14 Best Web Scraping Tools for Data Extraction in 2023

Web scraping can be helpful for various purposes, such as market research, data analysis, content aggregation, price comparison, monitoring websites for changes, and many others. Let’s consider the 14 best web scraping tools for data extraction in 2023.

What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is a technique used to extract data from websites automatically. It involves writing a program or using a tool to access and retrieve information from web pages, typically in a structured format like HTML or XML. Web scraping tools enable users to gather large amounts of data from multiple websites, which can then be analyzed, processed, or used for various purposes.

14 Best Web Scraping Tools

1. Octoparse

Prices

• Free Plan: Provides limited features and allows for 10 crawlers.
• Standard Plan: Cost around $75 per month. This package allows unlimited crawlers, IP rotations, and API access.
• Professional Plan: Cost around $209 per month. This package is for large-scale data extraction and includes all features of the standard plan plus priority queue, high-speed extraction, and more.

Top Features

1. Data Export: Octoparse supports exporting scraped data in various formats such as CSV, Excel, HTML, TXT, and databases (MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle).
2. Advanced Regular Expression Tool: This tool helps deal with more complex data scraping situations.
3. Web Scraping Templates: Octoparse provides preformatted templates for scraping data from specific websites like Amazon, eBay, Twitter, etc.
4. Captcha Solving: It can handle some types of CAPTCHA automatically during the scraping process.

Pros

1. IP Rotation;
2. Advanced-Data Extraction;
3. Scheduled Extraction;
4. Extensive Export Options.

Cons

1. Limitations with Dynamic Websites;
2. Speed;
3. Limited Captcha Solving.

Rating

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2. Scrapy

Pricing

Scrapy is an open-source framework used for web scraping in Python. As an open-source web scraping tool, it is free for anyone who wants to download and use it.

Top Features

1. Built-in Follow Links: Scrapy can follow links automatically based on the rules set, which helps in navigation for data extraction.
2. Command Line Tool: It offers a command line tool to control the scraping process. The tool provides commands for creating new projects, spiders, parsing URLs, etc.
3. Robust Data Processing Pipelines: It provides powerful ways for cleaning and validating the scraped data using its pipelines.
4. Built-In HTTP features: Scraping tool supports features like authentication, handling cookies, retrying failed requests, and others.
5. Exporting Data: It provides built-in support for outputting the scraped data in various formats such as JSON, XML, and CSV.

Pros

1. Extensibility;
2. Community and Support;
3. Data Export.

Cons

1. Less Intuitive for Single-Page Applications;
2. No GUI;
3. Requires Setup and Maintenance.

Rating

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3. ParseHub

Pricing

1. Free Plan: ParseHub's free plan provided limited features and allowed for 200 pages per run and 5 public projects.
2. Standard Plan: This plan costs approximately $189 per month and allows for up to 10,000 pages per run and 20 private projects.
3. Professional Plan: This plan costs around $599 per month and provides unlimited pages per run and 120 private projects.
4. Enterprise Plan: For larger businesses or custom requirements, the web scraping tool offers an Enterprise plan, which provided more significant data extraction capabilities, excellent support, and customized solutions. The price for this plan was not listed and was likely negotiable based on the specific needs of the user.

Top Features

1. Data Export: It supports exporting scraped data in multiple formats, including CSV, Excel, and JSON, or via their API.
2. API Access: It provides an API that you can use to manage and run your projects programmatically.
3. Multiple Pages Crawling: With web scraping software, you can set up rules to follow links and crawl through multiple pages for complete data extraction.
4. Conditional Logic: ParseHub lets you implement conditional logic in your scraping setup, allowing you to handle various scraping scenarios.
5. Cloud-Based: It is a cloud-based tool, meaning you can set your projects to run and then close your computer without interrupting the data extraction process.

