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1. Parsehub Web Scraping Software
2. Web Scraping Software Mac

Mar 05, 2020 ParseHub is a web based data scraping tool which is built to crawl single and multiple websites with the support for JavaScript, AJAX, cookies, sessions, and redirects. The application can analyze and grab data from websites and transform it into meaningful data. Read our guides on the way to scrape Amazon or eBay information for aggressive analysis. Web scraping is usually an automatic course of accomplished by a chunk of software program, although it could still be carried out manually. As a result, most people select to utilize web scraping software program program to save lots of lots of time and money.

What is a web scraping tool?

A web scraper can be easily understood as a tool that helps you quickly grab and turn any unstructured data you see on the web into structured formats, such as Excel, text or CVS. One most recognized value of a web scraping tool is really to free one from unrealistically tedious copy and pasting work that could have taken forever to finish. The process can be automated to the point where the data you need will get delivered to you on schedule in the format required.

There are many different web scraping tools available, some require more technical backgrounds and others are developed by non-coders. I will go into great depth comparing the top five web scraping tools I’ve used before including how each of them is priced and what’s included in the various packages.

So what are some ways that data can be used to create values?

• I’m a student and I need data to support my research/thesis writing
• I’m a marketing analyst and I need to collect data to support my marketing strategy
• I’m a product guru, I need data for competitive analysis of the different products
• I’m a CEO and I need data on all business sectors to help me with my strategic decision-making process.
• I’m a data analyst and there’s no way I can do my job without data
• I’m an eCommerce guy and I need to know how the price fluctuates for the products I’m selling
• I’m a trader and I need UNLIMITED financial data to guide my next move in the market
• I’m in the Machine learning/deep learning field and I need an abundance of raw data to train my bots

There are so many more, literally countless reasons people may need data!

What are some of the most popular web scraping tools?

1. Octoparse
Octoparse is an easy-to-use web scraping tool developed to accommodate complicated web scraping for non-coders. As an intelligent web scraper on both Windows and Mac OS, it automatically 'guesses' the desired data fields for users, which saves a large amount of time and energy as you don't need to manually select the data. It is powerful enough to deal with dynamic websites and interact with any sites in various ways, such as authentication, text input, selecting from drop-down menus, hovering over dynamic menus, infinite scroll and many more. Octoparse offers cloud-based extraction (paid feature) as well as local extraction (free). For precise scraping, Octoparse also has built-in XPath and Regular Expression tools to help users scrape data with high accuracy.

2. Parsehub
Parsehub is another non-programmer friendly software. Being a desktop application, Parsehub is supported in various systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Like Octoparse, Parsehub can deal with complicated web scraping scenarios mentioned earlier. However, though Parsehub intends to offer easy web scraping experience, a typical user will still need to be a bit technical to fully grasp many of its advanced functionalities.

3. Dexi.io
Dexi.io is a cloud-based web scraper providing development, hosting and scheduling services. Dexi.io can be very powerful but does require more advanced programming skills comparing to Octoparse and Parsehub. With Dexi, three kinds of robots are available: extractor, crawler, pipes. Dexi supports integration with many third-party services such as captcha solvers, cloud storage and many more.

4. Mozenda
Mozenda offers cloud-based web scraping service, similar to that of Octoparse cloud extraction. Being one of the “oldest” web scraping software in the market, Mozenda performs with a high-level of consistency, has nice looking UI and everything else anyone may need to start on a web scraping project. There are two parts to Mozenda: the Mozenda Web Console and Agent Builder. The Mozenda agent builder is a Windows application used for building a scraping project and the web console is a web application allowing users to set schedules to run the projects or access to the extracted data. Similar to Octoparse, Mozenda also relies on a Windows system and can be a bit tricky for Mac users.

5. Import.io
Famous for its “Magic” - automatically turning any website into structured data, Import.io has gained in popularity. However, many users found out it was not really “magical” enough to handle various kinds of websites. Besides that, Import.io does have a nice well-guided interface, supports real-time data retrieval through JSON REST-based and streaming APIs and it is a web application that can be run in various systems.

Detailed Feature-by-Feature Comparisons

Conclusion

There isn’t one tool that’s perfect. All tools have their pros and cons and they are in some ways or others more suited to different people. Octoparse and Mozenda are by far easier to use than any other scrapers. They are created to make web scraping possible for non-programmers, hence you can expect to get the hang of it rather quickly by watching a few video tutorials. Import.io is also easy to get started but works best only with a simple web structure. Dexi.io and Parsehub are both powerful scrapers with robust functionalities. They do, however, require some programming skills to master.

I hope this article will give you a good start to your web scraping project. Drop me a note for any questions. Happy data hunting!

