Top APIs for Web Scraping

Fri Dec 10 2021

2 min read

Web Scraping is an automated way of extracting data from a website. Web scraping has many important use-cases, but it can be challenging. These challenges include handling proxies, captchas, JavaScript rendering, and headless browsers. Web Scraping APIs allow developers to programmatically access the content on any website without worrying about these challenges.

Make sure you read the terms of service of a website before scraping it. Following are the best APIs for scraping websites.

1. ScrapingAnt

ScrapingAnt API offers web scraping features like proxy rotation, custom cookies, and JavaScript snippet execution. You can choose to format the response in either HTML or JSON.

  • Popularity: 9.5/10
  • Latency: 9385ms
  • Service Level: 98%
  • It offers free and premium plans with overage fees

2. ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee API is an easy to use API. It also provides JavaScript execution and custom cookies along with proxy rotation.

Its JavaScript rendering feature is particularly useful for scraping single-page applications built on frameworks like React.js, Angular.js, JQuery, or Vue, where content is loaded asynchronously/dynamically.

  • Popularity: 9/10
  • Latency: 10,462ms
  • Service Level: 99%
  • It offers free and premium plans with overage fees

3. Scraper's Proxy

Scraper's Proxy API is a fast and reliable API. It provides quicker response times and claims very low failure rates. Its features include JavaScript rendering, proxies, and Tor network support.

It can parse the HTML into easily accessible JSON, which is pretty handy.

  • Popularity: 8/10
  • Latency: 7306ms
  • Service Level: 100%
  • It offers free and premium plans with overage fees

4. Scraper Box

Scraper Box API is a simple API that takes a URL as a parameter, scrapes the website, and returns a clean HTML as the response.

  • Popularity: 7.1/10
  • Latency: 465ms
  • Service Level: 100%
  • It offers free and premium plans with overage fees

5. Scraping Monkey

Scraping Monkey API is a RESTful web scraping API that can return the HTML of a target website or run scraping tasks. Its features include JavaScript execution, proxies, and JavaScript rendering.

This API also offers automated screenshots, which is a standout feature.

  • Popularity: 8.8/10
  • Latency: 916ms
  • Service Level: 100%
  • It offers free and premium plans with overage fees