13 Best Web Scraping Tools in 2024 [Reviewed]

While browsing the web scraping tools market, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the vast selection. The available software ranges from free libraries to complete (and expensive) platforms, from no-code tools to developer-only solutions.

This article aims to make the choice of data extraction tools easier. You'll learn about the available types of software and find a comprehensive review of the ten best tools for different use cases.

And if you don’t have time to go into details, here's a quick comparison:

What Are Web Scraping Tools?

Web scraping tools are the software used for extracting data from web pages at scale. They help automate the process, avoid blocks and bans, and retrieve the data in a format that enables further analysis.

If you'd like to brush up on the basics of web scraping, take a look at these 101 guides:

• What Is Web Scraping and What Is It Used For?
• Web Crawling vs. Web Scraping

Types of Web Scraping Tools

Web scraping tools can be divided into sub-categories based on the software type and general purpose. Understanding what each type can or cannot do will help you shortlist your candidates.

Web Scraping APIs

Web scraping APIs are lightweight, flexible tools with the most advanced anti-blocking features. They’re easy to use on top of your existing tool stack and guarantee fast, uninterrupted performance even for large data volumes. Since they require coding knowledge, they’re dedicated to developers and provide a good balance of automation and flexibility. Examples of this type of tool include ZenRows or Apify.

Web Scraping Libraries and Frameworks

These open-source tools let you build your scraper, integrating with specific programming languages. They’re flexible and most often free, but they naturally require coding knowledge to use, and more advanced web scraping options have to be additionally set up. This guide highlights three popular Python frameworks and libraries, but you can find equivalents for every language. Check out our guides:

• 7 Best Python Web Scraping Libraries
• Top 5 JavaScript and NodeJS Web Scraping Libraries
• 10 Best PHP Web Scraping Libraries
• 7 Best C# Web Scraping Libraries

Web Scraping Software

This category includes cloud-based software for web scraping. These tools are often complete, no-code solutions that support native integrations, making them a good choice for professionals without programming knowledge, e.g. researchers, marketers, or salespeople. However, since they're aimed at non-developers, they often lack customizability. Examples of these tools include Octoparse. Import.io, or Diffbot.

Desktop Scraping Applications

Desktop applications are installed locally on your computer. They're often free or require a one-time license purchase only. Due to infrastructural constraints, desktop applications may not scale well enough for larger projects. Examples of such software are ParseHub or ScreamingFrog.

No-code Browser Scrapers

These are usually lighter versions of professional software and APIs. You can install them as a browser extension, and they sometimes come with a dashboard. They're easy to use and often free, but their functionalities and scraping power are limited. Webscraper.io, Data Miner, or Instant Data Scraper are perfect for testing them out.

However, remember that these specializations don't correspond with the software's web scraping quality or capabilities. What's “under the hood” of the dedicated solutions is identical to the more general scrapers. Their only advantage may be the specialized knowledge of their customer success teams, who are trained to support your use case. To test if that's the case, make use of demos offered by the software before you make the final decision!

13 Best Tools for Web Scraping

Now, let's take a more detailed look at the top web scraping software on the market. You'll learn about each tool's pros, cons, prices, and top use cases.

1. ZenRows: The Complete Web Scraping API

ZenRows is a web scraping API with a powerful toolkit for extracting data at scale. The tool lets you bypass any anti-bot protection system, including even the most advanced protection systems. For total anonymity, ZenRows offers premium proxies and proxy rotator, a headless browser, and User Agent rotator.

ZenRows is also equipped with JavaScript rendering to scrape sites with even the most challenging UIs, and an auto-parsing feature to extract data in easily readable formats right away.

It smoothly integrates with any programming language, including Python, NodeJS, Java, PHP, Go, and Ruby.

👍 Pros:

• Easy to use.
• Full anti-bot bypass, including even the most advanced WAFs.
• Exhaustive documentation.
• JavaScript rendering for human-like interactivity.
• 24/7 customer support.
• Auto-parsing.
• You only pay for successful requests.

👎 Cons:

• Requires coding knowledge to use.

