28 Best web scraping tools in 2026: Pros, cons and pricing

The best web scraping tools range from open-source libraries to managed platforms. This guide reviews 28 tools one by one with their features, pros, cons and pricing, so you can match each to your project and budget.

Quick comparison of the 28 best web scraping tools

The table lists the top web scraping tools we reviewed, with the lowest paid or metered plan as the entry price and the Capterra rating with its review count where the tool appears on Capterra’s web scraping software page.

How did we pick and compare these web scraping tools?

We read each vendor’s own documentation and pricing page to record what the tool returns, how it handles JavaScript, logins and anti-bot protection, and what it costs, and every price is dated and linked to its source.

We did not benchmark success rates across vendors, so this guide makes no claim about who unblocks best. Credits and requests are not a common unit across vendors, so compare cost per thousand successful pages on your own targets during a free trial.

1. ScraperAPI: Best web data infrastructure for developers and data teams

ScraperAPI is web data infrastructure for developers and data teams that handles blocking, retries and site changes, from a first API call to scheduled production feeds, so you don’t stitch together separate unblockers, SERP APIs, crawlers and agent tooling.

ScraperAPI also covers the newer jobs that most scraping tools leave to a separate product, such as AI-generated parsers, AI search answer collection and crawling, and we aim to make it the fastest route from a URL to clean data.

ScraperAPI top features:

• The Scraping API handles proxy rotation, retries, CAPTCHAs and JavaScript rendering behind one request.
• Structured Data Endpoints return JSON for Amazon, Google, ChatGPT, Walmart, eBay, Redfin, and more, including the Google Search Scraper and the Amazon Search Scraper.
• The endpoint list has grown beyond search and shopping to include Walmart categories and reviews and Home Depot, and sites without a dedicated endpoint, such as LinkedIn, Indeed and Zillow, can still be scraped through the Scraping API. Walmart costs one credit per request and the Google endpoints 25.
• The AI Results API, in beta, sends a prompt to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Mode and returns the answer, its cited sources and the model as JSON for 25 credits a request, or 75 for ChatGPT with sources.
• The AI Parser turns up to three example URLs of one page type into a parser for similar pages with no selectors to write. Your first parser is free, extra parsers cost 30,000 credits and paid plans hold up to five.
• The Crawler, generally available since April 2026, follows links from a start URL until it reaches your depth or credit budget and skips duplicates. The Free plan caps link depth at one and has no scheduling, while paid plans have no depth cap and can run recurring crawls.
• Async batch jobs take up to 50,000 URLs with automatic retries for up to 24 hours, and DataPipeline schedules recurring projects of up to 100,000 URLs, keywords or ASINs with no code, billed at the same credit costs as the standard API with results kept for 30 days.
• It is agent-ready by default, with an MCP server for web scraping that exposes the scraper, structured endpoints and crawler as tools, a CLI, an Agent Skills plugin for Claude Code and OpenClaw with 18 skills, and n8n, Zapier, LangChain and LlamaIndex integrations.
• Geotargeting with country_code covers the US and EU on Hobby and Startup and 70 countries from Business, with 184 more countries on premium geo.
• Premium and ultra premium proxies are available, and the credit table lists bypass for Cloudflare, Cloudflare Turnstile, DataDome and PerimeterX at 10 extra credits each.
• Sticky sessions reuse the same proxy across requests that share a session_number, and a session expires 15 minutes after its last use, while device_type, keep_headers, wait_for_selector, screenshots and max_cost give finer control, while the Domain Credit Cost Estimator predicts what a target will cost before you scrape.
• Enterprise customers get a dedicated support team, a Slack support channel and tailor-made solutions, including managed delivery through professional services.

The snippet below fetches a JavaScript-rendered page as markdown in Python.

import requests

params = {
    "api_key": "YOUR_API_KEY",
    "url": "https://quotes.toscrape.com/js/",
    "render": "true",
    "output_format": "markdown",
}
response = requests.get("https://api.scraperapi.com/", params=params, timeout=70)
print(response.text[:330])

The response is ten quotes as markdown, and the first one looks like this:

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”by Albert Einstein

Tags: change deep-thoughts thinking world

ScraperAPI pros and cons:

ScraperAPI pricing

ScraperAPI bills from a monthly credit pool with no per-GB maths, and credits per request vary by target, at one for a standard page, five for Amazon, 25 for Google and 10 for render=true.

Plans are Hobby at $49 (100,000 credits, 20 threads), Startup at $149 (1,000,000), Business at $299 (3,000,000), Scaling at $475 (5,000,000), Professional at $975 (10,500,000) and Advanced at $1,975 (21,500,000), with Enterprise through sales.

Pay as you go starts on Scaling and above and switches on once the monthly credits are used, and the free trial gives seven days with 5,000 credits and no card.

Plans run up to $1,975 a month before you need to talk to sales, and yearly billing takes 10% off, according to the pricing page.

2. ScrapingBee: Best for developers who want a simple API with JavaScript rendering

ScrapingBee is a scraping API that runs headless browsers and rotating proxies behind one endpoint, with AI extraction, screenshots and dedicated Google, Amazon and Walmart APIs. It suits developers who want credits and a single endpoint.

