In today’s world of information, being able to make decisions based on the valid and up-to-date data can be mission-critical for your business. In order to collect and analyze such data, businesses resort to the use of special online tools that make web scraping easy.
In this article we will study the best data scraping tools available in the market. And, like always, we will start by supplying you with some background info about the industry of web scraping and how proxies can help you in performing it more efficiently.
What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping lets you extract the valuable data from websites and various online platforms to be able to use them further for your business analytics. As a result, you can get structured databases made ready for decision-making.
The process of web scraping requires the use of special software tools called web scrapers. When powered with proper proxies, such tools let you stay undetected for as long as the scraping is in progress.
How Can We Use Web Scraping Tools?
Web scrapers for data extraction appear as scripts or API plugins that you can get straight from a website of a software provider. Normally, such tools can be launched to operate in the automatic or manual mode to process as much data as possible.
During its operation, a scraper will target the given URL and first will download the whole page for further dissection. It will then take parts of the code that will be essential for further storing into a database based on your predefined parameters and export it in a readable format.
The use cases of web scraping tools are also very widespread. You can successfully implement tools from this guide for data analytics in real estate, lead generation, coupon aggregation and fraud prevention, just to name a few. You can power them with SEO proxies for successful data scraping of Google or Bing’s SERP that can be essential for your needs.
In the list of top scrapers below we will accentuate on the areas of application of the most popular tools available on the market. We have excluded some names like Oxylabs and Bright Data from the list on purpose to concentrate on tools for data scraping only.
Top Web Scraping Tools
So, now it is the time we take a closer look at the top web scraping tools out there that have proven their efficiency with web scraping proxies users around the World. We have pinpointed the most outstanding features of each of the scrapers in the list and briefly laid out the use case scenarios for each of the tools.
1. ParseHub
ParseHub is a truly easy-to-use and incredibly elegant scraping tool, that allows you to collect the essential data from target websites without any need for coding.
The developers of ParseHub offer you a downloadable app for point-and-click data scraping. It sounds like magic, and that’s what it appears like for first time users. All you need is to open a site for scraping and create a pattern by clicking on the fields that require data extraction.
The software supports all JavaScript and AJAX pages. You can teach the tool to open, scroll up and down for data. You can even instruct the app to login and proceed with data extraction from forms. And, once you are done teaching the tool, you will have a massive array of data exported into JSON or Excel format using ParseHub’s REST API.
The package is perfect for the use by any data analysts, including those without any coding experience.
Pricing Policy: You can start using the tool for free and get 200 pages of data in only 40 minutes. Paid plans start from $189 and support proxy use and IP rotation (similar to datacenter rotating proxies). Here you will benefit from live tech support and much faster speed of scraping.
2. Scrapy
Scrapy is an open-source tool for scraping that is free to its users. The main benefit of Scrapy is that it is very well documented and, therefore, extremely popular among Python developers.
The key features of Scrapy include a whole selection of middleware modules that make it one of the best scraping tools with great integration options of all sorts. Developers can set up Scrapy for collaboration in order to use it for data selection from multiple areas or machines.
The scraper is portable since it is written in Python. It can be launched on Linux, Mac or Windows. You can power it with our proxies for price monitoring to be able to compile reports on the current pricing standings of your competition.
Pricing Policy: Scrapy web tool is free of charge. The development and support of the software is done by the Scrapinghub developers community.
3. Octoparse
Octoparse, just like ParseHub or Apify, is a no-code scraping tool that can help you with data extraction right out-of-the-box. It has a workflow designer that lets you set up the scraping patterns and start data collection straight inside the browser.
Unlike other web scraping tools, Octoparse features an advanced AI helper to identify the items for scraping in the auto-detect mode. To make the process even more efficient, you can provide the tool with datacenter proxies or static residential proxies, set up IP rotation, initiate Captcha solving and scrolling functions, etc.
Also, you can select from a multitude of scraping templates based on the most popular sites. This can get you started with data collection in no time.
Pricing Policy: You can get a free Octoparse account with 10 tasks to start with. An upgrade to a Standard Plan will cost you $75 a month (for 100 tasks, templates, IP rotation, Captcha solving tools and more).
4. Scraper API
Scraper API revolves around the bright idea of arranging flawless scraping with Ruby and high performing proxies. Since most sites that are popular for scraping employ sophisticated anti-bot systems, you really need geo-targeted proxies to avoid the risks of getting your scrapers banned. In its execution this tool is similar to such popular software as ScrapingBee.
With Scraper API you can start scraping with Java for Amazon or Google through a well-documented API that is available right from the website. The script for calling the respective API in Python will be right at your fingertips. The scraping results in a form of JSON will be made available to you even in a free trial version.
You can use this scraper for lead generation using proxies, and the success rate of scraping on the featured domains will be up to 99%. All the requests from the scraper are well-documented for all popular languages: cURL, Python, PHP, Ruby, Java to name a few.
