Best Web Scrapers
ScraperAPI Review 2024
Proxies are widely used for unblocking IP-based restrictions and unlocking the geo-targeted content through web scraping.
However, handling proxies can be challenging depending on the project technicalities and target website.
In addition to proxy management, one has to go through anti-bot systems, CAPTCHA solving, and JavaScript rendering.
For this reason, it’s better to use a proxy API as it helps extract the data from different websites to make sure you can gather information from multiple sources and transform it into organized and structured data for easier analysis or usage.
ScraperAPI is one of the best proxy APIs – it’s a robust solution that leverages third-party proxies, browser farms, and machine learning to help you extract data without any security challenges.
As a user, it can be challenging to determine if this is a suitable proxy API, which is why going through our detailed ScraperAPI review will help!
ScraperAPI – Overview
ScraperAPI is one of the best proxy APIs to ensure you can use the proxy easily without making it look like you are using the proxy.
It doesn’t only provide proxies but is an excellent way of avoiding and passing through CAPTCHA on websites.
It has automated IP rotation, so you can easily access the geo-restricted data without worrying about IP-related security issues.
It has JavaScript rendering available to ensure you don’t have to use headless browsers, and the users can easily scrape over 100 million websites or pages.
In addition, it can handle concurrent threads to ensure easier web scraping.
ScraperAPI also retries scraping with multiple headers and IPs to achieve the 200 status code (this status code indicates successful scraping).
In simpler words, you don’t need to worry about fetching the web pages, so you don’t have to handle the browser restrictions and proxies.
With ScraperAPI, all you’ve to do is to process the data – you can start with data parsing from the web pages after sending the request.
For this purpose, you have to send the API request.
It has a huge pool of locations and IP addresses for routing the requests. It offers unlimited bandwidth usage and works pretty efficiently.
The API platform is extremely reliable, easy to use, scalable, and customizable. In addition, this Scraper API review also includes information about the features, such as;
1. Extensive Proxy Pool & Promising Location Support
With the basic plan, ScraperAPI utilizes proxies to help users route the requests and avoid IP-based or location-based restrictions.
It’s not certain how many IP addresses are available in the proxy pool, but it can easily cater to businesses and individual clients.
According to ScraperAPI, it has more than 40 million IP addresses from around the globe, which makes it the biggest proxy pool.
Scraper API likely depends on P2P for extracting the IP addresses – most IP addresses are residential and are collected from fifty locations around the globe.
In addition, the users have the choice to select the IP address from the desired locations to access the geo-restricted or geo-targeted content.
2. Customization Features
It’s common for proxy APIs to be rigid, especially concerning request configuration.
On the other hand, Scraper API review that it has a default configuration for a time-efficient and convenient function, but you can also customize the configuration.
For instance, the users can select how and from where the IP requests will be sent.
Scraper API enables the users to to parse data from well-known websites. It allows the users to select between various sticky proxies and rotating proxies.
In addition, you can select a location while sending the requests, and you can customize the request headers as well.
It allows the users to choose if JavaScript should be rendered or not.
In fact, automated parsing is available for selective websites – the data is parsed in the HTML form while it’s returned in JSON files.
However, the data parsing is only available for Google Shopping, Google Search, and Amazon.
To enable parsing, you need to add the command “autoparse=true” in the IP request, and the data will be parsed.
The users can easily customize the headers, which means the website won’t be able to differentiate your activity from the regular browsing activity.
In addition, you won’t be charged anything for the bandwidth (you will be charged according to the number of requests you send).
The servers are extremely fast and have a speed of over 100Mbps.
Scraper API shows a header management system in the API, which helps increase the performance and success rates of website scraping.
As far as customizing the headers is concerned, it will help users retrieve specific results from a webpage.
For this reason, the custom headers sometimes lead to a low success rate as the header system is overridden.
3. Free Trial & Money-Back Guarantee
Scraper API offers a free trial to check the features.
