which you've been waiting for so long. As the name implies, these proxies are available for free and can be accessed by multiple users. So, if you want to use a proxy for free, you’ll have to share it with others too. We don’t usually recommend our readers to go for the free proxies as they are a bit insecure, but there are pros and cons for everything and that we’ll discuss in this post.

What is a free proxy?

A free proxy is a proxy server that acts as a middleman or intermediary between the internet and your system as a whole and it provides these services for free. When you type a web address in the browser’s bar, a request is sent to the server that connects the website to the proxy.

In short, a proxy server helps you connect to the World Wide Web so that you can surf easily and get the information you want. Some proxies are private or dedicated proxies and can be accessed by only those who are authorized to use them; however free proxies are open and accessible by everyone. If you want to use the internet, you can contact the free proxy server and connect to it for using the internet.

A word of caution, however: if you're concerned about security, then you should not go for the free proxies as they are not secure. Many people are worried about internet safety because of scams and breaches of privacy. No one wants to be monitored by someone, and everyone wants their internet traffic habits unknown to anyone. As it is said that all free things come with some price, such is the case with the free proxies or public proxies. They are easy to find, but they are not a good option because they aren’t safe.

Advantages of free proxies:

Free proxies are insecure, but they have some benefits too. Unless you don't have any confidential or private task to do on the web, you can happily use the free proxies as they don't cost anything and let you enjoy the internet. Following are the main advantages of using free proxies:

Free proxies are almost free of cost and sometimes completely free, so choosing them is the most affordable option.
Many public proxies allow the use of some useful SEO tools like ScrapeBox, which allows easy collection of data from the network.
The free proxies can support Socks 5 proxies too which are very secure, and also the HTTP proxies that offer fast browsing and surfing.
Some applications and web browsers offer proxy use, and free proxies support this option.

Disadvantages of free proxies:

Free proxies have problems too, and if you want to keep your data private and secure, you should go for the private proxies or socks proxies as they provide a safe environment for people to navigate on the web. Following are the disadvantages of using free proxies:

Free proxies are very slow because many people are using it simultaneously. This can eliminate the ease of using the internet because you'll have to wait too long for performing even a simple task.
Because so many people are sharing the free proxy, it might be possible that you don’t get any network connection at all.
People using the free proxies are completely unaware of the one who is providing the service or managing it. In such cases, there are chances that your activities are being monitored.
Your sensitive data can be stolen, and the free proxy service providers might monitor your communications.
There might be hackers using the same free proxies too, and if that's so, they can cause a considerable security threat to you and your data. Hackers can easily sneak into your system and cause trouble to you by stealing data.
Your details and information can be easily leaked using the techniques of SSL and TLS encrypted connections.
You might access blocked or malicious websites because you won't know whether they are good for your system or not.

What can worse happen with the free proxies?

Free proxies are free for a reason. The fundamental advantage of these proxies is that they are free and easy to use, as stated earlier. With these proxies, you don't have to alter the software settings or install any application, and you can connect and start using it. However, when it comes to the disadvantages, things don't remain so simple. The quality of free proxies is always lower than that of the private proxies that are paid ones. The free proxies are mostly created to accelerate access of the internet, and they don't allow manipulation of IP addresses.

Apart from the issues of the lifetime and stability of free proxies, other items can be troublesome for the users. While you're using free proxies, the chances are that your system might be infected with malware or some different sort of infection that can cause loss of data or any other danger. However, some of the worst things that can happen due to the free proxies are as follows:

Your credit card or banking info can be stolen.
Your login info of various apps or sites such as social media can be stolen.
Your internet activities can be monitored.
You might be forced to participate in the DDoS attacks, and this happens when the browser starts loading a website hundreds of times within a second.

Conclusion:

If you want to use a proxy on a continuous basis, we advise you to use paid proxies because they are faster and more secure. If you're going to use the free proxies because of their affordability, you should use them for performing just basic and harmless activities such as web surfing and browsing. If you have something confidential to do, using paid or private proxies is a better choice.

Private Vs. Shared Vs. Free Proxies

YounglBrownh — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 06:35:59 +0000

Proxies act as middlemen to connect the computers to the World Wide Web or the internet. Proxies thus work as a bridge that connects you to the internet by conveying your requests. Proxies are a third party, and they filter out the requests based on the server's rules and regulations. They work in various ways, and there are different types too, that can be chosen according to the level of speed or security needed. All proxies work in the following manner:

The user types a web address, and the proxy server connects.
A request message is sent when the user requests a service or information in the form of a website or anything.
The proxy server then filters the request according to the server guidelines.
After verification, a response message is sent to the user.

