Introduction
You might have heard about Apify web scraper right? that’s why you are here.
You should keep scrolling if you’re curious about what web extracting is.
Let me tell you about web scraping through an example.
For example, what will you do if you need a piece of information about Barack Obama and store it for your assignments?
The simple answer is you search on the web & copy & paste it for your projects. But what if you need long and in-depth information? In this case, data extracting is a more effective solution than copying and pasting.
You can use web scraping to perform market research, news research, analytics, Likewise email marketing for today’s organizations. The more interesting are the uses of data extracting, the more attractive its benefits and history. The most beneficial thing here is that you can easily collect extensive data & search more for variations of data.
Apify less costly and provides updated information. However, its origin started with the emergence of the WWW in 1989. After four years, JumpStation was started due to a lack of websites and search engines previously used to collect information from the web. In 2000, Web API & API Crawler got all the attention of data collectors worldwide.
The same year, eBay and Salesforce started API, accessing data collectors to search and download data from the APIs. Later the process of accessing and downloading data became easier. Now, if you want to perform web scraping, this is the most beneficial tool. Some people still get confused about whether to use this app. So, below is the answer!
What Is Apify
It is one of the most powerful tools that can easily use for social media, websites, e-commerce platforms, and many more automated workflows. Jan Curn introduced it a few years before in 2015. With Robotic Process Automation needs and data extraction, this scraper tool is one of the exceptional choices for web scraping.
This powerful tool can be used in web scraping and allows you to collect data from any website and arrange it according to your requirements. Despite that, it is one of the best software that can easily integrate with any system to export your crucial data within a few minutes.
Still, have the confusion? Clear it from the below, where I have provided its uses that let you understand its importance for your organization and workflows.
Why Use Apify?
Multiple uses of this tool make it beneficial in every organization. Most organizations mainly use this tool for web scraping, automation, and integrations. You can try this software as a result it provides a full-featured cloud platform for various use cases.
You can explore unlimited storage for your crawling data. The standalone thing is that you will get access to the residential and data center proxies. It can manage the bots’ geographical origin. It lets you organize your various jobs at regular intervals.
Furthermore, it provides a facility of Apify Store, providing scrapers for multiple websites, including Google Search. You must press a few clicks to help you download or store data. You can rely on this process for the reason that it doesn’t require coding knowledge for other functions.
In addition, you will get multiple integrating options that are easy for other services. With these integrating options, you can easily download your data into different formats like CSV, Excel, JSON, and XML. It also syncs with Zapier and allows you to create workflows.
Developers can enjoy its advanced web scraping in most cases. With more custom handling and actor building, advanced web scraping with this scraper tool, becomes a more advantageous option you can rely on.
Multiple users use this tool because of its full-featured cloud platform to carry out various organizational tasks.
How do I Scrape Data Using Apify?
Getting started with this robust tool becomes more flexible and accessible. Initially, you will need only two essential things: the web page and the solution to extract data from the pages.
Go to the “Input Settings” and select “Start URLs.” This will open the loading pages for the scraper. Now, choose a Link Selector, Glob Patterns, or Pseudo URLs to specify links that will add to the crawling queue.
Now, you can provide a Page Function to help extract the data from web pages. You can use JavaScript Code to load your web page. Page functioning is similar to creating front-end code because Apify needs a full-featured Chromium browser. Below is how this scraper works.
- First, it transfers all “Start URLs” to the crawling queue.
- Queue provides its first “URL” and loads in “Chromium Browser.”
- When the page loads, the scraper starts “Page Function” on that page to save results.
- This scraper mainly works to find all links with the help of “Link Selector.” The queue gets ready if the link matches “Glob Patterns” and doesn’t appear under “Pseud-URLs.”
- That’s it!
Repeat step 2 if you see items, like auction details, market pricing, etc., in the complete queue. In addition, you can quickly improve the performance by choosing other configuration settings, like Limitations, Input Configuration, Run Mode, Start URLs, Link Selector, and more.
Why Is Scraping Web Data So Important?
Your organization can walk on the path of success and make daily routine tasks more seamless by choosing this software and its essential features. You can easily rely on Apify to experience better technology that makes your extracting process more seamless. With this scraper tool, you can easily monitor the prices of competitor products and your products.
It helps your organization in building a price strategy for regular products. Scraping proves helpful to market research as well. You can easily determine where a company should focus after knowing the market research about products, consumer demands, etc. In addition it allows you to monitor news and consumer sentiments.
If the organization wants to understand the public sentiments, you can do that with this scraping software. You can easily collect data from social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to see people’s likes and dislikes. Once you know about that, you can make further strategies accordingly.
