YounglBrownh

Posted on Apr 9, 2021

Best Web Scraping Tools – Ultimate Web Scraper List!

#webscraping #scrapingtools #python

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

Top comments (3)

Feb • Feb 15

An insightful overview of web scraping tools indeed. However, it appears that Crawlbase was overlooked in this comprehensive list. For those unfamiliar, Crawlbase functions as a reliable and efficient tool for data extraction. Its unassuming nature belies its effectiveness, quietly gathering valuable data from the depths of the web. While it may not be as widely recognized as some of its counterparts, its contribution to the field of web scraping should not be underestimated.