ScrapingBee top features:

• JavaScript scenarios click, fill, scroll, wait and run custom JavaScript, including infinite scroll.
• Classic, premium and stealth proxy tiers come with country_code geotargeting and support for your own proxy.
• Output can be HTML, markdown, plain text, screenshots of the viewport, full page or one selector, or JSON with XHR capture.
• AI extraction works from a plain-English query or JSON rules, alongside CSS and XPath extract rules.
• session_id holds one IP for five minutes, and proxy-mode endpoints support HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS5.
• Auto-mode picks the cheapest working setup, and max_cost caps what it can spend.
• Dedicated Google, Amazon and Walmart APIs return parsed data.

ScrapingBee pros and cons:

ScrapingBee pricing

ScrapingBee bills in API credits, with five for a JavaScript render, 10 for a premium proxy (25 with rendering) and 75 for a stealth proxy.

Plans are Freelance at $49 (250,000 credits, 50 concurrent), Startup at $99 (1,000,000, 100), Business at $249 (3,000,000, 200) and Business + at $599 (8,000,000, 400), and the free trial is 1,000 credits with no card.

Details are on ScrapingBee’s pricing page.

3. ZenRows: Best for protected sites and AI agents that want one credit pool

ZenRows is a web data platform built around Fetch, Extract, Batch and Browser Sessions, which draw on one credit balance. It targets teams scraping anti-bot-protected pages and feeding AI agents.

ZenRows top features:

• Adaptive Stealth Mode (mode=auto) escalates to rendering or premium proxies only when a request needs them.
• A residential pool of more than 55 million IPs supports proxy_country targeting across 190+ countries.
• JavaScript instructions click, fill forms, scroll and run custom code, with wait and wait_for options.
• Output can be markdown, plain text, PDF, screenshots or JSON with XHR capture.
• Batch jobs take up to 100,000 URLs with automatic retries and a webhook or polling on completion.
• Browser Sessions connect Puppeteer or Playwright through one WebSocket URL, with lifetimes of one to 15 minutes.
• Python, Node and Go SDKs, a CLI, an MCP server and n8n and Zapier integrations are available.

ZenRows pros and cons:

ZenRows pricing

ZenRows shares one credit pool across all its products, with one credit for a standard page, five for JavaScript rendering, 10 for premium proxies and 25 for both.

The page loads on annual billing, which it lists as a 17% saving, and plans are Build at $16 (45,000 credits, 20 concurrent), Launch at $58 (250,000, 50), Growth at $166 (1,200,000, 100) and Scale at $458 (5,000,000, 200 to 400).

A permanent free plan gives 5,000 credits a month with no card, per ZenRows’ pricing page.

4. Scrapingdog: Best for low entry prices and prebuilt SERP and e-commerce endpoints

Scrapingdog is a scraping API subscription that opens its full catalogue of more than 40 dedicated APIs, including Google Search, Maps and Amazon, on every plan. Buyers who want a low entry price and ready-made endpoints fit it best.

Scrapingdog top features:

• Headless Chrome rendering runs through the dynamic parameter, with a wait option.
• Premium residential proxies (premium=true) and rotating proxies are available, with stealth_mode=true for Cloudflare-style protection.
• Country-level geotargeting with ISO codes is included on every plan.
• session_number reuses one IP across requests.
• The Screenshot API returns png, jpg or webp, with full-page capture, a custom viewport and a quality setting.
• More than 40 dedicated APIs cover Google SERP, Maps, News, AI Mode, Amazon and Walmart, returning parsed JSON.
• LLM-ready markdown output is available.

Scrapingdog pros and cons:

Scrapingdog pricing

Scrapingdog charges one credit for a standard request and five for JavaScript rendering.

Plans are Lite at $40 (200,000 credits, five concurrent), Standard at $90 (1,000,000, 50), Pro at $200 (3,000,000, 100) and Premium at $350 (6,000,000, 150), and the free trial is 100 credits with no card.

Team support starts on the Pro plan, per Scrapingdog’s pricing page.

5. Zyte API: Best for many different sites, with cost matched to difficulty

Zyte API is a scraping API that picks proxies and rendering per site, with ban handling, browser actions and AI extraction into typed data. It suits developers scraping many varied targets and pairs naturally with Scrapy, which Zyte maintains.

Zyte API top features:

• Automatic ban handling picks the leanest proxy setup for each site.
• Browser-rendered HTML and screenshots come with actions such as typing, mouse input, waits and scrolling, plus browser scripts.
• Network capture records the requests a browser session makes.
• AI extraction returns typed data such as products, articles and jobs, or your own schema.
• Sessions keep cookies, geolocation can be overridden, and you can choose datacentre or residential IPs.
• A CDP headless browser works with Playwright or Puppeteer, and an HTTP proxy mode and an MCP server for coding agents are available.

Zyte API pros and cons:

Zyte API pricing

Zyte API bills per 1,000 successful responses and prices each request by the target site’s difficulty tier, so no flat entry price exists.

Pay as you go runs from $0.13 (tier one) to $1.27 (tier five) for HTTP and from $1.01 to $16.08 for browser rendering, commitments start at $100 a month, and a $5 credit lasts 30 days with no commitment, per Zyte’s pricing page.

