Top 6 Octoparse Alternatives & Competitors in 2024

Businesses take advantage of data extraction to improve their processes, customer relationships, and business decisions using web scraping tools and web scraping APIs. Octaparse has long been a one of the main player in the dynamic world of web scraping, offering users no-coding solutions for extracting data from websites. However, as with any technology, the web scraping landscape continually evolves, bringing forth innovative alternatives that might be perfect fit for your scraping needs.

This article delves into the top Octoparse alternatives and competitors, analyzing their features to see if they can compensate for the shortcomings of Octoparse.

Octoparse alternatives’ comparison

Octoparse evaluation

Octoparse is no-code data extraction software that can be scaled up. 

Octoparse provide business-specific data extraction services including:

• Collecting social media data from various networks using:
  • Instagram scraper
  • YouTube scraper
  • Twitter data collector 
  • LinkedIn profile scraper
• Obtaining e-commerce data, including product review data, vendor product listings, product ratings, prices, etc., from retail and e-commerce websites such as Amazon, eBay, Target, etc.
• Extracting alternative datasets from various sources such as financial transactions and social media.
• Gathering hotel and travel data from online travel websites such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor.

The Octoparse user reviews show that:

• Ease of use: According to the reviews we analyzed, 13% of users found Octoparse to be difficult to use. Octoparse has the lowest score compared to two main alternatives in the domain: Bright Data and Apify. Figure 1 shows a customer comment about how difficult it was to understand and use Octoparse web scraping software.

Figure 1: Comparison of Octoparse with other tools in terms of ease of use

Figure 2: A reviewer on G2 commenting about their experience with Octoparse

• Easy to install: The most positive word used to describe Octoparse is “Easy to install,” appearing in 13% of the reviews.
• Features: Octoparse features have been mentioned by 25% in all the reviews we analyzed.

Features

The following are some of the main features offered by the vendor:

• IP rotation: For each new connection request to the target server, a proxy server assigns a new IP address.
• Data export: Web scrapers deliver extracted data in the available format.
• Scheduled crawling: Web scraper scheduling allows clients to crawl and scrape web sources at predetermined intervals (e.g. start on 01-20-2023, at 10:00AM, until 01-27-2023, every one hour).
• Cloud-based: Collect and store data on the cloud.
• API access: Octoparse API provides authorized clients to access and exchange data from the Octoparse website. The API forwards the client’s connection request to the web server on the client’s behalf in order to access and retrieve data.

Figure 3: Main scraping services offered Octoparse 

Octoparse’s pros & cons

Pros:

• Schedule scraping tasks
• Provide API access
• Store and process your data on cloud. Cloud data extraction is available at an additional cost.

Cons:

• Do not extract video.
• There is no keyboard shortcuts functionality.
• Json, Google Sheet, and Tableau are not supported as data download and storage formats.

This drawback was derived from the vendor’s website and customer reviews.

Pricing

• Free trial is available
• Pricing plans starting at $89 / Month.

Top 6 alternatives of Octoparse

We will discuss Bright Data, Parsehub, and Import.io as strong alternatives to Octoparse in the domain.

1. Bright Data

Bright Data, which offers data collection and proxy services, is one of the top alternatives to Octoparse. Its offerings include:

• Proxy networks
• Web scrapers
• Web scraping APIs
• Ready-to-use datasets

Bright Data Data Collector customer reviews show that:

• Easy to use: According to the comments on G2, Bright Data Data Collector outperforms Octoparse and Apify in terms of ease of use (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Comparison of Bright Data with other tools in terms of usability

• Quick deployment: Bright Data has an 8.9 customer satisfaction rating for ease of deployment on G2.
• Customer support: Bright Data and Apify have the highest G2 score for the quality of customer support and service among four tools (Figure 4). Bright Data is mentioned more than Apify in terms of customer support quality in reviews.

Figure 5: Comparison of  Bright Data with other vendors in terms of customer service/support

Figure 6: A reviewer on G2 commenting about their experience with Bright Data’s Data Collector

Features

Some of the key benefits provided by the provider include:

• IP rotation
• Scheduled extraction
• Cloud based scraping service
• HTML parsing: HTML parsing allows businesses to parse text files in HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) and XHTML formats.

Figure 6: Main scraping services offered Bright Data’s Data Collector

Pricing

• Free trial is available
• Pricing plans starting at $500/month

Bright Data’s pros & cons

Pros:

• Use HTTP(S) or SOCKS5 protocols
• Support city and ASN-level filtering
• Support javaScript rendering

Cons:

The following disadvantages have been identified in customer reviews (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Bright Data Data Collector’s Downsides

2. Smartproxy

Smartproxy is web data collection platform that offers proxies and web scraping services that cater to diverse needs and preferences. Smartproxy’s proxy network consists of 65M+ proxy IPs, including residential, mobile,  ISP and shared or dedicated datacenter proxies. Residential proxies operate on separate subnetworks, meaning each IP functions on its own distinct subnetwork. Proxies support HTTP(s) and SOCKS5 protocols. 

