Web scraping is the automated collection of data from websites: prices, product descriptions and specs, contacts, listings, search results, meta tags, and any other structured information. You can tackle it two fundamentally different ways — write your own scraper in some programming language, or reach for a ready-made tool that already knows how to crawl pages, pull out data, and export it in the format you need.
This article is about the second path: ready-made web scraping software and services. We won't write a single line of scraper code and we won't dig into libraries. If you're interested in building your own solution, start with our separate guides:
- What programming language should you write a scraper in? — choosing a language and the overall approach to a custom build.
- Web scraping libraries — the specific developer tools for extracting data from HTML.
Below is an overview of the tools that let you collect data without writing your own scraper: desktop programs, spreadsheet tricks, cloud no-code platforms, and services that hand you data through an API. If you're shopping for the best web scraping tools for a specific job, this is the map.
How the tool market breaks down
It helps to sort the ready-made options into a few groups, because they solve very different problems:
- Desktop programs — installed on your machine, maximum control, good for recurring jobs (Screaming Frog, Datacol, A-Parser).
- Scraping right inside spreadsheets — simple ways to pull data with Excel or Google Sheets without a separate program.
- Cloud no-code services — collect data "in the cloud" through a point-and-click visual interface (Octoparse, ParseHub, Web Scraper, and others).
- Automation and SEO-harvesting tools — programs where scraping is one feature alongside browser automation, link building, and proxy work (ZennoPoster, GSA, ScrapeBox).
- Services with an API and infrastructure — return data (or "unblockable" requests) through an API, handling proxies, JavaScript rendering, and anti-bot bypass for you (Apify, Bright Data, ScrapingBee, Zyte, Firecrawl).
- Browser extensions — grab data from an open page in a click or two.
Which one fits depends on three things: how much you're willing to learn about the tech, how much data you need, and how much protection sits on the target sites.
Desktop programs
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Originally a crawler for technical SEO audits: it walks a site like a search bot and collects links, response codes, titles, meta tags, redirects, duplicates, and other technical information. But for scraping, the important part is Custom Extraction mode, which pulls arbitrary data out of the HTML via XPath, CSS selectors, or regular expressions.
In practice that means you can point Screaming Frog at a large list of URLs and have it collect prices, SKUs, product names, or any markup elements at once. It renders pages through headless Chromium (so it copes with JavaScript sites), integrates with Google Analytics, Search Console, and PageSpeed Insights, and pulls link metrics from Ahrefs, Majestic, and Moz.
The model is simple: the free version is capped at 500 URLs per crawl with a trimmed feature set (custom extraction, JS rendering, and saved projects are paid only). A paid license is annual, around £259 per user per year (prices are approximate and change periodically — check the official site).
Who it's for: SEO specialists and anyone who needs to collect structured data from a site with predictable markup. The advanced features have a real learning curve, and it's not a replacement for a full scraper on very large or well-defended sites.
Datacol
A long-standing general-purpose visual scraper that's been on the market for over a decade. The idea is to configure data collection visually, without programming: you point it at a site, use a wizard to select the elements you want, and set up navigation and pagination. Under the hood it's XPath and extraction rules, with a helper for building them.
Datacol positions itself as a solution "for any site": online stores, classified-ad boards (real estate, autos, marketplaces like Amazon and eBay), social networks, Google Maps, search results, news, and keyword-driven content. Results save to CSV, Excel, XML, JSON, or a database, and export directly into popular CMSes (WordPress, OpenCart, and others). Functionality extends via plugins (free and paid) — spinning, translation, phone-number recognition. A license runs about $89, with a demo available.
Who it's for: people willing to learn the configuration and regular expressions who want to automate content population or the collection of repetitive data. Bear in mind the interface takes time to master, and non-standard tasks sometimes mean buying configuration or plugins.
A-Parser
A professional multithreaded scraper aimed at large volumes and SEO tasks. Its strengths are performance and flexibility: dozens of ready parsers out of the box (search results, rank tracking, SEO-parameter collection, and so on), a constantly growing catalog of ready presets, and the ability to build your own parsers in JavaScript at nearly any complexity.
Unlike Datacol, A-Parser gives finer control over settings, supports building JS parsers, and offers control via an API — so you can wire it into your own processes and automate runs. It's a paid product with several license editions.
Who it's for: SEO specialists, agencies, and anyone scraping large volumes who wants maximum flexibility. The barrier to entry is higher than a visual no-code tool: unlocking the potential means digging in.
