Do you want to make use of a web scraping cloud provider? Then come in now to discover the top cloud-based web scraping services you can use to scrape data from the Internet effortlessly.
When it comes to web scraping, there are 3 main platforms you can use – PC software, cloud-based services, and browser extensions. While each of them has its strengths and weaknesses, the most flexible of them are cloud-based solutions. This is because they are not OS-dependent, and the scraped data is saved in the cloud. The processing power some of these cloud-based solutions provide is unrivaled by most systems.
However, you need to know that with all these advantages comes an increase in pricing. But if you value the flexibility, processing power, and cloud-based storage solution they provide, then you won’t mind paying for the price they are asking as it is completely worth it. This article will be used to discuss the best 10 cloud-based web scraping services in the market. Before that, let take a look at what web scraping is in brief.
What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping is the process of extracting data from web pages using automation tools known as web scrapers. The process involves sending HTTP requests to download web pages, using a parser to pull out the required data, and then storing the extracted data in a database.
Web Scraping is different from fetching data through the use of APIs as using APIs comes with limitations and sometimes require you to pay some money. Even though web scraping can become illegal depending on the technicalities involved, it is legal on a general note.
Best Web Scraping Cloud Provider
There are many cloud-based web scraping service providers in the market, and as such, choosing the best one can become difficult, especially for newbies. The list below contains the best web scraping cloud providers in the market – you can use the list as a guide to choosing the best for your project, depending on your specific project requirement.
Scrapy Cloud
- Pricing:$9 per Scrapy Unit for a month
- Free Trials:1-hour crawl time
- Data Output Format: CSV, JSON, JSONLines, and XML
- Data Retention Period: Starts at 120 days for paid plans
Scrapy Cloud does not provide you a web scraper to you, but it provides you an essential service for web scraping, and that’s a cloud hosting platform for web scrapers and crawlers. With Scrapy Cloud, you do not need to think of servers again as they provide you web scraping optimized servers that can scrape at any scale.
It is a battle-tested cloud platform for running web scrapers and crawlers. It integrates seamlessly with Splash, Crawlera, and Spidermon, many other tools. The best web scraping framework to use in developing a web scraper to host on Scrapy Cloud is Scrapy, the popular web scraping framework for python developers. 
Octoparse
- Pricing: Starts at $75 per month
- Free Trials: 14 days of free trial with limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON, MySql, SQLServer
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
Octoparse is a cloud-based web scraping tool that can help you convert a full website into a structured spreadsheet – with just a few clicks of the mouse. It might interest you to know that you require no coding skills at all to make use of Octoparse as it is a visual scraping tool where you just need to point and click to extract any data. You can use it to scrape from any website as it can deal with AJAX, authentication, and even infinite scrolling. It rotates IP to avoid getting banned, and you can even schedule your scraping task – very important is the fact that your data remains in the cloud. You can even run up to 4 web scrapers at ones. 
ParseHub
- Pricing: Starts at $149 per month
- Free Trials: Desktop app is free
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Starts at 14 days
ParseHub is a free web scraping tool that you can use for scraping data from web pages. For their free plan, you need to download a software, and it comes with some limitations. The real deal comes with their paid plans, which as a cloud-based solution that’s is extremely powerful and flexible. One very important feature I like on a personal note is the fact that you can access the scraped data on their servers through their REST API point. It scraped perfectly from JavaScript-heavy websites. It has support for Regular Expression, schedule scraping, and rotation of IPs. Downloaded images and files are saved to DropBox or S3. Data retention varies from 14 days to 30 days. 
Webscraper.io Cloud Scraper
- Pricing: Starts at $50 per month
- Free Trials: Browser extensions are completely free
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Starts at 30 days
Do you want to build a database that would be beneficial to your business? Then Webscraper.io Cloud Scraper, the automatic data extraction tool, can help you with that. It comes from the developers of Webscraper.io, a free extension based web scraper. Cloud Scraper is paid and can handle dynamic website scraping and JavaScript execution. It has its own parser that enables the post-processing of data. Its requests are routed through a pool with thousands of IP addresses – and rotated efficiently. Also important is the fact that you can manage your scrapers through their API and schedule your scraping tasks. 
Dexi
- Pricing: Starts at $199 per month
- Free Trials: Yes
- Data Output Format: CSV
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
Dexi is one of the best web-based web scrapers in the market. Just like the others above, it is cloud-based and requires no installation as it is accessible from your browser. Dexi supports any website you have interested in scraping its data and comes with a deduplication system that removed any form of duplicates from the scraped data. One competitive advantage Dexi has over many of the scrapers discussed in this article is that it supports a good number of add-ons that extend the functions of Dexi and ease the work of its users. Dexi robots have what it takes to build the database you require. 
Diffbot
- Pricing: Starts at $299 per month
- Free Trials: 14 days with limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
Diffbot makes use of Artificial Intelligence to retrieve and clean structured data from web pages. Diffbot is a cloud-based web scraping solution that can help you automatically extract any given piece of data from any website you can think of. Its system is scalable, and you can scrape any amount of information you need provided you can pay for it. With their AI Web Extraction technology, you do not need to write rules for different websites, and the system can get that done automatically. Diffbot is developer-friendly as it has clients and APIs meant for developers to use. 
Import.io
- Pricing: Starts at $50 per month
- Free Trials: Yes, 1000 URLs per month
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
Get insights from data scraped for you from web pages without the infrastructures to do with the help of import.io cloud-based platform. Import.io will help you handle all the difficult tasks, including setup, monitoring, and maintenance, to make sure the quality of data scraped is at par with requirements regardless of if you know how to code or not. As a programmer, you are in good company as Import.io has some developer-centric features, which include API integration and complex data extraction. The team behind Import.io also offers on-site training if required. 
Mozenda
- Pricing: Starts at $250 per month
- Free Trials: 30 days with some limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
Mozenda is another cloud-based web scraping service provider with a scalable architecture that you can use to scrape millions of web pages without any form of problems – thanks to their over 10 years’ experience in the business of web scraping. Mozenda is trusted by a good number of Fortune 500 companies. With the Mozenda web scraping stack, you do not need to write codes or get anyone to do that for you as it has what it takes to scrape any kind of data available online. Interestingly, you can try it out for free for 30 days with some limitations. Just like many of the scrapers above, Mozenda will retain your data for a specific period of time on their server – and you can access it using their API. 
Apify
- Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
- Free Trials:Yes, a one-month trial with limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Starts at 14 days
Apify is a cloud-based web scraping solution provider with tools such as actors which are nothing but web scrapers you can use to scrape specific data from specific websites. Aside from the web scrapers they provide, they also provide a database system specifically designed and optimized for web scraping. Apify also sells proxies that can help you evade IP tracking and the limitations that come with it. The API actors (web scrapers) are efficient and scalable. 
80legs
- Pricing: Starts at $29 per month
- Free Trials: 10,000 URL crawling
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON
- Data Retention Period: Not specified
80legs provides web scraping services to individuals and businesses. They allow their users to run their crawlers on their platform or make use of their Giant Web Crawl, which you can use to scrape data from any website of your choice by providing its specifications regarding the HTML codes and keywords. With Giant Web Crawl, you can scrape millions of pages. Currently, it has been used to scrape over 15 million domains in the US and the EU region alone. It is very fast, reliable, and easy to use. 
Conclusion
Looking at the above, you can see that there are a good number of options to choose from. However, if you consider your budget, your specific use case, and the features that differentiate them, you will get to know that only a few of them might work for your use case, depending on how specialized your use case is. Else, choosing any of the web scraping cloud providers above should work for you if you need a solution for a general scraping task.
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