- It will help you make an informed decision regarding the Best Web Scraping Tool catering. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next.
- Web scraping tools are a great alternative to extract data from web pages. In this post, we will share with you the most popular web scraping tools to extract data. With these automated data.
In this era of data, most key activities in business like lead generation, research, marketing, analytics, market predictions, etc are data-driven. And today almost all of the data is available on the internet across multiple websites.
When Business users get to make key business decisions or analyze data in various fields like data science, marketing, Economics, Statistics, etc they would then need to look for multiple web pages which may range anywhere between 10-100x pages. This manual task would involve a lot of copy-pasting that would consume resources and time adding to undeniable human errors that may occur.
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. Hi there, Here are some good tools for you to consider: Scrapeworks 80 Legs Content grabber Diggernaut Difbot I see that your scraping needs require a quick and easy solution. There are a lot of scraping tools available in the market that can help.
What is Web scraping?
Web scraping is a process that involves extracting and importing data from websites to the local machine using bots.
Web scraping tools are the resort for those who are looking for a tool that would give required web data consolidated in local Storage or database instead of doing it manually and save time. It comes as a package of 2 tools, one is a web crawler that identifies in which website your data points exist to build an index, and the scraper itself which is for data extraction.
Why Web scraping tools?
Web scraping tools which invariably come along with web crawlers can directly access the World Wide Web using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or a web browser.
Web Scraping is a very popular choice for Market research, finding leads, comparing between products across multiple sites in e-commerce, content analysis between web pages, price comparison, big data, stock market analysis, etc
Here is a curated 15 best web scraping tools for you to select and make your life so much easier:
Best Web Scrapping Tools
1) XTRACT.IO
Xtract.io is a tool that enables you to transform web data, PDFs or social media posts into a readable format that is human-friendly and enables you to make business decisions quickly and effectively. With the company’s belief that every business has to rely on data rather than gut feeling to arrive at any key business decisions or analysis, their data experts strive to provide the agility and flexibility as per the user’s business needs.Key Features:
- Pre-configured workflows
- Scrape business-specific information like financial data, user reviews, news updates with tailored data processing solutions
- Provide Granular insights to your market or customers with location-specific data
Best Web Browser Best Web Scraping Tools
2) Scraping Bee
ScrapingBee is the easy-to-use web scraping API that handles headless browsers and has effective proxy management. It focuses on extracting only the data that you would need and doesn’t deal with parallel headless browsers which otherwise would take major junk of your device’s RAM. It is super fun to use for a technical user and might not be a very good option for a non-developer.Key Features:
Best Web Scraping Tool
- With its rotating proxies, it hides bots and lowers the chance of getting blocked
- Provides growth hacking for lead generation
- Great Java script rendering
- Renders web page as if a real browser is using
3) Luminati
Another web scraping tool is Luminati that has wide data collection tools and a variety of proxy services that enable easier web crawling and scraping of data. This is widely popular in web data extraction for the collection of stock market data and in the field of e-commerce.Key Features:
- User has full control of intelligent data collectors
- Allows integrating the proxy IPs via API
- Has Proxy browser extension to target a specific geolocation data
4) FMiner
Another easy-to-use web scraping tool that is popular amongst startups and developers. Its user-friendly dashboards make the web data extraction process very intuitive and faster. Overall FMiner is a suitable tool when your project is fairly complex.Key Features:
- Has easy to use- visual editor
- Can crawl Web2.0 dynamic websites as well
5)Dexi.io
Under its belt, Dexi.io has the credit of providing services for Hedge Funds, Retailers, Banks, etc which deal with dynamic data that is huge. This web Scraper tool allows you to extract data from any required website supporting a full browser environment and transform an unlimited amount of data as per your need. This tool is feature-rich and also is easy to use.Key Features:
- Allows scalability to include more scraping capacity
- Allows integration to endpoints like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Amazon S3, etc
- Provides processing feature to transform the data, manipulate and aggregate the data stream
- Has intuitive debugging to identify any bots that may have a failure during scraping
- Instantly removes duplicates before sending out the data to your local system
6) Outwit
This is a Firefox extension that can easily be downloaded from the Firefox add-ons store. This is quick and needs no coding-related knowledge to start web scraping. It lets you extracting of data from different webpages with few mouse clicks.It also allows the user to customize to meet the distinct scraping needs. There is also a documentation section in Outwit Hub that would make data scraping easier when you have a specific need.