💰Pricing:

Free trial with 1,000 API credits. Paid plans start at $49/month.

Use if:

You’re a developer with large-scale data scraping needs in any niche, looking for a tool that balances flexibility with automation and provides a full anti-bot bypass.

2. Apify: API for Easy Scraping of Popular Sites

Apify is a popular platform for building web scrapers. Its place on this list is due to the handy feature called Apify Store, which gathers 1500+ pre-built APIs. They can be used for popular servers such as Instagram, Twitter, Google Maps, and others, saving you time devising your own solutions. However, the tool also lets you build custom APIs. Other Apify features include rotating proxies, an open-source web scraping library, and a CLI.

👍 Pros:

• Rich library of pre-built actors.
• Big community support.
• Ease of integration.
• High customizability.

👎 Cons:

• Hidden costs (most features are charged separately per usage, so scaling up may be costly).

💰Pricing:

Apify's free plan offers $5 in platform credits. Paid options start at $49/month.

Use if:

You’re code-savvy, but you want to scrape popular sites and save time by using ready-made solutions.

3. Octoparse: No-code Data Extraction Software

Octoparse is a cloud-based, no-code web scraping platform. It promises full process automation, anti-bot bypass, and customizable workflows supported by AI and automations. As such, Octoparse is a great example of a “hands-off” scraper that doesn't require a developer to set up. It offers lots of ready-made scraping templates, point-and-click UI, and automated alerts and reports.

👍 Pros:

• Ease of use.
• Anti-bot bypass.
• Rotating proxies, AJAX handling.
• Pre-made templates.

👎 Cons:

• Limited customizability (since you don’t have access to code, you can only do what the UI allows).
• Costly.
• Team cooperation is only available for professional plans and up.

💰Pricing:

The free trial plan isn't limited in time but allows only ten tasks and two concurrent runs. Paid subscriptions start at $89/month.

Use if:

You're looking for complete scraping software, and you don't have coding knowledge, especially if you're an ecommerce or marketing specialist (the tool offers ready templates for these use cases).

4. Import.io: Scraper for E-commerce

Import.io is another representative of no-code web scraping software. This one caters specifically to ecommerce businesses, providing stellar marketing intelligence services. The point-and-click, no-code solution allows users to crawl and scrape websites at scale, with full anti-bot bypass and automatic scheduling. The platform also provides managed intelligence-gathering services for enterprises.

👍 Pros:

• E-commerce oriented, with experts on board.
• No-code program.
• Integrations with data analytics software and BI tools.

👎 Cons:

• Costly.
• The subscription-based policy doesn't allow idle periods.
• Limited customizability.

💰Pricing:

Subscription plans start at $399/month.

Use if:

You're a market researcher or sales specialist in an enterprise-level company, who wants a complete solution that doesn't require any in-house development.

5. Diffbot: From Web Content to Structured Data

Diffbot is an API that builds databases out of Internet content. It uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) and computer vision to automate information gathering and cleaning. Diffbot handle data extraction and site crawling, and offers an extensive pre-existing knowledge graph. It comes in handy for price monitoring, market research, or sentiment analysis.

Diffbot is not a traditional web scraping software—all the scraping is done “under the hood”, letting the user reap the benefits of using rich databases of structured data.

👍 Pros:

• Automatically transforms scraped information into structured data.
• No-code solutions, easy-to-use by non-developers.
• Extensive pre-existing databases.

👎 Cons:

• Costly
• Limited flexibility—very database-oriented
• Only the most expensive plans allow bulk extracts and web crawling.

💰Pricing:

Diffbot offers a free plan with limited options. Paid plans start at $299/month.

Use if:

You’re part of a research or commercial organizational team with no coding experience, your motivation to scrape the web is to build databases, and you’re not in need of complex customizations.

6. ParseHub: Desktop Tool to Try for Free

ParseHub is a web scraping desktop app, with a free version available. This simple solution lets you extract data from multiple pages and access it via JSON, Excel and API. You also get webhooks and JavaScript site scraping capabilities. ParseHub is handy for teams with small scraping needs, but the more advanced anti-block features, such as rotating IPs, are only available in the expensive paid plans.

