7 Best Web Scraping Tools in 2021

What Are Web Scraping Tools?

Aggregator, python developer, marketers or data scientists, all kinds of professionals demand some or the other kind of data. The purpose for acquiring such data may vary. It can be for performing competitor analysis, research, assessing distribution chains or comparing prices across websites in general. You do all this data management either manually or by deploying data scraping software.

Professionals use data scarping tools for multiple purposes like collecting data for market research, extracting emails and phone numbers of potential prospects from different websites, searching candidates for recruitment, tracking prices, etc. 

Paid and free web scraping tools are automated applications offering other options like IP rotation, auto run schedulers, agent grouping, navigation/pagination and much more. You can use free data scraping tools for configuring all your data requirements and enriching your research for business growth.

Who Can Benefit from Data Scraping Tools

Let us have a look at the diverse professions that depend on metal scraping tools or data scraping tools:

• Journalists and data scientists: Journalists and data scientists use web scraping tools to extract data for both research purposes as well as powering data models. The software is most useful for doing data cleansing and plugging all data into neat visualizations.
• E-commerce: Data scraping software is used by e-commerce platforms for scraping prices, ratings and user reviews from different websites. Popular online web scrapers even help with exporting such data directly into spreadsheets.
• Marketplace and aggregators: Aggregators and marketing research firms use web scraping software for aggregating data from multiple websites into a single platform. The software is most deployed for scraping products, profiles, content and news.
• Developers: Developers depend on instant data scrappers and its powerful API to scrape data and build web/mobile apps. The software also offers the module called regular expressions to extract only the selected data. 
• Consultants & analysts: Consultants & analysts deploy web scraping tools to backup all their business cases. These tools are also helpful in doing due diligence and competitor analysis. 
• Sales executives: Data can be extracted from social media, communities and directories for ushering leads through the sales funnel. Sales professionals depend on web scraping software solution for creating lists of all the potential leads.
• Python developers: Python developers prefer such scraping tools that can help with creating scalable web crawlers.
• Enterprises: Enterprises that regularly alter an HTML's structure require instant data scrapers for screen scraping and data crawling.
• NodeJS Developers: NodeJS developers depend on website scrapers for parsing their HTML.

What Are the Advantages of Online Web Scraper

You can fetch content from across different websites using website data scraper solutions. Along with quick data extractions, the best data scraping tools offer multiple advantages like:

• Scraping product images

Simple web scraper tools provide image lists for downloading product images from any web region. You can thus scrap product images using web scraping tools.

• Monitoring distribution chains

Web scraping tools provide market and financial data for monitoring the distribution chains. You can also gather other important information like inventory, categories, prices, etc. for content aggregation and competitor analysis.

• Data integration

All data that has been scraped crawled or harvested can be integrated into any business application that you are currently using. This is because popular web scraping tools depend on webhooks and powerful APIs for doing data integration.

• Looking for candidates or jobs

Web scraping software can be used by both employees and employers. Whether you are looking for a new job or hiring a new employee, paid and free data scraping tools make use of multiple filters like qualifications, area code, job preferences, role details and more for fetching data relevant to the case in point.

• Tracking prices from different markets

Web scraping tool is an ideal solution for those who are planning to launch a new product on their online store. Using this platform, you can compare prices across multiple online stores and markets.

• Offline reading & storage

You can rely on website scrapers for downloading information, manuals and knowledge bases from different sites. Once downloaded, these can be stored for reading offline even without any internet connection.

• Data collection for market research

Instant data scraper applications are robust tools for doing market research and estimating a company's position in the next six months. The software works by fetching data from market research organisations and multiple data analytic service providers for the purpose.

Key Data Scraping Tools Features

Instant data scrapers help with quick data extraction from the web. The platform is essential for organizations planning to scale their business using content aggregation and data crawling techniques. Here is a list of essential features of web and data scraping tools that help accomplish these tasks:

• Creating new extracting projects

Data scraping software solutions offer wizard-based window for creating new projects. This inbuilt setup wizard supports a link to scrapped product lists so that end users can create extracting projects with ease.

• Multi-thread data scraping

Website data scrappers save you from the hassle of crawling through several links for harvesting the data. The best web scraping tools thus help with running multiple threads for simultaneously browsing different links and webpages, all at once. 

