Blog / Web Scraping
Best Web Scraping Tools (No-Code, Libraries, and APIs)
By URLtoText Team · · 9 min read
The best web scraping tool depends on who's using it and what they need back. If you don't code, a no-code tool like Octoparse or the Web Scraper browser extension lets you click on the data you want. If you're a developer, open-source libraries like BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, Playwright, and Selenium give you full control for free. If you want results without running browsers and proxies yourself, a scraping API returns the data from a single request.
This guide groups the main options into those three categories and explains what each tool is best for. Where we mention pricing, it comes from the vendor's own pricing page at the time of writing. Prices change, so check before you buy.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Type | Best for | Handles JavaScript |
|---|---|---|---|
| Octoparse | No-code | Non-developers with recurring scraping jobs | Yes |
| ParseHub | No-code | Visual scraping without code | Check vendor |
| Web Scraper (extension) | No-code | Quick point-and-click jobs in Chrome | Yes |
| Browse AI | No-code | Monitoring pages for changes | Yes |
| BeautifulSoup | Library (Python) | Parsing HTML in small scripts | No |
| Scrapy | Framework (Python) | Large crawls across many pages | With a plugin |
| Playwright | Browser automation | JavaScript-heavy pages | Yes |
| Selenium | Browser automation | Teams already using it for testing | Yes |
| Puppeteer | Browser automation (Node.js) | Chrome automation in JavaScript | Yes |
| ScrapingBee | Scraping API | Developers who want proxies and rendering handled | Yes |
| Firecrawl | Scraping API | Turning sites into data for AI apps | Yes |
| Jina Reader | Scraping API | Quick URL to Markdown for LLMs | Yes |
| Apify | Platform | Ready-made scrapers and scheduled runs | Yes |
| URLtoText | Tool and API | Simple URL to clean text or Markdown | Yes |
No-code web scraping tools
No-code tools let you select data on a page with your mouse and export it as a spreadsheet. They're the fastest way to start if you don't program, but complex sites can still take some trial and error.
Octoparse
Octoparse is a visual scraper with a desktop app and cloud runs. You build a workflow by clicking elements, and it handles pagination, scrolling, and scheduled jobs. Best for: non-developers who scrape the same sites regularly. Pricing: a free plan with 10 tasks, and paid plans starting at $69/month billed annually.
ParseHub
ParseHub is a visual, point-and-click scraper in the same category as Octoparse. Best for: people who want to build scraping projects visually without writing code. We couldn't confirm its current plans on its pricing page, so check there before you commit.
Web Scraper (Chrome extension)
Web Scraper is a free browser extension. You build a "sitemap" of what to click and collect, run it in your browser, and export a CSV. A paid cloud version adds scheduling and runs jobs on their servers; plans start at $50/month billed annually. Best for: quick, one-off jobs on a handful of sites.
Browse AI
Browse AI lets you train a "robot" by showing it what to extract, then run it on a schedule and get alerts when data changes. Best for: monitoring prices, listings, or pages for changes. Pricing: a free plan with 50 credits per month, and paid plans from $19/month billed annually.
Open-source libraries and frameworks
These are free, and they give you complete control over what you collect and how. In return, you write and maintain the code, and you handle blocking and proxies yourself. If you're new to this, start with our Python web scraping tutorial.
BeautifulSoup
BeautifulSoup is a Python library for parsing HTML. It doesn't download pages, so you pair it with requests. It's the easiest way to learn scraping. Best for: small scripts on static pages. Limit: it can't run JavaScript, so pages that build content in the browser come back empty.
Scrapy
Scrapy is a Python framework for crawling. It handles request scheduling, concurrency, retries, following links, and exporting to JSON or CSV. Best for: crawling thousands of pages or whole sites. Limit: Scrapy doesn't execute JavaScript on its own. The Scrapy docs recommend scrapy-playwright when you need rendered pages.
Playwright
Playwright controls Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit and is available for TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Java. It waits for elements automatically, which makes scrapers less flaky. Best for: JavaScript-heavy sites, logins you're authorized to use, and anything that needs clicking or scrolling.
Selenium
Selenium is the long-standing browser automation project, built mainly for testing, with language bindings to drive real browsers. It's often searched alongside Scrapy, but they do different jobs: Scrapy crawls over HTTP, while Selenium drives a browser. Best for: teams that already use Selenium for testing and want to reuse that knowledge. For new scraping projects, Playwright is usually simpler.
Puppeteer
Puppeteer is a JavaScript library for controlling Chrome or Firefox. Best for: Node.js developers automating Chrome. If you work in Python, Playwright covers the same ground.