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Artículo en español: Comparación de Las 5 Mejores Herramientas de Web Scraping
También puede leer artículos de web scraping en el Website Oficial

Table of Contents

This article gives you an idea of what web scraping tool you should use to scrape from Amazon. The list includes small-scale extension tools and multi-functional web scraping softwares and they are compared in three dimensions:

• the degree of automation
• how friendly the user interface is
• how much can be used freely

Browser Extensions

The key to an extension is easy to reach. You can get the idea of web scraping rapidly. With rather basic functions, these options are fit for casual scraping or small business in need of information in simple structure and small amounts.

Data Miner

Data miner is an extension tool that works on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. It helps you scrape data from web pages into a CSV file or Excel spreadsheet. A number of custom recipes are available for scraping amazon data. If those offered are exactly what you need, this could be a handy tool for you to scrape from Amazon within a few clicks.

Data scraped by Data Miner

Data Miner has a step-by-step friendly interface and basic functions in web scraping. It’s more recommendable for small business or casual use.

There is a page limit (500/month) for the free plan with Data Miner. If you need to scrape more, professional and other paid plans are available.

Web Scraper

Web Scraper is an extension tool with a point and click interface integrated in the developer tool. Without certain templates for e-commerce or Amazon scraping, you have to build your own crawler by selecting the listing information you want on the web page.

UI integrated in the developer tool

Web scraper is equipped with functions (available for paid plan) such as cloud extraction, scheduled scraping, IP rotation, API access. Thus it is capable of more frequent scraping and scraping of a larger volume of information.

Scraper Parsers

Scraper Parsers is a browser extension tool to extract unstructured data and visualize without code. Data extracted can be viewed on the site or downloaded in various forms (XLSX, XLS, XML, CSV). With data extracted, numbers can be displayed in charts accordingly.

Small draggable Panel

The UI of Parsers is a panel you can drag around and select by clicks on the browser and it also supports scheduled scraping. However it seems not stable enough and easily gets stuck. For a visitor, the limit of use is 600 pages per site. You can get 590 more if you sign up.

Amazon Scraper - Trial Version

Amazon scraper is approachable on Chrome’s extension store. It can help scrape price, shipping cost, product header, product information, product images, ASIN from the Amazon search page.

Right-click and scrape

Go to Amazon website and search. When you are on the search page with results you want to scrape from, right click and choose the 'Scrap Asin From This Page' option. Information will be extracted and save it as a CSV file.

This trial version can only download 2 pages of any search query. You need to buy the full version to download unlimited pages and get 1 year free support.

Scraping Software

If you need to scrape from Amazon regularly, you may find some annoying problems that prevent you from reaching the data - IP ban, captcha, login wall, pagination, data in different structures etc. In order to solve these problems, you need a more powerful tool.

Octoparse

Octoparse is a free for life web scraping tool. It helps users to quickly scrape web data without coding. Compared with others, the highlight of this product is its graphic, intuitive UI design. Worth mentioning, its auto-detection function can save your efforts of perplexedly clicking around with messed up data results.

Besides auto-detection, amazon templates are even more convenient. Using templates, you can obtain the product list information as well as detail page information on Amazon. You can also create a more customized crawler by yourself under the advanced mode.

Plenty of templates available for use on Octoparse

There is no limit for the amount of data scraped even with a free plan as long as you keep your data within 10,000 rows per task.

Amazon data scraped using Octoparse

Powerful functions such as cloud service, scheduled automatic scraping, IP rotation (to prevent IP ban) are offered in a paid plan. If you want to monitor stock numbers, prices and other information about an array of shops/products at a regular basis, they are definitely helpful.

ScrapeStorm

ScrapeStorm is an AI-powered visual web scraping tool. Its smart mode works similar to the auto-detection in Octoparse, intelligently identifying the data with little manual operation required. So you just need to click and enter the URL of the amazon page you want to scrape from.

Its Pre Login function helps you scrape URLs that require login to view content. Generally speaking, the UI design of the app is like a browser and comfortable to use.

Data scraped using ScrapeStorm

ScrapeStorm offers a free quota of 100 rows of data per day and one concurrent run is allowed. The value of data comes as you have enough of them for analysis, so you should think of upgrading your service if you choose this tool. Upgrade to the professional so that you can get 10,000 rows per day.

Parsehub Web Scraping Software

ParseHub

ParseHub is another free web scraper available for direct download. As most of the scraping tools above, it supports crawler building in a click-and-select way and export of data into structured spreadsheets.

For Amazon scrapers, Parsehub doesn’t support auto-detection or offer any Amazon templates, however, if you have prior experience using a scraping tool to build customized crawlers, you can take a shot on this.

Build your crawler on Parsehub

You can save images and files to DropBox, run with IP rotation and scheduling if you start from a standard plan. Free plan users will get 200 pages per run. Don’t forget to backup your data (14-day data retention).

Web Scraping Software Mac

Something More than Tools

Tools are created for convenience use. They make complicated operations possible through a few clicks on a bunch of buttons.

However, it is also common for users to counter unexpected errors because the situation is ever-changing on different sites. You can step a little bit deeper to rescue yourself from such a dilemma - learna bit about htmland Xpath. Not so far to become a coder, just a few steps to know the tool better.

Author: Cici