Best Web Scrapers
In a hurry?
The best LinkedIn scraper in 2023, as found in our independent testing, is Phantombuster!
LinkedIn is a popular platform for attaining user and business data.
This is why there are a lot of scrapers out there for extracting info from the platform.
But, lots of scrapers just do not work anymore.
This is why we have made a list of the top scrapers for LinkedIn that are reliable and trustworthy.
If you want to find out how to scrape LinkedIn profiles with python, you can get that info right after this list of the best LinkedIn scrapers for 2023.
Best LinkedIn Scraper Tools 2023
This independently verified list of the best scraper tools in the industry is going to save you a ton of time, energy, and money! Let’s do it.
- Phantombuster – 🏆 Winner!
- Oxylabs
- Bright Data
- ScraperAPI
- Meet Alfred
- Dux Soup
- ScrapingBee
- Octoparse
- Proxycrawl
- FollowingLike
1. Phantombuster
Being able to scrape LinkedIn profiles is invaluable to your business and the growth of your brand, and Phantombuster understands this.
They understand the kind of LinkedIn scraping tools that you need so that you can remain both safe and anonymous and successful at gleaning the type of data that you need.
They believe that they are good for helping their customers with scraping all available data, even if this includes email addresses.
Pro Tip: Try the “LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Export Phantom” to scrape and export data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
If you need to talk to them about anything at any point, you can communicate directly with them on the website, and we think that being able to get started with them for free is a nice touch.
See what their tutorial is all about too so that you can make the most of their services.
2. Oxylabs
Oxylabs is another intelligent scraper tool.
Developed by a top team, Oxylabs is a powerful, enterprise-class scraping tool.
It uses an automatic data point identification system for detecting and scraping the info you want.
You can also use its point and click interface for scraping info wherein the automatic detection system fails to work.
It supports several data export methods, including Google Sheets, MySQL, JSON, Excel, CSV, TXT, and more, while simplifying the LinkedIn scraping procedure.
The scraper starts at a price of $99.99 for a month.
You can also check out its free trial for 7 days.
3. Bright Data
Bright Data is one of the best choices as a LinkedIn scraping tool because they can help you as a web data platform that is really well known in the industry as a whole.
They are great for helping you with ready-made LinkedIn datasets, or you can request a custom dataset.
Bright Data also make it really easy for you to get the public web data that you really care about.
You can either request a demo from them, or you can begin your journey with them right now with their free trial.
Their LinkedIn data scraper makes it easier for you to automate and streamline your data collection so that you can obtain the levels of data that you need to be able to promote your brand successfully and generate new leads.
As well as helping you with data scraping, they also have an industry-leading proxy infrastructure, which goes hand-in-hand with web scraping.
4. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is one of the greatest scrapers in the proxy sector, because they have access to more than 40 million IP addresses worldwide, and they can also help you with uptime guarantee of 99.99%.
This means that there is a really really good chance that your connection isn’t going to drop in the middle of a scrape.
As well as these features, you can also make the most of the fact that they have unlimited bandwidth, and professional support that is available around the clock, so even if you have an issue outside of business hours, you are going to be able to talk to someone directly.
You don’t ever have to worry about being blocked for using LinkedIn and scraping information from it, so that you can generate the right leads for your business, and make the most of the wealth of information that is on LinkedIn.
5. Meet Alfred
Meet Alfred as an incredibly helpful scraper for LinkedIn, as well as CRM sync.
This means that you can not only gather the vital information that you need in order to create connections with leads that matter to your brand, but you can also export this information to CRM really easily.
They offer a free trial that is going to last for two weeks, which we think is more than enough time period to work out whether they are the right scraper for you or not.
They can also help you manage your LinkedIn connections and leads, so you aren’t going to lose any information, or get overwhelmed by the process.
They only make sure that they scrape the kind of LinkedIn data that is actually going to benefit your brand, as opposed to just scraping anything that comes within their path.
They are confident they can help their clients both build and maintain a really effective LinkedIn network, and the fact that they have a chat box so you can talk to them before you get started says a lot too.
6. Dux Soup
Dux Soup is another excellent scraper tool, because it offers a Chrome extension.
This means that you can connect directly to the tool, and you don’t have to download anything on your computer.
It is going to automatically connect to your LinkedIn profile, and let you scrape, visit, and send messages to your prospects and leads directly from LinkedIn.
It also offers its clients an extension, that is automatically going to act for you on your LinkedIn profile. It mimics human behavior, so as to limit the risk of being detected by LinkedIn, and from just $9.92, you can start prospecting with these guys.
They offer a free plan, as well as a free trial, so if you’re someone that wants to get to know a company before you commit to anything, this is going to be a good option for you.
