Web crawling (also known as web data mining, web scraping) is now widely used in many fields. BeforeWebcrawlerever got out to the public, it's the magic word for ordinary people with no programming knowledge. Its high threshold still blocks people from accessing big data. A web scraping tool is an automated crawling technology and bridges the gap between mysterious big data for everyone. In this article, you will learn more about the top 20Web-Crawling-Toolsbased on desktop devices or cloud services.
How do web tracking tools help?
- No more repetitive copy-paste work.
- Get well-structured data not limited to Excel, HTML, and CSV.
- Time-saving and cost-effective.
- It is the cure for marketers, online marketers, journalists, YouTubers, researchers and many others who are lacking in technical skills.
Top 20 Web Crawling Tools You Can't Miss
Web crawling tools for Windows/Mac
1.Octoparse-free web scraper for non-programmers
Octoparse is a client-based web crawling tool for reading web data into spreadsheets. With an easy-to-use point-and-click interface, the software is specially designed for people who don't know how to code. Here is a video about Octoparse, also its main features and simple steps so you can know it better.
Octoparse Web Crawler Key Features
- Planned Cloud Pull:Extract dynamic data in real time.
- Data Sanitization: Built-in Regex and XPath settings to automatically sanitize data.
- Bypass Blocking: Cloud Services andIP-Proxy-Serverto bypass ReCaptcha and blocking.
Simple steps to get data using Octoparse web crawling tool
- Pre-built scrapers - for scraping data from popular websites like Amazon, eBay, Twitter, etc.
- Auto-detection – Enter the target URL in Octoparse and it will automatically detect and clear the structured data for download.
- Advanced Mode - Advanced mode allows technical users to customize a data scraper that extracts objective data from complex websites.
- Data format: EXCEL, XML, HTML, CSV or your databases via API.
- Octoparse fetches product data, prices, blog content, contacts for opportunities, social media posts, etc.
Using the pre-made templates
Octoparse has 100+ template scrapers and you can easily get data from Yelp, Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay and many popular websites in 3 steps with these template scrapers.
1. Choose a template template that can help you get the data you need. If you can't see the template you want on the templates page, you can always try looking up the site name in the software and it will tell you immediately if templates are available. If there isn't a template that meets your needs yet, email us with your project details and requirements and see how we can help.
2. Click on the template scraper and read the guide which tells you what parameters to fill in, a data preview and more. Then click "Try it out" and fill in all the parameters.
3. Extract the data. Click Save and Run. You can choose to run the data locally or in the cloud. If it doesn't support running locally, it should run in the cloud. In most cases, we recommend running in the cloud so the scraper can scrape with IP rotation and avoid blocking.
Building a crawler from scratch
If there isn't a ready-made template for your target websites, don't worry, you can create your own crawlers to collect the data you want from any website. it is usually within three steps.
1. Go to the web page you want to scrape: Enter the URL page(s) you want to scrape in the URL bar on the home page. Click on the "Start" button.
2. Create the workflow by clicking "Automatically detect website data". Wait until you see "Auto-detection complete" and then check the data preview to see if there are any unnecessary data fields that you want to remove or add. Finally, click on “Create workflow”.
3. Click the "Save" button and tap the "Run" button to start the extraction. You can select "Run task on your device" to run the task on your PC or "Run task in the cloud" to run the task in the cloud so that you can schedule the task to run at any time. .
2.80 legs
80legs is a powerful web crawling tool that can be configured according to custom requirements. It supports fetching large amounts of data along with the option to download the extracted data instantly.
Key features of 80legs:
- API: 80legs provides users with APIs to create trackers, manage data and more.
- Scraper Customization: 80legs JS-based application framework allows users to configure web crawls with custom behaviors.
- IP Servers: A collection of IP addresses used in web scraping requests.
3.ParseHub
Parsehub is a web crawler that collects data from websites using AJAX technology, JavaScript, cookies, etc. Its machine learning technology can read web documents, analyze them, and then turn them into relevant data.
