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 scrapers…
Cloud-based web scrapers and platforms provide a relatively fast entry point into “Self Service” scraping. A self-service cloud web scraper is a good choice if you want to try out web scraping and have the basic technical knowledge to build scrapers.
In this post, we will go through some of the popular cloud-based web scraping platforms and provide you with details about how they work, their pros, cons, and pricing from information that is publicly available on their websites.
Cloud-Based Web Scraping Platforms:
- Scrapy Cloud by Zyte
- ScrapeHero Cloud
- Webscraper.io Cloud Scraper
- Parsehub
- Dexi.io
- Diffbot
- Import.io
Scrapy Cloud by Zyte
Scrapy Cloud is a hosted, cloud-based service by Zyte, where you can deploy scrapers built using the Scrapy framework. Scrapy Cloud removes the need to set up and monitor servers and provides a nice UI to manage spiders and review scraped items, logs, and stats.
Data Export
- File Formats – CSV, JSON, XML
- Scrapy Cloud API
- Write to any database or location using ItemPipelines
Pricing
Pricing generally depends on the number of concurrent scrapers you can run, and data retention and it goes up with the add-ons like Crawlera (Intelligent Proxy) and Splash (Website Rendering).
- Free for 1 concurrent job (maximum lifetime of one hour, then it’s auto-terminated), 7-day data retention.
- $9 per “capacity unit”/month – 1 additional concurrent job, unlimited job runtime, 120 days of data retention (vs 7 days in the free tier), and personalized support
- $25/month (or more) for Splash if you need to render websites in a headless browser. This is usually required for Javascript-heavy websites.
- $25/month (or more) for 150K Requests made through Crawlera, an intelligent proxy that claims to be the world’s smartest proxy network.
Even though the pricing looks simple, a typical crawl of 150K pages per month on a website that requires a headless browser and moderate scale of blocking would cost about $59 per month, for a crawl spread out through the month.
Pros
- The only cloud service that lets you deploy a scraper built using Scrapy – the most popular web scraping cloud framework
- Highly Customizable as it is Scrapy
- Unlimited Pages Per Crawl (if you are not using Crawlera)
- No Vendor Lock-In as Scrapy is open source and you can deploy Scrapy Spiders to the less functional open source ScrapyD Platform if you feel like switching
- An array of useful add-ons that can improve the crawl
- Useful for large-scale scraping
- A decent user interface that lets you see all sorts of logs a developer would need
Cons
- No point and click utility
- You still need to “code” scrapers
- Large-scale crawls can get expensive as you move up to higher pricing tiers
Links
ScrapeHero Cloud
ScrapeHero Cloud is a browser-based web scraping platform built by ScrapeHero. It has affordable, pre-built crawlers and APIs to scrape data from websites such as Amazon, Google, and Walmart.
Setting up a crawler can be done in 3 easy steps – Open any web browser, create a ScrapeHero Cloud account, and select the web crawler you want to run to scrape the website data.
ScrapeHero Cloud Platform allows you to add crawlers, check the crawler status, and review scraped data fields and the total number of pages crawled. The interface has crawlers that can scrape websites with features such as infinite scrolling, pagination, and pop-ups. You can run a maximum of up to 4 crawlers at a time.
The scraped data can be downloaded in CSV, JSON, and XML formats and delivered to your Dropbox. ScrapeHero Cloud lets you set up and schedule the web crawlers periodically to receive updated data from the website.
Every ScrapeHero Cloud plan has automatic IP rotation available to avoid getting blocked by the websites. ScrapeHero Cloud provides Email support to all free and lite plan customers and priority support to all customers with higher plans.
Data Export
- File formats – CSV, JSON, and XML
- Integrates with Dropbox
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of pages crawled, support, and data retention:
- Free for one concurrent job (25 pages), with a 7-day data retention
- Intro – $5/per month for 300 pages, 1 concurrent job, 7-day data retention
- Lite – $25/per month for 2K pages, 1 concurrent job, 7-day data retention
- Starter – $50/per month for 6K pages, 2 concurrent jobs, 30-day data retention, priority support
- Standard – $100/per month for 15K pages, 4 concurrent jobs, 30-day data retention, priority support
- Pro – $250/per month for 40K pages, 4 concurrent jobs, 30-day data retention, priority support
- Mega – $500/per month for 100K pages, 4 concurrent jobs, 30-day data retention, priority support
Pros
- No programming skills are required
- Can run up to 4 crawlers at a time
- Easy to use simple user interface
- Small learning curve
- Supports all browsers
- Includes Automatic IP rotation in every plan
- Email support for free plans and Priority support for plans beyond Lite plan
Cons
- Supports a limited number of websites
Links
You might also be interested: How to scrape Google Maps using ScrapeHero Cloud (no-code)
Web Scraper.io Cloud Scraper
Webscraper.io Cloud scraper is an online platform where you can deploy scrapers built and tested using the free point-and-click Webscraper.io Chome Extension. Using the extension you create “sitemaps” that shows how the data should be traversed and extracted. You can write the data directly in CouchDB or download it as a CSV file.
Data Export
CSV or Couch DB
Pricing
Based on the number of pages scraped. You purchase blocks of page or cloud credits and each page that your sitemap traverses will deduct one credit from your balance.
