Web scraping also called web harvesting or web data extraction is a method of extracting data from other websites. The data extracted from other websites will be processed and formatted according to their requirements, including data research, price monitoring, a news feed, and lead generation, etc.
Web scraping or data extraction can be done manually or using automated tools like a web crawler or a bot. Using these web scraping tools, one can extract a huge amount of data and download it in various formats including CSV, Excel, or XML.
Web scraping tools are available in the market as:
- Browser Extension tools
- Installable Software
- Cloud-based extraction tools.
In this article, we’ll explore the best web scraping tools to suit your various requirements.
1. Scraper API – web scraping tool
If you are looking to crawl large websites like Amazon or eBay to collect huge content, then Scraper API is the best web scraping tool you need to look for. It is one of the best web scraping tools in the market, that can grab data in quick time.
Using a residential IP network, the API addresses used by Scraper API are very hard to detect and cannot be blocked easily. One of the major highlights of this scraping tool is that they can solve captchas too.
Mostly websites make use of captchas to differentiate between real people and automation tools and bots. With the ability to solve captchas, that problem is solved with the use of Scraper API.
The API is completely easy to use and highly customizable as well according to your scraping requirements.
You will never get blocked because it rotates IP addresses with each request, from a pool of millions of proxies across over a dozen ISPs, and automatically retries failed requests, also solves captcha’s for you.
Scraper API is easy to use and fully customizable; it allows you to customize request headers, request type, IP geolocation, and more with literally no effort.
Pros:
- Automatic rotation of IP addresses
- Contains more the 20 million residential IP addresses
- Fully customizable API
- Easily solves captchas too
- Dedicated support channel provided with enterprise plans
Cons:
- Only ideal for web scraping tasks
Pricing:
Comes with 4 paid plans including:
- Free Trial – Available
- Hobby – $29
- Startup – $99
- Business – $249
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
Platform:
Scraper API offers a Restful API that can be accessed through HTTP easily
2. Octoparse – web scraping tool
The second web scraping tool for review is the free web scraper, Octoparse. It comes loaded with a lot of powerful features that you would only expect in a paid tool. The web scraping tools also provides support for both Windows and MacOS platforms.
Compared with other free tools available in the market, the offering provided by Octoparse looks to be quite generous. Yes, it offers free unlimited pages. One of the highlights of this tool is that it the scraping process is extremely quick and easy to complete.
Even if you are not experience with programming, you can still use this tool as no coding experience is required to use this web scraping tool.
Pros:
- Automatic IP rotation
- No programming experience required
- Download data in various formats including CSV, Excel and API formats
- Easily schedule your scraping tasks
Cons:
- Confusing user interface
Pricing:
- Free Plan – Available
- Standard – $75
- Professional – $209
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
Platform:
- Supports both Windows and MacOS
3. Scraping-Bot
Next on our list of the best web scraping tools for every need is Scraping-Bot. It is a highly powerful and effective web scraping tool that helps your extract data from other websites without any issues.
One of the highlights of Scraping-Bot is that it comes with separate scraping APIs for various sectors including Real estate, Retail, Raw HTML and Prestashop module etc. The data is extracted, parsed, and delivered in structured JSON for further use.
The website also provides a detailed documentation to get started with the API. There is also a Live Test environment provided to test the functionality of the API.
Pros:
- Affordable pricing
- Readymade API for different sectors
- Supports both browsers and proxies
- Supports JS rendering
- Geotargeting
Cons:
- Only ideal for web scraping tasks
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Freelancer – $39
- Startup – $99
- Business – $299
- Enterprise – $649
API / Interface:
Scraping-Bot offers specialized API for different sectors.
4. X-tract.io
Xtract.io is another highly powerful web scraping tool that allows website owners and marketers to extract a huge quantity of scalable data extraction.
The API can be easily customized according to your needs to scrape any kind of data including pricing data, historical data, social media content, structured web content etc.