Apify is among the robust software that can quickly get detailed reports of the company’s current situation. For example, scraping software will provide detailed reports for day-to-day functioning if a particular company goes viral on the news.
In this competitive age, you can simply rely on this software to maintain your position on top. It allows you to watch your competitors and make changes in organizations accordingly. Lastly, you can easily use it to collect different Email IDs for the organization’s promotion and marketing purposes.
Apify Features, Pros, Cons & Pricing
This tool becomes more suitable to help you in every aspect of data collection for your project requirements as it doesn’t need coding knowledge. Similarly, they have some good features you will need in your data collection journey. Take a look at these features.
Features
- Diverse Extraction Points: It allows you to collect data from multiple sources like emails, web pages, etc.
- Data Arrangement: It enables you to arrange data according to your choice.
- Integration: It allows you to view or download data into CSV and other formats.
- Cloud Storage: It lets you store and access data whenever possible.
- Visual Representation: It allows you to watch data in a visual form.
- Proxy revolving: Enhances your performance.
- Machine Learning: It enables bots to learn human behaviors and work in their places.
- Dashboard: It helps you showcase your performance and usage.
Pros
- Free version
- It helps you collect extensive data
- Great customer support
- Built-in proxy rotation
- Free Trial
- Provides interesting marketplace
- Supports the English language
- Multiple web scraping services
Cons
- You will need to utilize your debit card for free trial actors.
- Adding debugging statements can create a problem.
Pricing
Apify is free for multiple users with a few benefits only. However, you can choose from the following plans to enjoy its advantages thoroughly.
- A Personal plan is $49 per month and allows you to get 30 shared data center proxies. in addition, it includes email support and 14-day data retention features.
- The Team plan is $499 a month and allows you 100 shared data center proxies. Also, it includes 128 GB of storage space for actors and chat support.
- The Enterprise plan offers unlimited benefits, so you ought to reach out to them if you’re interested.
You can also choose annual plans and get 20% off on their projects.
Top 08 Apify Alternatives
However, if you don’t find the above tool helpful or looking for something extra, don’t worry. We have analyzed and gathered the most exciting alternatives to this tool to give you more options.
#1. Parsehub
If you are looking for web scraping in your initial stage and don’t want to pay for this, try my first suggestion, Parsehub. It is free to use for web scraping and becomes easier with a few simple clicks. It was launched in 2014, helping startups and small business organizations.
With the help of this robust tool, you can access endless web pages to collect data. REST API allows you to download your desired data in Excel & JSON. It will enable you to collect and store data from JavaScript and AJAX pages that don’t even need coding. Further, you can easily select this because it is best for Scheduled Collection and IP Rotation.
Features
- Analysts & Consultants: It allows you to analyze the industry, marketing, and competitors.
- Sales Lead: Increase sales leads from directories, social media platforms, and communities.
- REST API: Developers can use REST API to create mobile and web apps.
- Marketplaces: Allows you to collect news content, products, profiles, etc.,
- Data Scientists & Journalists: It allows you to remove unwanted data from any website.
Pros
- Parsehub Works like a data mining tool
- Easy-to-use scraping tool
- Browser-based extracting
- Cloud-based scraping and data-storing servers
- REST API connections
- Saves time on copy and pasting
- Free for small extracting
Cons
- It can hang your computers as it comes with bugs.
- You have to choose plans for higher Web extracting projects.
Pricing
It has a free plan for all users that you can use without giving credit card details. Rather than this, they have some premium plans.
- The Standard plan is $189 per month with features like IP Rotation, Data Retention, and more.
- The Professional plan is $599 per month with the above features and saves important to DropBox and S3.
- You can choose a ParseHub Plus plan for Enterprise Web Scraping as well.
These plans can be canceled anytime. You can save 15% if you choose Quarterly Billing plans. Further, use their coupons to get heavy discounts.
#2. Octoparse
octoparse is the best alternative of apify. by the way, In this competitive era, rely on this scraping software that turns your web pages into structured spreadsheets. It was released in 2016 and became a modern solution for data-extracting software. The novice and pro users can easily collect a high amount of information with this tool. It also doesn’t need the coding knowledge for your scraping.
Furthermore, with this software, you can easily access a website of your choice and download essential information within a few clicks. It’s a most exciting tool that can easily turn any data into a custom API and allows you to make the rule for collecting data. So, if you don’t like the above alternatives, use this one and manage your data with simple steps.
Features
- Smart Mode: Makes your web scraping seamless.
