Are you looking for the best JavaScript web scraping library for your next project? You've come to the right place!
This article will explore the top 7 JavaScript and Node.js libraries for web scraping, helping you navigate the options and select the best tool for your specific needs.
Let's go!
1. ZenRows
ZenRows is a web scraping API with a complete CAPTCHA and anti-bot auto-bypass toolkit. It provides all the tools required to scrape any website without limitations. As such, it can replace any web scraping library. A single API call is all it takes to integrate ZenRows into your web scraping project.
🔑 Key features
- CAPTCHA and anti-bot auto-bypass: ZenRows bypasses all CAPTCHAs and web application firewalls under the hood, allowing you to focus on your scraping logic.
- Proxy auto-rotation: ZenRows's proxy auto-rotation is handy for avoiding rate-limited IP bans while scraping multiple pages.
- Geo-targeting: The geo-targeting feature lets you bypass geo-restricted IP bans, allowing you to access content regardless of location.
- Request header optimization: ZenRows ensures your request headers are in the best shape to make your request more legitimate.
- JavaScript rendering: ZenRows' headless browsing feature lets you interact with web pages and scrape dynamic content at scale.
👍 Pros
- Residential proxy with a vast IP pool from daily internet service provider (ISP) network users.
- Full web application firewall (WAF) and CAPTCHA auto-bypass.
- Works for all programming languages.
- Full support for JavaScript rendering.
- Suitable for large-scale web scraping.
👎 Cons
- ZenRows is a paid service (but offers a free trial without a credit card).
🧑💻 Code example
Let's use ZenRows to scrape Antibot Challenge, a webpage heavily protected by anti-bot, to see how it works.
Sign up to open the ZenRows Request Builder. Paste the target URL in the link box, and activate Premium Proxies and JS Rendering. Select Node.js as your preferred language and choose the API connection mode. Copy and paste the generated code into your scraper.
Here's the generated code:
// npm install axios
const axios = require('axios');
const url = 'https://www.scrapingcourse.com/antibot-challenge';
const apikey = '<YOUR_ZENROWS_API_KEY>';
axios({
url: 'https://api.zenrows.com/v1/',
method: 'GET',
params: {
url: url,
apikey: apikey,
js_render: 'true',
premium_proxy: 'true',
},
})
.then((response) => console.log(response.data))
.catch((error) => console.log(error));
The above code gives the following HTML output:
<html lang="en">
<head>
<!-- ... -->
<title>Antibot Challenge - ScrapingCourse.com</title>
<!-- ... -->
</head>
<body>
<!-- ... -->
<h2>
You bypassed the Antibot challenge! :D
</h2>
<!-- other content omitted for brevity -->
</body>
</html>
ZenRows successfully bypassed the anti-bot and scraped the required data. Now, let's see the other JavaScript web scraping libraries.
2. Axios and Cheerio
Axios is a popular HTTP client commonly used for web scraping in JavaScript, while Cheerio is an HTML parser library in Node.js. Axios uses a clean API with modern JavaScript practices like promises for handling asynchronous requests.
Axios doesn't support HTML parsing, but you can pair it with Cheerio to parse and scrape specific elements. It also doesn't have built-in anti-bot evasion features. However, setting up proxies with Axios enhances its chances of bypassing anti-bot measures.
🔑 Key features
- HTTP requests: Axios covers the most essential HTTP request methods, including GET, POST, UPDATE, and DELETE, making it suitable for various scraping purposes.
- Promise-based: Its promise-based feature is handy for executing requests asynchronously, especially during concurrent scraping.
- Request interceptors: With Axios, you can alter requests to modify parameters like proxies and request headers.
- Request cancelation: The Axios request cancellation feature allows you to abort scraping requests based on specific conditions. For instance, to avoid rate-limited bans, you can cancel a request after a given number of attempts or if a request takes too long to respond.
👍 Pros
- Node and browser compatibility.
- Easy to use with clean syntax.
- Fast execution time.
- Active development and community.
