There are many free web scraping tools. However, not all web scraping software is for non-programmers. The lists below are the best web scraping tools without coding skills at low cost. The freeware listed below is easy to pick up and would satisfy most scraping needs with a reasonable amount of data requirement.
** Web Scraper Client**
- Octoparse
Octoparse is a robust web scraping tool which also provides web scraping service for business owners and Enterprise. Data extraction includes but not limited to social media, e-commerce, marketing, real estate listing and many others. Unlike other web scrapers that only scrape content with simple HTML structure, Octoparse can handle both static and dynamic websites with AJAX, JavaScript, cookies and etc. You can create a scraping task to extract data from a complex website such as a site that requires login and pagination. Octoparse can even deal with information which is not showing on the websites by parsing the source code. As a result, you can achieve automatic inventories tracking, price monitoring and leads generating within figure tips.
Octoparse also provides extraction services that can help you customize the scraping task or scrape the data for you. The cloud services enable to bulk extract huge amounts of data within a short time frame since multiple cloud servers concurrently run one task. Besides that, the cloud service will allow you to store and retrieve the data at any time.
Octoparse has the Task Template Mode, Wizard Mode and Advanced Modes for users with both basic and advanced scraping skills.
A user with basic scraping skills will take a smart move by using this brand-new feature that allows him/her to turn web pages into some structured data instantly. The Task Template Mode only takes about 6.5 seconds to pull down the data behind one page and allows you to download the data to Excel.
The Wizard mode is for users with intermediate scraping skills. It has an on-screen interactive guide which would walk you through the entire scraping process with simple point-and-click.
The Advanced mode–it has more flexibilities comparing the other two modes. This allows users to configure and edit the workflow with more options. Advance mode is used for scraping more complexed websites with a massive amount of data.
Know more about how to get data in hand by visiting http://www.octoparse.com/
- ParseHub
Parsehub is a great web scraper that supports collecting data from websites that use AJAX technologies, JavaScript, cookies and etc. Parsehub leverages machine learning technology which is able to read, analyze and transform web documents into relevant data.
The desktop application of Parsehub supports systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, or you can use the browser extension to achieve an instant scraping. It is not fully free, but you still can set up to five scraping tasks for free. The paid subscription plan allows you to set up at least 20 private projects. There are plenty of tutorials for at Parsehub and you can get more information from the homepage.
- Visual Scraper
VisualScraper is another great free web scraper. With its point-and-click interface, users with no or little programming skills are able to configure data extraction with setting your own preferences. Its real-time function allows you to test and view data result immediately.
This freeware is available for Windows, you can scrape data from up to 50,000 web pages. You can scrape more than 100,000 web pages with its Premium Plan. For details, please check http://www.visualscraper.com/pricing
- Outwit hub
Outwit hub is a Firefox extension, and it can be easily downloaded from the Firefox add-ons store. Once installed and activated, you can scrape the content from websites instantly. It has an outstanding “Fast Scrape” features, which quickly scrapes data from a list of URLs that you feed in. Extracting data from sites using Outwit hub doesn’t demand programming skills. The scraping process is fairly easy to pick up. You can refer to our guide on using Outwit hub to get started with web scraping using the tool. It is a good alternative web scraping tool if you need to extract a light amount of information from the websites instantly.
** Web Scraping Plugins/Extension**
- Data Scraper (Chrome)
Data Scraper can scrape data from tables and listing type data from a single web page. Its free plan should satisfy most simple scraping with a light amount of data. The paid plan has more features such as API and many anonymous IP proxies. You can fetch a large volume of data in real-time faster. You can scrape up to 500 pages per month, you need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Learn more information about Data Scraper by visiting the homepage https://data-miner.io/.
- Web scraper
Web scraper has a chrome extension and cloud extension. For chrome extension, you can create a sitemap (plan) on how a website should be navigated and what data should be scrapped. The cloud extension is can scrape a large volume of data and run multiple scraping tasks concurrently. You can export the data in CSV, or store the data into Couch DB.
Visit the homepage to learn more from the tutorials: http://webscraper.io/.
- Scraper (Chrome)
The scraper is another easy-to-use screen web scraper that can easily extract data from an online table, and upload the result to Google Docs.
Just select some text in a table or a list, right-click on the selected text and choose “Scrape Similar” from the browser menu. Then you will get the data and extract other content by adding new columns using XPath or JQuery. This tool is intended for intermediate to advanced users who know how to write XPath. You can add the extension here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scraper/mbigbapnjcgaffohmbkdlecaccepngjd?authuser=2
Web-based Scraping Application
- Dexi.io(formerly known as Cloud scrape)
Dexi.io is intended for advanced users who have proficient programming skills. It has three types of robots for you to create a scraping task - Extractor, Crawler, and Pipes. It provides various tools that allow you to extract the data more precisely. With its modern feature, you will able to address the details on any websites. For people with no programming skills, you may need to take a while to get used to it before creating a web scraping robot. Check out their homepage to learn more about the knowledge base.
The freeware provides anonymous web proxy servers for web scraping. Extracted data will be hosted on Dexi.io’s servers for two weeks before archived, or you can directly export the extracted data to JSON or CSV files. It offers paid services to meet your needs for getting real-time data.
Webhose.io enables you to get real-time data from scraping online sources from all over the world into various, clean formats. You even can scrape information on the dark web. This web scraper allows you to scrape data in many different languages using multiple filters and export scraped data in XML, JSON and RSS formats.
The freeware offers a free subscription plan for you to make 1000 HTTP requests per month and paid subscription plans to make more HTTP requests per month to suit your web scraping needs.
Visit the homepage https://webhose.io/ to know more about their services
Author: Ashley Weldon
#webscraping #datascience