The API is quite simple, effective and easy to use. FinXtract is a specialized tool that is offered for the financial sector to extract financial data.
Pros:
- Powerful API
- Cloud-based API
- Easily integrate with your applications
- Data extraction automation
- Uses rotating proxies to bypass captchas
Cons:
- No free trial available
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Not Available
- Pricing – Only quote-based pricing
API / Interface:
Cloud-based API provides support for Windows, MacOS
5. Import.io
Import.io allows you to extract large chunks of datasets from various websites. Considered as one of the best tools available for data extraction and integration with your existing applications using customizable APIs and webhooks. It also provides support for integration with various programming languages and analytical tools.
Import.io is a SaaS web data integration platform, which allows people to convert semi-structured web data in web pages into structured data. It offers real-time data retrieval through our JSON REST-based and streaming APIs, and integrates with many programming languages and data analysis tools.
Pros:
- Saas-based data extraction platform
- Easily convert unstructured data into easy-to-use structured data
- Streaming API
- Email, IP address, pricing, phone number extraction etc
Cons:
- Not affordable for small businesses and single user extraction
Pricing:
- Only Quote-based pricing
6. Wintr
Next on our list of the best web scraping tools for 2021 is Wintr. It is a highly effective and powerful tool that makes use of rotating residential proxies to avoid getting blocked.
With Wintr, you can easily scrap any kind of data and convert into JSON format. The website also provides extensive documentation to help you get started with the data extraction process quickly.
Pros:
- Easy to use API
- Easily customizable according to your requirements
- Affordable pricing
- Unhindered data extraction
Cons:
- Free plan comes with very little features
Pricing:
Comes with 6 paid plans including:
- Free Trial – Available
- Bronze – $20
- Silver – $40
- Gold – $80
- Platinum – $150
- Diamond – $300
- Pay As You Go – $500 (minimum)
API / Interface:
API available in Bash, PHP, NodeJS and Python
7. Webhose.io
Webhose.io offers real-time data extraction and provides direct access to the huge amount of structured data from various websites. One of the highlights of this web scraping tool is that provides direct access to historical data feed with more than 8-10 years of data.
Pros:
- Machine readable data extraction
- Easily convert unstructured data into readable data
- JSON and XML format data output
- Advanced filter to analyze data feeds
Cons:
- Searches the dark web too
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Pricing – Quote-based pricing
8. Scrapinghub
Next in our list of the best web scraping tools for all your data extraction requirements is Scrapinghub. It is a highly effective, open-source data extraction tool. One of the highlights of this tool is that it can easily handle more than 3million pages/month.
It also supports automatic data extraction and allows for easier management of web crawlers using Scrapy Cloud. When compared with other web scraping tools, Scrapinghub doesn’t use IP rotation, but still gets the job done without getting banned.
Pros:
- Ideal for data scientists
- Large scale data extraction
- Free project assessment done
- GDPR compliance review provided
Cons:
- Not adequate documentation
- Not ideal for beginners
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Pricing – Quote-based pricing
API / Interface:
Cloud-based API
9. Dexi Intelligent
As the name suggests, Dexi Intelligent is truly an intelligent web scraping tool that provides unhindered data extraction services. The extracted data can be store in CSV or JSON formats, or you can even store in your Google Drive account.
Pros:
- High-level of accuracy
- Quick data extraction
- Large scale data extraction
- Advanced product analytics and monitoring
Cons:
- Not ideal for beginners
- Steep learning curve
Pricing:
Comes with 4 paid plans including:
- Only quote-based pricing
10. ParseHub
If you are looking for the cheapest web scraping tools, then you need to check out ParseHub. With the free plan, you can easily extract 200 pages in every run and you can create 5 public projects too.
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Excellent customer support
- Affordable pricing
Cons:
- Only limited features in the free plan
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Standard – $149
- Professional – $499
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
API / Interface:
ParseHub offers REST API.