We could not load Zyte’s pricing page on 9 October 2026, so these figures date from 30 September.

6. Oxylabs: Best for per-result pricing and a residential pool from one vendor

Oxylabs sells a Web Scraper API through a single endpoint, with proxies, CAPTCHA handling and parsers included, alongside residential proxies. Teams that want an API and an IP pool from one vendor fit best.

Oxylabs top features:

• Realtime, Push-Pull and Proxy Endpoint integration methods are available, and Push-Pull is recommended for large volumes.
• Rendering to HTML or PNG comes with browser instructions to click, type, scroll and wait for elements.
• geo_location works by country, with SERP and e-commerce localisation such as ZIP codes for Amazon.
• Sessions run through session_id for up to 25 minutes or 100 requests.
• Dedicated parsers (parse=true) and a Custom Parser using XPath or CSS extract fields.
• Output can be HTML, JSON, markdown or several formats, with Fetch and XHR capture and image download.
• Results can be delivered to S3, Google Cloud Storage or S3-compatible storage, and a free cron-based Scheduler runs recurring jobs.
• The network spans 177M+ proxies in 195+ countries, with SOC 2 Type II and Python and Go SDKs.

Oxylabs pros and cons:

Oxylabs pricing

Oxylabs bills per 1,000 successful results.

Plans are Starter at $30 (up to 60,000 results, from $0.50 per 1,000), Basic at $100 (up to 222,000, from $0.45) and Flexible at $500 (up to 1,430,000, from $0.35), while Enterprise starts from $0.25 per 1,000 for 10,000,000+ results.

New accounts get $5 of welcome credits toward any Oxylabs product, and the plans changed between our 30 September and 9 October checks, per Oxylabs’ pricing page.

7. Decodo: Best for small teams starting on a free API plan

Decodo, formerly Smartproxy, offers a Web Scraping API with more than 100 templates and residential proxies with city, ZIP and ASN targeting. Small teams and budget buyers get the most from it.

Decodo top features:

• More than 100 ready-made templates cover Amazon, Google, Walmart, Target, YouTube, ChatGPT and Perplexity, plus a universal Web target.
• Standard or Premium proxy pools and JavaScript rendering are chosen per request.
• Output can be HTML, JSON, CSV, XHR, PNG or markdown.
• Automatic retries, browser fingerprinting and CAPTCHA handling are built in.
• Task scheduling is included, and the product page states unlimited concurrent sessions.
• An MCP server, TypeScript, Python and Go SDKs, and n8n and LangChain integrations are available.

Decodo pros and cons:

Decodo pricing

Decodo bills by pages scraped and counts crawls separately, so the $249 plan covers 383,000 crawls or 1,200,000 pages.

Plans are Free (up to 10,000 pages), $19 (38,000), $49 (122,000), $99 (330,000) and $249 (1,200,000), and the free plan needs no card.

Residential proxies are sold separately, per Decodo’s pricing page.

8. Bright Data: Best for one vendor covering proxies, unblocking and datasets

Bright Data is a data platform that sells proxy networks, a Web Unlocker API that handles blocks and CAPTCHAs, and Scraper APIs with ready-made collectors. Teams that want proxies, unblocking and datasets from one vendor fit best.

Bright Data top features:

• Web Unlocker handles fingerprinting, IP rotation, retries, cookies, user agents and referer control.
• CAPTCHA solving covers a published list that includes hCaptcha, reCAPTCHA v2 and v3, Turnstile, DataDome, Akamai and PerimeterX.
• A built-in browser renders JavaScript automatically, with output as HTML, JSON, markdown or screenshots.
• Scraper APIs offer prebuilt scrapers for popular sites, and Scraper Studio builds custom ones with AI.
• Up to 5,000 URLs go into one call, with delivery as JSON, NDJSON or CSV through the API, a webhook or cloud storage.
• Python and Node SDKs, a CLI and a hosted MCP server are available.
• AI self-healing keeps scrapers running, and Scraper APIs have unlimited concurrency.

Bright Data pros and cons:

Bright Data pricing

Bright Data bills the Web Unlocker API per 1,000 successful requests.

Pay as you go costs $1.50 per 1,000 requests, Scale is $499 a month with 383,000 requests included, Enterprise is on request, and a free tier gives 5,000 requests a month with no card.

Details are on Bright Data’s Unlocker pricing page.

9. Apify: Best for ready-made scrapers or hosting your own

Apify is a cloud platform for building, running and selling serverless scrapers called Actors, with a Store that listed more than 84,000 of them on 9 October 2026, plus proxies and storage. Teams that want a marketplace or a place to host crawlers fit best.

Apify top features:

• Ready-made Actors in the Store cover many sites, or you build your own from JavaScript, TypeScript or Python templates.
• Schedules use cron expressions, with time zone and daylight saving support.
• Datasets export as JSON, CSV, XML, Excel, HTML table, RSS or JSONL.
• Apify Proxy offers datacentre, residential and Google SERP IPs with rotation and geotargeting, plus an Unblocker for anti-bot and CAPTCHA systems.
• Webhooks fire on run success or failure, and a REST API comes with JavaScript and Python clients.
• Integrations include Zapier, Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable, n8n, Airbyte, LangChain and an MCP server.
• Crawlee, the open-source library, adds browser fingerprinting and proxy tiering for your own crawlers.

