Web scraping or web data extraction might sound like a very complex process on the internet but is quite easy to understand. It basically means the idea of assembling specific data and copying them from the web to a central local database or spreadsheet and is meant for the sole purpose of analysis or retrieval on a later date. Information is fetched and processed later using a specially developed web data scraping and extraction software, which facilitates automatic data mining.
With the ever-increasing tendency of people to automate and digitize everything, a diverse range of software categories are being formulated continuously these days. Under each category again, we get a host of software products to pick from. However, with too many options, making a choice for the best and most-suited one becomes a little tricky.
Table of Contents
What a web data scraping and extraction tool should have?
Web scraping and extraction tools are widely available online and are pretty easy to use, so much that even the people who do not have much knowledge in coding can work with them without much difficulty. Hence, here are a few elementary features that one should look for in a web data scraping and extraction tool.
Feature comparison
| Name | Scheduled Collection | Excel Extraction |
Data Aggregation |
API Access |
| ParseHub | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Import.io | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Webhose.io | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ScrapingHub | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Octoparse | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| OutWit | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| FMiner | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Dexi.io | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
1. Parsehub
Parsehub is a free web data scraping and extraction tool and features a simple API that supports a seamless integration into the current application of the users. The app can also be downloaded and installed as a free desktop application on and above Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, etc.
Parsehub uses machine learning technology to identify and detect even the most complex documents online and deliver the resulting files in your desired data format. It supports automatic IP rotation; RegEx, XPATH, CSS Selectors; navigation among multiple sites etc. Users can download JSON and CSV files. The users can extract data from tables and maps too and maintain the scheduled run. The extracted files can have texts, HTML and other attributes, images, etc.
2. Import.io
The Import.io is a cloud-based web data scraping and extraction software and has a highly intuitive, interactive and simple interface. It can be used to integrate web data across the organisation of the users and also build custom applications on the cloud. All this is possible even without having to build a data infrastructure.
Import.io allows the conversion of the website data into a very structured form of usable data. It allows the usage of many APIs to integrate the data into business logic, applications and analytics. The web data can be then consumed with better insights and analytics with intuitive reports and visualisation. Import.io is also available as a free app for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. You can download data, build data crawlers and extractors, and sync with your online account. It features email alerts, capture screenshots, extractor tagging and machine learning auto-suggestion as well.
3. Webhose.io
Webhose.io is a browser-based web tool that gives its users direct access to structured and real-time data by crawling a myriad of web sources like news, blogs, reviews, etc. It can analyse over 115 different languages and prepare for them.
Webhose web data scraping software helps in extracting online discussions on forums and can store the output data in multiple formats, like JSON, XML and RSS. It also features disparate data collection. The Webhose API can offer low latency but high coverage data.
4. Scrapinghub
The users can fetch valuable information from various online sources with the help of Scrapinghub, which is a browser-based data extraction software. It uses Crawlera, a smart proxy rotator, for crawling massive or bot-protected websites with greater ease.
Scrapinghub works by converting the entire web page into a well-fashioned content. The users can link data different scraped web pages. Automated data crawling updates are also available. The platform also lets the users have many add-ons to extend the spiders in the clicks. The data is stored in a very high-availability database and the users can browse through it and even share it with the team.
5. Octoparse
Octoparse is a SaaS web-based web data extraction software can be installed as a software on Windows as well. The users will find help in data collection from disparate web sources, in web data extraction, and also in extracting images from the web pages. You can extract price information from multiple e-commerce sites as well.
Octoparse allows doing IP address extraction, email address extraction, and phone number extraction. No coding is needed, in case the user does not know the technical language. It comes with in-built Regex and XPath tools. The user interface is very simple and it includes just clicking on any web data to extract it. It also applies machine learning that is good enough to locate the data as soon as the cursor is placed on it.
Summary
All of these five software products are all very handy when it comes to extracting data from various sources on the web. Some of them are web-based cloud SaaS tools while others can be downloaded on the local storage too.
Out of these, Octoparse seems to be a very easy-to-use tool as it has the click-to-extract feature. However, in terms of sheer features, Parsehub and Import.io are probably the most feature-fed. Webhose.io, on the other hand, takes data scraping to another level with multi-language extraction, though it is limited to news, blogs and reviews. But since it supports multi output data formats (XML, JSON and RSS), it turns out to be a potent option.