- Browser Extension – Free
- 5,000 cloud credits – $50 per month
- 20,000 cloud credits – $100 per month
- 50,000 cloud credits – $200 per month
- Unlimited cloud credits – From $300 per month
Pros
- You can get started quickly as the tool is as simple as it gets and has great tutorial videos.
- Supports javascript-heavy websites
- The extension is opensource, so you will not be locked in with the vendor if the service shuts down
Cons
- Not ideal for large-scale scrapes, as it is based on a chrome extension. Once the number of pages you need to scrape goes beyond a few thousand there are chances for the scrapes to be stuck or fail.
- No support for external proxies or IP Rotation
- Cannot Fill Forms or Inputs
Links
ParseHub
ParseHub lets you build web scrapers to crawl single and multiple websites with the support for JavaScript, AJAX, cookies, sessions, and redirects using their Desktop Application and deploying them to their cloud service.
Data Export
- File Formats – CSV, JSON
- Integrates with Google Sheets and Tableau
- Parsehub API
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of pages crawled, speed limit and the total number of scrapers you have, data retention, and support priority
- 200 pages in 40 minutes, 200 pages per run – Free
- 200 pages in 10 minutes, 10,000 pages per run – $189 per month
- 200 pages in 2 minutes, unlimited pages per run – $599 per month
Pros
- Point and Click Tool is simple to set up and use
- No programming skills are required
- Supports javascript-heavy websites
- The desktop application works in Windows, Mac, and Linux
- Includes Automatic IP Rotation
Cons
- Vendor Lock-In – You will be locked in the Parsehub ecosystem as the tool only lets you run scrapers in their cloud You can’t export your scrapers to any other platform or tool using Parsehub.
- Cannot write directly to any database
Links
Dexi.io
Dexi.io is similar to Parsehub and Octoparse, except that it has a web-based point-and-click utility instead of a desktop-based tool. It lets you develop, host, and schedule scrapers like the others. Dexi has a concept of extractors and transformers interconnected using Pipes. It can be described as an advanced yet “complicated” alternative to Yahoo Pipes.
Data Export
- File Formats – CSV, JSON, XML
- Can write to most databases through add-ons
- Integrates with many cloud services
- Dexi API
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of concurrent jobs you can run and access to external integrations
- $119/month for 1 concurrent job. This plan is pretty much unusable for larger jobs or if you need access to external storage or tools
- $399/month for 3 concurrent jobs, better support, and access to Pipes, and other external services through integrations
- $699/month for 8 concurrent jobs, priority “tech” support, and access to Pipes, and other external services through integrations
Pros
- Many Integrations including Storage, ETL, and Visualisation tools
- Web-based point-and-click utility
Cons
- Vendor Lock-In – You will be locked in the Dexi ecosystem as the tool only lets you run scrapers in their cloud platform. You cannot export your scrapers to any other platform
- Access to integrations comes at a high price
- Setting up a scraper using the web-based UI is very slow and hard to work with for most websites
- Higher learning curve
Links
Diffbot
Diffbot lets you configure crawlers that can go in and index websites and then process them using its automatic APIs for automatic data extraction from various web content. You can also write a custom extractor if automatic data extraction API doesn’t work for the websites you need.
Data Export
- File Formats – CSV, JSON, Excel
- Cannot write directly to databases
- Integrates with many cloud services through Zapier
- Diffbot APIs
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of API calls made to Diffbot, the speed of those calls, and data retention
- $299/month for 250K API calls at 5 calls per second
- $899/month for 1 Million API calls at 25 calls per second
- Prices differ for custom solution
Pros
- Most of the websites do not usually need much setup as the automatic APIs do a lot of the heavy lifting for you
- The custom API creation tool is easy to use
- No IP rotation for the first two plans
Cons
- Vendor Lock-In – You will be locked in the Diffbot ecosystem as the tool only lets you run scrapers in their environment platform.
- Relatively Expensive
Links
Import.io
With Import.io you can clean, transform and visualize the data. It sits somewhere between Dexi.io, Octoparse, and Parsehub. You can build a scraper using a web-based point-and-click interface. Like Diffbot, import.io can handle most of the data extraction automatically.
Data Export
- File Formats – CSV, JSON, Google Sheets
- Integrates with many cloud services
- Import.io APIs ( Premium Feature )
Pricing
Pricing is based on the number of pages crawled, support, and access to more integrations and features.
- $299/month for the most basic plan – 5000 pages per month. with no integrations or reports.
Pros
- A whole package – Extraction, transformations, and visualizations.
- Has a lot of value-added services which some would find useful
- Has a good point-and-click interface along with some automatic APIs to make the setup process painless
Cons
- Vendor Lock-In – You will be locked in the Import.io ecosystem as the tool only lets you run scrapers in their environment platform.
- Most Expensive of all providers here ( If we understood the pricing correctly )
- Confusing pricing model
Links
If you aren’t proficient with programming (visual or standard coding) or your needs are complex and you need large volumes of data to be scraped, there are great web scraping and web crawling services or custom APIs that will suit your requirements to make the job easier for you.
You can save time and get clean, structured data by trying us – a “full-service” provider that doesn’t require the use of any tools and all you get is clean data without any hassles.
Need some professional help with scraping data? Let us know
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Note: All features, prices, etc are current at the time of writing this article. Please check the individual websites for current features and pricing.