7. ScrapingBee
ScrapingBee is another helpful scraper that can make all the difference with a huge proxy pool.
They know that you are going to want to scrape a lot if you are a big brand and you are hoping to generate a lot of leads for your business, and they think that they have the capacity and the bandwidth to make this happen.
As well as offering a huge proxy pool, they also offer geotargeting, as well as proxy rotation that occurs automatically, meaning that your proxy connection is going to switch up for you and you don’t even have to think about it.
They go into great detail on their website about how they can help you, whether you are trying to extract specific data, or you are just going to generalised web scraping.
This is a great tool to use whether you are a small business or a big business.
8. Octoparse
Octoparse is one of the most intelligent and best web scraping tools, including LinkedIn.
You can extract the info in only three steps, i.e., finding the data, selecting it, and then exporting it. It can help you convert LinkedIn web pages into an organized database.
There are several exporting options, including SQLServer, MySQL, JSN, Excel, XLSX, and CSV.
Plus, you can store the data on a different platform with the help of API keys.
Octoparse has several features that a good internet scraper has. These encompass advanced online scraping characteristics, like a cloud-based platform, scheduled scraping, proxy rotation, etc.
Plus, you don’t require a proxy with this scraper since it can switch IP addresses.
You just have to pay a small price of $75 monthly to get this scraper. It also offers a 14-day trial period with some restrictions.
This scraper supports both desktop and cloud.
9. Proxycrawl
Proxycrawl has several scrapers, including a LinkedIn scraper, in its scraping API (Application Programming Interface) inventory.
However, it requires some coding skills as opposed to other web scrapers mentioned above.
It is designed for developers who don’t want to work with Captchas and proxy management.
The tool allows you to scrape info like user profile details, employee data, description of a firm, and so on. It is easy to use this software, similar to sending API requests.
Proxycrawl is offered at $29/month for 50,000 credits. You can use it free of cost for the initial 1000 requests.
The supported platforms include the cloud, which can be accessed through API.
You can get the data in JSON format.
10. FollowingLike
FollowingLike is not only a scraping tool for LinkedIn, but it is also a social media management program for Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, etc.
It allows you to search LinkedIn by skills, likes, emails, posts, educational institutions, businesses, and so on.
You can also export the search outcomes. The tool lets you employ several LinkedIn accounts for scraping information on LinkedIn with its Account Manager feature.
You can get account statistics as well.
Plus, FollowingLink has native proxy support.
11. Helium Scraper
Helium Scraper is a LinkedIn data scraping desktop app, which helps you scrape all types of data on LinkedIn, such as company profiles, individual profiles, job posting data, etc.
It makes extracting information from LinkedIn simple as it has an intuitive interface.
The scraper has a point and click interface, which is helpful in training.
You can quickly extract complex info up to 140 terabytes (SQLite can hold this much data) using this tool without any hassles.
There are several data output formats available, including SQLite, JSON, XML, Excel, and CSV. It starts from $99 for a single-user license.
You can also try its completely functional 10-day free trial option. The tool supports the desktop platform.
12. ParseHub
ParseHub is a visual web scraper that is designed for data analysts to take out info from internet pages without requiring them to code.
The scraper’s desktop application is offered free of cost with some restrictions, which may not be so significant for you.
This tool is quite powerful and flexible. However, you have set the proxies while using its desktop app since it does not rotate IP addresses.
The paid option starts at $149 for a month.
You can get the data in JSON and Excel formats and it supports both desktop and cloud platforms.
13. LIX – LinkedIn search eXporter
LIX is a LinkedIn data extractor and scraper that can be used on any browser and device.
This online browser extension tool does not require you to download or install it. It is used by more than 11,000 users to scrape more than 11,000 search results.
You just have to start a search and then you can automatically export all the search outcomes. It allows you to download hundreds of search outcomes.
LIX exports search results to 10x your pipeline and has an automated profile viewer and CV parsing option.
You can export email addresses from profiles on LinkedIn in a comma-separated file for mail merge.
Plus, you can export company data in Excel and CSV file formats.
You can directly import to your existing recruitment program as well. The tool is priced at $40 per month.
14. Web Scraper
Web Scraper is a popular web scraping extension that has over 350,000 users. It allows you to obtain info from any platform or site, including LinkedIn.
The tool is easy to use with its point and click interface. You only have to install the extension on Google Chrome and go to LinkedIn in order to scrape it.
Even though you need to modify it a bit in order to get the desired results, it can detect several data types, including web links, texts, and special webpage codings like JavaScript, PHP, and Python.
This scraper supports the cloud and its supported data output formats include XLSX, CSV, JSON, and sitemaps.