- Wizard Mode: Allows you to collect data from web pages.
- Training Sessions: It provides you with complete guidance on using Octoparse.
- Copy Task: This lets you copy the previously completed tasks.
- Export and Import: This function permits you to export and import .ODT documents.
- File formats: This allows you to save your data in various forms like CSV, XML, HTML, etc.
Pros
- Best for constructing web crawlers
- Provides excellent cloud service to users
- Shows professionalism in delivering data services
- Easy to use without coding
- User-friendly interface
- Free trial and free version
- IP Rotation
- Affordable pricing
- Unlimited storage for users
Cons
- Poor customer support
- The Free plan has limited access
Pricing
You can easily use Octoparse web scraping for free. However, the free version offers limited access, suitable for small projects.
- The Standard Plan is $89 per month, including all free plan features.
Moreover, it comes with IP Rotation, Boost Mode, and access with API.
- The Professional Plan is available for $249 monthly, containing all Standard Plan features. With advanced API and Priority Support, this Plan offers up to 20 concurrent cloud processes.
- You can contact them to get an instant quote about the Enterprise plan.
Despite that, you can choose the annual Plan that is available with a few amounts of discounts. That means you can save on yearly plans for your projects.
#3. Bright Data
With 15,000+ happy customers worldwide and award-winning proxy networks, Bright Data is the third choice on my list. Bright Data is the world’s number 1 web data platform after apify that proves beneficial for E-commerce, social media marketing, and SERP, along with its potent web scraping and ready-to-use datasets.
Most industries like Market Research, Travelling, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Real Estate use this software for multiple uses. You can rely on this software for scraping as it provides a fully hosted cloud environment that makes most of your organizational tasks, such as analytics makes it more accessible.
Features
- Web Scraping templates: this allows you to complete your tasks faster.
- Debug tools: lets you run a manageable environment.
- Pre-built functions: configure a proxy, network calls, and many more.
- Parser creation: allows you to write parsers and live previews.
- Integrating options: allows you to target crawls.
Pros
- Robust 24/7 support
- Excellent transparency
- Powerful SaaS solutions
- Easy to use
- Free trials
- Great features
- Flexible billing options
- Scraped datasets
- Residential proxies
- Provide tutorials
Cons
- The set up may take times
- Costly for web scraping
Pricing
Bright Data web scraping has a few Including a customized plan. So you can select your plan depending on your needs.
- A Business plan is available at $500 per month, allowing you to enjoy 24/7 support, built-in proxy infrastructure, and many more.
- The Premium plan is available at $1,000 per month, which allows you to enjoy all the above perks with multiple delivery options and debugging tools.
- You need to contact them about the Enterprise plan that allows you to enjoy all the above features and a dedicated account manager, browser worker, etc.
Despite that, you can get a free trial for all plans. Once you understand this software, you can continue with one plan.
#4. Scraping Bee
In my list after apify, octoparse, and bright data. I gave fourth place to this instrumental Scraping Bee tool for your web scraping. With its robust features and affordable prices, you can easily rely on this software to accomplish web scraping. It is the best software that allows users to scrape data extraction and provides a SaaS tool.
This scraping software uses the latest Chrome versions and helps you provide faster services. Therefore, it becomes an excellent choice for your routine marketing and engineering tasks. Further, your price monitoring, real estate scraping, and other extracting jobs become easier with this software that doesn’t even need coding knowledge.
Features
- Job Scheduling: this allows you to automatizing scraping tasks.
- Drag and drop: allows you to connect multiple applications
- Great Documentation: enable you to start it quickly.
- Code samples: allows you with Python, PHP, JavaScript, Java, etc.
- Exceptional support: live chats, emails, and more.
- Knowledge base: offers tutorials and every single piece of information you want.
Pros
- Excellent web scraping
- Offers integrating options
- Great technical and customer support
- Easy to use
- Affordable pricing
- Effective solutions
Cons
- The lowest-paid plan offers a limit of only five concurrent requests.
- Sometimes you may face internal server issues.
Pricing
Scraping Bee offers four pricing plans for your web scraping.
- The Freelance plan is available at $49 per month. It includes JavaScript rendering, geotargeting, and other features.
- The Startup plan is available at $99 per month. It includes all Freelance plan features, rotating & premium proxies, priority email support, and others.
- You can pay $249 per month for the Business plan service. It includes all Startup plan plans, dedicated account management, screenshots, Google Search API, etc.
- The Business+ plan is available at $599+ per month. It includes more than 9,000,000+ concurrent requests and all Business plan features.