Apify pros and cons:

Apify pricing

Apify bills in compute units (1 GB of RAM for one hour) plus Actor fees.

Starter is $19 a month with $19 of usage at $0.20 per compute unit, Scale is $199 ($0.16) and Business is $999 ($0.13), and a free plan includes $5 of monthly usage with no card.

Unused prepaid usage expires each cycle, per Apify’s pricing page.

10. Octoparse: Best for non-developers who want a visual tool with ready templates

Octoparse is a desktop no-code scraper with cloud runs, more than 500 preset templates and paid add-ons. Non-developers, freelancers and small teams use it.

Octoparse top features:

• Auto-detect drafts the workflow, and you edit it by drag and drop.
• Logins, pagination, infinite scroll and CAPTCHAs are handled, according to the homepage.
• More than 500 preset templates cover Amazon, Google Maps, Google Search, TikTok and X.
• Cloud runs work around the clock, splitting large jobs and rotating IPs automatically.
• Task scheduling is available from the Standard plan.
• Exports go to Excel, CSV, JSON, HTML, XML, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Google Sheets, Drive, Dropbox, S3 and Zapier.
• A Data Export API comes with Standard, an Advanced API with Professional, and there is an MCP server and a CLI.
• Task monitoring with email alerts is a Professional feature.

Octoparse pros and cons:

Octoparse pricing

Octoparse prices its plans by task count.

Standard is $83 a month ($69 billed annually) for 100 tasks, Professional is $299 ($249 billed annually) for 250 tasks, and a free plan allows 10 tasks.

Residential proxies cost $3/GB and CAPTCHA solving $1 to $1.50 per thousand, per Octoparse’s pricing page.

11. ParseHub: Best for non-technical users scraping interactive sites

ParseHub is a point-and-click desktop scraper that handles AJAX, forms, dropdowns, logins and infinite scroll, running on ParseHub’s servers. Non-technical users scraping multi-step pages fit it.

ParseHub top features:

• Point-and-click selection uses a machine-learning engine that infers element hierarchy.
• AJAX pages, forms, dropdowns, logins, maps, infinite scroll, tabs and pop-ups are supported.
• Cloud collection has a per-project option to rotate IPs.
• Scheduled collection runs daily, weekly or monthly.
• Regular expressions clean text and HTML before download.
• A REST API returns JSON or CSV, with webhooks.
• Data downloads as JSON and Excel, and imports to Google Sheets and Tableau.

ParseHub pros and cons:

ParseHub pricing

ParseHub prices its plans by pages per run and number of projects.

Standard is $189 a month with 10,000 pages per run and 20 private projects, cancel anytime, Professional is $599 with unlimited pages per run, and a free plan allows 200 pages per run and five public projects.

Details are on ParseHub’s pricing page.

12. Web Scraper: Best for visual setup with predictable scaling

Web Scraper is a free browser extension for building scrapers as sitemaps, paired with Web Scraper Cloud, which runs them on a schedule. Teams that want visual setup and concurrency-based scaling fit it.

Web Scraper top features:

• The sitemap model lets you build in the extension, test, then run locally or in Cloud.
• An AI Sitemap Wizard sits beside an Advanced Sitemap Builder.
• Pagination, load more, infinite scroll, tabs and product variants are handled.
• The Cloud scheduler uses intervals or cron and has a job dashboard.
• Automated CAPTCHA bypass, retries and proxy rotation run in Cloud.
• A data parser applies per-column regex and replace rules without scripts.
• Quality monitoring uses validation rules such as minimum records, empty pages and column fill, with email alerts.
• An API, webhooks and delivery to Sheets, Drive, Dropbox, Google Cloud, Azure and S3 are available.

Web Scraper pros and cons:

Web Scraper pricing

Web Scraper bills in URL credits, with one per page load.

Project is $50 a month billed annually (5,000 credits, two concurrent scrapers), Professional is $100 (20,000, three), Scale starts from $200 (unlimited credits, priced per concurrent scraper), and a seven-day Cloud trial needs no card.

A residential proxy add-on costs $2.50/GB on Scale, per Web Scraper’s pricing page.

13. Browse AI: Best for monitoring pages and feeding spreadsheets

Browse AI lets you train robots by recording clicks, monitor pages for changes and send results to Google Sheets, Airtable, Zapier, Make or Amazon S3. Business users who want monitoring without code fit it.

Browse AI top features:

• Robots are trained by recording clicks, and AI structures list data for approval before a run.
• Prebuilt robots cover popular sites, and the page gives both 200+ and 250+ as the count.
• Change detection adapts robots to layout changes.
• Monitors send change alerts on an hourly, daily or weekly schedule.
• Pagination including infinite scroll, forms, dropdowns and logins are supported, with custom geo locations.
• Chained robots collect page and subpage data, and bulk runs handle up to 500,000 pages, per the FAQ.
• Data goes to CSV, JSON, S3, Sheets, Airtable, a REST API, webhooks, Zapier, Make and 7,000+ apps.

