Web scraping tools are special software made to easily scrape information from web page. Getting this information is helpful and used a lot, but it can also get messy and take lots of time and effort.
In this post, we’ll compare the top 8 web scraping tools based on what they can do, how much they cost, and how easy they are to use.
What is a Web Scraping Tool?
A web scraping tool is a computer program that scrapes information from web page. When you want to collect specific information from websites, you’ll probably use some type of web scraper to get that information.
A scraping tool is used during the process of web scraping to ask a website for information and take that information from a page. It gathers information that anyone can see and that is shown by the website in a code called HTML.
Sometimes it also asks for related information (like prices or contact details) that’s stored in a database and sent to your browser through special requests.
There are many different types of web scrapers and tools for getting data, like Zyte Automatic Extraction, which can be changed to fit your specific project.
What are Web Scraping Tools Used for?
You might need a web scraping tool to understand how a website is built or to get, change, and save data from it.
Web scraping tools can be big systems that can handle many different scraping tasks. But you can also use regular programming tools and put them together to make a scraper.
For example, you can use a tool for making requests to websites (like the Python Requests library) and combine it with a tool for reading website code (like BeautifulSoup) to scrape information from web page. Or you can use a special tool that already combines these things.
Scrapy is a popular example. It’s a free tool made for advanced scraping needs.
Top 8 Tools of Scrape Information From Web Page
Let’s check out the best web scraping tools to scrape information from web page.
Bright Data
Bright Data Web Scraper IDE is a tool made for developers to easily gather lots of info from websites. It uses special technology to avoid being blocked and comes with ready-made functions to save time.
Features:
- Uses the top technology to avoid being blocked
- Runs in the cloud so you don’t need to install anything
- Includes ready-made templates to get you started quickly
- Uses JavaScript to work with websites
- Built-in tools to hide your identity and avoid blocks
- Follows industry standards for data safety
- Cooperates with all kinds of projects
Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars on Capterra
Best for: Bright Data is great for online stores that want to improve their products and prices, and for marketing teams who need to collect information from social media.
Oxylabs Scraper API
Oxylabs’ Web Scraper API is a tool made to scrape information from web page in real time. It’s a good choice for quickly and reliably getting data, especially for things like protecting against fraud, doing market research, and keeping an eye on travel prices. You can try it for free for a week.
Features:
- Special technology to avoid getting blocked
- Tries again automatically if it fails
- Can get data from specific countries
- Works with websites that use JavaScript
- Lets you schedule tasks to run regularly
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2
Best for: Oxylabs is a great choice for market research, protecting your brand, checking ads, collecting travel prices, watching search engine rankings, comparing prices, and more.
Price: Free and paid plans starting at $49/month.
Import.io
Import.io is a web scraping tool that helps you collect lots of data from websites. It manages all your web data and makes sure it’s accurate, complete, and trustworthy.
You can use Import.io to build your own datasets by taking data from a specific webpage and then saving it as a CSV file. It can also help you create over 1,000 special ways to get data from websites.
Import.io is available online and as a free app for Mac, Linux, and Windows.
While it has some good features, there are also some downsides. It has a low rating on Capterra because users say it’s expensive and doesn’t have good customer support.
Best for: Import.io is best for checking prices, machine learning, researching investments, and other things. It can be used by online stores, retailers, and researchers.
Price: Plans start at $199/ month.
Scrapy
Scrapy is another great tool for scraping websites. It’s a free tool that developers who know Python can use together to build powerful web crawlers (programs that browse the web and collect data).
Best for: Scrapy is best for people who know how to code in Python and have some technical knowledge.
Grepsr
Grepsr is a tool that helps businesses scrape information from page. It’s great for finding potential customers, checking what competitors are doing, gathering news, and collecting financial information. It can even find email addresses for you.
Features:
- Lead generation data (finding potential customers)
- Pricing and competitor data
- Financial and market data
- Monitoring distribution chains
- Custom data collection (getting exactly what you need)
- API ready (can be used with other tools)
- Social media data and more
Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra
Best for: Grepsr is a good fit for small, medium, and large businesses because it offers many different solutions for web scraping.
Price: Plans start at $299 per month, which is a bit expensive, but it depends on what your business needs.
Scrapingdog
Scrapingdog is a good website scrape information tool. It makes it easy to use proxies, browsers, and even solve those annoying CAPTCHA puzzles. With this tool, you can get the HTML code of any webpage with just one request. One of the best things about Scrapingdog is that it also has a special tool for LinkedIn.
Features:
- Change your IP address with each request and solve CAPTCHAs, so you won’t get blocked.
- Work with websites using JavaScript.
- Use webhooks (a way to send data between apps automatically).
- Use a headless browser (a browser without a visual interface).
Best for: Anyone who needs web scraping, whether they know how to code or not.
Price: Plans start at $30 per month, with a standard plan for $90 per month and a pro plan for $200 per month.
HasData
HasData is a tool that helps you get info from any website easily, without needing special tools.
It has features like automatic changing of proxies (to avoid getting blocked), automatic scaling (to handle big projects), and the ability to handle websites that use JavaScript. This makes web scraping faster and simpler.
It also offers ready-made tools that don’t require coding, so you can easily get the data you need in formats like CSV, Excel, and JSON.
Features:
- Work with websites by JavaScript
- Automatically changes proxies to avoid getting blocked
- Can get data from all over the world
- No limits on how much data you can get
- Can get data from Google search results
Best for: It’s great for people who don’t know how to code or don’t want to write their own scripts.
Price: You can try it for free for 30 days.
- Individual: $29 per month
- Startup: $49 per month
- Business: $99 per month
- Enterprise: $249 per month
Diffbot
Diffbot is a web scraping tool that helps you scrape information from web page easily. It’s one of the best tools for this. It can automatically figure out what’s on a page and get things like products, articles, discussions, videos, or images.
Features:
- Product API (a way to get info about products)
- Clean text and HTML (makes the info easy to read)
- Search to find only what you need
- Can scrape websites in different languages
- Saves info as JSON or CSV files (common ways to store data)
- Tools to get articles, products, discussions, videos, and images
- Can control how it crawls websites
- Works completely online (no need to install anything)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars on Capterra
Best for: Diffbot is great for marketing teams who want to find potential customers, research the market, reach out to people, and understand how people feel about their brand.
Price: You can try it for 14 days without money. After that, plans start at $299 per month, which is pretty expensive. But, you need to decide if the extra features are worth it for your business.
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