Pros

1. Scheduled Runs;
2. Cloud-Based;
3. Advanced Selectors.

Cons

1. API Access;
2. Speed;
3. Limited Free Plan.

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4. Import.io

Pricing

1. Starter Package: Designed for small businesses and individual users with basic web scraping needs.
2. Standard Package: Designed to retrieve information from interactive websites and overcome CAPTCHAs and login barriers.
3. Advanced Package: Developed to efficiently extract large volumes of data, catering to the highest priority use cases with extensive support.
4. Custom: Aimed at large corporations with high-volume data extraction needs and requirements for advanced features and priority support.

Top Features

1. Data Quality Assurance: It offers data quality assurance features, which ensure the data you're scraping is accurate and complete.
2. Scheduling and Automation: Web scraping software allows you to schedule your scraping tasks to run at specific intervals, which is useful for projects where you need regular data updates.
3. API Access: It provides an API that you can use to manage and run your projects programmatically or to integrate the scraped data directly into your applications.
4. Webhooks: Webhooks allow real-time data delivery, meaning your data is pushed to your endpoint as soon as it is ready.

Pros

1. Scheduling and Automation;
2. API Access;
3. Cloud-Based.

Cons

1. Pricing;
2. Learning Curve;
3. Customer Support.

Rating

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5. Web Scraper

Pricing

1. Web Scraper Browser Extension: This is a free tool available as a browser extension for Chrome. It allows you to set up and run small to medium scraping tasks in your browser.
2. Project: $50 per month.
3. Professional: $100 per month.
4. Business: $200 per month.
5. Scale: from $300 per month.

Top Features

1. Multi-Page Scraping: Web Scraper can navigate multiple pages of a website to scrape data, and it can also handle sites that use infinite scrolling.
2. Sitemap-Based Structure: A web scraping tool structures your scraping project as a sitemap, where you can define what pages to navigate, what data to extract, and how the pages are interconnected.
3. Data Export: Web Scraper supports exporting the scraped data in various formats, including CSV.
4. Cloud-based Scraping: With the cloud service (a paid feature), you can scale up your scraping tasks and run them on Web Scraper's servers, saving you from using your computer resources.

Pros

1. Multi-Page and Infinite Scrolling Support;
2. Cloud-Based Scraping;
3. Data Export.

Cons

1. Limited Features in Free Version;
2. No JavaScript Rendering in Free Version;
3. Learning Curve.

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6. Beautiful Soup

Pricing

Beautiful Soup is an open-source library for Python that is used for web scraping purposes to pull the data out of HTML and XML files. It is freely available for use and modification. There is no cost to use Beautiful Soup.

As with any open-source tool, while the library itself is free, there may be associated costs depending on how you use it. For instance, you might need to invest time in learning how to use the library, or you might need to pay for computing resources if you are doing large-scale data extraction.

Top Features

1. Easy Navigation: The web scraping tool transforms a complex HTML document into a tree of Python objects, such as tags, navigable strings, or comments. You can navigate this tree and find the data you need.
2. Searching the Parse Tree: Beautiful Soup provides methods and Pythonic idioms for searching the parse tree. You can filter elements by their tags, attributes, text content, or relationship to other elements.
3. Modifying the Parse Tree: Web scraping software allows you to modify the parse tree or individual elements in the parse tree. This means you can change tag names and attribute values, add new tags, modify .string and .contents, replace_with() and insert(), and more.
4. Printing the Parse Tree: It provides methods for pretty-printing the parse tree with or without formatting.
5. Parse Filters: It supports complex patterns and methods for searching the parse tree. You can use a function, a regular expression, a list, or a string for filtering during a search.

Pros

1. Open Source;
2. Well Documented;
3. Community.

Cons

1. Requires Programming Knowledge;
2. Speed;
3. No JavaScript Support.

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7. Selenium

Pricing

Selenium is a free and open-source automated testing framework used to validate web applications across different browsers and platforms. It is free to use, but you can also change its source code to meet your requirements, thanks to its open-source nature.