The free trial is available for seven days, with which you can send out over 5000 requests without making a payment.
Once the trial period is over, you can upgrade to the paid plan.
Previously, Scraper API allowed 1000 requests with a free trial, but they have not increased the number of requests.
In addition to the free trial, you also have a money-back guarantee, with which you can get your money back within seven days of payment if this proxy API doesn’t work for you.
It’s recommended that you choose a smaller paid plan to see if the service works for you or not.
4. Support For Proxy & API Modes
This is a beginner-friendly proxy API, making it suitable for people who aren’t tech-savvy.
It has a simple and minimalistic dashboard, which makes it easier to navigate around, send requests, and customize the configurations.
In addition, Scraper API makes it clear that you can use this software in two modes, including proxy and API.
With the API mode, you can send out the API requests and customize the mode by using the parameters connected to the URL.
In addition, Scraper API supports various programming languages, including Bash, Node, Java, Python, Ruby, and PHP.
All these languages are also supported by the proxy mode. The API mode has an API touch, but the proxy mode comes with proxies only.
In simpler words, with the proxy mode, you need to configure the requests rather than just sending them out.
Both these modes are convenient to use, and you can get a full guide on how to use these modes when you subscribe to the plan (there is a documentation tab available on the website and the dashboard).
5. Affordable Plans
The tool clearly shows that it has advanced features but it’s also extremely affordable.
For instance, it has great location support and a huge pool of IP addresses. In addition, it has the best anti-bot system for automated solving of CAPTCHAs.
Still, it’s extremely affordable, as the smallest plan costs around $29, allowing users to send over 250,000 API requests.
Even more, the free trial is extremely generous, but you must remember that the smallest paid plan doesn’t offer JavaScript rendering, JSON parsing, and geo-targeting.
In addition to this, there is a startup plan that costs $99 and a business plan that costs $249.
Every plan offers a different number of API requests, but they range from 250,000 to 3,000,000.
In addition, if you need to send more API requests, you can ask the team to create a custom plan for you.
The hobby plan is the smallest, which offers ten concurrent requests and around 250,000 API requests.
On the other hand, the startup plan offers 1,000,000 API requests, and you can send twenty-five concurrent requests. Also, you can send fifty requests at a time.
Lastly, there is a business plan that offers 3,000,000 API requests in a month, and you will also get premium proxies and JavaScript rendering.
6. Easy To Use
An important part of this Scraper API review is that we found it’s straightforward to use. You will be given the access key when you sign up for this proxy API.
So, just call the API with this key and the URL you would like to scrape. As a result, you will receive the website’s raw HTML.
When ScraperAPI receives the request, the URL will be accessed by the service through a proxy server.
As a result, it extracts the data and sends the data back to you.
The IP addresses are rotated automatically for every request you send while the CAPTCHAs are solved on the server.
The key can be accessed through the browser, and the server will return the webpage’s HTML, which can be stored as a variable.
If you want to render JavaScript, you must add the render=true command at the end of an API request.
The free trial, hobby plan, and startup plan offer proxy locations in the US. The servers use headless Chrome for visiting the page.
In addition, you can also keep the request headers original.
The sessions usually expire within fifteen minutes, and you can use the same proxy for various usages. The users can set the proxies for specific locations.
On the other hand, the business plan offers various locations for proxies, including Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Brazil, India, Mexico, Japan, Australia, and China.
It’s essential to add that some websites can be challenging to scrape, which is why Scraper API reserves the pool of mobile and residential IP addresses for business and enterprise plan users.
The IP addresses are charged at 10x rather than regular IP addresses (it consumes ten requests for scraping one IP, and 25 requests will be consumed if you enable JavaScript rendering).
7. Dashboard
When you subscribe to the Scraper API, you have to sign in to the account.
Once you are signed in, you will access the dashboard with information about the remaining requests and how many requests you’ve already sent.
In addition, the dashboard shows the failed requests (the company doesn’t count the failed requests).
