3 Benefits of Using Web Scraping as a Service in 2024
Cem DilmeganiWeb scraping is the process of combing through the internet to obtain large amounts of data from websites for various purposes. Web scraping can be done either manually or automatically. If you opt for manual web scraping or scripting your own web scraping bot, you may face some challenges along the way. These include, but are not limited to, creating a web scraper, getting the data, reformatting it to make it usable, and finding a way to bypass IP blocking.
But if you choose to do this automatically by using cloud-based web scraping solutions as a service, you can bypass these challenges and get the results faster, cheaper, and easier.
In this article, we will go into more detail about what web scraping as a service is and what are its benefits and challenges, and how it’s different than conducting an on-premise web scraping.
Top web scraping service providers
Vendors are ranked according to their total number of reviews, with the exception of the products of the article’s sponsors which are linked to sponsor websites.
| Vendors | Number of B2B reviews | Average score | Pricing/mo | Free trial | PAYG plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bright Data | 179 | 4.7 | $500 | 7-day | ✅ |
| Apify | 264 | 4.8 | $49 | 7-day | ❌ |
| Smartproxy | 13 | 3.6 | $50 | 3K free requests | ❌ |
| Oxylabs | 33 | 4.7 | $499 | 7-day | ❌ |
| Octoparse | 85 | 4.4 | $89 | 14-day | ❌ |
| Scraper API | 69 | 4.6 | $149 | 7-day | ❌ |
| Zyte | 54 | 4.3 | $100 | $5 free/mo | ❌ |
| SOAX | 42 | 4.9 | $59 | 7-day | ❌ |
| Diffbot | 33 | 4.9 | $299 | 14-day | ❌ |
We filtered vendors based on the following publicly verifiable criteria since they are correlated with a company’s success in the market:
- Number of employees: 5+ employees on LinkedIn
- Number of B2B customer reviews: 5+ reviews on review sites such as G2, Trustradius, and Capterra.
What is web scraping as a service?
If you’ve ever copied and pasted information from a website, then you have successfully scraped the web. Web scraping bots basically do exactly that, only on a larger scale.
While you can create your own web scraper by purchasing servers, creating a bot, and programming commands, you may be better off using web scraping solutions offered by vendors as a bot as a service manner.
Web scraping as a service means that you outsource your web scraping to a company or vendor that already has the infrastructure (e.g. bot license, browser extensions, IT personnel). Your involvement in the process will be minimal, for you will only give your request and get the end result shortly afterward. The data, then, can be used to help you make educated guesses regarding the project at hand.
What are the benefits of web scraping as a service?
If you don’t want to invest in creating a web scraping tool or simply don’t know how to do it, you can outsource it to software companies that will handle the scraping process for you. If you choose this method, you will enjoy the following benefits:
- Reduce costs: Since the user is essentially borrowing the provider’s services, and all relevant components, for a short period of time, they do not have to incur any expenses for infrastructure or wages for hiring trained personnel.
- A quicker data delivery: Vendors not only have a ready-to-use tool, but also a staff of data extraction service providers who pull data from a variety of sources.
- Ready-to-use data: The bot will deliver the data in your desired format, which you can instantly put to use.
Sponsored:
Bright Data allows you to retrieve public data by offering three cloud-based web scraping solutions as a service:
- Web Unlocker: Web Unlocker is an automated website unlocking tool that reaches targeted websites. With just one request, Bright Data’s Web Unlocker gives you the most accurate data available. Web Unlocker manages browser fingerprints, is compatible with existing codes, provides an automatic IP selection option, and enables cookie management and IP priming. See our article on proxy scraping to explore the benefits of using proxies for web scraping. Feel free to check out our article on the different types of proxy servers to make a more informed decision.
- Data Collector: Bright Data’s Data Collector is a more comprehensive solution than Web Unlocker. It collects accurate data from any website at any scale and delivers it to you on autopilot in the format of your choice. Data Collector provides the same quality and type of service regardless of the scope of your project.
- Search Engine Collector: Bright Data’s Search Engine Crawler provides users with real search results, for any keyword, on any search engine. The Search Engine Crawler provides users with powerful SEO tools, regardless of volume. For personal use, it can be used for general text-based searches, images, shopping, location scouting, videos, and, if you’re looking for a change of scenery, hotels. For business use, the crawler offers keyword searches, result ranking, brand protection, market research, copyright infringement decisions, price comparisons, and more.
What are the differences between manual and automatic web scraping?
We have summarized all the differences between manual and automated web scraping in the table below:
| Manual | Automatic | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Cheaper in the long run, although there is a hefty
initial outlay on infrastructure and periodic maintenance costs down the road.
| Cheaper in the short run, but not as economical as
the manual option for continued usage.
|
| Implementation Time | Varies case-to-case, but it will essentially require time to be
rolled out.
| No implementing required. Instant access. |
| Accessibility | It depends on the organization's policies for accessibility. | Anyone with the correct log in credentials can have access.
|
| IT Dependency | It's more or less entirely IT-dependent. | You will not have to worry about IT unless you
need more features from the scraper.
|
| Security | You have to secure the network yourself, although to your
liking and preferences.
| The vendor provides blanket security for all users. |
| Maintenance | The servers have to be periodically maintained. | The vendor takes care of the maintenance automatically. |
| Calibration | If there are any errors or issues with the web
scraper, you need to address it yourself.
| You can contact the vendor and it's their responsibility to
fine-tune their product.
|
Recommendation: Choose between manual and automatic web scraping by looking at your needs and budget. If your web scraping needs are sporadic, leveraging the web scraping tools that companies offer is your best bet.
What are the challenges of web scraping as a service?
Even though users don’t have to worry about most of the web scraping issues, because they pass them on to the providers, they still have to be wary of other issues, such as
- Privacy: There are two likely scenarios in which customer privacy may be at risk:
- Not only can web scrapers gain insight into the company they’re grabbing data from – that’s almost a given – but they theoretically have insight into the kind of details the customer wants to know more about.
- The vendor can take advantage of this knowledge by informing the customer’s competitors that they are conducting research to potentially expand their market presence.
- The provider might not release parts of the entire scraping result or might edit the result to control what the customer gets to see.
- Not only can web scrapers gain insight into the company they’re grabbing data from – that’s almost a given – but they theoretically have insight into the kind of details the customer wants to know more about.
- Cloud concerns: The web scraping as a service providers host their servers, and make them accessible, via the cloud. If there is an Internet or server outage, both the accessibility and the storage on the cloud are rendered meaningless.
For more on web scraping
If you are interested in reading more on web scraping, we have previously written articles on the subject:
For the specific use cases of web scraping, see:
- Web Scraping in Real Estate: Top 5 Use Cases & Data Sources
- In-Depth Guide to Web Scraping for Finance
- Guide to Web Scraping in e-Commerce: Use Cases & Challenges
Finally, if you believe your solution will benefit from a web scraping solution, we have a data-driven list of vendors.
And we will help you through the process:
Cem has been the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month.
Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte, HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission. You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple.
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised businesses on their enterprise software, automation, cloud, AI / ML and other technology related decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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