👎 Cons
- No support for JavaScript rendering.
- Easily blocked by anti-bots.
- Axios requires a parser to scrape specific elements.
🧑💻 Code example
The sample code below requests the demo e-commerce website with Axios and parses its HTML using Cheerio:
// require the axios library to make HTTP requests
const axios = require('axios');
// require the Cheerio library to parse HTML
const cheerio = require('cheerio');
// make a GET request to the specified URL
axios
.get('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/')
.then((response) => {
// handle the response if the request is successful
// load the response data into Cheerio
const $ = cheerio.load(response.data);
// log the entire HTML content to the console
console.log($.html());
})
.catch((error) => {
// handle any errors that occur during the request
// log the error to the console
console.error('Error:', error);
});
Run the above code in your machine's terminal. You'll get the following HTML output:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">
<head>
<!--- ... --->
<title>Ecommerce Test Site to Learn Web Scraping - ScrapingCourse.com</title>
<!--- ... --->
</head>
<body class="home archive ...">
<p class="woocommerce-result-count" id="result-count">Showing 1-16 of 188 results</p>
<ul class="products columns-4" id="product-list">
<!--- ... --->
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Since we'll scrape the same website throughout the code examples, the other tools in this article will also generate a similar output.
Read our comprehensive guide on web scraping with Axios to learn more.
3. Puppeteer
Puppeteer is one of JavaScript's most popular automation and web scraping libraries. It provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. The library allows you to programmatically interact with web pages and simulate user actions such as scrolling, clicking, and hovering within a browser environment.
🔑 Key features
- Browser automation: Puppeteer lets you run a browser instance to interact with web pages. This feature helps you mimic human behavior during scraping, reducing the chances of anti-bot detection.
- Headless browsing: Puppeteer runs headless mode by default, allowing you to operate a browser without a graphical user interface (GUI). If you need to debug your script, you can run it in the GUI mode to view the automation process.
- JavaScript execution: Puppeteer allows you to execute custom JavaScript code within the web page context. This feature lets you manipulate the DOM to perform complex interactions and scrape dynamic web pages.
- Request interception: Puppeteer allows you to interrupt and modify network requests. You can use this feature to block resources or set specific headers for a particular browser context during active scraping.
👍 Pros
- Full support for JavaScript execution.
- Suitable for scraping complex websites like those using infinite scrolling.
- Active community.
👎 Cons
- The Chromium instance consumes memory.
- It triggers bot-like properties like
navigator.webdriver. - Limited to the JavaScript ecosystem.
🧑💻 Code example
Here's an example of Puppeteer code that scrapes the target website's full-page HTML:
// import the puppeteer library
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
// define an asynchronous function to run the puppeteer script
(async () => {
// launch a new browser instance
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
// open a new page in the browser
const page = await browser.newPage();
// navigate to the specified url
await page.goto('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/');
// get the html content of the page
const content = await page.content();
// print the page content to the console
console.log(content);
// close the browser
await browser.close();
})();
Want to learn more about Puppeteer scraping? Read our detailed guide on scraping with Puppeteer for a complete tutorial.
4. Playwright
Developed by Microsoft, Playwright is an open-source automation library for software testing and web scraping. It features a headless browser for interacting with web pages and can automate a wide range of browsers, including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Playwright is available in multiple programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and .NET.
🔑 Key features
- Cross-browser automation: Playwright's cross-browser support allows you to run your scraping tasks via different browsers. This feature is helpful when you want to spoof different browsers to avoid getting blocked while scraping. Like Puppeteer, Playwright also runs headless mode by default, but you can choose the GUI mode for debugging faulty automated interactions.
- Auto-wait: Playwright has a built-in auto-wait feature that automatically pauses for the DOM to load before interacting with it. This feature reduces manual pausing intervention, which is often unreliable. It's also handy when dealing with dynamic web pages, as it ensures your script pauses until details are fully loaded before trying to scrape them.