That being said, while Selenium itself is free, certain indirect costs can be associated with its use:

1. Learning and Development Time.
2. Infrastructure Costs.
3. Support Costs.

Top Features

1. Selenium Grid: Web scraping software allows running tests in parallel, where different tests can be run simultaneously on different remote machines. This helps reduce the time taken to execute parallel tests and aids in achieving faster feedback.
2. Integration with other Tools: It can be easily integrated with tools like TestNG and JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports. This tool can also be integrated with Maven, Jenkins, and Docker for continuous testing.
3. Community Support: It has a large user base and an active community, making it easier to find help and resources for learning and problem-solving.
4. Open Source: Being an open-source web scraping tool, Selenium is free to use, and it allows users to extend and modify the source code to suit their needs.

Pros

1. Open Source;
2. Cross-Browser Compatibility;
3. Multi-Language Support.

Cons

1. Complexity;
2. Limited Support for Dynamic Web Pages;
3. No built-in Reporting.

Rating

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8. Dexi.io

Pricing

• Trial: free. Take a test drive of Planet Earth’s most powerful web data extraction tool.
• Standard: Build complex data projects with increased capacity and email support.
• Corporate: Expand your reach with higher volume, an account manager, and options to expand. 
• Enterprise: Create powerful harvesting solutions that drive web data strategy at scale.

Contact their sales or customer service team. They should be able to provide you with the most current pricing details and any available packages or plans that could meet your specific needs.

Top Features

1. Robust Data Extraction: Dexi.io can extract data from all types of websites, including those with complex structures or those that use JavaScript, AJAX, cookies, sessions, and redirects.
2. Dataflow and Pipelines: With a web scraping tool, you can create data flow pipelines that allow you to extract, transform, and load (ETL) the data in a single process. This is useful for cleaning and formatting the data as it's extracted.
3. Multiple Extraction Types: It supports different types of extraction, such as web crawling for large-scale data extraction, data extraction for precise and targeted data extraction, and file downloads for downloading files and images from websites.
4. Browser-Based Tool: It is a browser-based tool, which means you don't need to install any software on your machine. You can access it from any device with an internet connection.

Pros

1. Scheduling and Automation;
2. Multiple Extraction Types;
3. Integration and Export Options.

Cons

1. Pricing;
2. Learning Curve;
3. Dependency on Internet Connection.

Rating

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9. Mozenda

Pricing

• Trial: free. Take a test drive of Planet Earth’s most powerful web data extraction tool.
• Standard: Build complex data projects with increased capacity and email support.
• Corporate: Expand your reach with higher volume, an account manager, and options to expand. 
• Enterprise: Create powerful harvesting solutions that drive web data strategy at scale.

Top Features

1. Automated Data Extraction: It enables you to schedule and automate the data extraction process, saving time and effort. You can set up recurring scraping tasks to run at specified intervals.
2. Data Transformation and Enrichment: The web scraping tool provides features to transform and enrich the extracted data. You can clean and format the data, perform calculations, merge datasets, and add custom fields or values.
3. Integration and Export Options: It offers integration capabilities with other systems and services. You can export the scraped data in various formats, including CSV, Excel, XML, and JSON. It also supports direct integration with databases and APIs.
4. Scalability and Performance: It is designed to handle large-scale scraping tasks. This tool provides scalability and performance optimization features to ensure efficient data extraction from numerous sources.

Pros

1. Automation and Scheduling;
2. Integration and Export Options;
3. Dedicated Support.

Cons

1. Pricing;
2. Learning Curve;
3. Limited JavaScript Handling.

Rating

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10. Apify

Pricing

1. Free Plan: The web scraping tool provides a free plan that includes a limited number of free computing units (CPU and memory usage), free storage, and limited access to features. This plan is suitable for small-scale scraping tasks or getting started with the platform.
2. Starter: $49 per month.
3. Scale: $499 per month.
4. Business: $999 per month.
5. Enterprise: custom.