It is priced as per the credits, which can range from 100,000 to 2,000,000 pages.
15. Scrab.in
Scrab.in is great for outbound marketing, account management, and lead generation on LinkedIn.
It can also be used for automating online interactions, including directly messaging selected profiles on LinkedIn and visiting a social media platform.
You can choose from a variety of filters to get leads on LinkedIn.
The search results can be downloaded in a CSV file or exported to a third-party CRM.
You can download and set up its extension on the Google Chrome browser or use it as a web application.
Its price is based on your visits and scans.
What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a social networking website that caters to firms and business professionals.
The platform allows career people to connect, network, support, and source other professionals.
It has had over 810 million users since it was founded in 2002.
LinkedIn is great for hosting and job posting. It has huge data, including profile details of businesses and their employees.
This includes their usernames, websites, skills, email addresses, industries, and much more.
Plus, the site has huge data related to jobs that the common public can access. This data on the profiles of professionals and businesses is required by researchers and companies.
Manually scraping the platform can take days, which means you have to open and look through every single profile.
And, even though this data is publicly available, you cannot access it freely.
LinkedIn’s API is not very extensive, which is why data analysts cannot get the type of data they are looking for.
Thus, if you want to get a lot of data free of cost, you only have the option of scraping LinkedIn pages, which is done through LinkedIn automation or LinkedIn bots, in a subset of tools called scrapers.
However, the main question here is if LinkedIn allows using automatic bots and web scraping.
Plus, how can you do it and which are the top scrapers available (see the list above for that).
LinkedIn Scraping – An Overview
It’s not so simple to scrape LinkedIn. If you think it is, then just give it a try and you will know.
In fact, LinkedIn is one of the most complex sites to scrape. It uses strict and smart anti-bot programs in order to avoid scraping.
The company also has a legal division to control whoever tries to do it. There has been a lot of scraping on LinkedIn and the company wants to end it.
One of the most famous anti-scraping court cases was between HiQ Labs and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn initiated this lawsuit; however, it lost the case. This lawsuit asserts that the web scraping practice is lawful based on a few factors.
Nevertheless, you should get in touch with a lawyer before you scrape LinkedIn since it can still be against the law.
And, even if it’s considered legal, it’s not an ethical and moral practice.
But, some companies and researchers require this data, due to which they have to ignore the moral and ethical aspects of web scraping.
If you too want such information and don’t mind the negative aspects of web scraping, then you can read further.
Why Do People Scrape Linkedin?
People scrape online platforms and websites in order to get information for different purposes, such as business intelligence, analysis, etc.
In the case of LinkedIn, people scrape it to get information on companies and employees.
For example, if you work as an executive in a firm and want to look for experts for your company on LinkedIn, then scraping the platform can help you.
This is because it is quite hard to scrape or go to every page on LinkedIn manually for copying the profile information.
However, by scraping LinkedIn via bots, you can get profile information on all potential workers in your industry who are on LinkedIn.
But, since web scraping involves bots, many social media sites, including LinkedIn, disapprove of it.
What Does LinkedIn Say About Scraping?
LinkedIn is one of the top social media sites when it comes to professional profiles. This is why it’s quite strict about its user data protection policy.
It does not allow using plugins, crawlers, bots, etc. to alter or scrape info on the platform.
This means that it is unlawful to scrape information on LinkedIn via a proxy.
When a new user registers on the site, they will find in the User Agreement that they cannot get involved in any scraping practices.
However, this is a matter of debate since everyone who scrapes information is not doing it for the wrong reasons.
As per the court in 2019, LinkedIn scraping was determined to be legal. This was when LinkedIn blocked HiQ for scraping the platform.
When scraping LinkedIn, bots can only download the information that is publicly accessible, that is, which other people can view.
But, even after the verdict, LinkedIn maintains its stand and condemns scraping.
This means if you’re caught scraping the platform, then your account will be restricted or shut down altogether.
Plus, you can be taken to court by LinkedIn as they have already done many times before.
This means if you plan to scrape LinkedIn, then you have to do so carefully to avoid getting caught since it is against their rules.
You can develop your own scraping bot for LinkedIn if you are a programmer or you can take the help of one of the top LinkedIn scrapers.
How to Scrape LinkedIn using Python and Selenium
Scraping LinkedIn is pretty difficult and if you make even a single error, then you would be blocked immediately. It has a smart anti-bot system that identifies and rejects bot traffic.
Therefore, if you’re not a qualified bot developer, then you should employ a web scraper.
But, if you can develop your own LinkedIn scraper bot, then you can try doing so.
This way you can also know how easy or hard it’s to avoid the anti-bot system of LinkedIn.
