Web Scraping: Your business’ secret weapon – 10 Best Tools for Web Scraping

Web scraping has been around since the birth of the internet, but not many people seem to know about it. Ironically, the success of web scraping as a business tool has contributed to its under-the-radar-status; companies who rely on web scraping don’t want competitors gaining access to their secret weapon. Encountering the world of web scraping for the first time can feel like discovering a new and uncharted continent. Luckily, once you get your bearings, it’s not too hard to navigate.

Put simply, web scraping is the process of extracting information from the world’s largest database: the world wide web. Data gathering projects that would otherwise require hundreds of work-hours can be easily and quickly done using a web scraper.
As Big Data and Data Science become increasingly important, more organizations are realizing the potential of web scraping as vital to data-driven decision making. Common web scraping use cases include:

• Location data

• Product listing

• Price monitoring and comparison

• Competitor research

• Market research

• Reviews and rating

• Social media

A good web scraping tool can collect almost any data point on the internet, so potential use cases are almost endless – no matter what industry you work in, web scraping can become the ultimate secret weapon for your business or organization. With over 2 billion sites, there’s a data set for everyone. 

Historically, web scraping projects have been handled by developers, but as costs increase and data needs expand, many organizations are turning to web scraping software vendors to fulfill their data projects. 

Here are the top 10 web scraping tools to help you tackle web data projects of every shape and size – from personal projects and student research to large-scale enterprise data gathering. 

1) Mozenda:

One of web scraping’s early pioneers, Mozenda is an industry leader used by approximately 1/3 of the Fortune 500. 

Mozenda allows users to extract almost any publicly accessible data point on the internet, from product and location data to image and file downloads.
It helps you to organize and prepare data files for publishing.and its ability to scale makes it useful in a lot of different scenarios.         

Mozenda’s mix of accessibility and customization make it appealing for both beginners and pros. Mozenda’s point-and-click Agent Builder tool lets users of any skill extract data, while more technical users can make use of a full-featured API and Xpath to customize their web scraping projects. 

Mozenda offers a risk-free trial and customer support and account management for every type of account.

• Scrape specific information like product catalog information, financial information, lease data, location data, company and contact details, job postings, reviews, and ratings, social media profiles, and more
• Best-in-class account management and customer support
• Collect and publish your web data to any Bl tool or database
• Create powerful web scraping agents in minutes using a point-and-click interface, Xpath, and the Mozenda API
• Use Job Sequencing and Request Blocking to harvest web data in real-time
• Outsource large or complex projects to Mozenda’s in-house Services team
• Tackle a nearly limitless variety of sites and projects

2) Scraping-Bot

Scraping-Bot.io is an efficient tool to scrape data from a URL. It provides APIs adapted to your scraping needs: a generic API to retrieve the Raw HTML of a page, an API specialized in retail websites scraping, and an API to scrape property listings from real estate websites.

• Easy-to-integrate integrate API
• JS rendering
• High-quality proxies
• Full Page HTML
• Up to 20 concurrent requests
• Geotargeting
• Affordable

3) X-tract.io

X-tract.io is a data extraction platform that can be customized to scrape and structure web data, social media posts, PDFs, text documents, historical data, and emails into a consumable, business-ready format.

• Seamlessly integrate enriched and cleansed data directly into your business applications with powerful APIs
• Automate the entire data extraction process with pre-configured workflows
• Get high-quality data validated against pre-built business rules with rigorous data quality
• Export data in the desired format like JSON, text file, HTML, CSV, TSV, etc
• Bypass CAPTCHA issues rotating proxies to extract real-time data with ease

4) Scrapinghub

Scrapinghub is a hassle-free cloud-based data extraction tool that helps companies fetch valuable data and store it in a robust database. 

• Convert entire web pages into organized content
• Deploy scale crawlers on demand
• No server management
• Bypassing bot counter-measures to crawl large or bot-protected sites

5) Octoparse

Octoparse is another useful and easily configurable web scraping tool. The point-and-click user interface allows you to teach the scraper how to navigate sites and extract the needed fields. It also provides ready-to-use web scraping templates.

• Extract data from ad-heavy pages using the Ad Blocking feature
• The tool provides support to mimics a human user while visiting and scraping data from the specific websites
• Run extraction on the cloud or your local machine
• Export all types of scraped data in TXT, HTML CSV, or Excel formats

6) Import.io

Import.io is a SaaS web data platform. It provides a web scraping solution that allows you to scrape data from websites and organize them into data sets. They can integrate the web data into analytic tools for sales and easy interaction with webforms/logins.

• Schedule data extraction
• Store and access data in the Import.io cloud
• Gain insights with reports, charts, and visualizations
• Automate web interaction and workflows

URL: http://www.import.io/

7) Webhose.io

Webhose.io provides direct access to structured and real-time data by crawling thousands of websites. It allows you to access historical feeds covering over ten years’ worth of data.

• Get structured, machine-readable datasets in JSON and XML formats
• Access a massive repository of data feeds without paying any extra fees
• Use advanced filters allow for granular analysis

Url: https://webhose.io/products/archived-web-data/

8) Dexi.io

Dexi is a web scraping tool that allows you to transform unlimited web data into immediate business value.

• Increased efficiency, accuracy and quality
• Ultimate scale and speed for data intelligence
• Fast, efficient data extraction
• High-scale knowledge capture
• Large integration library 

Url: http://dexi.io/

9) Outwit

Outwit is a Firefox extension that allows you to scrape the web using your browser. Users can pick from multiple plans depending on their requirements –  the Pro edition, the Expert edition, or the Enterprise edition.

• Collect contacts from emails and the web 
• No programming required
• Scrape hundreds of web pages with a single click

Url: http://www.outwit.com/

10) ParseHub

ParseHub is a free web scraping tool. It uses a point-and-click interface, so extracting data is as easy as clicking a button. Parsehub allows you to download your scraped data in any format for analysis.

• Clean text & HTML before downloading data
• The easy to use graphical interface
• Helps you to collect and store data on servers automatically

Url: http://www.parsehub.com/