Browse AI pros and cons:

Browse AI pricing

Browse AI bills in credits, with one per page or one per 10 extracted rows, whichever is more.

The page loads on annual billing, where Personal is $19 a month (12,000 credits a year), Professional is $69 (60,000 credits a year) and Premium starts from $500, and a free plan gives 50 credits a month with no card.

The monthly view of Browse AI’s pricing page shows different credit allowances, so check which one you are buying.

14. Thunderbit: Best for quick one-off lead and directory extractions

Thunderbit is an AI-driven Chrome extension and web app that scrapes a page from a plain-language description and exports to Excel, Google Sheets, Airtable or Notion. Non-technical users pulling leads or directory listings fit it.

Thunderbit top features:

• You describe the data in plain language, and AI suggests fields with no selectors.
• Subpage scraping appends columns to your table.
• Pagination and bulk scraping come with Starter and Pro.
• Pre-built templates for Amazon, eBay and Google Maps use no AI credits.
• It extracts from PDFs, images and documents.
• It can summarise, categorise and translate during a run.
• Scheduled scrapers number one on Free, five on Starter and 25 on Pro, with minimum monitor intervals of one day, one hour and five minutes.
• An Open API takes batches of up to 100 URLs with webhooks, and a CLI and an MCP server are available.

Thunderbit pros and cons:

Thunderbit pricing

Thunderbit bills in credits.

The page loads on yearly billing, where Starter is $9 a month (5,000 credits a year) and Pro is $16.50 (30,000 credits a year, limited-time discount), while monthly billing is $15 for Starter (500 credits) and $38 for Pro (3,000 credits).

A free plan covers six pages a month, and details are on Thunderbit’s pricing page.

15. Firecrawl: Best for feeding AI agents and RAG pipelines with markdown

Firecrawl is an API that turns pages into LLM-ready data through scrape, crawl, map, search and browser-interaction endpoints. Developers building agent and retrieval pipelines fit it.

Firecrawl top features:

• Scrape output formats include markdown, summary, cleaned or raw HTML, links, images, screenshots, JSON, branding and a natural-language query format.
• Structured extraction takes a JSON schema or just a prompt and returns JSON.
• Crawl controls cover depth, include and exclude path regex, sitemap modes and subdomain switches, with a default cap of 10,000 pages and robots.txt respected.
• The Interact endpoint clicks and fills forms on a scraped page from a prompt or code.
• The Monitor endpoint runs scheduled checks, at intervals down to five minutes, with change tracking sent by webhook, email or Slack.
• JavaScript rendering, PDFs and DOCX are handled, and a Parse feature converts local files.
• SDKs for six languages, a CLI, an MCP server, LangChain and LlamaIndex integrations and a self-hostable open-source repository are available.

Firecrawl pros and cons:

Firecrawl pricing

Firecrawl charges one credit per page, and JSON extraction adds four.

Hobby is $19 a month billed monthly or $16 billed yearly (5,000 credits), Standard is $83 billed yearly (100,000), Growth is $333 (500,000) and Scale is $599 (1,000,000), and the free tier gives 1,000 credits a month and two concurrent requests with no card.

Prices were effective 4 September 2026 per Firecrawl’s pricing page.

16. Crawl4AI: Best for Python developers who want free, controllable crawling

Crawl4AI is an open-source Python crawler that turns sites into LLM-ready markdown or structured data, and it now has a hosted Crawl4AI Cloud. Python developers with hosting capacity fit the library, and teams without engineering capacity fit the cloud version better.

Crawl4AI top features:

• Clean markdown generation uses fit filters (pruning, BM25 or LLM-based) that strip menus and boilerplate, with numbered link citations.
• Extraction without an LLM uses CSS, XPath and regex strategies, with a schema generator that writes reusable schemas.
• LLM extraction into a typed JSON schema works with any provider, including local models through Ollama.
• Deep crawling runs breadth-first, depth-first or best-first with crash-recovery resume, and an adaptive crawler stops once it has enough to answer a query.
• Browser control covers persistent profiles, remote browsers over CDP, sessions, authenticated proxies with rotation, stealth mode and Chromium, Firefox and WebKit.
• Dynamic pages are handled by running JavaScript, waiting for elements, scrolling and capturing screenshots or PDFs.
• Caching and batch crawling are built in, and cloud batches take up to 50 URLs per streamed call or 10,000 in a background job.
• Self-hosting through Docker adds a REST API, MCP, a dashboard and a playground.

Crawl4AI pros and cons:

Crawl4AI pricing

The Crawl4AI library is free, and the cloud service sells prepaid packs with no billing unit for the library itself.

New cloud accounts get 2,000 credits on signup plus a 7-day pass of 20 credits, and packs are $10 for 10,000 credits, $25 for 27,500 and $100 for 125,000, though the site warns that prices can change.

Details are in the Crawl4AI documentation.

17. ScrapeGraphAI: Best for prompt-based structured extraction

ScrapeGraphAI is an AI-powered API that scrapes, extracts, searches, crawls and monitors pages, using natural-language prompts to pull structured fields without selectors. Developers who want prompt-based extraction fit it.