7) ParseHub
This is the web scraping tool you need when there is complex data extraction from websites that uses AJAX, Javascripts, redirects, cookies. It is well equipped with machine learning technology to analyze web data and ensure the user has end data as only required data. The free plan from ParseHub allows you to have up to 5 free crawl projects, you can use the free plan and upgrade later as per your future need.Key Features:
- Can execute scheduled runs that can be daily, weekly, etc
- Extract content that loads with AJAX and Javascript
- It is highly scalable
- Allows to connect to API and download data
8) Octoparse
Octparse is another web scraping tool that is very much similar to ParseHub however pricing is lower for Octoparse. It is fairly easy to use and both coders and non-coders can leverage it. Most often Octparse is preferred for e-commerce sites data scrapping.Key Features:
- Automatic IP rotation during extraction
- Can deal with various types of websites with login, drop down AJAX, etc
- Tool available for both Windows and Mac users
- Supports scheduled scrapping for regular data extraction
9) Diffbot
Diffbot is well suited for data scraping when you are dealing with unstructured web data. Developing DIY web scrapers can be quite painful for developers when there are 15 websites to scrape and the developer would have to take care of 15 different rules. Diffbot handles this complexity with their automatic extraction APIs available. Diffbot is a Knowledge-As-A-Service provider.Key Features:
- Allows easy integration with google sheets, excel, tableau, etc
- AI understands the web data and processes into information before sending
10) Import.io
This is a beginner-friendly web scraping platform available for the extraction of data from web pages. It is preferred for large companies looking for low to no coding web scraping tools for data extraction.Key Features:
- Intuitive UI
- Allows data transformation before it has to reach you
- Has the ability to extract only data that has got changed since your last extraction
- Provides visualization of data extracted
11) Webhose.io
This tool is an effective one for real-time data extraction while it also allows you to access historical feed worth ten+ years of data. It can allow you to access web datasets from 2008 to enhance the research and analysis for your business or industry.Key Features:
- Access to historic feeds across the globe
- Advanced filters for granular analysis
- Provides free subscription plan with limited HTTP requests
- Supports multiple languages
12) Agenty
It is a cloud-based web scraping tool with built-in APIs. With few mouse clicks, you will be able to set up your web scraping agents without any coding knowledge. Offers batch URL crawling to extract data from unlimited web pages using a single agent. Offers highly anonymous proxies while scraping.Key Features:
- Has flexible scheduling option
- Allows website crawling with login using your credentials in agent
- Notifies you via email when the job is completed
- Integrations to send data to Secure FTP, Dropbox, etc
13) Web Scraper Chrome extension
This is a popular chrome extension web extraction tool with an easy point-and-click UI. It is a free and easy-to-use tool. It has modular selectors that know how to traverse into target websites and extract the required web data. While it is simple to use it cannot handle complex web scraping scenarios.14) Mozenda
This web scraping software is designed for various kinds of data extraction and enables the user to extract text, pdfs, and images from the web. This tool has been used for data extraction to derive key business decisions by 1/3rd of fortune 500 companies.Key Features:
- Allows organizing and publishing of web data in your local BI tool
- Can scrape PDFs too
- Enables creation of web scraping agents in few minutes
15) Scraper API
This is a fully customizable web scraping tool. Scraper API rotates IP address with each request and automatically retries failed requests if any. Scraper API also handles CAPTCHAS that could have been a blocker. They even prune slow proxies from pools periodically making the developer’s life easier.Key features:
- Millions of proxies available across ISPs
- Enables rendering Javascript
- Geolocated rotating proxies ensuring localized data
- Fast and reliable for developers to write speedy crawlers
Concluding thoughts
So there you have it folks, the best of web scrapper tools. Let us know in the comments section which one do you prefer and why?
Monday, January 18, 2021
Web scraping (also termed web data extraction, screen scraping, or web harvesting) is a technique of extracting data from the websites. It turns unstructured data into structured data that can be stored into your local computer or a database.
It can be difficult to build a web scraper for people who don’t know anything about coding. Luckily, there are tools available for people with or without programming skills. Also, if you're seeking a job for big data developers, using web scraper definitely raises your working effectiveness in data collection, improving your competitiveness. Here is our list of 30 most popular web scraping tools, ranging from open-source libraries to browser extension to desktop software.
