Octoparse Alternatives

Let me tell you what you already know! Octoparse is a great web scraping tool! But like every great tool, it’s got its limitations. At times, you may wonder if there are any alternatives to Octoparse. We wondered the same and put together this blog to provide you a short list of Octoparse alternatives along with their features and distinguishing factors. Let’s get started!

Why do we need Octoparse alternatives

1. Limited Concurrent extraction

To start with, let’s assume you want to start a series of web scraping tasks simultaneously on Octoparse. What would happen next?

Well, Octoparse can do it, but you can only go up to 20 concurrent extraction when it comes to Octoparse.

If you are looking for fast and frequent concurrent extraction, you will need to look at Octoparse alternatives. Hence, we tried to discover the alternatives to Octoparse which provide more than 20 concurrent extraction.

2. Average speed extraction

When one is talking about concurrent extraction, it’s obvious that getting it done fast is the objective here. You want the data extracted at speed and scale.

However, if you are using Octoparse, you would encounter extremely slow speed. In effect, this browser-based scraping never goes beyond 3-4 seconds per page. In some complex web pages, it may even take 1 minute per page.

Now let’s say, if you have 100,000 pages to extract, it would take ages to get the data you need. This is precisely why you need faster, sharper alternatives to Octoparse.

3. Software is needed to install 

Web scraping tools have evolved a lot in recent times. Gone are the days of old-fashioned ways of scraping.

However, to use Octoparse, users still need to install software on their computers, which is only supported by Windows and OSX.

Software also means that there would be updates to the software.

We need to go to the next level and discover more sophisticated tools than this. Hence, our search for Octoparse alternatives!

Octoparse Alternatives table

1. ProWebScraper

• ProWebScraper is an amazingly effortless web scraping tool. It is as uncomplicated as it is efficient.
• It’s fantastic for non-technical users because it [project creation] is as easy as browsing.
• At the same time, it’s so robust that it can scrape 90% of websites from the entire web.
• It is powerful enough to scrape data from JS-rendered websites (dynamic websites) and also from pagination.
• It requires no unnecessary software installations or updates. In short, no drama!

Features:

• It’s powered by a supremely powerful Point and Click Selector which lets you select and scrape data by a simple point and click!
• Average speed: Compared to Octoparse’s speed of 3-4 pages per minute, average scraping speed of ProWebScraper is 15 pages per minute
• Concurrent Extraction : As against up to 20 concurrent extraction by Octoparse, ProWebScraper provides up to 50 scrapers run concurrently.
• It’s armed with a Custom Xpath and CSS Selector to extract hidden data.
• With it, you can extract data from Pagination in a hassle-free manner.
• It has chaining functionality in which one extractor/crawler gets a list of URLs from a listing page, those URLs being in turn crawled by another scraper.
• When the scraping is over, you can download data in a format of your choice- JSON or CSV.
• You can also take the route of getting access to data via API.
• It’s got a Scheduler which allows you to extract latest data frequently and effortlessly, time and time again!

Pricing : 

• To start with, it’s free for the first 1000 pages! Yes, when you opt for a free trial, you can scrape the first 1000 pages for free.
• Once the free trial is over, it’s a quite simple Pay as You Scrape pricing concept.
• It’s got a wonderful, flexible pricing plan. It makes it one of the cheapest in the market.
• Here’s how it works out on a monthly basis:
  • Scrape 10,000 pages for only $70
  • Scrape 50,000 pages for only $250
  • Scrape 100,000 pages for only $375
• One time
  • Starting from $50 for 5,000 page scrape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WulWKu84du0

More features of ProWebScraper: 

For those not initiated into programming or not exposed to technicalities of web scraping, it may turn out to be as easy. However, ProWebScraper has worked out a few amazing features such as point-and-click and free custom set-up which make web scraping an astonishingly easy task for even a layman! Take a look at some more features of ProWebScraper!

• Point-and-Click
  • • This feature is the only effort you have to make to scrape data from a website. Yes, you read it right! Much like when you are browsing and clicking on different parts of a web page, you simply need to point and click to select the part of a web page that you wish to scrape.
    • For example, simply select a column in your dataset, and point at the item of interest on the page. This is how you set it up for being scraped.
    • With this unique feature of ProWebScraper, anyone who knows how to browse can scrape.