Scraping right inside spreadsheets
Sometimes a separate program is overkill — a simple task can be handled with office tools.
Excel / VBA
Excel has built-in Power Query (under "Get Data" / "From Web"), which pulls tables and structured data straight from web pages, refreshes them on a click, and transforms them on the fly. For finer scenarios people use VBA with objects like MSXML2.XMLHTTP or WinHTTP to send requests and parse the response.
Pros: nothing extra to install, data lands right in a familiar spreadsheet. Cons: it copes poorly with dynamic JavaScript sites and pages where data isn't in explicit tables; for non-trivial logic in VBA you're effectively programming anyway (which is closer to writing a scraper from scratch — see the guides above).
Google Sheets
Google Sheets has a set of importer formulas that turn a cell into a mini-scraper:
IMPORTHTML(url, "table"|"list", index)— pulls a table or list from a page by number.IMPORTXML(url, xpath_query)— extracts data by XPath (a heading, price, link).IMPORTDATA(url)— fetches a CSV or TSV by URL.IMPORTFEED(url)— reads RSS/Atom feeds.
Pros: free, nothing to install, results land straight in a cloud spreadsheet, easy to refresh. Cons: it works only with static HTML (JavaScript isn't executed), there are limits on request frequency and volume, and on big jobs the formulas slow down and hit ceilings. It's an excellent option for one-off and small jobs on simple sites.
Automation and SEO-harvesting tools
A separate category: programs conceived as broader than "a scraper." Their main job is to automate browser actions or SEO processes (sign-ups, posting, link building), and data collection comes along as one of the capabilities. If the task isn't just "pull a table" but "log in, click around, collect, and send it somewhere" — this is where to look.
ZennoPoster
A visual builder for browser automation from ZennoLab (on the market since 2011 and widely used for this kind of work). You can assemble logic from "blocks" without code, or record your actions in a browser and have the program turn them into a project that then repeats across dozens or hundreds of parallel threads. Device and fingerprint emulation, proxy handling, CAPTCHA-solving integration (CapMonster), a scheduler, database integration, and — for advanced scenarios — C# and JavaScript inserts.
Scraping here is one typical scenario: collecting search results, monitoring competitor rankings and prices, scraping content and contacts, exporting object IDs. But ZennoPoster's real strength is the "collect + act" combination: anything you can do by hand in a normal browser, you can automate. It runs on Windows, with a large community and thousands of ready templates on the forum. It's a paid product with several license editions.
Who it's for: people who need not just data collection but full automation of multi-step actions on sites (sign-ups, posting, account warming) — with scraping as part of the process.
GSA (GSA Search Engine Ranker and related software)
GSA is a whole family of SEO and marketing programs. The flagship, GSA Search Engine Ranker, is primarily an automated link-building tool, but it includes a built-in harvester: it can scrape target URLs from search engines by keywords and footprints, then place links on them. So scraping here is a supporting, not a primary, function.
Nearby in the lineup are more "scraper-like" tools: GSA Proxy Scraper collects and checks proxies, GSA Content Generator has a built-in scraper for gathering content from web pages, and GSA Keyword Research scrapes keywords from various sources. All of it is paid Windows software geared toward SEO tasks and large-volume work through proxies.
Who it's for: SEO specialists who need to collect large lists of URLs, proxies, or keywords as part of link building and promotion. For scraping "business data" (prices, products, contacts) it's not the right tool.
ScrapeBox
Since we're on GSA-style tools, we can't skip ScrapeBox — a classic SEO harvester often called the "Swiss Army knife" of scraping. Its main use is mass collection of URLs from search results by keywords and footprints, harvesting and checking proxies, metric checks, link extraction, and a pile of small SEO utilities. Like GSA, it's a tool from the world of SEO automation, not a general-purpose structured-data scraper.
Who it's for: people working with big URL lists and SEO metrics who need fast mass harvesting.
Cloud no-code services
These platforms let you collect data through a visual interface: you open a page inside the service, click the elements you want, and it builds the extraction logic itself. Running, scheduling, and storing results are handled by the cloud.
Octoparse
One of the best-known no-code scrapers. You configure collection by clicking elements in a browser preview; there are hundreds of ready templates for popular sites (marketplaces, maps, social networks, classifieds), cloud runs, schedules, built-in proxies, automatic CAPTCHA solving, and export to CSV/Excel/JSON and Google Sheets. There's a limited free tier; paid plans start around $75–99 per month, with API access on the higher plans. The visual builder runs on Windows.
Who it's for: non-programmers who need structured data on a regular, reliable basis.