11. Mozenda
Next on our list is Mozenda, a high-speed data extraction tool. It allows you to extract all kinds of data including text, images, and other content from websites.
Pros:
- Action items
- Extremely Quick
- Error handling features
- XPath compatibility
Cons:
- Only available for Windows platform
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Project – Custom pricing
- Professional – Custom pricing
- Corporate – Custom pricing
- Managed Services – Custom pricing
API / Interface:
REST API
12. FMiner
FMiner is basically a downloadable data extraction software that provides easy web harvesting and data extraction services. It provides support for both Windows and Mac OS platforms.
The user interface is extremely easy to use and you don’t need any programming interface to make use of this tool. The software also can extract data from web 2.0 sites that employ advanced JavaScript and Ajax etc.
Pros:
- Intuitive user interface
- Downloadable software
- No coding required
- Easy to use
- Nested data elements
Cons:
- Steep learning curve to use advanced features
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Basic – $168
- Pro – $248
- Pro for MacOS – $228
API / Interface:
Downloadable GUI software
13. Content Grabber
If you are looking for a visual, point and click interface for easy data extraction, then better checkout Content Grabber. It is another highly renowned and reliable data extraction tool.
People with programming knowledge can tweak this tool to fulfill all their web scraping requirements.
Pros:
- Supports both Windows and Linux
- Supports debug and error handling
- Ideal for large scale data extraction
Cons:
- Not available for MacOS
Pricing:
Comes with 4 paid plans including:
- Free Trial – Not Available
- Server – $69
- Professional – $149
- Premium – $299
API / Interface:
Downloadable software
14. OutWitHub
OutWitHub is another highly effective web scraping tool that requires no programming skills to extract data from other websites. Previously, it was offered as a Firefox add-on, but now, they provide a downloadable software for easy extraction.
With OutWitHub, you can extract all kinds of data and convert into various data formats like CSV, XML or SQL
Pros:
- Quick and easy data extraction
- No coding skill required
Cons:
- No extensive documentation available
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Pro – $95
- Expert – $245
- Enterprise – $745
API / Interface:
Downloadable software
15. 80legs
The next web scraping tool in our list is 80legs. It is a cloud-based scraping tool that uses IP rotation to prevent from getting blocked. There is also no rate limiting issues with 80legs.
All you need to do is just provide the URL list, set the crawl limit and relax. The crawling and data extraction will get completed automatically
Pros:
- Cloud based
- Supports giant web crawl
Cons:
- No advanced crawl features available
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Intro – $29
- Plus – $99
- Premium – $299
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
API / Interface:
Cloud-based data extraction tool
16. Apify
As the name suggests, people looking to transform a website into API data can make use of Apify web scraping tool With Apify, you can schedule your web scraping tasks like cron-job in linux.
crawling and data extraction will get completed automatically
Pros:
- Ideal for large scale scraping
- Excellent community support
Cons:
- No IP rotation
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Personal – $44
- Team – $449
- Business – $899
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
API / Interface:
JavaScript-based API
17. DiffBot
Last but not least, DiffBot is another high-quality web scraping tool that uses API for data extraction purposes. One of the highlights of this tool is that employs Machine Language (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for data analysis and extraction.
Pros:
- Easy integration
- Advanced extraction features ML, NLP etc
- Supports custom APIs
Cons:
- Expensive
Pricing:
- Free Trial – Available
- Startup – $299
- Plus – $899
- Enterprise – Custom pricing
API / Interface:
Cloud-based API
Conclusion
When it comes to web scraping and data extraction, one can find a lot of tools available. Most of the tools work perfectly for small-time data extraction and one-off extraction works. But if you are looking for large scale data extraction, then you need to go for commercial web scraping tools. Only with paid scraping services, you can achieve unhindered data extraction and get excellent support as well.
Hope the above list provided for the best web scraping tools for every need has satisfied your needs and queries on finding the right web scraping tool. If you find any tool missed out, or want to suggest a new tool, you are always welcome to suggest.