Alexis Kestler
Scrape what matters to your business on the Internet with these powerful tools.
What Is Web Scraping?
Web scraping is used to describe different methods of collecting information and essential data from across the Internet. It is also termed web data extraction, screen scraping, or web harvesting.
There are many ways to perform web scraping:
- Manually – you access the website and extract the data you need.
- Automatically – use tools to configure what data you need and let the tools extract it for you.
If you choose the automatic approach, you can either install software on your own servers or use a cloud-based solution.
If you are interested in setting up your own web scraping system, check out these top web scraping frameworks.
Why Use a Cloud-Based Web Scraping Solution?
As a developer, extracting web pages, handling JavaScript, rendering pages accurately, and gathering clean data can be complicated. To reliably obtain quality data, there‘s a lot of work involved.
With a cloud solution, you offload all the complexities of web scraping to a provider. You don‘t need to worry about:
- Maintaining infrastructure and software
- Spending time on initial setup
- Preventing IP bans
- Managing proxies
- Retrying failed requests
Instead, you can focus entirely on configuring the data you want and putting it to use for your business.
How Web Scraping Benefits Businesses
Here are some of the key ways businesses utilize web scraping:
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Aggregate product information, images, prices, etc. from various sites to build a data warehouse or price comparison engine.
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Monitor any commodity, analyze user behavior, collect reviews/feedback as needed.
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Online reputation management. Scrape the web to detect fake reviews and guard your brand reputation.
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Identify SEO competitors for a search term by scraping Google‘s organic results. Understand what title tags and keywords competitors target.
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Acquire data for analytics, business intelligence, and other applications.
Now let‘s explore some of the top cloud-based web scraping services available today:
1. Scrapestack
Scrapestack allows you to scrape anything on the web.
With a pool of over 35 million residential IPs, requests sent through Scrapestack almost never get blocked. The service routes requests through multiple global locations to provide reliable, scalable data extraction.
You can get started with a free plan for ~10,000 monthly requests. Once satisfied, upgrade to a paid plan for more features:
- JavaScript rendering
- HTTPS encryption
- High-quality proxies
- Concurrent scraping
- Bypass CAPTCHAs
Thanks to comprehensive API docs for PHP, Python, Node.js, jQuery, Go, Ruby etc., you can have a scraper running in just 5 minutes.
2. Bright Data
Bright Data provides the world‘s #1 web data platform, consisting of two main products:
Web Unlocker
Web Unlocker offers an automated website access service. It uses proprietary unlocking technology to penetrate target sites at unmatched success rates.
The tool handles browser fingerprints, integrates with your current code, offers smart IP selection, cookie/IP management, IP priming and more.
You can also validate content integrity based on data types, page content, timing SLAs etc.
Pricing starts at $300/month. A pay-as-you-go model is also available at $5 per thousand page loads.
Data Collector
Data Collector simplifies large-scale web data extraction. As sites evolve, this API automatically adapts to site changes and new blocking tactics.
You can retrieve data in your desired format/structure from virtually any site, at any scale. Other key features include:
- One-click integrations (AWS S3, GCS, Azure, APIs, webhooks, email)
- Automated, structured data delivery
- Advanced data processing and cleaning
Choose between pay-as-you-go ($5/thousand pages) and monthly plans starting from $350/month.
3. Oxylabs
Oxylabs provides an easy-to-use API for web scraping ecommerce sites, job portals and more.
Data extraction is fast and accurate thanks to built-in functionalities like proxy rotation and JavaScript rendering. You only pay for the data you successfully retrieve.
The proxies provide access to 195+ countries so you can scrape region-specific data. As proxies and infrastructure are fully managed, you can focus on your project while Oxylabs handles maintenance, retries etc.
Key Features
- 102M+ residential proxy pool
- Bulk scraping (up to 1000 URLs)
- Schedule/automate scraping
- Integrations (AWS S3, GCS etc.)
Plans start at $99/month after a 1-week free trial.
4. Abstract API
Abstract API‘s web scraper makes data extraction incredibly fast and flexible for developers.
