Best 5 Free Web Data Scraping Tools in 2022

As modern professionals, we deal with data almost every day. It is very common that we will need to collect and analyze data from websites to reach certain conclusions. This task would be extremely tedious if you are extracting data manually. Luckily, there are many solutions out there to help with this exact task. Here today, we are listing the best 10 web data scraping tools for data extraction in 2021.

OVERVIEW – TLDR version

1 – Octoparse, Most Powerful Desktop Data Scraping Tool For Experts

www.octoparse.com

Octoparse is a cloud and desktop client-based web data scraper. It is very powerful and comes with lots of features including scheduled extraction, IP rotation, API access, and unlimited storage.

Octoparse offers a free plan but limits the amount of records export to 10,000. If you need to extract and export more than 10,000 records, you will need to pay $75 or $209 per month depending on your need.

Octoparse also have a customizable enterprise plan for companies who need more than the standard features.

Although very powerful, Octoparse can be a bit difficult to use and require some training. You will need to be very computer literate and knows around it’s complicated interface.

The verdict – Octoparse is one of the most used web scraper offered for a fair price with great features

2 – AnyPicker.com | Most Easy To Use Browser-Based Scraper

www.anypicker.com

AnyPicker.com is a chrome-based web scraper with an easy-to-use visual interface. It doesn’t require any coding skills or a complicated learning curve and everyone can use it intuitively.

The best part about AnyPicker is that it is extremely easy to use. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up data extraction rules and can be used repeatedly with recipes.

The free tier offered by AnyPicker is also the most generous of all the tools; offering 750 pages each month, you can use it comfortably if you are not doing any heavy-duty data scraping jobs.

The Verdict – AnyPicker is the easiest to use web scraper and with features that are good enough for everyday use

3 – Parsehub

www.parsehub.com

Parsehub is a powerful desktop client scraping tool with many features. You can do a lot of things with Parsehub once you manage to get around the complicated setup and data structure. You would need to be familiar with HTML structures and other technical terms in order to use all the features.

If you are not technically fluent, Parsehub might be a bit too complicated for you to use. But once you can get around the complicated setup, you will find parsehub one of the most powerful data scrapers available.

Parsehub is also the most expensive tools of them all, the free tier doesn’t offer much with limited 200 pages scraping limit per month. This means you might only be able to do 1 or 2 projects before needing to pay them. And the paid tier is not exactly cheap, available for $149 and $499 for stnadard and professional tier.

Parsehub is powerful, complicated to set up, and expensive. If you are technically enabled and knows your way around HTML structures and are doing data scraping professionally, parsehub might be worth considering. For light users or even professional users who are less technic, I would recommend you to look elsewhere.

The Verdict – Parsehub is powerful, but expensive and hard to setup

4 – Grespr

www.grespr.com

Similar to AnyPicker, Grespr is also a chrome-based extension tool that can be used anywhere Chrome Browser is available. Grespr also utilizes a visual data selection interface that requires minimum training or coding skills to use. Grespr also offers a full service for businesses customers and API interface.

The biggest advantage grespr offers are APIs and cloud based monitoring and scheduled data scraping. However it’s free tier offers one of the fewest records, a whopping 1000 records export per month. If you intend to do any serious data scraping job, you will need to be ready to pay at least $20 to get to the basic plan, which offers 25,000 records export per month. But this is only slightly more than what AnyPicker offers for free.

Another issue grespr has, would be website compatibility, although fairly easy to use, grepr’s chrome extension would need the website to be written in very structured way in order to be functioning properly. This further limits the usability of grespr. It is easy to see why as they are mainly focusing on the service portion of their business. It definitely makes more sense price wise to just pay for their service in some circumstances.

In conclusion, Grespr is an expensive and easy-to-use scraper that works on certain websites.

5 – ScrapeStorm

www.scrapestorm.com

ScrapeStorm is a AI-Powered visual web scraping tool which can be used to extract data from almost any websites without writing any code. It is powerful and very easy to use. For experienced and inexperienced users, it provides two different scraping modes (Smart Mode and Flowchart Mode). ScrapeStorm supports WindowsMac OS and Linux. You can save the output data in various formats including Excel, HTML, Txt and CSV. Moreover, you can export data to databases and websites.

ScrapeStorm can detect website pattern automatically. This is similar to what AnyPicker offers. You can also identify exactly what to extract by the rules. It also offers loads of features such as data aggregation, email address extraction, document extraction, IP address extration etc

ScrapeStorm can export files in excel,csv,txt,html,MySQL,mongoDB and many more, making your life much easier if you ever needed them.

However ScrapeStorm has this complicated workflow setup process and is required everytime when you need to setup a job. You will need to go through many of it’s training videos to know exactly what to do. The free tier also offers very little compared to other products.

The Verdict – Difficult to use but powerful, has AI features and multiple format support best for Academia Researchers