When you type a web address, you're providing your IP address to the proxy server, and it acts as an intermediary to transfer the information. Proxies are used by many businesses, firms, and individuals as they are secure, they can hide the IP address and identity of the user so that the user can bypass geological restrictions and censorships. In this post, we'll discuss the different types of proxies in comparison with each other.

Free Proxies:

A free proxy is the one that is available for free, which means that you can use the internet for free. While some people like the idea of using the internet for free, some are more concerned about the security. Free proxies are not secure as anyone can monitor your internet activities and even steal your data without letting you know. Since the service is free, there are multiple users connected to the free proxy, and thus the speed gets slow. Free proxies are also known as public proxies as they are available to use for the public. Following are some essential points which should be considered before using them:

Free proxies allow the users to benefit from the SEO tools such as scrapebox and this way data collection from the web becomes easy.
You can use the free proxies for the web browsers and apps that support the proxy use only.
You can perform basic browsing and surfing activities on the web which do not involve any privacy.
Highly confidential tasks such as online shopping and other transactions that involve credit information shouldn’t be done using the free proxies.
Some of the free proxies' service provider offers support for the use of Socks 5 proxies too which are secure.
Free proxies are very slow because of the access to multiple users. Sometimes the speed might be so slow that you won’t be able to access it.

Shared proxies:

Shared proxies are also accessed by multiple users, but not as many as they are with the free proxies. These proxies are not free, but they are affordable and are shared by only those who buy them. When a user connects to the internet, the IP address is sent to the server so that it is verified. A proxy server acts as a middleman and connects you to the remote host. Shared proxies are also called as semi-private proxies as they are paid ones and are accessed by only some users who have authorized access to them.

With the shared proxies you have to share the internet service with some people whom you don't know. There are not many users who are sharing the network with you, so the speed is good too, but it's not very fast as compared to the dedicated or private proxies. The shared proxies are cheaper than other proxies, and they also allow their users to visit the websites that are blocked due to censorship or any other reason.

Shared proxies also protect the users from malware and other infections because of the filter system they use. As the name implies, these proxies are shared with other users who have authorized access to them. Mostly these proxies are used for browsing purposes, and since they have good speed, they can be used for downloading purposes too. Following are some benefits of the shared proxies:

Shared proxies are a cheaper option as compared to the private proxies. They provide almost the same features except that the others know about you because you are sharing the server with them. So, your identity is not anonymous.
Shared proxies will allow you to access websites from any geographical location and then bypass the restrictions to view a website.
Premium shared proxies service providers offer good speed for surfing the web.
These proxies are readily available as many websites are providing such proxies at a very affordable rate.
These proxies help reduce the overall cost as other people are sharing it too and you aren't the one who's paying alone.

Private proxies:

Private or dedicated proxies are the ones that are purchased by a single person, and they offer complete security and privacy. These proxies are the most expensive ones, but they offer the best value for the price too. So, if you buy a private proxy, you'll be the only one that will be using it and get full bandwidth to use. A private proxy makes sure that you browse the net while being completely anonymous and offer high security because of this. Private proxies completely hide your identity so that you can perform various surfing and browsing activities on the web without letting anyone know about it.

For example, if you are at work, and you aren't allowed to use the internet, or you want to create multiple social media profiles, or you want to watch a YouTube video from another country, private proxies are there to help with such tasks. There are many advantages of these proxies, and the only drawback is that they are costly as compared to the free and shared proxies. Following are the main points that define private proxies:

Private proxies are used exclusively by a single person who has authorized access to it after its payment.
There is no sharing of bandwidth, and thus the speed is quite fast. This allows smooth and quick surfing and browsing.
Your IP address remains completely hidden, and you can surf the web anonymously. This is because there is no sharing and your proxy is dedicated to you only.
You can easily bypass the geological restrictions and censorships of various websites. You can also work from remote locations and make your IP address appear at other location to trick the site.