👍 Pros:

• Scrapes AJAX and JavaScript pages.
• Data downloads for JSON and Excel formats.
• Downloadable app for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

👎 Cons:

• The free scraping capacity is minimal.
• Expensive paid plans.
• The custom scraper setup is complicated.

💰Pricing:

ParseHub gives you 200 pages of data per run for five projects for free. Subscription plans start at $189/month.

Use if:

You want to test a no-code desktop-app-based tool, and you don’t have large data needs.

7. Screaming Frog: An SEO's Best Friend

No SEO professional needs an introduction to Screaming Frog, the website crawler for technical SEO audits. The platform efficiently crawls even the largest websites (including JavaScript ones) and allows for real-time result analysis, highlighting common SEO issues such as duplicate pages, broken links, or redirects. It also offers XPath data extraction, sitemap generation, and site architecture visualization.

👍Pros:

• Powerful free version.
• Comprehensive SEO audit.
• Easy to use by non-developers.

👎Cons:

• Use-case-specific.
• Limited customizability.

💰Pricing:

Screaming Frog’s unlimited free version offers most of the tool's powerful features. The license for the paid version costs €239/year.

Use if:

You’re an SEO professional in need of a reliable tool for exhaustive data audits.

8. Instant Data Scraper: Completely Free Browser Extension

Instant Data Scraper is a Chrome extension that packs quite a punch for a fully free tool: it allows to extract and then save data, handles dynamic content, and offers delay and maximum wait time customization. The extension has a scriptless approach: it lets AI detect the data for scraping, and then the user can customize the selections if greater accuracy is needed.

Web Robots, the company behind the tool, also offers fully managed web scraping services, and an IDE for writing JavaScript robots.

👍Pros:

• Fully free.
• Automated scraping with some customization.
• CSV data exports.

👎Cons:

• Won’t work against advanced anti-bot measures.
• Inefficient for large scale scraping.

💰Pricing:

Free.

Use if:

You’re looking for a smart, automation-supported browser solution for a small-scale scraping project.

9. Webscraper.io: Browser-Based Handy Scraper

Webscraper.io is one of the most popular Chrome (and Firefox) extensions for web scraping. It's a no-code solution that allows for dynamic data scraping and extracting data in popular formats. For those with larger scraping needs, the company also offers cloud-based software, which is additionally armed with proxies, data parsing, and a scheduler.

👍 Pros:

• Easy to use.
• Runs on the browser, no additional software required.
• Free.

👎Cons:

• The browser extension can’t handle large-scale scraping.
• Limited customizability.

💰Pricing:

The browser extension is free. Paid plans for the cloud solution start at $50/month.

Use if:

You’re looking for a light, no-code solution that doesn't require any extra software, and you don't have large scraping needs.

10. Data Miner: Powerful Automation Inside the Browser

Data Miner is an extension for data scraping and crawling that works for Chrome and Edge. It allows for automated scraping of a single or multiple pages. It handles pagination, dynamic content, and forms and login pages. Additionally, it enables its users to fill in “recipes,” which allows for easier scraping of similar pages in the future.

👍 Pros:

• A no-code solution.
• Browser-based, no additional software required.
• Simple automation that streamline work.

👎Cons:

• Gets pricey for large-scale scraping.
• Limited customizability.

💰Pricing:

Data Miner offers a free version with limited features. Paid plans start at $19.99 for a solo plan, or $49 for a small business plan.

Use if:

You’re looking for a browser-based solution offering simple automation and multiple-page-scraping capabilities, but you don’t need to scrape heavily protected websites.

11. Scrapy: A Popular Framework for Python

Scrapy is an open-source tool for automated web scraping in Python. It's one of the most popular frameworks for the most popular web scraping language, so expect an active developer community surrounding it. Its biggest advantage is asynchronous loading, allowing it to scrape many pages at once, and it has a rich collection of built-in web scraping solutions. However, it requires Python expertise, and a more complex setup is needed to bypass website protection systems and handle JavaScript.