Key features of Parsehub:
- Integration: Google Tabellen, Tableau
- Data format: JSON, CSV
- Device: Mac, Windows, Linux
4.eye scratch
In addition to SaaS, VisualScraper offers web scraping services such as data provisioning services and building software extractors for clients. With Visual Scraper, users can schedule projects to run at a specific time, or repeat the sequence every minute, day, week, month, or year. Users can use it to get frequent news, updates and forums.
Important features for Visual Scraper:
- Various data formats: Excel, CSV, MS Access, MySQL, MSSQL, XML or JSON.
- Apparently the official website is not updated now and this information may not be current.
5.WebHarvy
WebHarvy is point-and-click web scraping software. It is designed for non-programmers.
Key Features of WebHarvy:
- Extract text, images, URLs and emails from websites.
- Proxy support enables anonymous tracking and prevents web servers from blocking it.
- Data format: XML, CSV, JSON or TSVfile. Users can also export the scratched data to a SQL database.
6.Content-Grabber (Sequentum)
Content Grabber is web crawling software aimed at businesses. Allows creating standalone web crawling agents. Users can use C# or VB.NET to debug or write scripts to control the scheduling of the tracing process. You can extract content from almost any website and save it as structured data in a format of your choice.
Key Features of Content Grabber:
- Integration with third-party data analysis or reporting applications.
- Powerful script editing and debugging interfaces.
- Data formats: Excel reports, XML, CSV and most databases.
7.Heliumschaber
Helium Scraper is visual web data scraping software that allows users to scrape web data. A 10-day trial is available for new users, and once you're happy with how it works, you can use the software for life with a one-time purchase. Basically, it could fulfill users' tracking needs at an elementary level.
Key features of elium Scraper:
- Data Format: Export data to CSV, Excel, XML, JSON or SQLite.
- Fast extraction: options to block unwanted images or web requests.
- rotation of lawyers.
Website-Downloader
8.Cyotek WebCopy
Cyotek WebCopy is as descriptive as its name. It is a free website crawler that allows you to copy partial or full websites locally to your hard drive for offline reference. You can change your settings to tell the bot how you want to crawl. In addition, you can also configure domain aliases, user agent strings, default documents, and more.
However, WebCopy does not include a virtual DOM or any form of JavaScript parsing. If a website relies heavily on JavaScript to operate, WebCopy is more likely to fail to make a true copy. Most likely dynamic website layouts are not processed correctly due to heavy use of JavaScript.
9.HT-Spur
As a free website crawler software, HTTrack offers very handy features to download an entire website to your PC. Versions are available for Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris and other Unix systems, covering most users. It is interesting that HTTrack can mirror one site or more than one site together (with shared links). You can set the number of connections open at the same time when downloading web pages in "Set options". You can mirror your website's photos, files, and HTML, and resume broken downloads.
Also, proxy support is available in HTTrack to maximize speed. HTTrack works as a command line program or via a shell for both private (capture) and professional (online web mirror) use. With this in mind, HTTrack should be preferred and used by those with advanced programming skills.
10They stay
Getleft is a free and easy-to-use website grabber. It allows you to download an entire website or a single webpage. After launching Getleft, before launching, you can enter a URL and select the files you want to download. Going further, it changes all the links for local navigation. In addition, it offers multilingual support. Getleft now supports 14 languages! However, it has limited FTP support, it downloads the files but not recursively.
In general, Getleft should meet the basic tracking needs of users without more complex tactical skills.
Extensions/Plugins Web Scraper
11scraper
Scraper is a Chrome extension with limited data mining capabilities, but it's useful for online research. You can also export the data to Google spreadsheets. This tool is intended for both beginners and experts. You can simply copy the data to the clipboard or save it to spreadsheets using OAuth. Scraper can automatically generate XPaths to define URLs to crawl. It doesn't offer all-inclusive tracking services, but most people don't have to deal with messy setups anyway.
12OutWit Center
OutWit Hub is a Firefox plugin with dozens of data mining features to simplify your web searches. This web crawler tool has the ability to navigate through the pages and save the extracted information in an appropriate format.
OutWit Hub provides a single interface to extract small or large amounts of data depending on your needs. OutWit Hub allows you to extract any webpage from the browser. You can even create automatic agents to extract data.
It is one of the easiest web scraping tools that is free to use and offers you the convenience of extracting web data without writing a single line of code.