Top Features

1. Integration and Extensibility: Web scraping software integrates with various third-party services and platforms, making it easy to connect your scraping tasks with other tools and systems. It provides API access and supports integration with services like Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack, and more.
2. Monitoring and Alerting: It provides monitoring features to track the status and health of your scraping tasks and actors. You can set up alerts and notifications to stay informed about any issues or changes in your automated workflows.
3. Community and Marketplace: It has an active community and a marketplace where you can find pre-built actors and share your own, allowing you to leverage existing solutions and collaborate with other users.

Pros

1. Workflow Automation;
2. Integration and Extensibility;
3. Active Community and Marketplace;

Cons

1. Learning Curve;
2. Pricing;
3. Limited Control over Infrastructure;

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11. Helium Scraper

Pricing

• Helium Scraper Basic: The Basic version of Helium Scraper is available for a one-time payment of $99. This version provides basic scraping features and is suitable for smaller-scale scraping tasks.
• Helium Scraper Premium: The Premium version is available for a one-time payment of $499. It includes additional advanced features and is suitable for more complex scraping needs and larger-scale projects.

Top Features

1. Point-and-Click Interface: The web scraping tool offers a user-friendly point-and-click interface that allows users to easily select and extract data elements from web pages without writing code.
2. Advanced Scraping Capabilities: It supports scraping from JavaScript-rendered websites, AJAX-heavy pages, and dynamic content. It can handle complex scraping scenarios, including nested data structures and pagination.
3. Regular Expressions and Custom Functions: It allows users to apply regular expressions and custom functions to extract and manipulate data. This enables more advanced data extraction and transformation tasks.
4. Web Browser Simulation: The web scraping software simulates a web browser environment, allowing users to interact with websites during the scraping process. This includes handling JavaScript, submitting forms, and executing user actions.

Pros

1. Data Manipulation;
2. Web Browser Simulation;
3. Scheduled Scraping and Automation.

Cons

1. Limited Operating System Compatibility;
2. Lack of Community and Support;
3. Pricing.

Rating

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12. Diffbot

Pricing

1. Startup: $299 per month.
2. Plus: $899 per month.
3. Enterprise: custom.

Top Features

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP): Web scraping tool analyzes and understands the content it extracts, applying NLP techniques to extract meaningful information from text. This allows for advanced data processing and analysis.
2. Data Enrichment: It can enrich extracted data by automatically adding contextually relevant information from external sources. This can include social media profiles, company information, related articles, and more.
3. Automatic Structuring of Data: Web scraping software organizes extracted data into structured formats such as JSON or CSV, making it easier to work with and integrate into other systems and tools.
4. AI Training: It allows users to train custom machine learning models for specific websites or domains. This enables the extraction of data from complex or unique web pages that may require custom configurations.
5. URL, HTML, and PDF Extraction: It supports extracting data not only from web pages but also from URLs, HTML code, and PDF documents. This extends its functionality to a wider range of data sources.

Pros

1. Natural Language Processing (NLP);
2. Structured Data Output;
3. Scalability and Performance.

Cons

1. Limited Customization;
2. Dependency on AI Algorithms;
3. Pricing.

Rating

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13. WebSundew

Pricing

• Lite: $99 per month.
• Standard: $399 per month.
• Professional: $899 per month.
• Enterprise: $2499 per month.

Top Features

1. Automated Data Extraction: WebSundew supports scheduling and automation of scraping tasks, allowing users to set up recurring scraping jobs at specific intervals. This enables hands-off data extraction and regular updates.
2. Built-in Workflow Editor: It includes a workflow editor that allows users to create, modify, and manage scraping workflows. The tool provides features such as data preview, error handling, and conditional logic.
3. Data Export and Integration: It enables users to export scraped data in various formats, including CSV, Excel, XML, and databases. This tool also supports direct integration with external systems and APIs for seamless data transfer.
4. Proxy and IP Rotation: Web scraping tool supports the use of proxies, allowing users to rotate IP addresses and bypass restrictions or limitations imposed by websites. This helps to maintain anonymity and avoid IP blocking.