Scraping APIs and platforms
A scraping API fetches the page for you, handling proxies, JavaScript rendering, and retries, and returns the result through one HTTP request. You pay per request or per credit instead of maintaining that infrastructure. For how these compare to official APIs, see web scraping vs API.
ScrapingBee
ScrapingBee returns a page's HTML (or extracted data) with headless browser rendering and proxy rotation built in. Best for: developers who want to keep their own parsing code but outsource fetching. Pricing: credit-based monthly plans starting at $19/month, with 1,000 free trial credits.
Firecrawl
Firecrawl turns websites into clean Markdown or structured data for AI applications, and can crawl a whole site or search the web. Its core is open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with a hosted version. Best for: developers building AI agents or RAG pipelines that need whole sites. Pricing: credit-based, with a free tier of 1,000 credits and paid plans from $16/month billed yearly.
Jina Reader
Jina Reader converts a page to Markdown when you put https://r.jina.ai/ in front of the URL. Basic use works without an API key at a lower rate limit; an API key raises the limit and uses token-based billing. Best for: quickly feeding a page into an LLM.
Apify
Apify is a platform for running scrapers, called Actors. You can write your own or use ready-made ones from the Apify Store, and the platform runs them in the cloud. Best for: teams that want prebuilt scrapers for specific sites, or a place to run their own. Pricing: a free plan with $5 of monthly usage, and paid plans from $19/month.
URLtoText
URLtoText does one thing: you give it a URL and get back plain text, Markdown, or HTML. The web tool is free to use without signing up, with rate limits. Options include JavaScript rendering, residential and stealth proxies, a CSS selector to keep only part of the page (such as article), an "end of article" cutoff phrase, and an AI prompt that runs on the extracted text. YouTube links return the video transcript.
The API works the same way:
import requests
response = requests.post(
"https://urltotext.com/api/v1/urltotext/",
headers={"Authorization": "Token YOUR_API_TOKEN"},
json={"url": "https://example.com", "output_format": "markdown"},
timeout=120,
)
response.raise_for_status()
print(response.json()["data"]["content"])
Best for: individuals, small teams, and AI workflows that need readable text from pages, not crawls of entire sites or structured product data. Pricing: prepaid credits with plans from $10/month; a basic request costs $0.00015, and unused credits roll over. Limit: it doesn't automatically strip ads or menus; you target the content with a CSS selector or cutoff phrase.
How to choose a web scraping tool
- Do you write code? If not, start with a no-code tool. Try the free Web Scraper extension for one-off jobs, or Octoparse or Browse AI for recurring ones.
- Do you need text or structured fields? For readable text or Markdown (for reading, research, or AI), a text extraction tool like URLtoText or Jina Reader is the shortest path. For specific fields like price and SKU, use a scraper you can target precisely.
- How many pages? A few hundred pages fit in a simple script. Whole sites call for Scrapy, Firecrawl, or Apify.
- Does the site need JavaScript? If your output comes back empty, use Playwright, scrapy-playwright, or an API with rendering.
- Who maintains it? Open-source tools are free but take your time. APIs cost money but save the upkeep.
Whatever you pick, check the site's terms and robots.txt first. See is web scraping legal? for what to watch out for.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best web scraping tool?
There's no single best tool. For non-developers, Octoparse and the Web Scraper extension are good starting points. For developers, Scrapy is the strongest framework for large crawls and Playwright for JavaScript-heavy pages. For hands-off results, a scraping API like ScrapingBee, Firecrawl, or URLtoText saves you running the infrastructure.
What is a good text scraping tool?
If you want the text of a page rather than structured fields, use a URL to text tool. URLtoText and Jina Reader both turn a URL into plain text or Markdown. URLtoText also lets you target one part of the page with a CSS selector.
What are web scraping automation tools like Selenium and Scrapy?
Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer automate real browsers, so they can click, scroll, and run JavaScript. Scrapy is a crawling framework that fetches pages over HTTP and follows links at scale. Many projects combine them, for example Scrapy with the scrapy-playwright plugin.
Is Puppeteer or BeautifulSoup better?
They do different jobs. BeautifulSoup parses HTML in Python but can't run JavaScript. Puppeteer controls a browser from Node.js and can render any page. Use BeautifulSoup for static pages and a browser tool like Puppeteer or Playwright when content loads with JavaScript.
Are there free web scraping tools?
Yes. BeautifulSoup, Scrapy, Playwright, Selenium, and Puppeteer are free and open source. The Web Scraper extension is free, and Octoparse, Browse AI, Firecrawl, and Apify all offer free plans. URLtoText's web tool is free to use without signing up.