👍 Pros:

• Open-source library.
• Fast scraping of significant data volume.
• Export in different formats (JSON, CSV, XML).

👎 Cons:

• It can't handle JavaScript on its own.
• No anti-bot bypass capabilities.
• Requires coding expertise.

💰Pricing:

Free and open-source. For commercial scraping, however, you'll need plug-in proxies bought from third-party providers, which can get expensive.

Use if:

You're a Python developer doing large-scale data scraping, and you'd like to try a free solution with built-in web scraping capabilities.

12. Pyspider: Python Web Crawler With Web UI

Pyspider is a Python web crawling system that lets you manage scraping tasks via a web-based user interface or the CLI. It natively supports JavaScript rendering via PhantomJS, a discontinued headless browser.

👍Pros:

• Free and open-source.
• Web-based UI.

👎Cons:

• Steep learning curve.
• No in-built anti-bot bypass system.
• Currently less popular than Scrapy, its community isn’t that active.

💰Pricing:

Free and open-source

Use if:

You're a Python developer, and you'd like access to a web-based UI for easier monitoring.

Unsure whether to start with Scrapy or Pyspider? Read our comparison of Scrapy vs. Pyspider!

13. BeautifulSoup: Python Web Scraping Library

Beautiful Soup is a powerful Python web scraping library for parsing XML and HTML documents. It's built on well-known Python parsing packages and is convenient to use and navigate. Beautiful Soup allows for great flexibility and has superb encoding detection capabilities.

👍Pros:

• Popular, with an active community.
• No framework constraints.
• Great parsing capabilities.

👎Cons:

• Steep learning curve.
• No built-in anti-bot solutions.

💰Pricing:

Free and open-source

Use if:

You're looking for a Python library, and you need powerful document parsing capabilities.

How to Choose a Web Scraping Tool?

When browsing for a paid solution, you should make sure it checks all the boxes a good scraper should check. Here are some essential factors to consider:

• Scaling up: If you're sure your scraping needs won't grow, you can opt for smaller-scale tools with lower data limits or query load. But most likely, the more your business grows, the higher the scraping capacity you'll require. You may want to avoid tools that set a limited bandwidth or charge extra for multithreading.
• Scraping scope: Do you only need to extract data from a few specific pages, or will you be scraping entire large sites? If it's the latter, search for tools that also enable crawling. Additionally, remember that many platforms are subscription-based, meaning they'll also charge idle periods. If you only perform occasional web scraping tasks or deal with small volumes, you're better off with more flexible or free options.
• Price: Some tools charge per use, and some have fixed subscription plans. If your data needs are large, the latter is usually the better choice. Also, always use the free trials before committing to the tool.
• Anti-bot solutions: Some tools deal with blocking systems better than others. Open-source solutions, for example, will not save you from websites' protection measures, even if you're code-savvy.
• Ease of use: Check if the tool has an intuitive, easy-to-use UI, especially if you're not a developer. It will save you the hassle of tiresome onboarding.
• Performance and speed: A good web scraping solution should save you time by performing efficiently and automating manual tasks. Check the list of features for rotating proxies, the number of concurrent requests, and automatic retries.
• Data formats supported: Make sure that the tools let you extract data in CSV or JSON formats, which will cover most of the use cases and are easy to convert.
• Customer support: Check if your tool of choice has 24/7 customer support and a good uptime guarantee.

Conclusion

Now that you've reviewed the list of the best web scraping tools in four popular categories, you're one step closer to making the choice! As usual, it's best to test the tools out on your own with free versions or trials. Remember to plan ahead: free solutions may be a good idea initially, but they won’t let you efficiently scale or perform web scraping without downtime. You're bound to get blocked by anti-bot protection systems in no time.

If you're ready to start testing now, jump to ZenRows' free trial. Test the tool on hard-to-scrape webpages, such as the Cloudflare-protected G2, and see how ZenRows effectively bypasses the CAPTCHA.

Good luck with your next project!