Pros

1. Data Extraction and Transformation;
2. Data Export and Integration;
3. Proxy and IP Rotation.

Cons

1. Limited Customization;
2. Learning Curve.

Rating

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14. ScrapingBee

Pricing

• Freelance Package: Designed for small businesses and individual users with basic web scraping needs. It costs $49 per month.
• Startup  Package: Geared towards businesses with larger data requirements and more complex scraping tasks. The price is $99 per month.
• Business Package: Aimed at large corporations with high-volume data extraction needs and requirements for advanced features and priority support. It costs $249 per month. The Business+ costs $599+ per month.

Top Features

1. CAPTCHA Handling: It automatically handles CAPTCHAs, allowing you to scrape websites more efficiently.
2. Large Scale Web Scraping: It is built to handle large-scale web scraping tasks.
3. Rotating Proxies: It uses rotating IP addresses to avoid IP bans.
4. Custom Headers and Cookies: You can customize HTTP headers and cookies as per your requirements.
5. Geolocation: It allows you to set geolocation for your requests.
6. API: Web scraping software provides an easy-to-use API to facilitate web scraping tasks.

Pros

1. CAPTCHA Handling;
2. Rotating Proxies;
3. Customization.

Cons

1. Pricing;
2. Dependency;
3. Limited built-in storage.

Rating

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Web Scraping As a Powerful Tool 

Here's a general overview of how web scraping works:

1. Retrieving web content: The scraping process begins by sending HTTP requests to the target website's server to retrieve the HTML content of a particular web page. This can be done using programming languages like Python or specialized scraping tools.
2. Parsing the HTML: Once the HTML content is obtained, the next step is to extract the relevant data from it. This involves parsing the HTML document to identify and locate specific elements such as headings, paragraphs, tables, or links.
3. Extracting data: After identifying the desired elements, the scraper extracts the required data using techniques like XPath, CSS selectors, regular expressions, or specialized libraries such as Beautiful Soup in Python. The extracted data can include text, images, links, or any other content on the web page.
4. Storing and processing data: The scraped data can be stored in various formats, such as CSV, JSON, or a database. Once stored, the data can be processed, analyzed, or integrated into other systems or applications for further use.

Web scraping tools should be used responsibly and in compliance with the website's terms of service and legal restrictions.

Web Scraping Tools FAQ

1. What are web scraping tools?

A web scraping tool is a software or a library that automates the web scraping process. These tools provide functionalities to retrieve, parse, and extract data from websites more conveniently and efficiently. They often offer features like data extraction, data transformation, scheduling, proxy management, and more.

2. Are web scraping tools legal?

The legality of web scraping depends on various factors, including the website's terms of service, the jurisdiction, and the purpose of scraping. Generally, scraping public data from websites without causing harm or violating any laws is considered acceptable. However, scraping private or copyrighted information, sensitive personal data, or bypassing security measures is typically prohibited. It is crucial to review and comply with the terms of service and applicable laws before scraping any website.

4. Can web scraping tools handle JavaScript-rendered websites?

Some web scraping tools can handle JavaScript-rendered websites, while others may require additional configurations or tools. Tools like Selenium, which automate browser interactions, are often used to scrape websites that heavily rely on JavaScript for dynamic content loading. Alternatively, some libraries or frameworks, like Puppeteer (for Node.js) or Splash, provide JavaScript rendering capabilities specifically designed for web scraping purposes.

5. Are there any limitations or challenges with web scraping tools?

Web scraping tools may encounter limitations or challenges depending on the complexity of the target website or the volume of data to be scrapped. Some common challenges include dynamic websites, CAPTCHA protection, IP blocking, rate limiting, or changes in website structure. Advanced techniques like rotating proxies, user agent spoofing, or implementing delay mechanisms can help mitigate these challenges.