ScrapeGraphAI top features:

• The Scrape endpoint returns markdown, HTML, screenshots, JSON, links, images, summaries or branding analysis.
• The Extract endpoint turns a URL, raw HTML or markdown into JSON from a natural-language prompt, optionally enforced by a JSON schema.
• The Search endpoint searches the web and extracts structured data from results in one call.
• The Crawl endpoint is asynchronous, with start, stop and resume controls.
• The Monitor endpoint runs cron-scheduled checks and fires webhooks on page changes.
• A reusable Schema store and a History endpoint retrieve past results.
• Render modes auto, fast and js come with a stealth toggle for anti-bot bypass.
• Python and JavaScript SDKs, an MCP server, a CLI and LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI and Zapier integrations are available, alongside an MIT-licensed open-source Python library.

ScrapeGraphAI pros and cons:

ScrapeGraphAI pricing

ScrapeGraphAI charges one credit for a markdown scrape and five for extraction, and stealth mode adds five.

Starter is $20 a month (10,000 credits), Growth is $100 (100,000) and Pro is $500 (750,000), and the free trial is 500 credits, one time, at 10 requests a minute.

Details are on ScrapeGraphAI’s pricing page.

18. Diffbot: Best for structured article, product and company data without per-site rules

Diffbot is an AI-based web data company that sells Extract APIs, Crawl, a Knowledge Graph and Natural Language and Web Search APIs. It extracts data with computer vision and language processing instead of selectors, so it suits teams that scrape many sites whose layouts change.

Diffbot top features:

• A page-classification API picks the right extractor for any page.
• Page-type APIs cover articles, products, images, video and discussions, with event, list and job types in beta.
• Computer vision and NLP extraction needs no per-site rules.
• Crawl spiders a site from one seed URL and runs Extract on every page.
• The Knowledge Graph holds over 10 billion entities.
• Enhance matches uploaded data to Knowledge Graph records.
• The Natural Language API resolves entities and sentiment, and the Web Search API returns live results.

Diffbot pros and cons:

Diffbot pricing

Diffbot charges one credit per page (two through a datacentre proxy), 25 per Knowledge Graph entity and one per web search.

Startup is $299 a month (250,000 credits, overage $0.001), Plus is $899 (1,000,000, overage $0.0009, Crawl with 25 active crawls, three seats), and a free plan gives 10,000 credits a month with no card at five requests a minute.

Details are on Diffbot’s pricing page.

19. ScrapeHero: Best for non-developers scraping popular sites, or outsourcing custom crawls

ScrapeHero has two parts. ScrapeHero Cloud offers no-code, ready-made scrapers and real-time APIs, and a fully managed service builds custom crawlers, APIs and automation for you. Non-developers scraping popular sites and firms outsourcing crawls fit it.

ScrapeHero top features:

• More than 50 scrapers and APIs cover sites such as Amazon, Walmart and Google Maps.
• Real-time APIs are offered for Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and more.
• Scheduling runs hourly, daily or weekly.
• ScrapeHero handles site changes and blocking, so maintenance is included.
• Rotating proxies are standard, with premium proxies from the $100 plan.
• Role-based access control is available.
• The managed service builds custom crawlers and APIs, and retail store location data is offered.

ScrapeHero pros and cons:

ScrapeHero pricing

ScrapeHero Cloud bills in data credits, while the managed service bills by pages.

Cloud plans are Intro at $5 a month (4,500 credits), Lite at $25 (30,000), Starter at $50 (90,000) and Standard at $100 (225,000), the managed service starts from $550 per site, and 400 free credits don’t renew.

Details are on ScrapeHero Cloud’s pricing page.

20. Mozenda: Best for business teams that want a supported point-and-click scraper

Mozenda is a cloud-hosted point-and-click scraping platform sold as licensed software, with on-premise and managed data service options. It still exists under the same name, and its About page says it joined Dexi.io in July 2020.

Mozenda top features:

• Point-and-click agent building comes with XPath for harder sites.
• Job Sequencer chains agents and publishing.
• Request Blocking speeds up runs.
• Premium Harvesting collects from different geographic locations.
• Templates, agent grouping and email alerts are included.
• API access controls agents and collections, and output comes as TSV, CSV, XML, XLSX or JSON.
• Managed Data Services handle harvesting and data wrangling for you.

Mozenda pros and cons:

Mozenda pricing

Mozenda bills in processing credits per month.

Pilot is $500 a month (5,000 credits, 10 agents, 10 GB), Enterprise is on quote and paid yearly, and the 14-day trial includes 500 credits, five agents and 1 GB.

Details are on Mozenda’s pricing page.

21. Scrapy: Best for large structured crawls in Python

Scrapy is a Python framework for writing spiders that crawl sites and extract structured data. Python teams crawling mostly static pages at volume choose it.

