10 Best Web Scraping Tools and Software in 2023

The volume of data on the web is multiplying daily, and it’s become almost impossible to scrape this amount manually. Hence web-scraping tools have become increasingly popular and valuable to all, from students to enterprises.

Whether it’s real estate listings, seeking industry insights, comparing prices, or generating leads, web scraping tools automate the task of collecting the raw data and providing structured data in your desired format.

 

Why Do You Need Web Scraping Tools?

Web scraping tools are the most efficient means of data extraction. Let’s see why:

• Web scraping tools eliminate manual copy-pasting and offer efficient data extraction from websites.
• These tools provide insights into competitors’ strategies, pricing, and market positioning.
• Web scraping empowers data-driven decision-making by accessing vast amounts of data from multiple sources.
• By automating data collection, web scraping tools save valuable time for higher-value tasks.

 

Best Web Scraping Tools and Software

Web scraping software and tools are crucial for anyone looking to gather data. In this article, we’ve curated the best web scraping tools that will help you easily extract data.

ScrapeHero Cloud

If you’re looking for a hassle-free web scraping experience, look no further than ScrapeHero Cloud. With years of experience in web scraping services, ScrapeHero has used this extensive expertise to develop a user-friendly platform.
With ScrapeHero Cloud, you can access a suite of pre-built crawlers and APIs designed to effortlessly extract data from popular websites like Amazon, Google, Walmart, and many others.

 

 

 

Features

1. ScrapeHero Cloud DOES NOT require you to download any data scraping tools or software and spend time learning to use them.
2. ScrapeHero Cloud is browser-based, and you can use it from any browser.
3. No programming knowledge is required to use ScrapeHero Cloud. With the platform, web scraping is as simple as ‘click, copy, paste, and go!’
4. To set up a crawler, all you need to do is:
   1. Create an account
   2. Select the crawler you wish to run.
   3. Provide input and click ‘Gather Data.’ And that’s it! The crawler is up and running.
5. The pre-built crawlers are highly user-friendly, speedy, and affordable.
6. ScrapeHero Cloud crawlers support data export in JSON, CSV, and Excel formats.
7. The platform offers an option to schedule crawlers and delivers dynamic data directly to your Dropbox; this way, you can keep your data up-to-date.
8. The crawlers have auto-rotate proxies and can run multiple crawlers in parallel. This ensures cost-effectiveness and flexibility.
9. ScrapeHero Cloud offers customized crawlers based on customer needs as well.
10. If a crawler is not scraping a particular field you need, all you have to do is email, and the team will get back to you with a custom plan.

Pricing

ScrapeHero Cloud follows a tired subscription model ranging from free to 100$ monthly. The free trial version allows you to try out the scraper for its speed and reliability before signing up for a plan.

Scrapy

Scrapy is an open-source web scraping framework in Python used to build web scrapers. It gives you all the tools to efficiently extract data from websites, process them, and store them in your preferred structure and format.

Features

1. Scrapy is built on top of a Twisted asynchronous networking framework.
2. You can export data into JSON, CSV, and XML formats.
3. Scrapy is popular for its ease of use, detailed documentation, and active community.
4. It runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows systems.

Pricing

Since Scrapy is an open-source web scraping tool, it’s free to use.

Web Unlocker – Bright Data

Bright Data’s Web Unlocker scrapes data from websites without getting blocked. The tool is designed to take care of proxy and unblock infrastructure for the user. The user can focus on data collection instead, while Bright Data takes care of the rest.

Features

1. Web Unlocker can handle site-specific browser user agents, cookies, and captcha solving.
2. Web Unlocker scrapes data from sites with automated IP address rotation.
3. Web Unlocker adjusts in real-time to stay undetected by bots constantly developing new methods to block users.
4. Live customer support 24/7

Pricing

Web Unlocker follows a tiered subscription model ranging from a ‘pay as you go’ option to enterprise-level custom pricing. The price starts at $3/ CPM for the lowest tier.

Web Unblocker – Oxylabs

Web Unblocker by Oxylabs is an AI-augmented web scraping tool. It manages the unblocking process and enables easy data extraction from websites of all complexities.

Features

1. Web Unblocker offers a proxy-like integration.
2. Web Unblocker supports JavaScript rendering.
3. The tool has a convenient dashboard to manage and track your usage statistics.
4. Web Unblocker lets you extend your sessions with the same proxy to make multiple requests.

Pricing

Web Unblocker offers a one-week free trial for users to test the tool. Beyond that, pricing starts at $75/month for 5 GB.

Octoparse

Octoparse is a visual website scraping tool specifically designed for non-coders. Its point-and-click interface lets you easily choose the fields you need to scrape from a website.

