Data analytics has become an essential part of business management due to the surge in data amounts. Even though there are many data sources, the largest source is the web.
As data analytics grows, businesses require data analysts who can use sophisticated methods to scrape the web for various purposes: lead generation, competitor analysis, price monitoring, etc.
Unlike the mind-numbing process of getting data manually, web scrapers utilize automation methods to extract data from millions or thousands of data sets instantly.
Among the market’s most popular web scraping tools is ScrapingAnt, which offers proxies and the ecosystem required to use them. Customers appreciate this software for its ease of use, affordability, comprehensive set of features, and excellent customer support.
This article reviews the ScrapingAnt tool in detail, from what it is and its benefits to its features, pricing models, and how to get started with it.
What Is ScrapingAnt, And Who Is It Meant For?
ScrapingAnt is one of the best web scraping tools that provides a complex data extraction infrastructure with a custom API and a headless browsing service and helps to set them up.
The program allows users to pass customized cookies and perform actions under an authorized account. It also lets users render JavaScript using headless chrome.
ScrappingAnt is used by thousands of companies across various industries that rely heavily on data.
The program’s key benefits include the following:
- Simple integration: Integrating ScrappingAnt into business apps takes minutes.
- Customization: ScrapingAnt allows users to customize their data extraction parameters to achieve all their scrapping goals.
- In-built scraping solution: ScrappingAnt assists users in overcoming obstacles like CAPTCHA, IP rotations, and JavaScript rendering.
- Quick start: Users don’t have to install, build, or download ScrapingAnt; they can start scrapping right after completing the configuration and integration steps.
- Affordability: Using ScrappingAnt is more cost-effective than outsourcing web scraping specialists.
- Speed: ScarpingAnt offers extensive capabilities to enable companies to collect massive data amounts in a few minutes.
- Custom solutions: The company provides top-tier data collection experts who can meet any business requirements and build custom scraping software, especially for you as well as offers data team augmentation services.
ScrapingAnt Use Cases
This best-in-class web scraping software can be used for a wide spectrum of business needs of any complexity, particularly:
1. General data extraction
ScrapingAnt is used for general tasks related to web scraping without getting blocked. Companies use this tool to extract various types of data, which help them make well-informed decisions regarding marketing, product offers, pricing strategy, etc.
In particular, users leverage the power of ScrapingAnt to cover their needs in the following directions: smart real estate and NFT decisions, sneaker price data collection, web scraping for freelancers, improvement of the HR process, and numerous other cases.
2. Price monitoring
ScrapingAnt helps businesses overcome their competitors by conducting in-depth market research. The service allows firms to scrap product prices and see the best deals.
Businesses can then use the scraped data to come up with better offers to improve their profits. Price monitoring also helps companies understand customer purchase behavior and set competitive prices to attract their competitors’ clientele.
3. Odds scraping
For a betting company to remain competitive, it must constantly check market odds. ScrappingAnt has a large proxy pool that allows companies to monitor their competitors without getting blocked.
What’s In It for Me: The Killer Features
ScrapingAnt provides one of the most reliable and convenient scraping experiences, offering a fantastic set of features.
1. Custom cookies
A cookie refers to small data pieces such as personal information, how long you visited a website, the pages visited, and user-agent information that a visited server creates.
When a user connects to a website to scrape data, the server hosting the website establishes a session between the user and the website. ScrapingAnt helps users scrape session data by rotating requests via proxies that establish multiple sessions for every request.
The advantage of this is that it allows users to scrape data in parallel, and it makes the target website think you’re sending organic traffic.
2. Captcha avoidance
Captcha is a common test website owners use to distinguish between computers and humans to determine if their website generates real traffic. Captchas are usually triggered when a website detects activities that resemble bot behavior.
ScrappingAnt allows users to avoid captcha by rotating proxies every time they send a request to a target website. This makes it difficult for the target website to determine a user’s IP footprint because the proxies’ IP address will appear instead of the user’s for each request they make.
3. Headless browser
A headless browser refers to one that doesn’t have a user interface. Like normal browsers, headless browsers have all the capabilities for rendering websites. Headless browsers are perfect for web scraping as the task can be performed quickly.
ScrapingAnt allows users to scrape data from headless Chrome automatically and optimally by opening target websites and queries back all relevant results.
4. JavaScript rendering
Scraping data from websites that use JavaScript is complex because when using regular request packages to such websites, the queries will return with no data.
ScrapingAnt provides users with a dedicated API that offers a customizable experience that overcomes blockings like JS rendering and helps you extract data from websites built with JS frameworks.
5. Rotating proxies
Rotating proxies help protect web scrapers from getting blocked by the target website. ScrapingAnt’s rotating proxies provide users with random IP addresses, which enables them to use IP addresses from different locations globally. This reduces the chances of a web server monitoring you and protects you from bans.
6. Fastest Amazon web services
Amazon is among the largest eCommerce sites globally, thus making it an extensive database for market trends, reviews, and products. ScrapingAnt handles CAPTCHAs, browsers, and proxies to allow users to extract Amazon data like availability, reviews, or price.
ScrapingAnt Pricing Models
Users can start with a Free plan and switch to a paid tariff as their requirements and needs evolve.
- Free plan: This is for personal use, and it gives you access to output preprocessing, custom cookies, and JavaScript rendering through headless Chrome.
- Enthusiast plan: For $19 per month, you get 100,000 credits, email support, and document integration.
- Startup: At $49 every month, you’ll have 500,000 APIs, expert assistance, integration with customized code snippets, and expert help.
- Business: For $249 per month, users get 3,000,000 APIs, integration planning, expert guidance, integration calls, and priority email support.
Get Started With ScrapingAnt In 4 Simple Steps
Although the ScrapingAnt technology is comprehensive and offers robust functionality, starting to use it is a pretty straightforward process involving only four simple steps:
- Sign in with a Google or GitHub account and set a strong password.
- Create a scrapping request after going through the various options.
- Scrape the intended website.
- Create a data extraction pipeline for the API.
Final Verdict
ScrappingAnt is among the most popular website scraping APIs available in the market. The tool is easy to use, efficient at passing anti-bot systems, and offers browser customization and custom cookies.
The service does all the heavy lifting and allows you to pay only when requests are successful. ScrappingAnt offers various affordable pricing options that make it a worthwhile investment for newbies, businesses, and freelancers. Try the product right now!