Scrapy top features:

• Asynchronous request scheduling handles many pages at once.
• CSS and XPath selectors come with regex helpers.
• Item pipelines clean, validate, deduplicate and store items.
• Feed exports write JSON, JSON Lines, CSV, XML, Pickle and Marshal to disk, FTP, S3, GCS or stdout.
• AutoThrottle adjusts delays from server latency.
• Middlewares handle cookies, compression, authentication, caching, robots.txt and depth limits.
• Native asyncio support is on by default in new projects.
• HttpProxyMiddleware applies a proxy you supply, and the docs point to third-party services for rotation.

Scrapy pros and cons:

Scrapy pricing

Scrapy is free and open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence, with version 2.19.0 released on 10 September 2026 and maintained by Zyte.

Our Python libraries guide shows how it compares with the alternatives, and the code is in the Scrapy repository.

22. Crawlee: Best for developers who want full control in JavaScript or Python

Crawlee is a free, open-source crawling library from Apify that manages crawl queues, browsers and proxies. Developers who write and maintain their own scrapers get the most from it.

Crawlee top features:

• One interface covers HTTP and headless-browser crawling, and the Playwright and Puppeteer crawlers share it.
• Cheerio and JSDOM parsers are integrated.
• A persistent request queue runs breadth-first or depth-first.
• Proxy rotation works from a static list (round-robin), a custom function or tiered proxies that escalate when blocked.
• SessionPool ties cookies and headers to an IP and retires blocked sessions.
• Autoscaling follows system resources, with maxConcurrency and maxRequestsPerMinute limits.
• Browser-like headers, TLS fingerprint replication and human-like fingerprints reduce blocks.
• Results save as JSON by default, with CSV export.

Crawlee pros and cons:

Crawlee pricing

Crawlee is free and open source, and we checked its JavaScript docs at version 3.18.

Its proxy management guide has the details, and you cover your own infrastructure and proxy costs.

23. Playwright: Best for JavaScript-heavy sites with a modern browser API

Playwright controls Chromium, Firefox and WebKit through one API from Node.js, Python, Java and .NET. Developers scraping dynamic pages use it most.

Playwright top features:

• Auto-waiting makes actions wait for elements to be visible, stable, enabled and able to receive events.
• Built-in locators find elements by role, text, label, placeholder, alt text, title and test ID, and CSS and XPath also work.
• Network control routes, mocks, modifies or aborts requests and responses.
• Chromium, Firefox and WebKit are supported, along with Chrome and Edge channels and mobile device emulation.
• The Python API has sync and async variants.
• Locators pierce Shadow DOM by default, though XPath does not.
• Browser contexts isolate sessions, and authenticated state can be saved and reused.

Playwright pros and cons:

Playwright pricing

Playwright is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence, with version 1.63.0 released on 4 September 2026.

Sources are the Playwright repository and its network documentation.

24. Selenium: Best for teams that already know WebDriver

Selenium implements the W3C WebDriver standard, with clients for Java, Python, C#, Ruby, JavaScript and Kotlin. Teams with existing Selenium skills or infrastructure choose it.

Selenium top features:

• Bindings cover six languages under the W3C WebDriver standard.
• Eight locator strategies include ID, name, class name, tag name, CSS, XPath, link text and partial link text.
• Relative locators find elements by their position next to others.
• Implicit and explicit waits handle timing.
• WebDriver BiDi over WebSocket exposes network events, console messages and JavaScript errors.
• Selenium Manager fetches drivers automatically and ships with every release.
• Selenium Grid routes commands to remote browsers for parallel runs across machines.

Selenium pros and cons:

Selenium pricing

Selenium is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence, with version 4.49.0 released on 9 September 2026.

A proxy can be set through browser options, with no rotation, and the project lives in the Selenium repository.

25. Puppeteer: Best for Node.js teams scripting Chrome

Puppeteer is a JavaScript library that controls Chrome or Firefox over the DevTools Protocol or WebDriver BiDi. Node.js teams use it for rendered pages.

Puppeteer top features:

• Chrome or Firefox run under DevTools Protocol or WebDriver BiDi control.
• Headless is the default, with headful mode available.
• Locators wait for the element to be in view, visible, enabled and stable before acting.
• A custom selector syntax covers XPath, text, ARIA and Shadow DOM alongside CSS.
• Request interception can continue, respond to or abort each request.
• Screenshots, PDFs and performance timeline traces are built in.

Puppeteer pros and cons:

Puppeteer pricing

Puppeteer is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 licence, with version 25.12.0 released on 23 September 2026.

The documentation we read describes no proxy rotation or CAPTCHA handling, and the code is in the Puppeteer repository.

26. Beautiful Soup: Best for beginners and static HTML

Beautiful Soup is a Python library that pulls data out of HTML and XML documents. Python beginners get productive fastest with it.

Beautiful Soup top features:

• It navigates, searches and modifies the parse tree.
• Pluggable parsers include html.parser, lxml and html5lib.
• CSS selectors work through the .css property, powered by Soup Sieve.
• Encoding detection runs through Unicode, Dammit, with a from_encoding override.
• SoupStrainer parses only chosen tags to save memory.
• Multi-valued attributes such as class come back as lists.
• XML parsing works when lxml is installed.

Beautiful Soup pros and cons:

Beautiful Soup pricing

Beautiful Soup is free and open source under the MIT licence, with version 4.15.0 on PyPI (7 June 2026), although the project homepage still shows 4.14.3.