Table of Content
1. Beautiful Soup
Who is this for: developers who are proficient at programming to build a web scraper/web crawler to crawl the websites.
Why you should use it: Beautiful Soup is an open-source Python library designed for web-scraping HTML and XML files. It is the top Python parsers that have been widely used. If you have programming skills, it works best when you combine this library with Python.
2. Octoparse
Who is this for: People without coding skills in many industries, including e-commerce, investment, cryptocurrency, marketing, real estate, etc. Enterprise with web scraping needs.
Why you should use it: Octoparse is free for life SaaS web data platform. You can use to scrape web data and turns unstructured or semi-structured data from websites into a structured data set. It also provides ready to use web scraping templates including Amazon, eBay, Twitter, BestBuy, and many others. Octoparse also provides web data service that helps customize scrapers based on your scraping needs.
3. Import.io
Who is this for: Enterprise looking for integration solution on web data.
Why you should use it: Import.io is a SaaS web data platform. It provides a web scraping solution that allows you to scrape data from websites and organize them into data sets. They can integrate the web data into analytic tools for sales and marketing to gain insight from.
4. Mozenda
Who is this for: Enterprise and business with scalable data needs.
Why you should use it: Mozenda provides a data extraction tool that makes it easy to capture content from the web. They also provide data visualization services. It eliminates the need to hire a data analyst.
5. Parsehub
Who is this for: Data analyst, Marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: ParseHub is a visual web scraping tool to get data from the web. You can extract the data by clicking any fields on the website. It also has an IP rotation function that helps change your IP address when you encounter aggressive websites with anti-scraping techniques.
6. Crawlmonster
Who is this for: SEO and marketers
Why you should use it: CrawlMonster is a free web scraping tool. It enables you to scan websites and analyze your website content, source code, page status, etc.
7. ProWebScraper
Who is this for: Enterprise looking for integration solution on web data.
Why you should use it: Connotate has been working together with Import.io, which provides a solution for automating web data scraping. It provides web data service that helps you to scrape, collect and handle the data.
8. Common Crawl
Who is this for: Researchers, students, and professors.
Why you should use it: Common Crawl is founded by the idea of open source in the digital age. It provides open datasets of crawled websites. It contains raw web page data, extracted metadata, and text extractions.
9. Crawly
Who is this for: People with basic data requirements.
Why you should use it: Crawly provides automatic web scraping service that scrapes a website and turns unstructured data into structured formats like JSON and CSV. They can extract limited elements within seconds, which include Title Text, HTML, Comments, DateEntity Tags, Author, Image URLs, Videos, Publisher and country.
10. Content Grabber
Who is this for: Python developers who are proficient at programming.
Why you should use it: Content Grabber is a web scraping tool targeted at enterprises. You can create your own web scraping agents with its integrated 3rd party tools. It is very flexible in dealing with complex websites and data extraction.
11. Diffbot
Who is this for: Developers and business.
Why you should use it: Diffbot is a web scraping tool that uses machine learning and algorithms and public APIs for extracting data from web pages. You can use Diffbot to do competitor analysis, price monitoring, analyze consumer behaviors and many more.
12. Dexi.io
Who is this for: People with programming and scraping skills.
Why you should use it: Dexi.io is a browser-based web crawler. It provides three types of robots — Extractor, Crawler, and Pipes. PIPES has a Master robot feature where 1 robot can control multiple tasks. It supports many 3rd party services (captcha solvers, cloud storage, etc) which you can easily integrate into your robots.
13. DataScraping.co
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who're lack of programming skills.
Why you should use it: Data Scraping Studio is a free web scraping tool to harvest data from web pages, HTML, XML, and pdf. The desktop client is currently available for Windows only.
14. Easy Web Extract
Who is this for: Businesses with limited data needs, marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: Easy Web Extract is a visual web scraping tool for business purposes. It can extract the content (text, URL, image, files) from web pages and transform results into multiple formats.
15. FMiner
Who is this for: Data analyst, Marketers, and researchers who're lack of programming skills.
Why you should use it: FMiner is a web scraping software with a visual diagram designer, and it allows you to build a project with a macro recorder without coding. The advanced feature allows you to scrape from dynamic websites use Ajax and Javascript.