Python programmers must be aware that the combination of Beautiful Soup and requests would not be of any help here as they depend on AJAX, which can miss some data.
Other coders of programming languages must also know that they require frameworks or libraries that render JavaScript.
Requests will not be of any help in rendering and carrying out JavaScript, which is why you will require Selenium for it.
You can use proxies when taking the help of a LinkedIn scraping tool to avoid getting caught by LinkedIn.
Businesses, like HiQ, use such proxies. You can use residential proxies since the anti-spam program of LinkedIn is quite effective.
Residential proxies are great for scraping LinkedIn as they use a residential IP address, such as the one that is given by an ISP (Internet Service Provider).
This real IP address is not derived from data centers as the latter IP address does not point to any location.
This means the IP addresses used by residential proxies show a real location, which is in fact not your actual location.
You can stay anonymous this way without divulging your real IP address and getting banned by LinkedIn.
Furthermore, you have to imitate the way humans surf online, along with using LinkedIn proxies, in order to ensure the LinkedIn anti-bot system grants you access.
Then, you can obtain publicly accessible info on LinkedIn. You can see an example of a code below for scraping job info.
This is a basic script without proxies, HTML tags, and necessary exemption-handling codes. The code just proves the scraping concept.
From selenium import webdriver
class LinkedInScraper:
def __init__(self):
self.job_list = []
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
self.chrome = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)
def scrape_jobs(self):
self.chrome.get("https://www.linkedin.com/")
self.chrome.find_element_by_class_name("intent-module__button").click()
jobs = self.chrome.find_element_by_class_name("jobs-
search__results-list").find_elements_by_tag_name("li")
for job in jobs:
d = job.find_element_by_class_name("result-card__contents")
title = d.find_element_by_tag_name("h3").text
company = d.find_element_by_tag_name("h4").text
s = d.find_element_by_class_name("result-card__meta")
location = s.find_element_by_tag_name("span").text
time_stamp = s.find_element_by_tag_name("time").text
job_detials = {"title": title,
"company": company,
"location": location,
"time": time_stamp}
self.job_list.append(job_detials)
return self.job_list
x = LinkedInScraper()
x.scrape_jobs()
FAQs
Why Web Scrape in General?
We have talked about this a little bit already in this article, but to sum it up, there are many reasons why you might want to web scrape, especially when it pertains to LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a great place to generate leads for your brand and make those all-important connections when it comes to your professional industry.
Therefore, it is advantageous for you to find people that are like-minded and fall within your niche, so that you can make connections with them, learn about them behind the scenes, and extract powerful data that is going to advance your brand’s purpose in general.
Should I Use a Proxy with Web Scraping?
We think that it is pretty important to be able to web scrape safely, and one of the best ways to safely scrape online is to use a proxy.
The thing about web scraping is that depending on where you are located in the world, there are certain terms and regulations around it that mean that it isn’t technically legal everywhere.
If you’re doing something that is slightly risky as far as being online goes, then you will definitely want to hide your identity, and hide your IP address using a proxy.
This can also help you protect the information that you are extracting as well, so that there’s no chance that it could get hacked.
How Much Information do I Need to Know About a Company Before I Use Them?
Personally, we are big fans of being able to find out everything we can about a company before we jump into using them.
The thing about services these days that can help you scrape information from LinkedIn is that they are a dime a dozen, which means that it can be difficult to determine which ones are going to actually help you, and which ones are just trying to get your money.
Therefore, the more information they have about their team on their website, the more credibility they have, and the more that you can feel confident that they’re going to stay accountable to you further down the track.
Can I Download the Data to my Desktop or Mobile?
The good news is that the majority of the web scraper tools that we have talked about in this article for LinkedIn can help you download your information not only to your desktop, but to mobile as well.
There are some that are only going to help you download your information to the cloud, where you will be able to access it online, but the majority are going to make it really easy for you to extract important information to your desktop, so that you can organize it in an excel spreadsheet.
Conclusion
So, we have covered how to scrape LinkedIn profiles with python and selenium. And as said before, it is not easy to do.
But, if you still want to do it due to any reason, such as for attaining vital business info, you cannot use a simple web scraping tool as it is more likely to be identified and as a result, you will be blocked by LinkedIn.
Such information is useful in several industries to end-users.
Therefore, you must use the very best LinkedIn scraping tools created by professionals, such as the ones mentioned in this article.
Ensure that you use these LinkedIn crawlers and scraping tools for good reasons.
We do not support using scrapers and proxies for illicit activities.
Plus, LinkedIn prohibits scraping so you could get in trouble if they catch you.
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Written by Jason Wise
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