It allows you to cancel your paid plans anytime without any counter questions. Therefore, you can choose any one of these plans and cancel it once your job is done.
#5. Diffbot
With news & articles and organizational uses, you can use the Diffbot scraper tool for retail products. You can try apify as well as diffbot software for your state-of-the-art analytics. This scraping software offers a cloud-based platform for your organizations, helping automate data and machine learning and AI technologies.
Most users choose this software to find facts, sentiments, and other essential information in the market. In the same way, this scraping software becomes handy for multiple eCommerce retailers because they can calculate sold products, prices, and available stock.
Features
- Crawl: allows you to convert your site into a structured database.
- Extract: allows you to research articles, products, discussions, etc.
- Natural Language: allows you to collect sentiments.
- Contact Database: this allows you to collect phone numbers, emails, and other social media details.
- Offers cloud-based platform
Pros
- Provides updated information
- Integrating options
- Out of the crawler to scrap
- Easy to manage and extract data
- Access to multiple companies’ data
- Great API and technical resources
- Excellent support team
Cons
- It takes time to become familiar with software
- No major cons yet
Pricing
Diffbot has the following pricing plans for everyone.
- The Startup plan is available at $299 per month only. It allows you to use data center proxies, natural language, and other features and has email support.
- Plus plan is available at $899 per month only. It allows you to use bulk extract, 35 active crawls, dashboard access, and API access, and it has email support.
- You can contact them for the custom plan to get access to its features like data center and third-party proxies, 100+ active crawls, custom user licenses, etc. Also, it has custom SLA, Email, and Managed Solutions for your support.
#6. Scrape.do
Target any webpage and collect data for your projects using this Scrape.do scraper tool that offers faster-rotating proxies and integrating options. With some straightforward tricks, this software lets you work with proxies, headless browsers, and captchas for your analytical workloads.
You can use this trustworthy software to save time as it provides faster solutions than the other. You can easily rely on this software to find the unblocked location for your targeted sites. Furthermore, most companies like Tripadvisor, Expedia, Zillow, etc., use this software due to its robust features and affordable prices.
Features
- Rotating proxies: allows you to open every website for your data collection process.
- Geotargeting: allows you to collect data from any country, including the USA, Turkey, UK, Canada, and many more.
- Backcobbect Proxy: allows you to work on data collection without getting blocked by any server.
- Webhook: allows you to get push results as fast as possible.
- JavaScript Execution: this allows you to work with advanced JavaScript executions.
Pros
- Scrape.do is an easy-to-use software
- Great customer services
- Easy to integrate with python and other codes.
- One thousand conquer requests are provided for free.
- Excellent rotating IP addresses
- Higher performance
Cons
- No cons yet!
Pricing
Although you can use Scrape.do for free, it offers a few paid plans for your convenience.
- The Hobby plan is $29 per month, allowing you to make five concurrent requests. Also, it offers rotating proxies, unlimited bandwidth, email support, and more.
- The Pro plan is $99 per month, allowing you 15 concurrent requests. Also, it offers JavaScript rendering, +10 geotargeting, advanced customizable APIs, etc.
- You will need to pay $249 per month for Businees plan, allowing you 40 concurrent requests. Also, it offers dedicated support, residential & mobile proxies, keep sessions, and more.
Therefore, this is the most reliable software in my web scraping alternative lists. This software also allows you to cancel the subscription at any point and offers a 3-day refund policy.
#7. Grepsr
Grepsr is a handy tool for collecting heavy data for your different requirements. Therefore, if you want to use this software for web scraping, you can use its quality-assured datasets. With their glorious track record and happy customer service, they are providing web scraping to collect substantial data from targeted websites.
Due to their exceptional services and question-solving teams, this software rules the eCommerce, housing and retail estates, analytics, management counseling, marketing, logistics, and other industries. On top of that, this web scraping software has integrating options and team collaborating abilities.
Features
- Auto Extraction: this allows you to extract data without manual efforts
- Image Extraction: this allows you to extract images from the web, social media, etc.
- Data Management: It allows you to store data from sites and store it in files and spreadsheets.
- Activity Dashboard: Monitoring your team’s activities is made easier with this tool
Pros
- Easy to use
- Grepsr Scraping offers great customer support
- Acquire insights fastly
- Clean data extraction facilities
- Provides 99% data reliability
- In-depth research
Cons
- Email updates may trouble you
- No other cons
#8. Import.io
When the above options are not your choice, you can easily rely on this outstanding software for web scraping. You can trust this software as it works faster like apify. This software can be used for web scraping, which involves extracting data from targeted websites.