16. Scrapy
Who is this for: Python developers with programming and scraping skills
Why you should use it: Scrapy can be used to build a web scraper. What is great about this product is that it has an asynchronous networking library which allows you to move on to the next task before it finishes.
17. Helium Scraper
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: Helium Scraper is a visual web data scraping tool that works pretty well especially on small elements on the website. It has a user-friendly point-and-click interface which makes it easier to use.
18. Scrape.it
Who is this for: People who need scalable data without coding.
Why you should use it: It allows scraped data to be stored on the local drive that you authorize. You can build a scraper using their Web Scraping Language (WSL), which is easy to learn and requires no coding. It is a good choice and worth a try if you are looking for a security-wise web scraping tool.
19. ScraperWiki
Who is this for: A Python and R data analysis environment. Ideal for economists, statisticians and data managers who are new to coding.
Why you should use it: ScraperWiki consists of 2 parts. One is QuickCode which is designed for economists, statisticians and data managers with knowledge of Python and R language. The second part is The Sensible Code Company which provides web data service to turn messy information into structured data.
20. Scrapinghub
Who is this for: Python/web scraping developers
Why you should use it: Scraping hub is a cloud-based web platform. 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. This is a solution for IP banning problems.
21. Screen-Scraper
Who is this for: For businesses related to the auto, medical, financial and e-commerce industry.
Why you should use it: Screen Scraper is more convenient and basic compared to other web scraping tools like Octoparse. It has a steep learning curve for people without web scraping experience.
22. Salestools.io
Who is this for: Marketers and sales.
Why you should use it: Salestools.io is a web scraping tool that helps salespeople to gather data from professional network sites like LinkedIn, Angellist, Viadeo.
23. ScrapeHero
Who is this for: Investors, Hedge Funds, Market Analysts
Why you should use it: As an API provider, ScrapeHero enables you to turn websites into data. It provides customized web data services for businesses and enterprises.
24. UniPath
Who is this for: Bussiness in all sizes.
Why you should use it: UiPath is a robotic process automation software for free web scraping. It allows users to create, deploy and administer automation in business processes. It is a great option for business users since it helps you create rules for data management.
25. Web Content Extractor
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who're lack of programming skills.
Why you should use it:Web Content Extractor is an easy-to-use web scraping tool for individuals and enterprises. You can go to their website and try its 14-day free trial.
26. WebHarvy
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: WebHarvy is a point-and-click web scraping tool. It’s designed for non-programmers. They provide helpful web scraping tutorials for beginners. However, the extractor doesn’t allow you to schedule your scraping projects.
27. Web Scraper.io
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: Web Scraper is a chrome browser extension built for scraping data from websites. It’s a free web scraping tool for scraping dynamic web pages.
28. Web Sundew
Who is this for: Enterprises, marketers, and researchers.
Why you should use it: WebSundew is a visual scraping tool that works for structured web data scraping. The Enterprise edition allows you to run the scraping projects at a remote server and publish collected data through FTP.
29. Winautomation
Who is this for: Developers, business operation leaders, IT professionals
Why you should use it: Winautomation is a Windows web scraping tool that enables you to automate desktop and web-based tasks.
30. Web Robots
Who is this for: Data analysts, Marketers, and researchers who lack programming skills.
Why you should use it: Web Robots is a cloud-based web scraping platform for scraping dynamic Javascript-heavy websites. It has a web browser extension as well as desktop software, making it easy to scrape data from the websites.
Closing Thoughts
To extract data from websites with web scraping tools is a time-saving method, especially for those who don't have sufficient coding knowledge. There are many factors you should consider when choosing a proper tool to facilitate your web scraping, such as ease of use, API integration, cloud-based extraction, large-scale scraping, scheduling projects, etc. Web scraping software like Octoparse not only provides all the features I just mentioned but also provides data service for teams in all sizes - from start-ups to large enterprises. You can contact usfor more information on web scraping.
Ashley is a data enthusiast and passionate blogger with hands-on experience in web scraping. She focuses on capturing web data and analyzing in a way that empowers companies and businesses with actionable insights. Read her blog here to discover practical tips and applications on web data extraction 日本語記事：スクレイピングツール30選｜初心者でもWebデータを抽出できる |