Web scraping has grown in popularity as a method for businesses and individuals to obtain structured data from the internet. Businesses scrape data to stay competitive, and hence a strong data extraction tool has become an essential part of businesses for customer retention. Product information, text, images, customer reviews, and pricing comparisons are all examples of scrapable data sets.
Data extraction is a very useful and widely used process, but it can quickly become a complicated, messy business that requires a significant amount of time and effort. We use scraping tools to make data extraction from websites easier.
How do web scraping tools work?
A web scraper extracts structured data and content from a website using bots by getting the HTML source code and data stored in a database. There are many steps in data extraction, including preventing IP bans, analyzing the source website properly, creating data in a fitting format, and refining the data. These steps can be done more easily, quickly, and effectively with scraping browsers and data scraping tools.
There are so many web scraper tools available and it can be difficult to know where to start and which tools would be best for you. Each scraping tool has its unique use case and advantages. Here are some of the best scraping tools you can check out:
1. Bright Data:
Bright Data Scraping Browser is the first browser proxy-unblocking solution, designed to allow users to focus on web scraping while Bright Data handles the entire proxy and unblocking infrastructure. Users are not required to learn any new languages. They can easily access and navigate to target websites using favorite libraries like Puppeteer or Playwright. They can also interact with the HTML code of the website to extract the information they require.
The following are the primary advantages of the Bright Data scraping browser:
- It can bypass the toughest website blocks using AI technology.
- Scale with as many web scraping browsers as you need.
- Compatible with Puppeteer, Playwright, and Selenium.
- Automatically learns how to bypass bot detection software and outsmarts them.
Their scraping browser offers 7 days free trial and the paid plan starts from $13.50/GB and pay as you go plan is also there. You can choose from different plans based on your needs.
2. ScrapingDog
Scrapingdog is a web tool that makes web scraping easy for anyone, whether they are developers or not. It can get HTML data from any website with one API call. It also handles browsers, proxies, and CAPTCHAs without any hassle. It even has a LinkedIn API as an extra feature. Some of the other features that Scrapingdog offers are:
- It used Headless Chrome under the hood for scraping.
- Webhooks
- IP rotation is used to prevent IP address bans.
- It has 40 million+ IPs
Scrapingdog has different plans to suit different needs. The Lite plan costs $30 per month, and the Enterprise costs $200 per month. If you need a custom plan, you can contact Scrapingdog directly.
3. AvesAPI
AvesAPI is a fantastic tool designed primarily for agencies and developers, but it’s also useful for marketing professionals. Its main purpose is to extract structured data from Google Search in a highly focused manner. The best part is that it utilizes a distributed system, making it capable of handling millions of keywords with ease, making it perfect for SEO purposes.
Here are some features of AvesAPI:
- It provides Geo-targeted results, you can easily extract structured data from Google Search with a focus on specific geographical locations.
- The tool can quickly gather and parse shopping product data from Google Search.
- AvesAPI provides access to the top 100 search results from any location, enabling users to monitor their search engine rankings.
AvesAPI offers a free trial service and paid plans start at $50 for 25,000 searches and go all the way to $3,500 for 5 million searches.
4. Diffbot
Diffbot is a web tool that lets you scrape web pages easily, even if they are not in English. It has a special feature called “Analyze API” that can automatically identify the type of pages. It also gives you clean text and HTML and lets you search for specific data structures. Some other benefits of using Diffbot are:
- You can control how the crawler works
- Easily get APIs for different types of content, such as images, videos, discussions, products, and articles
- Choose between CSV or JSON data formats to export
Diffbot offers a 14-day free trial, so you can try it out before you buy it. The paid plans start from $299 per month and are suitable for developers and tech companies that need powerful web scraping features.
5. Scrape.do
Scrape.do is a web tool that can scrape any website without charging fees for hard-to-scrape sites like Google. This makes it very useful for anyone who needs web scraping. It also has a very fast gateway speed, which is about four times faster than its competitor. It can get anonymous data from sites like Instagram in less than three seconds.
Here are some features of Scrape.do are:
- You can choose the country you want to scrape from
- It provides rotating proxies to avoid bans
- You don’t have to worry about bandwidth limits with any plan
- Provides 24/7 customer support
Scrape.do has affordable plans that start from $29 per month. The Business plan is $249 per month and gives you 3.5 million successful API calls.
Conclusion
We have talked about different scraping browsers and tools, each with its own features, use cases, and pricing plans. The primary conclusion to draw from this article is that you should choose a web scraping tool based on your needs and goals. Web scraping can assist you in obtaining valuable data from the internet, but it can also be difficult and time-consuming if you do not have the right tool.