- Recording and debugging tool: If you don't want to debug in GUI mode, you can capture automated web interactions with Playwright's recording tool and view them later for troubleshooting.
- Code generator: With Playwright's code generator, you can open your target website in a live browser, interact with it, and generate selectors and scraping script on the fly without writing code.
👍 Pros
- Intuitive API for interacting with web pages.
- Suitable for scraping dynamic web pages that require complex interactions.
- Support for multiple programming languages.
👎 Cons
- Browser instances introduce memory overhead.
- Prone to anti-bot detection.
- Slow performance.
🧑💻 Code example
See a sample Playwright scraper that collects the target website's HTML:
const { chromium } = require('playwright');
(async () => {
// launch a headless browser
const browser = await chromium.launch();
// create a new browser context and page
const context = await browser.newContext();
const page = await context.newPage();
// navigate to the url
await page.goto('https://scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/');
// wait for the page to load completely
await page.waitForLoadState('load');
// extract the html of the page
const html = await page.content();
// print the html content
console.log(html);
// close the browser
await browser.close();
})();
Want to learn more? Check out our complete tutorial on web scraping with Playwright.
5. Superagent
Superagent is a feature-rich JavaScript HTTP client compatible with Node.js and browser environments. It supports all essential HTTP request methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) and offers functionalities like request chaining, built-in callbacks, and request retries.
Like Axios, Superagent doesn't support parsing out of the box but depends on HTML parsers like Cheerio to extract specific elements from web pages. Similarly, setting up a Superagent proxy to avoid IP bans is straightforward.
🔑 Key features
- Request retries: Superagent automatically retries failed requests due to network or runtime errors. The retry mechanism is also customizable with retry frequency and callbacks. For instance, you can pass an exponential delay callback to the retry mechanism in Superagent to implement exponential backoffs.
- Request chaining: Superagent's chaining feature makes code more readable and less repetitive. For instance, you can chain GET and POST requests in sequence to simplify complex workflows, reduce the amount of boilerplate code, and handle responses in a more streamlined manner.
- Callbacks: Superagent's built-in callback feature helps you manage asynchronous server communication more effectively. Callbacks notify your code when an individual request finishes, providing access to the response data (on success) or error details (on failure). You can leverage this feature to take appropriate actions based on the request's outcome.
👍 Pros
- Support for all essential HTTP request methods.
- Easy to use.
- Supported in Node and browser environments.
- Customizable with many built-in extensions.
👎 Cons
- No support for JavaScript rendering.
- Many built-in features slow down its execution time.
- Prone to anti-bot detection.
🧑💻 Code example
The following sample Superagent scraper extracts the target website's full-page HTML and prints it in the console:
const superagent = require('superagent');
// make a GET request to the specified URL
superagent
.get('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/')
.then((response) => {
// handle the successful response
// log the HTML content to the console
console.log(response.text);
})
.catch((error) => {
// handle any errors that occur during the request
// log the error to the console
console.error('Error:', error);
});
6. Selenium
Selenium is one of the top browser automation and web scraping libraries. Compared to Playwright, Selenium supports more programming languages and can control more browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Safari. Although Selenium runs the browser GUI instance by default, you can configure it to run headless mode.
🔑 Key features
- Headless browser capability: Selenium lets you run a browser instance in headless or GUI mode. It also enables you to automate user interactions and execute JavaScript directly within the browser.
- Selenium IDE: Selenium IDE is a browser extension that provides a record-and-playback tool. You can use it to develop your scraping script and save development time without writing code.
- Grid support: Although more commonly used for automation testing, you can leverage Selenium Grid to run parallel web scraping tasks across different machines and browsers locally or in the cloud.
👍 Pros
- Cross-browser compatibility.
- Stable and frequently maintained.
- Full support for JavaScript rendering.
- Support for multiple programming languages.
- Active community.
- Full support for user action simulation.
👎 Cons
- Steep learning curve.
- Browser instance introduces memory overhead.
- Cloud grid maintenance is often costly.