The dashboard also shows the API key and an example link that can be copied and pasted into the code.
On the left menu, you can access the documentation page’s link (it shows how to use the proxy API in a specific mode and other features).
In addition, it has a code that can be copied and pasted into the scripts for PHP, Ruby, Bash, Python, and Node.
There are different sections on the dashboard, such as;
Usage
This tab includes the sample codes, usage statistics, API key, and monitoring tools.
The usage statistics include the used credits, failed requests, current pricing plan, billing cycle’s end date, and concurrency.
Billing
In the billing section, you can check the current pricing plan and the end date of the billing cycle.
In addition, if you want to change your plan, you can do it through this tab.
Also, you can update the payment method and billing details, check the invoices, and manage the subscription.
It allows the users to renew the subscription early if they run out of credits.
8. Processing Of API Requests
It supports API requests of over 2MB, which includes images, documents, HTML content, and PDF files.
It can scrape the web content and can be used for websites with a CDN background.
As far as the API request is concerned, it will be initiated in three different ways.
For instance, it can initiate the API request through the available endpoint, SDKs, or the proxy port.
The authorization is done through the API keys. However, you must know how to use the programming languages to initiate the requests.
Scraper API clearly shows that you can set the scrapers to a higher speed since concurrent connections are available.
Also, it’s a highly scalable software, which means it can adapt to the technical prerequisites.
Lastly, the pages that render through JavaScript will no longer be an issue because this software automatically renders the websites or pages.
9. Data Classification & Security
The data will be presented in a structured form when the API request is accepted. The datasets are well-structured and are presented in the natural language.
The majority of IP addresses used by the company belong to the residential IP network, which makes them hard to discover and block.
In addition, the CAPTCHAs are handled automatically, so you can focus on HTML processing.
Also, the same IP isn’t used for a website twice, which reduces your chances of getting caught.
As far as the website’s security protocols are concerned, there is anti-bot bypassing available.
The software tunes the proxy pool to create a customized bypass that allows you to scrape whichever data you want.
10. IP Addresses
It’s already clear that ScraperAPI has a huge pool of IP addresses.
As far as maintaining the scraping sessions is concerned, you can keep the IP and change the settings.
In addition, you can set the scripts to call the API and parse the data – it’s pretty simple.
Also, it automatically extracts the pages into actionable data on popular websites, such as Google, Amazon, and Instagram.
In simpler words, you can reuse the proxy for various requests. However, the sessions expire within fifteen minutes after your last usage.
11. Geotargeting
The IP addresses are available from more than 50 countries, but they are available on request.
However, twelve countries are available already, so you can use the country_code= command to request the IP address of a specific location to acquire localized and accurate data.
With this command, you must add the country codes you can get from the website.
12. Status Codes
When you send a request, the API returns a status code depending on if the request was failed, successful, or had some other error.
The failed requests are retried within sixty seconds to get the right response for the URL before it shows the error to make sure you scrape the data easily.
It works with Bing, Google, Allegro, Amazon, social media websites, G2, and LinkedIn.
The Bottom Line
This ScraperAPI review shows how amazing this proxy API is – it allows easy and efficient web scraping as it can handle the proxies and browser settings.
It has easier IP rotation and automates retrying of the failed requests.
In addition, you can fetch the HTML of any web page with an API call.
It has been used by over 1000 businesses and caters to two billion API requests monthly.
Scraper API allows the users to turn websites into practical or actionable data through data extraction and parsing.
In addition, you can customize the request type and headers.
In fact, if you have some issues, you will get free and robust email-based customer support (the turnaround time is extremely quick).
Overall, it’s an excellent choice for every scraping project, irrespective of its level or size.
However, as our review shows, you must remember that smaller plans don’t have geo-targeting and other advanced features.
If you do decide to pull the trigger and purchase a plan, be sure to use a ScraperAPI coupon to get a discount!
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Written by Jason Wise
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