Are you looking for the best web scrapers available as Chrome extensions? Then come in now and check out our list tested and trusted Chrome-based web scrapers – the list contains both paid and free extensions.
The importance of web scraping cannot be overemphasized – within a few hours; you can convert a whole website with hundreds of thousands of pages into structured data that you need for your businesses or research thorough automated means.
Web scrapers as the tool that makes web scraping possible, and there are many web scrapers you can get in the market. Some are paid while others are free. In terms of platform support, we can say that Chrome is one of the most popular platforms that get the attention of developers of web scrapers, and a good number of web scrapers have been developed for the Chrome platform as extensions.
Chrome is the most popular web browser in the market right now, and the Chrome Web Store is host to over 180,000 extensions with web scrapers being part of them. While a good number of them in the Chrome Web Store are free, it does not mean all of them are worthy of being used for any serious web scraping problem. It is because of this that this article has been written – to provide you recommendations on the best web scrapers available in the Chrome Web Store.
Why Use Web Scrapers Available as Chrome Extensions?
There was a time that developers do not see Chrome extensions as software to be taken seriously. That time is long gone as more and more users of Chrome find extensions helpful. Now, full-blown softwares are available as Chrome extensions and web scrapers are some of them. But why should you use them? They are lightweight, easy to develop, and as such, they are usually cheap, while some are even free. This then means that they are cost-effective compared to others developed as cloud-based platforms and installable apps on PCs. They are also cross-platform.
Top 5 Web Scraper Chrome Extensions
Make no mistake about it; web scraping can only be easy, fast, and stress-free only if you use the best web scrapers for your web scraping projects. Unfortunately, we have come to realize that a good number of web scrapers in the market are living on hypes, and as such, it is important we clear the air to prevent you from making the mistake of choosing the wrong tool for the job. Below are the 5 best web scrapers available as Chrome extensions that we have tried, and they prove to work quite well.
WebScraper.io Extension
- Pricing: Free
- Free Trials: Chrome version is completely free
- Data Output Format: CSV
Webscraper.io is a web scraping tool provider with a Chrome browser extension and a Firefox add-on. The webScraper.io Chrome extension is one of the best web scrapers you can install as a Chrome extension. With over 300,000 downloads – and impressive customer reviews in the store, this extension is a must-have for web scrapers. With this tool, you can extract data from any website of your choice in an easy and swift manner. It requests no coding skills but presents a point and click interface for training the tool on the data to be extracted. Its only dependency is having a Chrome browser installed on your computer. 
Data Miner.io Data Scraper
- Pricing: Starts at $19.99 per month
- Free Trials: 500 pages per month
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel
Data Miner Chrome extension remains free for you provided you wouldn’t be scraping more than 500 pages in a month -anything more than that, and you will have to opt-inn for their paid plans. Data Miner extension requires no coding to use, and it is perfectly made for absolute beginners as it requires just clicks to scrape. Currently, this extension is available for 15,000+ website. It is important you know that Data Miner does not behave like a bot as a regular user, and as such, you do not have to worry about blocks. Data Miner automates form filling, scrapes tables with just a click, and automatically go from page to page when pagination is detected. [su_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrq5E0zagGw"]
Scraper
- Pricing: Completely free
- Free Trials: Free
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel TXT
Scraper is fairly unpopular when compared with the two web scrapers discussed above – it does not even have a website of its own. However, it works quite great and can extract data out of web pages and convert them into spreadsheets. This web scraper is quite simple but comes with some limitations and is free to use. The major problem associated with Scraper is that it is not beginner-friendly. The usage of Scraper requires someone to be comfortable working with XPath, and as such, it is wise to say it is for intermediate and advanced users.
Hunter.io
- Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
- Free Trials: 50 requests monthly
- Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel
Hunter.io is a web scraping tool available as a Chrome extension. Unlike the others described above, Hunter.io web scraping tools are very much specialized and tailored towards crawling web pages in search of email addresses. With Hunter.io, you can find the email address of any professional or even scrape all the email addresses associated with a specific domain name. It also has an email verifier that you can use to verify the deliverability of any email address. Interestingly, over 2 million professionals are making use of this tool. 
Agenty Scraping Agent
- Pricing: Free
- Free Trials: 14 days free trial – 100 pages credit
- Data Output Format: Google spreadsheet, CSV, Excel
The Agenty Scraping Agent is not a free tool and requires you to make a monetary commitment – but has a free trial option for a test. The Agenty Scraping Agent can be installed as a Chrome extension. It presents a point and click interface for training the agent on the data required. It facilitates anonymous web scraping through the use of highly anonymous proxies and automatic IP rotation. It supports batch URL crawling and even crawls websites that require a login and JavaScript-heavy websites. It keeps a history of your crawling activities and can be integrated with a good number of tools, including Google Spreadsheet, Amazon S3, and Webhook.
Conclusion
Looking at the list above, you can see that developers are already taking Chrome as a serious platform, and we expect more web scrapers to join this list. Web scrapers available as Chrome extensions are light, easy to use, and comes with free plans perfect for small web scraping projects. They are also cross-platform and works in a browser environment, which makes them perfect for web scraping.
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