Web Scraping Services
13Scrapinghub (ahora Zyte)
Scrapinghub is a cloud-based data extraction tool that helps thousands of developers get valuable data. Its open-source visual scraping tool allows users to scrape websites without any coding knowledge.
Scrapinghub uses Crawlera, an intelligent proxy rotator that supports bot countermeasure bypass, to easily crawl large or bot-protected websites. It allows users to track multiple IP addresses and locations without the hassle of proxy management through a simple HTTP API.
Scrapinghub turns the entire website into organized content. The team of experts is at your disposal in case your trace generator cannot meet your needs.
14Dexi.io
As a browser-based web crawler, Dexi.io allows you to extract data from any website based on your browser and provides three types of bots that you can use to create an extraction task: Extractor, Crawler, and Pipes. The freeware provides anonymous web proxy servers for your web scraping and your extracted data will be hosted on Dexi.io's servers for two weeks before the data is archived, or you can export the extracted data directly to JSON or CSV format export files. It offers paid services to meet your real-time data needs.
15.webhose.io
Webhose.io allows users to get real-time data by following online sources from all over the world in various clean formats. This web crawler allows you to crawl data and extract more keywords in different languages using multiple filters covering a variety of sources.
And you can save the scraped data in XML, JSON and RSS formats. And users can access historical data from their archive. Also, webhose.io supports at most 80 languages with its data crawling results. And users can easily index and search the structured data crawled by Webhose.io.
In general, Webhose.io could meet users' basic tracking needs.
sixteen.import I
Users can create their own datasets by simply importing the data from a specific webpage and exporting it to CSV.
You can scrape thousands of webpages in minutes without writing a single line of code and build 1000+ APIs based on your needs. Public APIs have provided powerful and flexible capabilities to programmatically control Import.io and gain automated access to data. Import.io has simplified tracking by integrating web data into your own app or website with just a few clicks.
To better meet users' crawling needs, it also provides a free application for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux to create crawlers and data extractors, download data and sync it with an online account. In addition, users can schedule weekly, daily, or hourly crawling tasks.
17Spinn3r (now datastreamer.io)
With Spinn3r, you can pull comprehensive data from blogs, news and social networking sites, as well as RSS and ATOM feeds. Spinn3r ships with a Firehouse API that does 95% of the indexing work. It offers advanced spam protection that eliminates spam and inappropriate language, improving data security.
Spinn3r indexes Google-like content and stores the extracted data in JSON files. Web Scraper constantly scans the web and finds updates from multiple sources to get real-time posts. The management console puts you in control of traces, and full-text search allows you to perform complex queries on raw data.
Web-Scraping-RPA-Tool
18UiPath
UiPath is a free robotic process automation software for web scraping. Automates crawling of web and desktop data from most third-party applications. You can install Robotic Process Automation software by running it on Windows. Uipath can extract tabular and pattern-based data across different websites.
Uipath provides built-in tools for follow-up. This method is very effective when dealing with complex user interfaces. The screen scraping tool can handle individual text elements, text groups and text blocks, such as: B. Data extraction in table format.
Also, no programming is required to create intelligent web agents, but the .NET hacker in you has full control over the data.
Library for programmers
19grated
Scrapy is an open source framework that runs on top of Python. The library provides developers with a ready-to-use framework to customize a web crawler and extract data from the web at scale. With Scrapy you have the flexibility to configure a scraper according to your needs, for example to define exactly what data you extract, how it is cleaned and in what format it is exported.
On the other hand, you will face several challenges throughout the web scraping process and will strive to keep it up. With that said, Python lets you get started with some real data-scraping practices.
20Puppeteer
Puppeteer is a node library developed by Google. It provides developers with an API to control Chrome or Chromium via the DevTools protocol and allows developers to create a web scraping tool using Puppeteer and Node.js. If you are new to programming, you can spend some time in introductory tutorialshow to scrape the web with puppeteer.
Besides web scraping, Puppeteer is also used for:
- Get screenshots or PDF files from web pages.
- Automate form submission/data entry.
- Build an automated testing tool.
Select one of the listed web scrapers based on your needs. You can easily create a web crawler and retrieve data from any website you want.
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