The API routes each request through multiple proxy servers from 100+ global locations. This prevents IP blocks while providing smooth scraping at scale.
Abstract also offers automatic JavaScript rendering, rotating IPs/proxies, and 256-bit SSL encryption for data security.
You can get started with a free 1000 request trial before upgrading to a paid monthly subscription.
5. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is trusted by Fortune 500 companies and handles 5 billion+ API requests per month.
The tool manages proxies, browsers, and CAPTCHAs automatically in the background. So you can scrape without worrying about blocks or failures.
Some key features include:
- Millions of rotating IPs
- Customizable requests (headers, rendering, locations etc.)
- Concurrent scraping
- 99.9% uptime SLA
Get 10% off your monthly billing with code GF10.
6. ScrapingBee
ScrapingBee is a superb cloud scraper used by companies like Zapier and Kayak.
The tool auto-rotates proxies and supports headless browser rendering. This allows you to scrape modern sites without getting blocked.
ScrapingBee is also highly customizable. You can add customized browser, proxy and scraping logic using JavaScript snippets.
Plans start at $29/month. There is also a free trial to test out the product.
7. Geekflare Web Scraping API
Underpinned by AWS infrastructure, Geekflare‘s API offers speed and reliability for your web scraping projects.
It supports scraping via desktop, tablet or mobile viewports. The API also renders JavaScript to handle dynamic sites.
With integrated proxy rotation, you don‘t need to worry about blocks either. The documentation covers examples for cURL, Node.js, Python, PHP, and Ruby to accelerate development.
There is a free 500 request/month plan to get started. Paid plans start at $10/month.
8. Apify
Apify provides various ready-made scraping solutions called actors. These actors allow you to:
- Convert HTML to PDF
- Crawl websites
- Run headless Chrome
- Extract data
- Transform data
- Check site security
- Monitor site changes
- Analyze SEO
And much more. Apify lets you get up and running quickly instead of building custom scrapers from scratch.
9. WebScraper.io
WebScraper.io provides an incredibly simple way to build and deploy scrapers using its browser extension. The extension lets you visually select the data you want from a web page.
Key features include:
- Extremely beginner-friendly UI
- Open-source browser extension
- Supports proxy rotation
- Can extract JavaScript-rendered content
Once configured, scrapers run either on WebScraper‘s cloud or on your own hardware.
10. Mozenda
Mozenda simplifies large-scale automated web scraping. With over 7 billion pages scraped, they‘ve served enterprise customers worldwide.
The self-service platform specializes in:
- Template building to speed up workflow
- Automation through job sequences
- Multi-threaded scraping
- Geo and language targeting
11. Octoparse
You will love the scraping experience offered by Octoparse. This service has both cloud-based and on-premise offerings.
Everything is configured visually through its point-and-click desktop app. Key capabilities:
- Extremely beginner-friendly workflow
- Handles JavaScript-heavy sites
- Can run 10 scrapers locally
- Built-in IP rotation
12. ParseHub
ParseHub helps you develop web scrapers through its desktop app. It auto-detects site structure, letting you visually configure the data you want.
The scrapers can then run on ParseHub‘s cloud to scale extraction.
13. Diffbot
Diffbot provides turnkey scraping for certain data types (articles, products, images etc.) via its automatic APIs.
It also lets you build custom scrapers and host them privately on Diffbot‘s cloud. Crawling, proxies and retries are fully managed automatically.
Diffbot‘s knowledge graph allows you to query the web for answers too.
14. Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub)
Zyte‘s automated data extraction tool lets you get structured data in seconds thanks to its AI algorithms.
It supports 40+ languages and extracts data from websites globally. Zyte also provides integrated proxy rotation to prevent blocks.
Other features include:
- HTTP API access
- Multi-format structured data output
- Direct AWS S3/GCS Delivery
Conclusion
The cloud-based web scraping services above demonstrate how virtually any online data is now within reach. The key is choosing a platform that aligns with your use-case, technology stack and pricing needs.
With an enterprise-grade solution that handles proxies, browsers, CAPTCHAs and infrastructure, you can dedicate your energy to extracting and leveraging web data for business growth.