Pricing Policy: You can get yourself started with Scraper API with 5000 free credits (internal currency) for 7 days. Paid plans start from $49 a month with 100,000 API credits.
5. Mozenda
Mozenda is one of the best web scraping tools targeting corporate and enterprise clients. It is a no-code solution for businesses looking into harvesting and “wrangling” (the actual term Mozenda uses) data for analysis.
It is one of the tools that combines both the power of a capable scraper and data management software for enriching the received info for further presentation and decision-making. The package boasts hundreds of happy corporate clients who engage in the process outlined by Mozenda. In a simplified version, the modus operandi of the software looks like this: data is fed to the system, the essential fields are extracted, unification and data matching are performed, data enrichment is handled, and, finally, catalog publication is carried out.
You can scrape using a cloud solution or an on-premise integration that will do your scraping and data handling. For a premium price that you will pay for Mozenda you can expect a dedicated round-the-clock tech support, and high speeds of scraping via an automated and easy-to-use web scraper.
Pricing Policy: Although the company does not disclose its prices on paid plans, you can expect the minimal costs of $250 per month for the tool. Trial or “test drive” of the system can be obtained for free, giving you 1.5 hours of scraping to check out the app’s performance.
6. Webz.io
Webz.io (or as it was originally known Webhose.io) is a pretty sophisticated, all-in-one solution for data collection across multiple well-structured sources of information.
It is radically different in terms of approach to all other scrapers presented in this list of the best web data scraping tools. It is a powerful API-based software to import data for media monitoring, risk intel, financial analysis and cyber security threat tracking.
All of the above is made available via a set of intelligent crawlers that collect info across all the blogosphere in literally hundreds of languages. This information gets subdivided into types of sources (like News, Forums and Reviews) for the end user to be able to tap into it for fast analysis and decision-making.
This web scraping tool can be essential for any data-driven sphere like legislation or regulations, where you need to track myriads of players in order to produce reasonable decisions. Any overhyped subject, like the influence of AI on society will not go unnoticed if you get updated on the latest news in the area just in time. All of that can be considered as vivid use cases for Webz.io.
Pricing Policy: Like with most corporate web scraping tools, you can get a free version for testing. Here you will get 1000 HTTP requests to try out the system. Paid plans for data extraction are not openly advertised and can be discussed directly with the sales team of Webz.io.
7. Common Crawl
We decided to finalize our selection of the best tools for web scraping with Common Crawl for being a remarkable effort of coding enthusiasts to provide the developers across the World with a free-to-use open web data extraction platform.
Let me give you just a few stats to appreciate how impressive this effort had been. With Common Crawl you have access to over 240 billion pages collected over 16 years. This corpus of data was used for training the popular GPT-3 engine. And, it has been absolutely free since 2007.
The system has been popularized over the years throughout 8000 research papers and it keeps growing with billions of new pages added each month.
The project is extremely well-documented and a coder with minimal experience in scraping can access the cloud based repository for free from within any system or browser. All the examples of use cases and FAQs are right there at your fingertips.
Pricing Policy: Free to use data repository from coding enthusiasts, researchers and startups across the World.
Conclusion
By now, you should have a very good idea about what web scraping tools are good for and how you can successfully use them for data extraction be it for any kind of scientific research or business purposes.We are glad to be on the lookout for you for data handling solutions that can be easily coupled with our proxies to avoid any risk of hindered data mining across the Web. Our everyday selection of datacenter and residential proxies is just a click away for your web scraping needs. So, if you need a competitive set of private proxies for reputation intelligence, lead generation or real estate missions, do not hesitate to reach out to our account manager via the chat box to your right.
Frequently Asked Questions
Please read our Documentation if you have questions that are not listed below.
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What is a web scraper?
A web scraper (or web scraping tool) is a software tool designed to extract information from the Web. Normally, such tools allow you to collect the underlying HTML code of a target page for further data handling and/or presentation for analysis.
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Why should I use a proxy with a web scraper?
When coupled with the right private proxy, a web scraper can remain undetected for the whole duration of your scraping mission. This is especially essential for geo-specific missions, when a residential proxy can imitate a real Internet user for the target site that you are using for data extraction.
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Why are some scrapers rather expensive and some are free to use?
Like with any niche software, you can expect a free solution that will require further involvement of coders for operation, and some tools that will be ready out-of-the-box with features that businesses are willing to pay for to save budget and time required for fine-tuning.
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What do I need a web scraper for?
You can benefit from using a web scraper if you rely on data from the web in your business decision-making. For instance, if you run an e-commerce site, scraping data about the current offerings in your competitive market can bring you insights for further business development.
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How did the web scrapers above end up in the list of top web scraping tools?
Our selection of the Top web scrapers was influenced primarily on the web scrapers most popular among the users of our proxies. We studied the APIs and software packages that are openly available to them in the market and decided on the top names worth mentioning in this article.
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