The proxy provider also offers Scraping APIs for different data collection needs such as eCommerce, social media scraping and SERP. Smartproxy’s web scraping solutions cater to both small businesses and individuals.

Smartproxy pros & cons

Pros:

• Offers a wider range of web scraping solutions, including  no-code scrapers,  scraping APIs, and proxy servers. 
• Allows users to target cities and states while scraping data. 
• Offers automatic proxy rotation and sticky sessions
• The most frequently mentioned advantage of Smartproxy products is the simplicity of using their proxy services along with their responsive customer support.

Figure 8:  A reviewer on G2 commenting about their experience with Smartproxy products

Source: G2 ³

Cons:

• Some customers on G2 have expressed disappointment regarding the usability and functionality of the proxy dashboard. 

Figure 9: User review explaining pros and cons of Smartproxy services

Source: G2⁴

Pricing

• 14-day money-back option
• Have a pay as you go and monthly  subscription plans

3. Oxylabs

Oxylabs offers specialized web scraper APIs that are customized for different specific uses, including scraping data from search engine result pages, eCommerce sites, and real estate listings. Each API is tailored to efficiently collect data from its designated field. Their SERP scraper API features coordinate-based targeting, enabling the extraction of local search engine results as they would appear in a particular geographical location.

Additionally, Oxylabs provides a Custom Parser as an adjunct to their Scraper APIs. This tool allows users to devise their own rules for parsing, converting raw HTML into structured data. This feature facilitates the retrieval of neatly organized data in JSON format from any selected source, meeting unique data structuring requirements. User reviews on G2 frequently highlight the reliability and high success rate of Oxylabs’ proxies, though they may be costly for individual users.

4. Nimble

Nimble is a web data collection platform offering a range of scraper APIs. Web Scraping API supports functionalities like page interactions and parsing templates, making it highly effective for extracting data from websites, especially in sectors like E-commerce and Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). It is designed to process a large volume of URLs in a single request, handling up to 1,000 URLs at once.

The platform enables users to execute various actions on webpages, such as clicking, typing, and scrolling, during the data collection process. These page interactions are carried out synchronously, with each step performed sequentially. The total time allowed for all actions is limited to 60 seconds.

Additionally, Nimble’s Web Scraping APIs are equipped with a residential proxy network and Unlocker Proxy technology, enhancing their data collection capabilities.

5.Parsehub

Parsehub is an alternative to Octoparse that provides web scraping services for both static and dynamic websites.

Parsehub customer reviews show that:

• Ease of use: Parsehub has the lowest score among four web scraping services for ease of use according to the comments on G2 and Capterra (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Comparison of Parsehub with other vendors in terms of ease of use

• Customer support: On G2, Bright Data and Parsehub have the highest customer support score (9.4/10), followed by Apify and Octoparse (Figure 11).

Figure 11: Comparison of Parsehub with other web scraping providers in terms of customer support

Features

The following are  some of the most important features that Parsehub provides:

• IP rotation
• Data export
• Scheduled crawling
• Image data extraction: Gather text data from image files
• Cloud-based

Figure 12: Main scraping services offered Parsehub 

Parsehub’s pros & cons

Pros:

• Unlike Octoparse, Parsehub scrapes and downloads extracted image data
• Data export: API, CSV, Json, Google Sheet and Tableau
• Provide API access

Cons:

• Do not provide geolocating and real-time data collection.

Pricing

• Free trial is available
• Pricing plans starting at $189/month

6. Apify

Apify is one the major Octoparse alternatives that offer web scraping and automation services. Its offerings include:

• Web scrapers
• Scraping APIs
• Datacenter and residential proxies

Features

• IP rotation
• Scheduled data extraction
• Cloud web scraping
• API access

Figure 13: Main scraping services offered Apify 

Easy of use: Apify is the most user-friendly data extraction tool compared to Octoparse, Bright Data, and Parsehub, according to G2 and Capterra customer reviews (Figure 8).

Features: The overall score for Apify features is 4.8 out of 5. Apify has the highest feature score of all the vendors included in our research (Figure 8).

Apify’s pros & cons

Pros:

• Offer developer community
• Provide live chat in-app support

Cons:

• Real-time data extraction is not listed on the vendor website

Pricing

• Free trial is available
• Pricing plans starting at $49/month

Transparency Statement 

AIMultiple serves numerous tech companies including Bright Data.

Further reading

Explore more on web scraping tools and vendors:

• Web Scraping Tools: Data-driven Benchmarking
• Web Scraping APIs: How-To, Capabilities & Top 10 Tools
• The Ultimate Guide to Proxy Server Types

Transparency statement

AIMultiple serves numerous tech companies including Bright Data, Smartproxy, Oxylabs and Nimble.

For guidance to choose the right web scraping tool, check out data-driven list of web scrapers, and reach out to us:

External Links

• 1. Compare Octoparse, Bright Data, ParseHub, and Apify. G2
• 2. Bright Data top features. Capterra
• 3. Smartproxy Reviews & Product Details. G2
• 4. Smartproxy Reviews & Product Details. G2
• 5. Comparing 4 Data Extraction Software Products. Capterra