Differences between the Free, Shares, and Private Proxies:

Though all the proxies function in the same way, there are differences between the types of proxies. We will first differentiate these proxies in the form of a table and then discuss each of the properties in detail. Following is the chart:

	Free Proxies	Shared Proxies	Private Proxies
Speed	Very slow	A slight drop in speed	Very fast
Security	Low	Medium	High
Price	Free	Affordable	Costly

Speed:

Speed is one of the most important factors when it comes to choosing a type of proxy. Whenever a client thinks of using a proxy, the first thing that comes to his/her mind is the speed. Speed allows the users to surf smoothly and navigate quickly from one website to another. Proxies act as intermediaries and they connect a client to the server so that the requested information is received. Now with the free proxies, there are so many people trying to connect to the server, and thus the speed gets very slow. With the shared proxies, this speed gets reduced because there are a few numbers of people who are sharing the proxies with each other. Thus with the shared proxies, there is a slight speed drop only.

A private proxy is shared by only a single person as stated earlier. The proxy is dedicated to that person, and thus there is no one to share the bandwidth. Private proxies offer the highest speed and therefore are preferred by those only who don't want any speed drop while browsing the web. Sometimes you can also get this speed with the share proxies, but you'll have to use the proxy at such times when there is very less load on it. The load is usually lesser early in the morning or very late at night.

Security:

If you are concerned about the security and safety of your data and information, we recommend using the private or dedicated proxies. The private proxies are the most secure ones, and your information is protected because of the latest technology being used for data protection. However, if you want to perform the necessary tasks of surfing the web, using free or shared proxies is not a big deal. We will still not recommend using the free proxies because they have speed issues. So if you want an affordable option, you can go for the shared proxies.

Price:

The free proxies are available free of cost, as the name suggests. Some of the open proxies might be available at a cost, but that too will be next to nothing. The shared proxies are also cheap because many people are sharing it and the cost of the server gets divided among all the people. The most expensive ones are the private or dedicated ones, as they are dedicated to a single person only. A private proxy is assigned to a particular person who is paying for it, and thus it is more expensive than the other types of proxies.

How to evaluate the performance of the proxies:

The performance of the proxies is determined mostly by the security and speed they provide, and these are the factors that make one proxy better than the other. However, you can't judge anything by listening to the service provider or even reading the fine print. Only experience will tell you about the quality and functioning of a particular proxy. After buying a private proxy, you might think that it is the best one and now you won't be bothered about the speed or security. However, let us tell you that not all the private proxies are same.

Always read the customer reviews regarding a proxy service provider and then decide. Word of mouth is also a good thing when it comes to choosing proxies. A premium quality service provider will provide a proxy that will offer excellent value for money, and the decision is mainly yours. Whether you want the private proxies or the shared ones, we know you aim to have a secure internet connection along with good speed for surfing smoothly.

Which one is better?

When it comes to choosing the best one among these regardless of their costs, our choice will be the private proxies. Who wants someone else intruding into their privacy and stealing their information? Private proxies are very secure and since there is no sharing you can efficiently anonymously perform your daily internet activities. The proxy will mask your IP address so that you can access a website with a geological restriction for your location. You can also bypass censorship and access the data of a site which otherwise you can't with a standard internet connection.

If money is not a constraint, you should always go for the private proxies as they are the fastest and most secure. However, if you are not performing any confidential or private tasks such as performing online transactions, online shopping, and using your bank credit info for doing anything. We also don't recommend our readers to use the free proxies for handling their social media accounts because you might not know and the hackers will steal all the personal information to use it for scams and other harmful activities. Safe and secure surfing is the best option, and thus it is advised to go for the shared or private proxies.

Web Scraping Using Selenium and Python: The Step-By-Step Guide for Beginner

YounglBrownh — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 07:06:36 +0000

For dynamic sites richly built with JavaScript, Selenium is the tool of choice for extracting data from them. Come in now and read this article to learn how to extract data from web pages using Selenium.

The easiest websites to scrape data from are static pages that all content is downloaded upon request. Sadly, these types of sites are gradually fading out, and dynamic websites are gradually taking over.

With dynamic sites, all content on a page is not provided upon loading a page – the content is dynamically added after specific JavaScript events, which poses a different problem to scraping tools designed for static websites. Fortunately enough, with tools like Selenium, you are able to trigger JavaScript events and scrape any page you want, no matter how JavaScript-rich a page is.

With Selenium, you are not tied to a single language like other tools. Selenium has support for Python, Ruby, Java, C#, and JavaScript. In this article, we will be making use of Selenium and Python to extract web data. Before we go into that in detail, it is wise if we look at Selenium and instances when you should make use of it.