Features

1. Octoparse offers scheduled cloud extraction wherein dynamic data is extracted in real-time.
2. Octoparse has built-in Regex and XPath configurations to automate data cleaning.
3. Octoparse provides cloud services and IP Proxy Servers to bypass ReCaptcha and blocking.
4. There is an advanced mode that enables the customization of a data scraper to extract target data from complex sites.

Pricing

Octoparse has a free version of 10 tasks per account. The higher tiers range from $75 to $208 per month. There is a custom enterprise plan as well.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a powerful but simple API that allows you to control Google’s headless Chrome browser. A headless browser means you have a browser that can send and receive requests but has no GUI. It works in the background, performing actions as instructed by an API.

Related: Web Scraping with Puppeteer and NodeJS

Features

1. Puppeteer is most useful for extracting information that relies on API data and JavaScript code.
2. When you open a web browser, Puppeteer can take screenshots of web pages visible by default.
3. Puppeteer automates form submission, UI testing, keyboard input, etc.
4. It lets you create an automated testing environment using the latest JavaScript and browser features.

Pricing

Puppeteer is an open-source web scraping tool and is free of cost.

Playwright

Playwright is a Node library by Microsoft that was created for browser automation. In simpler terms, you can write code to open a browser; with the help of the automation scripts, you can navigate to URLs, enter text, click buttons, and, most importantly, scrape data from the web.

Related: Web Scraping using Playwright in Python and JavaScript

Features

1. Playwright was created to improve automated UI testing by eliminating flakiness, enhancing the speed of execution, and offering insights into browser operation.
2. Playwright provides cross-browser support–it can drive Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox.
3. Playwright also has continuous integration with Docker, Azure, CircleCI, and Jenkins.

Pricing

Like Puppeteer, Playwright is also an open-source library that anyone can use free of cost.

Cheerio

Cheerio is a library that parses and manipulates HTML and XML documents. Suppose you are writing a web scraper in JavaScript. In that case, Cheerio API is a fast option that makes parsing, manipulating, and rendering efficient.

Related: Cheerio Web Scraping: A Beginner’s Guide

Features

1. Cheerio allows using jQuery syntax while working with the downloaded data.
2. Cheerio does not – interpret the result as a web browser, produce a visual rendering, apply CSS, load external resources, or execute JavaScript; that’s why it’s so fast.

Pricing

Cheerio is a free and open-source web scraping tool.

Parsehub

Parsehub is an easy-to-use web scraping tool that crawls single and multiple websites. The easy, user-friendly web app can be built into the browser and has extensive documentation.

Related: How to Create A Spider Using ParseHub

Features

1. Parsehub supports JavaScript, AJAX, cookies, sessions, and redirects.
2. Parsehub uses machine learning to parse the most complex sites and generates the output file in JSON, CSV, Google Sheets, or through API.
3. Advanced features include pagination, infinite scrolling pages, pop-ups, and navigation.
4. Parsehub lets you visualize the data scraped in Tableau.

Pricing

Parsehub’s free version has a limit of 5 projects with 200 pages per run. With a paid subscription, you get upto 120 private projects with unlimited pages per crawl and IP rotation. They also provide custom enterprise-level pricing.

Web Scraper.io

Web Scraper.io is an easy-to-use, highly accessible web scraping extension that can be added to Firefox and Chrome. Web Scraper lets you extract data from websites with multiple levels of navigation. It also offers Cloud to automate web scraping.

Features

1. Web Scraper has a point-and-click interface to ensure easy web scraping.
2. Web Scraper provides complete JavaScript execution, waiting for Ajax requests, pagination handlers, and page scroll down.
3. Web Scraper also lets you build Site Maps from different types of selectors.
4. You can export data in CSV, XLSX, and JSON formats or via Dropbox, Google Sheets, or Amazon S3.

Pricing

The Web Scraper Extension is free and provides local support. The pricing ranges from $50 to $300 monthly for more capabilities, including cloud and parallel tasks.

Wrapping up: How to Select a Web Scraping Tool?

Web scraping tools (free or paid) and self-service software/applications are good choices if the data requirement is small and the source websites aren’t complicated. Web scraping tools and software cannot handle large-scale web scraping, complex logic, bypassing captcha, and do not scale well when the volume of websites is high.

A full-service web scraping provider is a better and more economical option in such cases.

Even though these web scraping tools easily extract data from web pages, they come with their limits. In the long run, programming is the best way to scrape data from the web as it provides more flexibility and attains better results.

If you aren’t proficient in programming, your needs are complex, or you require large volumes of data to be scraped, great web scraping services will suit your requirements and make the job easier.

You can save time and obtain clean, structured data by trying ScrapeHero out instead – we are a full-service provider that doesn’t require using any tools, and all you get is clean data without any hassle.

Note: All the features, prices, etc are current at the time of writing this article. Please check the individual websites for current features and pricing.