• Free Custom Setup by ProWebScraper Team
  • • If you don’t want to get into the complexity of setting it up on your own and need some help, ProWebScraper can set it up for you, for free!
  • I love this feature of the free custom set-up of ProWebScraper. They provide this service of setting up the scraper for free. Moreover, they do it in a record time of 2 business hours from the time of your registration!
  • It means that when you use ProWebScraper, you don’t need to worry about setting up the scraper or even getting started with your web scraping as their support team guides you all the way!
  • All you need to do is to state your requirements in a simple form and then relax as their team will do the rest for you in terms of setting up the scraper and onboarding you.
  • Among all the web scraping companies, ProWebScraper is the only one to provide such a free set-up with the help of a pro-active support team. Other companies do provide the ability to set it up but they charge for that!
  • Octoparse does provide free set-up but only in their higher plans. Other web scraping companies like Dexi charge $250, Grepsr charges $99/site, and Apify charges $100/site.

2. Grepsr

• If you are looking for a robust enterprise-ready web scraping solution, Grespr stands out.
• Once you provide the sources, tasks and timelines, it can automate the workflow and provide you data on a scale.
• It harnesses AI and machine learning tools to rectify the lapses in terms of quality. Its powerful built-in quality control mechanisms provide you clean and immediately usable data.
• Once scrapped, your data would be delivered to a desired location such as Dropbox, Google Drive, AmazonS3, Box, FTP, etc.

Features:

• It’s got a Scheduler that lets you design your web scraping experience in your own way. In other words, you can schedule the tasks in any kind of frequency you want and leave the rest to it.
• Many tools boast of scaling up web scraping but producing quality data remains a challenge. In such a context, Grepsr has devised a built-in quality control mechanism with the help of which any quality lapses can be detected.
• Sometimes, you would want your data delivered at a specific location such as Dropbox or Google Drive. It would allow you to easily migrate your data from there or integrate it into other processes. If you have such a requirement, Grepsr comes to your rescue. It has a unique feature of delivering the scraped data to a location of your choice – Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, etc.
• You can also make use of JSON API to extract data and fulfill your web scraping needs.

Pricing:

• Grepsr offers three pricing plans:
  • Starter Plan: It starts at $129 per site per 50k records.
  • Monthly Plan: It starts at $99 per site + $50/month per 50k records.
  • Enterprise Plan: It depends on the quote.

More features of Grepsr:

• Built-in Quality Control

Clean and accurate data is the key to the business growth. Some tools may be able to extract vast quantities of data but you may not be sure of the quality. This is where Grepsr has carved a niche for itself. It has created a built-in mechanism to take care of any quality glitches. It produces a unique data quality report that the users can go through. In brief, the report tells you about the record and request counts, crawl run times and fill rates for the report. It gives you great insight into the accuracy and incisiveness of the web scraping process and its quality. So if you are keen for quality of web scraping, this feature will simply fascinate you!

3. Apify

• Apify is an excellent solution for many things- web scraping, data extraction, robotic process automation and much more.
• If you want robots to do your grunt work, Apify seems to be the right tool. With the help of Apify, you can easily automate the workflow and let robots do the manual work, such as filling up forms or uploading files.
• Apify can also let you turn any website into API.
• In all, Apify is a robust, complete solution that you can use for a variety of your needs.

Features:

• Apify has devised efficient actors which get the arbitrary computing jobs done in a hassle-free manner. It involves sending countless emails or crawling millions of web pages.
• It’s great at safeguarding your web scraping exercise and doesn’t let you get blocked. It’s got Apify Proxy which prevents IP address-based blocking of your web crawling bots by the target websites.
• With Apify, you get access to amazing Apify Storage wherein you can easily  maintain queues of URLs of web pages to crawl, store screenshots, save scraping results and export them to formats such as JSON, CSV or Excel.

Pricing:

• Apify plans start at $49/month with 100 compute units (For example, for 1 compute unit, you can crawl about 400 JavaScript-enabled web pages using headless Chrome, or about 5000 pages using a raw HTML parser.)

More features of Apify:

• Apify Store: supplies ready-made actors for your web scraping or automation project.
• You don’t need to fret about simple and common tasks. It contains hundreds of ready-made actors which are efficient and yet simple to use with a few clicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmlcFIYJgww

Conclusion

Let me conclude by saying that Octoparse is a good tool and it has had a great run so far.

But it’s time to go beyond Octoparse and its limitations. So the Octoparse alternatives come in.

As you must have seen in this blog, the alternatives come with amazingly unique features and functionalities that you can leverage for your specific needs. These alternatives can give you an edge over those who are still using Octoparse.

I hope you will explore these cool Octoparse alternatives and discover new ways of enhancing your web scraping practices.

Do share your valuable feedback and comments here. Explore these alternatives and take your web scraping to the next level!

Author: Kevin H.