Selenium WebDriver – an Overview

Selenium was not initially developed for web scraping – it was initially developed for testing web applications but has found its usage in web scraping. In technical terms, Selenium or, more appropriately, Selenium WebDriver is a portable framework for testing web applications.

In simple terms, all Selenium does is automate web browsers. And as the team behind Selenium rightfully put it, what you do with that power is up to you! Selenium has support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. In terms of browser support, you can use it for automating Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari. Also important is the fact that Selenium can be extended using third-party plugins. With Selenium, you can automate the filling of forms, clicking buttons, taking a snapshot of a page, and other specific tasks online. One of these tasks is web extraction. While you can use it for web scraping, it is certainly not a Swiss Army Knife of web scraping; it has its own downside that will make you avoid using it for certain use cases.

The most notable of its downsides is its slow speed. If you have tried using Scrapy or the combo of Requests and Beautifulsoup, you will have a speed benchmark that will get you to rank Selenium slow. This is not unconnected to the fact that it makes use of a real browser, and rendering has to take place.

For this reason, developers only use Selenium when dealing with JavaScript-rich sites that you will find it difficult to call underlying APIs. With Selenium, all you do is automate the process, and all events will be triggered. For static sites that you can quickly replicate API requests, and all content is downloaded upon loading, you will want to use the better option, which is Scrapy or the duo of Requests and Beautifulsoup.

Installation Guide

Selenium is a third-party library, and as such, you will need to install it before you can make use of it. Before installing Selenium, make sure you already have Python installed. To install Python, you can visit the Python official download page. For Selenium to work, you will need to install the Selenium package and then the specific browser driver you want to automate. You can install the library using pip.

pip install Selenium

For browser drivers, they have support for Chrome, Firefox, and many others. Our focus in this article is on Chrome. If you don’t have Chrome installed on your computer, you can download it from the official Google Chrome page. With Chrome installed, you can then go ahead and download the Chrome driver binary here.

Make you download the driver for the version of Chrome you have installed. The file is a zip file with the actual driver inside of it. Extract the actual Chrome driver (chromedriver.exe) and place it in the same folder as any Selenium script you are writing.

Selenium Hello World

As it is in the coding tutorial tradition, we are starting this selenium guide with the classical hello world program. The code does not scrape any data at this point. All it does is attempt to log into an imaginary Twitter account. Let take a look at the code below.

import time
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keysimport Keys

username = "concanated"
password = "djhhfhfhjdghsd"
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://twitter.com/login")
name_form = driver.find_element_by_name("session[username_or_email]")
name_form.send_keys(username)
pass_form = driver.find_element_by_name(("session[password]"))
pass_form.send_keys(password)
pass_form.send_keys((Keys.RETURN))
time.sleep(5)
driver.quit()

the username and password variables’ values are dummies. When you run the above code, it will launch Chrome and then open the Twitter log in page. The username and password will be inputted and then sent.

Because the username and password are not correct, it displays an error message, and after 5 seconds, the browser is closed. As you can see from the above, you need to specify the specific web browser, and you can see we did that on line 7. The get method sends GET requests. After the page has loaded successfully, we use the

driver.find_element_by_name

method to find the username and input elements and then use

.send_keys

for filling the input fields with the appropriate data.

Sending Web Requests

Sending web requests using Selenium is one of the easiest tasks to do. Unlike in the case of other tools that differentials between POST and GET requests, in Selenium, they are sent the same way. All that’s required is for you to call the get method on the driver passing the URL as an argument. Let see how that is done in action below.

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
# visit Twitter homepage
driver.get("https://twitter.com/")
# page source
print(driver.page_source)
driver.quit()

Running the code above will launch Chrome in automation mode and visit the Twitter homepage and print the HTML source code of the page using the

driver.page_source

. You will see a notification below the address bar telling you Chrome is being controlled by an automated test software.

Chrome in Headless Mode

From the above, Chrome gets launched – this is the headful approach and used mainly for debugging. If you are ready to launch your script on a server or in a production environment, you wouldn’t want Chrome launched – you will want it to work in the background. This method of running the Chrome browser without it launching is known as the headless Chrome mode. Below is how to run Selenium Chrome in headless mode.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.optionsimport Options

# Pay attention to the code below
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

# visit Twitter homepage
driver.get("https://twitter.com/")
# page source
print(driver.page_source)
driver.quit()

Running the code above will not launch Chrome for you to see – all you see is the source code of the page visited. The only difference between this code and the one before it is that this one is running in the headless mode.