ParseHub
A similar "click the element" model, but cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux) and often better at dynamic sites, SPAs, and infinite scroll. The free tier is capped by pages per run; paid plans are noticeably more expensive.
Who it's for: people who need to work with JavaScript-heavy sites in a visual tool and aren't on Windows.
Web Scraper (webscraper.io)
A lightweight solution in the form of a Chrome extension: you build a sitemap, define fields and pagination, and run the collection in the browser or in the cloud. There's a free version; cloud plans start around $50 per month. A good option for straightforward extractions without installing a separate app.
Browse.ai
A no-code service with an emphasis on monitoring and change tracking: it can not only collect data but also send alerts when something on a page changes (a price or availability, for instance). Modern interface and AI-assisted extraction setup.
Services with an API and infrastructure
Here the main pain these services solve is not the HTTP request itself but survival against anti-bot protection (Cloudflare, DataDome, and the like), proxy rotation, JavaScript rendering, and scale. These tools are especially useful to developers: you wire them into your own code or processes.
Apify
A platform built around "Actors" — ready scrapers, already numbering in the thousands in the catalog (for marketplaces, maps, social networks, and much more). Ready Actors are often configured as a "fill in the fields and run" form — so you can stay in no-code mode, or write your own on Crawlee/Playwright. There's an API, webhooks, schedules, and data storage. A small free credit to start, then pay-as-you-go; paid plans begin around $39 per month.
Who it's for: teams building data-collection pipelines who want to combine ready solutions with their own logic.
Bright Data
A big "upper-tier" player: a huge proxy network and a Web Scraper API that returns already-structured data (JSON/HTML/CSV) without writing scraping code. It handles proxies, CAPTCHAs, rendering, and retries; there are ready datasets for popular sites and pay-per-successful-request billing. The strength is high "penetration" of difficult sites and scale; the price matches, and there's essentially no free tier (only trial credits).
Who it's for: those whose bottleneck is specifically scale and the defenses on target sites.
ScrapingBee, ScraperAPI, Zyte
These are scraping APIs in their pure form: you send a request with a target URL and parameters (country, rendering, retries), and the service runs it through proxies, renders JavaScript if needed, and returns ready content. Essentially a "wrapper around your code": you keep your HTTP client and just add reliability and block-bypass. They differ on price per volume, the set of helpers (screenshots, search/e-commerce helpers), and the billing model (often with multipliers for JS pages).
Who it's for: developers who want a simple endpoint so they don't have to manage proxies and anti-bot themselves.
Firecrawl
An API-first service tuned for AI/LLM scenarios: it collects, crawls, and parses sites and by default returns the result as "model-ready" Markdown — no separate cleanup before feeding an LLM. One key, one API for scraping, search, crawling, and browser automation; there's a free tier for prototyping.
Who it's for: people collecting data for RAG pipelines, AI agents, and language-model apps.
Browser extensions
The fastest route for a one-off task is an extension that grabs data from a page you already have open. Instant Data Scraper and Data Miner, for example, find tables and lists on a page in a click or two and export them to CSV/Excel. No logic to program — but minimal control too: for recurring or complex jobs, it's no substitute for a full tool.
How to choose
A quick map by situation:
- One-off simple task, static site → Google Sheets formulas, Power Query in Excel, or a browser extension.
- Regular collection, willing to learn, working on your own machine → Screaming Frog (especially if SEO tasks are nearby), Datacol, A-Parser.
- Don't want code, but need it reliable and in the cloud → Octoparse, ParseHub, Web Scraper, Browse.ai.
- Need not just data but actions: sign-ups, posting, multi-step scenarios → ZennoPoster.
- SEO tasks: mass collection of URLs, keywords, proxies, link building → GSA, ScrapeBox, A-Parser.
- Large volume, defended sites, embedding in your own processes → Apify, Bright Data, ScrapingBee/ScraperAPI/Zyte.
- Collecting data for AI/LLM → Firecrawl.
Don't want to wade through the options and their setup? Order the data collection from us — scraping.pro delivers the data in exactly the format you need through our data extraction service, with no need to get into the technical side.
And the guiding rule: the more complex and defended the sites, and the larger the volume, the more the choice shifts from simple spreadsheet solutions toward specialized services with proxies and rendering. And if no off-the-shelf tool covers the task — it may be time to build your own. Where to start in that case is covered in What programming language should you write a scraper in? and Web scraping libraries.
Prices and plan terms are approximate as of 2026 and change periodically — check the developers' official sites before buying.