Top 10 Web Scraping Tools

Web scraping is an automated process to get data from multiple resources which is used by various industries without wasting their time in performing repetitive tasks of copy-paste. Here, top 10 easiest web scraping software are mentioned to help you find the best option to meet your data needs.

Web scraping is also known as web extraction, data scraping, web harvesting etc. But their goal is to get data from the web and store it in their local or cloud storage for further processing or analysis. Web scraper uses bots to scrape data from online websites.

Let’s take a deep dive in best web data extraction platforms :slight_smile:

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top web scraping software

Now the question is what kind of data is obtained by web scraping software. Basically, a web scraping software can extract huge variety of data from websites. This can be in multiple form such as:

  • Images: It includes product’s images, logos and photos on any websites.
  • Text: It basically includes product’s name, products reviews, descriptions, articles and others info on web pages.
  • Videos: It contains product demos, webinars and tutorials videos on the website.
  • Structured data: Price, descriptions, reviews, phone numbers,em etc are product informations which is available on the websites in structured manner.
  • Unstructured data: It includes the data which is not formatted in a specific way eg. text, images, videos etc. Which basically used for customer insights, competitive analysis, research and development, feed for machine learning or AI.

Agenty

Agenty is SaaS (Software as a service) company which have a powerful and flexible cloud based web scraping tool its known as Scraping Agent. It offers a user-friendly interface to create web scraping agent and range of features that helps to manage and analyze extract data. This is no- code scraper which allows you to extract data quickly and efficiently from any websites. It offers point-and-click web scraper extension for users who want to extract data from web without any programming knowledge.

Pros:

  • Point-and-click setup.
  • Customizable scraping agents
  • User-friendly interface.
  • Scripting for advance logic.
  • Cloud based data storage
  • Built in post-processing function.
  • Multiple Plugins to integrate with 3rd party apps.
  • Pricing starts from just $29.
  • 24/7 customers support available on chat, email or on call.

Cons:

  • Free trial is limited to 100 pages only.
  • Does not support Linkedin, Facebook crawling.

Import.io

Import.io is Los Gatos, CA based company founded in 2012. The Import.io web data platform is a scalable and reliable managed service or hands-on SaaS solution for extracting web data accurately. It also offers customers a cloud-based data storage system that helps to store and manage extracted data.

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • User- friendly interface
  • Rest based API
  • No coding required
  • Data storage

Cons:

  • Overpriced: The price is 10x higher than Agenty (Agenty : $29 per month and Import.io $299 per month for 5000 pages per month)
  • No individual website level support
  • Learning Curve

Dexi.io

Dexi.io is basic web scraping and data automation software. This is also called cloud web scraper tool. Dexi enables you to get data from all websites and social media pages. It can collect and save data to Box.net and Google drive and export this into JSON and CSV. Here are some potential pros and cons of using it:

Pros:

  • Firefox extension to setup agents
  • Automatic data extraction
  • Agents creation services available
  • No coding required

Cons:

  • Expensive for starters: $119 per month to start
  • Difficult for non-developers
  • Lack of documentation, example agents
  • Limited integrations

Zyte

We might know this software as Scrapinghub but now it is known as Zyte. It is the creators and the main maintainers of Scrapy, a popular web scraping framework in Python. Zyte(Scrapinghub) also offer services for building your scraper, deploying and running them to provide data of choice. It also specialize in large-scale web scraping.

Pros:

  • Large scale web scraping
  • Splash engine to full blown browser behind an API to execute action
  • Crawlera smart proxy to handle the IP block and automatic IP rotation

Cons:

  • Expensive for businesses: Starting at $450 per site
  • No Refunds
  • Hard to understand billing system

ParseHub

Parsehub is a browser-based web scraping tool. It allows their customers automatically extract data from website without any manual coding. Parsehub can handle interactive maps, searches, forums, drop down, javascript, ajax etc as Agenty.

Pros:

  • Automatic data scraping
  • Ability to use REGEX
  • Run on your system
  • Dropbox, S3 integration

Cons:

  • Require software to be installed
  • Expensive: Pricing starts from $149 per month
  • Limited support
  • Have pages limitation on per run.
  • Requires lots of steps to set up the scraper.

80Legs

80legs is a easy web crawling service which allows its user to create and run web crawlers through its server as a service platform. It is customizable crawling tool that enable users to create scraping workflows according to their needs.

Pros:

  • Pricing starts from $29 per month
  • It can be customized
  • Good for crawling
  • Data storage and management

Cons:

  • Not as flexible as other tools
  • Not good to scrape when you have category or URL list
  • Limited integrations

Octoparse


Octoparse is a Canadian company that offers visual web scraping tool. Octoparse gives the option to run your agent on cloud and also on your local machine. This tool can export scraped data into csv, html, text and excel format.

Pros:

  • Point and click interface
  • Can handle JavaScript, AJAX, or any dynamic website
  • Website also available in Japanese language.

Cons:

  • Expensive for starters - Pricing starts from $89 per month
  • Runs on your computer
  • Advance features are bit complicated
  • Unable to scrape data from pdf

Mozenda

Mozenda is probably the oldest web scraping software that allows to scrape data from HTML pages. But now Dexi acquired Mozenda. It has a Point and Click interface(now) to scrape data. The Mozenda software has features like: full featured API, track history, screen scraping, error handling etc.

Pros:

  • Easy to use for data scraping tool
  • Many years of experience
  • Powerful API
  • Point and click interface

Cons:

  • Hard to understand terms.
  • Not easy for complex websites scraping.
  • Costly for enterprise projects (Pricing starts from $250 per month.)

Webscraper.io

Webscraper.io is a small chrome extension freely available on Google chrome. The extension is good for basic data scraping from on page for small projects. Basically it works for small scale platform.

Pros:

  • Browser extension
  • User-friendly interface
  • Good for basic web scraping
  • Data storage and export

Cons:

  • Limited advance features
  • Not for businesses and Enterprises
  • Low Support system

Scrapy


Scrapy is an open-source and collaborative framework which used to crawl data from websites. It is basically designed to be fast and efficient so that can be used for wide range of purposes, from data- mining to automated testing.

Pros:

  • Fast and high performer
  • Customizable framework that create specific workflows
  • Large and active community of users

Cons:

  • Its learning curve makes it little difficult for beginners to get started
  • No graphical user interface,its command line tool
  • Limited support of JavaScript

Sum-up:

Here, I tried to list the latest best web scraping tools which definitely helps you to select the better data scraper for you. Overall a data scraping tool have wide range of uses across the multiple businesses whether its business intelligence, price monitoring, risk management, academic research and development or lead generation. Web scraping tools is the only way which simplify extracting valuable data and insight that improve decision-process of businesses.

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