Accessing Elements on a Page

There are basically 3 things involved in web scraping – sending web requests, parsing page source, and then processing or saving the parsed data. The first two are usually the focus as they present more challenges.

You have already learned how to send web requests. Now let me show you how to access elements in other to parse out data from them or carry out a task with them. In the code above, we use the

page_source

method to access the page source. This is only useful when you want to parse using Beautifulsoup or other parsing libraries. If you want to use Selenium, you do not have to use the

page_source

method. [su_list icon="icon: hand-o-right" icon_color="#0E86D4"]Below are the options available to you.

```
driver.title
```
is for retrieving page title
```
driver.current_url
```
for retrieving the URL of the page in view.
```
driver.find_element_by_name
```
for retrieving an element by its name, e.g., password input with name password.
```
driver.find_element_by_tag_name
```
for retrieving element by tag name such as a, div, span, body, h1, etc.
```
driver.find_element_by_class_name
```
for retrieving element by class name
```
driver.find_element_by_id
```
for finding element by id.

For each of the

find_element_by***

methods, there is a corresponding method that retrieves a list of elements instead of one except for

find_element_by_id

. Take, for instance, if you want to retrieve all elements with the “thin-long” class, you can make use of the

driver.find_elements_by_class_name(“thin-long”)

instead of

driver.find_element_by_class_name(“thin-long”)

. The difference is the plurality of the element keyword in the function.

Interacting with Elements on a Page

With the above, you can find specific elements on a page. However, you do not just do that for doing sake; you will need to interact with them either to trigger certain events or retrieve data from them. Let take a look at some of the interactions you can have with elements on a page using Selenium and Python.

```
element.text
```
will retrieve the text attached to an element
```
element.click()
```
will trigger the click action and events that follow that
```
element.send_keys(“test text”)
```
is meant for filling input forms
```
element.is_displayed()
```
is for detecting if an element is visible to real users or not -this is perfect for honeypot detection.
```
element.get_attributes(“class”)
```
for retrieving the value of an element’s attribute. You can change the “class” keyword for any other attribute.[/su_list]

With the above, you have what is required to start scraping data from web pages. I will be using the above to scrape the list of US states their capital, population (census), and estimated population from the Britannica website. Take a look at the code below.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.optionsimport Options

# Pay attention to the code below
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

driver.get("https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-state-capitals-in-the-United-States-2119210")
list_states = []
trs = driver.find_element_by_tag_name("tbody").find_elements_by_tag_name("tr")
for iin trs:
tr = i.find_elements_by_tag_name("td")
tr_data = []
for x in tr:
tr_data.append(x.text)
list_states.append(tr_data)
print(list_states)
driver.quit()

Looking at the above, we put into practice almost all of what we discussed above. Pay attention to the trs variable. If you look at the source code of the page, you will discover that the list of states and the associated information are contained in a table. The table does not have a class neither does its body.

Interestingly, it is the only table, and as such, we can use the find.element_by_tag_name(“tbody”) method to retrieve the tbody element. Each row in the tbody element represents a state and its information, each embedded in a td element. we called the find.elements_by_tag_name(“td”) to retrieve the td elements.

The first loop is for iterating through the tr elements. The second one is for iterating through the td elements for each of the tr elements. Element.text was used for retrieving text attached to an element.

You Have Learnt the Basics: Now What?

From the above, we have been able to show you how to scrape a page using Selenium and Python. However, you need to know that what you have learned is just the basics. There is more you need to learn. You will need to know how to carry out other moves and keyboard actions.

Sometimes, just filling out a form with a text string at once will reveal traffic is bot-originating. In instances like that, you will have to mimic typing by filling in each letter one after the other. With Selenium, you can even take a snapshot of a page, execute custom JavaScript, and carry out a lot of automation tasks. I will advise you to learn more about the Selenium web browser on the official Selenium website.

Conclusion

Selenium has its own setback in terms of slow speed. However, it has proven to be the best option when you need to scrape data from a rich JavaScript website.

One thing you will come to like about Selenium is that it makes the whole process of scraping easy as you do not have to deal with cookies and replicating hard-to-replicate web requests. Interestingly, it is easy to make use of.

Source, https://www.bestproxyreviews.com/selenium-web-scraping-python/