Our guide to Python web scraping libraries compares it with the alternatives, and package details are on PyPI.

27. lxml: Best for fast XPath and CSS parsing of large documents

lxml binds the libxml2 and libxslt C libraries to Python for fast XML and HTML processing with an ElementTree-style API. Developers parsing large or messy documents choose it.

lxml top features:

• XPath 1.0, XSLT 1.0 and EXSLT are supported, including regular expressions in XPath.
• lxml.html adds link rewriting, absolute links, form handling and HTML diff.
• CSS selectors work through the cssselect package, translated to XPath.
• Validation covers DTD, RelaxNG, XMLSchema and Schematron.
• Incremental parsing offers iterparse, a feed parser and a target parser.
• Recovery mode handles broken XML and HTML.

lxml pros and cons:

lxml pricing

lxml is free and open source under the BSD-3-Clause licence, with version 6.1.3 released on 2 September 2026.

It can’t fetch or render pages, and the source is in the lxml repository.

28. Cheerio: Best for quick static-HTML parsing in Node.js

Cheerio gives Node.js developers jQuery-style queries over parsed HTML. It’s quick on static pages and the natural pairing for a fetch library.

Cheerio top features:

• A jQuery-like API traverses and manipulates parsed markup.
• CSS selectors support combinators.
• parse5 handles HTML by default, and htmlparser2 handles XML or can be chosen on request.
• Fragment mode parses snippets without html and body wrappers.
• loadBuffer and decodeStream sniff encodings, and stringStream parses as data arrives.
• fromURL fetches pages, follows up to five redirects and takes request options.
• Markup serialises back with $.html().

Cheerio pros and cons:

Cheerio pricing

Cheerio is free and open source under the MIT licence, with version 1.2.0 released on 23 January 2026.

Our roundup of Node.js scraping tools shows where it fits, and the Cheerio documentation has the details.

Why do web scrapers keep breaking?

Scrapers break for seven recurring reasons, and most sit outside your parsing code.

• It works in the demo, then fails under load or after deployment. A tool that looks fine on ten pages can fall over at ten thousand, and an r/automation thread with 192 comments is full of people saying demos hide the load problem, so stress-test any tool during its trial. Code that works on your laptop can also fail on a server, because a local run uses your home IP and cookies while a deployed one comes from a datacentre and can be served a different page. One r/AI_Agents user suggests logging the raw HTML the deployment receives before blaming the parser.
• Blocks and CAPTCHAs, usually the IP stack and not the library. Commenters in the same r/automation thread argue that much of the flakiness blamed on Playwright or Selenium comes from flagged datacentre IP ranges, and one described a Playwright run that was fine for about 200 pages before CAPTCHA churn killed throughput.
• Selectors rot when a site redesigns. Selectors tie your code to a page’s layout, so a redesign quietly breaks extraction, and an r/SEO commenter notes that Google changes its results HTML constantly, so SERP scrapers need regular fixes.
• Sessions and logins that no tool solves. Expiring cookies, checkpoints and two-factor prompts break scrapers that log in, and an r/AI_Agents practitioner points out that no scraping API touches that problem. Their fix is a separate persistent browser profile for each site.
• Silent failures. A request that returns HTTP 200 with an empty selector looks the same as a day with no news. Two replies in that thread make the point, with one preferring a job that fails loudly to one that reports success on half the products, and another recommending alerts on the scrape failing, not only on the data.
• The time and cost of maintaining your own stack. One r/AI_Agents user spent three years on a custom scraper before paying for a SERP API or Zyte and passing the cost to clients. In the Apify and Web Scraping Club survey, 46.7% of professionals used only in-house code, 41.7% mixed in-house and external tools, and 5% used only external services, and because Apify sells scraping tools these are headline figures only.
• Too many tools and too much hype. An r/SaaS post titled “There are 20+ web scraping tools” captures the fatigue, and in r/webscraping practitioners say language models work as a light extraction layer over fetched pages and as a code generator, not as the fetcher, with token costs that balloon at millions of pages.

Should you choose open source or commercial tools?

Pick open source when you have the engineering time to run it, and a commercial tool when blocks, scale or a small team make that time the expensive part. People who search for web scraping tools open source usually want a free option they can self-host, and each review above gives the project’s licence and latest release.

What does open source really cost you?

Open source removes the licence fee but not the running costs, which are proxies, CAPTCHA handling, browser infrastructure and the time you spend fixing selectors. In the Apify and Web Scraping Club survey, 41.7% of respondents mix in-house code with external tools.

When does open source win?

On static sites, when you need full control, and when a per-request fee would cost more than the engineering time you would spend anyway.

When does a commercial tool win?

On protected targets, at scale, and in small teams that don’t want to run infrastructure. A founder of a scraping company in the r/AI_Agents thread says fully self-healing scrapers are marketing language and that websites will change and block you regardless, which is the case for having someone else own the fix.

Which web scraping tool fits your team?

Match the tool to the problem that keeps failing, and add layers only when a real problem appears. Automated web scraping tools range from a single API call to scheduled pipelines, so start with the smallest setup that does the job.