• Data loading

Popular web scraping tools python make it easy to load the data into specific websites even when such content hasn't been embedded in the source code. This function is important because web content isn't always embedded into the site's HTML source. Creating asynchronous requests is easy too with instant data scrapping solutions.

• Autorun scheduler

It is because of the built-in autorun scheduler that scheduling web scraping projects is so simple. As you schedule a project, the best metal scraping tool in use would ensure that all scrapped data is exported to its destination folder immediately. All such scheduling can be done based on your preferences, hourly, weekly or any other time.

• Extracting metadata

Popular web scraping tools python support NLP or natural language processing for helping its end users extract all critical metadata. 

• Transformation scripts

With paid and free web scraping tools, you would find transformation scripts for transforming the scrapped data in any form. Some of the good examples of such prebuilt scripts are replaced, sub-string collections and more.

• Automated data export

Simple web scrapper applications make it easy to export scraped web data in the desired format. This could be any format, whether XML, MySQL, HTML or CSV. Popular web scraping tools also offer ODBC connection support for transferring results to different database connections. All these exporting processes for scrapped results are automated and quick.

• Data scraping & sorting

The best web scraping tools make data scraping and sorting a hassle-free process. All this because of the software's inbuilt no-code and HTML extractors that make it easy to scrape all the logged in pages. You can also expect immediate notifications as and when the data gets updated.

• Extracting hidden data

Online web scrappers offer Xpath and custom CSS selectors for extracting all hidden data. You can also use the software for extracting data from navigation pagination as well as ajax, JavaScripts and other dynamic websites.

• URL pattern matching

URL pattern matching is done for navigating through site pages for data scraping and extraction purposes. Besides URL pattern matching, there are other options like drop down selections and link structures for data harvesting.

Top 8 Web Web Scraping Tools

Here is a list of best web scraping tools to be used by professionals and businesses.

• Apify
• WebScrapper
• ParseHub
• Scrapy
• OctoParse
• Scraper API
• Mozenda
• Webhose.io
• Content Grabber
• Common Crawl

Apify

Apify web scraping software provides web scrapers for harvesting the data. All an end user has to do is provide detailed specs of the websites that need to be scraped along with the schedule as to when that information is required. Built-in crawlers within this instant data scraper solution would send all data to the end user's inbox on regular basis.

Key Features:

• Converting HTML pages into pdf
• Data extraction from webpages
• Defacement monitoring
• Analyzing page SEO
• Checking broken links

Web Scraper

Extracting the web data is easy with Web Scraper data scraping software. The best part about using this metal scraping tool is that it can scrap data easily from web region having multiple navigation levels. You can also use this application for executing JavaScript. 

Key Features:

• Pagination handlers
• Modular selector system
• Data exporting in multiple formats
• Automated scheduler
• Proxy support for IP rotation

Mozenda

Mozenda online web scraper is relied upon for its fast data extraction processes. You can use Mozenda with ease for scrapping all kinds of data, pdf files, images and text from different web pages. Additionally, end users can deploy this simple web scraper for data integration purposes. 

Key Features:

• Agent grouping
• Job sequencer
• Request blocking
• Creating folders as per domain or purpose
• Region-specific data scraping

Octoparse

Octoparse is a point and click web scraping tool that is quite easy to set up. Doing IP rotation with Octoparse is as easy as running up to ten scrapers at a time in a computing device. The best part is that there is no coding required for crawling or harvesting the data.

Key Features:

• Infinite scrolling and drop down
• Multiple format support for downloading the data
• Point of click interface
• Cloud extraction
• API/CSV database

ParseHub Free Data Scraping Tool

Developing web scraper for crawling through different websites is easy with ParseHub web scraping tool. Forms, ajax or drop downs, clicking on any of these is easy with this website data scraper. To make data scraping more convenient, ParseHub offers tabs, pop ups and infinite scrolls. 

Key Features of ParseHub Free Web Scraping Tool:

• Regular expressions
• Navigation and pagination
• Scheduled collections
• Webhooks & API support
• Dropbox integration
• URL pattern for data crawling
• CSS, RegEx and XPATH collectors