- WebDriver maintenance is complex at scale.
- Prone to anti-bot detection measures.
🧑💻 Code example
The example Selenium scraper below extracts the target website's HTML:
const { Builder } = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');
// initialize chrome options
let options = new chrome.Options();
options.addArguments('--headless=new');
// initialize a chrome webdriver with headless options
let driver = new Builder()
.forBrowser('chrome')
.setChromeOptions(options)
.build();
driver
// navigate to the target webpage
.get('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/')
// get the html content of the page
.then(() => driver.getPageSource())
.then((html) => {
// print the html content
console.log(html);
// quit the webdriver session
return driver.quit();
})
.catch((err) => {
// log any errors
console.error(err);
// ensure webdriver quits in case of error
driver.quit();
});
7. jQuery
jQuery is a JavaScript library for manipulating and traversing the DOM, handling events and CSS animations, and implementing asynchronous requests. However, jQuery only works within the browser and not in a Node environment. You can only execute it directly in the browser via HTML, not in your local terminal. That said, you can still use its functionalities via jsdom to provide a mock DOM within the Node.js environment.
🔑 Key features
- HTTP client: jQuery has a built-in HTTP client for making all essential HTTP requests, including GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.
- Ajax support: jQuery supports Ajax calls, allowing you to make asynchronous HTTP requests to handle content rendered dynamically with JavaScript.
- DOM traversing: The library provides efficient DOM traversing capabilities, allowing you to query and navigate the DOM for specific elements using CSS selectors.
- DOM manipulation: You can also control the DOM and simulate user actions such as scrolling, clicking, etc.
- Cross-browser compatibility: jQuery helps handle browser inconsistencies by providing a consistent API for interacting with the DOM across different browsers. This feature simplifies your scraping code and reduces the need for browser-specific adjustments.
👍 Pros
- Fast execution time.
- Efficient DOM traversing.
- Asynchronous support.
- Active community.
- Suitable for quick prototyping.
👎 Cons
- Unsuitable for large-scale web scraping.
- It's not supported in a Node environment.
- jQuery is prone to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) issues since it runs directly in a browser.
🧑💻 Code example
Here's a simple implementation of jQuery using jsdom:
const { JSDOM } = require('jsdom');
// initialize jsdom in the target page to avoid CORS issues
const { window } = new JSDOM('', {
url: 'https://www.scrapingcourse.com/',
});
const $ = require('jquery')(window);
// make a GET request to the specified URL
$.get('https://www.scrapingcourse.com/ecommerce/', function (html) {
// log the response HTML content to the console
console.log(html);
});
Check out our complete tutorial on scraping with jQuery to learn more.
Which JavaScript and Node.js Web Scraping Library Is Best for You?
Your web scraping library choice generally depends on your project's requirements. However, consider the following factors before choosing a web scraping library:
- Skill level: Choose a web scraping library you're most comfortable with. While some require deeper technical knowledge to set up and use, others are straightforward and beginner-friendly.
- Specific features: Your ideal web scraping library should have features tailored to web scraping, such as support for proxy setup, built-in proxy rotation, custom header setup, and more.
- Community support: Your chosen web scraping library should have active community support with rich online resources to solve related problems quickly.
- Efficiency: Web scraping is already memory-demanding, especially when extracting content from multiple pages simultaneously. To keep up with this demanding task, a reliable web scraping library should be memory-efficient and have low fail rates.
- Anti-bot bypass: An essential attribute of a good web scraper is bypassing anti-bots. There are many ways to fortify the libraries mentioned above. However, they require time-consuming, crude techniques that are usually unreliable. The only way to guarantee a complete anti-bot bypass is to use a web scraping API like ZenRows.
Conclusion
As you've seen, when it comes to web scraping with JavaScript and Node.js, you have several exceptional tools and libraries at your disposal. Each has advantages over the others, so you'll have to consider what kind of projects you want to execute and the level of your coding skills.
Once you've decided which fits you best, you can scrape any page you want.