Since in the past decade web scraping became a very important service for business, the market started to offer more and more web scraping tools that can be used for data extraction. But with such a wide variety of tools often it’s pretty difficult to find one that would be useful to you and would be able to complete various web scraping tasks as well as it would be easily managed.
This article will overview the most useful web scraping tools for you in 2020.
SCRAPY
You might already know that Scrapy is an open-source and collaborative framework. This tool is one of the most favorites of those who work with the Python library and it can definitely offer you a lot. Here are some of the features you can find in this web scraping tool:
-Built-in support for selecting and extracting data from HTML/XML sources;
-Built-in support for generating feed exports in multiple formats;
-Robust encoding support and auto-detection;
-Wide range of built-in extensions and middlewares;
-It handles the requests asynchronously;
-It automatically adjusts scraping speed using the Auto-throttling mechanism.
Scrapy is a free web scraping tool and available for anyone. Even though Scrapy was originally designed for web scraping, it can also be used to extract data using APIs or as a general-purpose web crawler. This tool has one of the best performance rates among its competitors and definitely will stay among the best web scraping tools in 2020.
PARSEHUB
ParseHub can be your gateway into scraping. There’s no need to know any coding — just launch a project, click on the information that needs to be collected and let ParseHub do the rest. This is why this tool is very useful for those who just started web scraping and don’t have much knowledge of programming. Nevertheless, this tool is pretty advanced and can complete various difficult web scraping tasks. ParseHub supports most operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X, and LINUX. Also, it has a browser extension that allows you to scrape instantly.
Here are some ParseHub features:
-Extract text, HTML, and attributes;
-Scrape and download images/files;
-Get data behind a log-in;
-Infinitely scrolling pages;
-Search through forms and inputs;
-Dropdowns, tabs, and pop-ups.
ParseHub’s versatility is fully unlocked once you learn how to use its commands. Think of them as the different actions you can ask the scraper to do. This tool is very popular because of its functionality and the fact that it is pretty easy to understand his tool and work with it completing various web scraping tasks and this is why this tool will remain one of the most popular among web scrapers in 2020.
OCTOPARSE
Octoparse is a free and powerful web scraper with comprehensive features. The point and click user interface allow you to teach the scraper how to navigate and extract fields from a website. Below you can find several of the Octoparse’s features:
-Ad Blocking technique feature helps you to extract data from Ad-heavy pages;
-The tool provides support to mimics a human user while visiting and scraping -data from the specific websites;
-Octoparse allows you to run your extraction on the cloud and your local machine;
-It allows you to export all types of scraped data in TXT, HTML CSV, or Excel formats.
You can use Regex tools and XPath to help extraction precisely. XPath can resolve 80% of data missing problems, even in scraping dynamic pages. However, not all people can write the correct Xpath. Thanks to Octoparse, this is definitely a life-saving feature. Moreover, Octoparse has built-in templates including Amazon, Yelp, and TripAdvisor for starters to use. The scraped data will be exported into Excel, HTML, CVS and more. Precisely because of that, Octoparse shouldn’t be overlooked by web scrapers in 2020.
IMPORT.IO
Import.Io is a web scraping platform that supports most operating systems. It has a user-friendly interface that is easy to master without writing any code and this is especially great for those who are beginners at web scraping. You can click and extract any data that appears on the webpage. The data will be stored on its cloud service for days. It is a great choice for the enterprise.
This web scraping tool helps you to form your datasets by importing the data from a specific web page and exporting the data to CSV. It allows you to Integrate data into applications using APIs and webhooks. Here are the main features of Import.Io:
-Easy interaction with webforms/logins;
-Schedule data extraction;
-You can store and access data by using Import.io cloud;
-Gain insights with reports, charts, and visualizations;
-Automate web interaction and workflows.
Import.Io has many advantages and is very easy to manage and this is why I would recommend not overlooking this tool in 2020 for the best web scraping experience.
SCRAPINGHUB
Scrapinghub is a hassle-free cloud base data extraction tool that helps companies to fetch valuable data. It has four different types of tools — Scrapy Cloud, Portia, Crawlera, and Splash. It is great that Scrapinghub offers a collection of IP addresses covering more than 50 countries which is a solution for IP ban problems. This great tool allows you to store data in the high-ability database. The main features that can be found in Scrapinghub:
Allows you to converts the entire web page into organized content;
Helps you to deploy crawlers and scale them on demand without the need to care about servers, monitoring or backups;
Supports bypassing bot counter-measures to crawl large or bot-protected sites.
Since Scrapinghub has a lot to offer to its clients, this tool is a very great opportunity for businesses to extract valuable data without any problems and this is why Scrapinghub will remain among the most popular and useful web scraping services in 2020.
Is that all? No, you need something more.
But having the right tool for web scraping isn’t enough. You should also be aware of various obstacles that can stand in your way while scraping and be ready to avoid them. The other service that will remain very important while web scraping in 2020 is proxy service. Proxies are used to avoid geo-restrictions and it also masks your web scraping tool so the website won’t detect it and wouldn’t be able to stop you from extracting data you need. Here are some recommendations for proxy services to use in 2020:
Smartproxy — Smartproxy has over 40 million rotating residential proxies with location targeting and flexible pricing. In addition to some of the best proxies, they also offer all sorts of niceties like rotating sessions, random residential IPs, geo-targeting, sticky sessions, and automatic proxy rotator and more. One of the nice things about this service is that they are pretty good about overage pricing, once you exceed the limits of your plan, you can use them on a pay-as-you-go basis for every GB that you go over, instead of having to upgrade to the next plan. And with the coupon SMARTPRO you can get a 20% discount for your first purchase so it’s worth checking them out.
GeoSurf — Geosurf offers premium residential proxies at premium prices. While this may not be the best proxy provider for those on a tight budget, this is one of the instances where you get what you pay for, these are some of the best residential proxies around. They offer special pools of proxies for certain use cases, web scraping included.
Microleaves — Microleaves boasts the world’s largest pool of fairly cheap residential proxies, with over 26 million in its pool at any given time. For the specific use case where you are looking for rotating or dedicated residential proxies but don’t want to get charged for bandwidth, these might be the best-paid proxy servers around.
Top comments (5)
Thanks for compiling this list! I've found it incredibly helpful in my web scraping endeavors. While many tools mentioned here are fantastic, I've recently stumbled upon Crawlbase and have been pleasantly surprised by its ease of use and robust functionality. It might be worth giving it a try if you're looking for a reliable scraping solution.
Nice article! And you're definitely right mentioning that not only the tool make an impact but other services as well. Proxies are very useful when scraping and can help to avoid many obstacles and issues so it's wise to use them. As for your recommendations, I have to agree that Smartproxy is one of the best solutions in this case.
Hey Justin, awesome article
could you add to your list e-scraper.com/ - eCommerce service for web scraping. It helps me a lot with web scraping for my WooCommerce and Shopify e-stores.
The best of web scraping service they finddatalab.com/how-to-scrape-data... helped me out when I was in dire need of scraping. Prices are not low when compared to the entire market
Hello,
Please consider adding one more web scraper to your list.
Thank you