You can also use this software for powerful analytics, identification of consumer sentiments, monitoring your brand awareness, and creating price accuracy. In addition, you will get some on-time results for your jobs. Therefore, it is the last but among the most effective web solution scraping offered from my side.
Features
- Real-time extraction: allows you to get data in real time.
- Website automation: it automates everyday actions to make your web scraping seamless.
- Crawling: allows you to get the exact page by following links
- API: allowing you to get data of your choice
Pros
- Effective for extensive data collection
- Import.io is easy to use
- Great customer support team
- An ability to create custom data
- Ability to collaborate with teams
- The reporting tools and dashboard are easier to handle
Cons
- Requires coding knowledge
Pricing
- The prices are not given on the official site. Thus, you can contact them for pricing.
Apify Vs ParseHub
With multiple features for web scraping and faster service, Apify has become one of the most reliable web scraping and automation tools in today’s era. You can easily use this robust software to convert any website into an API.
In the same way, most of your daily organizational tasks, such as monitoring price, market, data collection, and much more. You can try out this entire software that can help you with its free version and data rotation proxies.
In contrast, Parsehub is another excellent software to use for web scraping. This scraping tool becomes the most preferred choice due to its screenshot feature. These screenshots show everything your systems watch.
Parsehub has support options like email, a knowledge base, phone support, 24/7 live, and more. It is available with the most interesting debugging modes that can give you different categories for web scraping, data extraction, and more. Furthermore, it is available for data collection, price monitoring, and many other routine tasks.
However, if you ask my suggestion, I will say you should go with Apify because of its exciting marketplace and multiple web scraping services.
Apify Vs Octoparse
Comparing two web scraping tools like Apify and Octoparse means the beginning of another comparative war. it is mainly helpful in developing and running data extraction. You can easily rely on their integrating options to build, test, and establish crawlers. With this, you can easily schedule crawl jobs, making your other jobs manageable.
It is available with proxies, an online code editor, great storage, scheduling for extraction, complete API, and other services. Therefore, you can easily rely on its trustworthy services.
On the other hand, you can try Octoparse, which is quite good compared to Apify. It provides a dynamic solution for your web data extraction and allows you to collect a large amount of data within one go.
This software provides a complete dynamic solution for your web data extractions. Therefore, it becomes a suitable option for novice and experienced users. The data extraction process becomes more automated. It is one of the best cloud-based web scraping software to collect a large amount of data.
However, my choice is still Apify, which offers multiple benefits.Cloud-based development, testing, and deployment are all possible. Similarly, it provides an exceptional library of web scraping templates.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that you all need data for your multiple projects. Whether it’s your commercial, organizational tasks, or personal data collection requirements, essential information is required to fulfill your needs. Sometimes copy-and-paste option proves ideal for collecting and using data in your projects.
However, when it comes to acquiring a large amount of data, you can choose a modern approach called web scraping. It allows you to collect extensive data and store it in your files or spreadsheets to use them on time. But note that this web scraping is almost impossible if you don’t use tools for web scraping.
In this modern era, you will find multiple web scraping tools, including Apify. It is one of the most potent tools that complete all your requirements in one place. It has the ability to help you with price monitoring, market research, and other analytics.
In the same way, you will get real-time results for your tasks. It is straightforward to use and doesn’t need coding knowledge. As a result, you can easily collect vast amounts of data and save a lot of time. As well as providing enough storage, it allows you to save your crucial data in files.
Due to all these benefits, this scraping software becomes helpful in the collection of data. Therefore, I’ve mentioned features, pros and cons, and pricing for your convenience in this article. In addition to this, you will see a few alternatives that are similar to this Apify software.
These alternatives are affordable and provide great benefits like rotating proxies, data extraction, exceptional support team, APIs, and other advantages. Hence, choose one of them and gather as much data as possible for your purposes.
FAQs
Q) Does Apify support multi-devices?
Ans: – Yes! It allows you to use this software on the internet, multiple platforms, and computers.
Q) Can I organize my data using this scraper tool?
Ans: – Yes! It allows you to divide and organize your data into categories and use it according to your requirements.
Q) Is it possible to make modifications to my membership plan for Apify?
Ans: – Yes! This software allows you to make changes like upgrading, downgrading, and canceling subscriptions.
Q) Is Scraping legal?
Ans: – Yes! The data available for the public is legal to scrap.
Q) Can I use this scraping tool to scrap all websites?
Ans: – Yes! It allows you to load all web pages using proxies like HTTP, SOCKS5, and Apify.
