Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ParseHub VS puppeteer

Compare ParseHub VS puppeteer and see what are their differences

ParseHub logo ParseHub

ParseHub is a free web scraping tool. With our advanced web scraper, extracting data is as easy as clicking the data you need.

puppeteer logo puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium...
  • ParseHub Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-12
  • puppeteer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02

ParseHub features and specs

  • User-friendly Interface
    ParseHub offers a point-and-click interface that makes it easy for users to extract data from websites without needing any coding skills.
  • Advanced Features
    The tool supports complex data extraction tasks, including handling AJAX, JavaScript, infinite scroll, forms, and CAPTCHA.
  • Cross-platform Compatibility
    ParseHub is available as a web app and a desktop application, making it accessible on multiple operating systems.
  • API Integration
    ParseHub provides an API that allows for easy integration with other applications, enabling automated data extraction workflows.
  • Schedule and Automate
    Users can schedule their data extraction tasks to run at specific intervals, which is useful for keeping datasets up-to-date.
  • Cloud Storage
    Extracted data is stored in the cloud, allowing easy access and management of large datasets without consuming local storage resources.
  • Free Tier
    ParseHub offers a free tier that allows users to perform a limited number of data extraction tasks, suitable for small projects or initial testing.

Possible disadvantages of ParseHub

  • Learning Curve for Complex Tasks
    While the basic interface is user-friendly, advanced data extraction tasks may require a steep learning curve to master.
  • Monthly Limits
    The free tier and lower-tier plans have limits on the number of tasks and the amount of data that can be extracted per month, which could constrain heavy users.
  • Pricing
    Higher-tier plans can become expensive, especially for businesses that require extensive data extraction capabilities.
  • Performance Issues
    Users have reported occasional performance issues and bugs when dealing with very large or complex websites, which can affect the reliability of the data extraction processes.
  • Limited Export Formats
    While ParseHub supports common formats like CSV, JSON, and Excel, it lacks support for some specialized or less common file formats.
  • Customer Support
    Some users have reported that customer support can be slow to respond to issues, which could be problematic for time-sensitive projects.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Since the data extraction occurs on ParseHub's servers, there could be privacy concerns related to the handling of sensitive or proprietary data.

puppeteer features and specs

  • Headless Browsing
    Puppeteer allows headless browsing, which means you can automate and test web applications without opening a browser user interface, resulting in faster execution and lower resource usage.
  • Full Browser Control
    Enables full control over Chrome or Chromium browsers, allowing for comprehensive browser testing and automation, including taking screenshots, generating PDFs, and capturing web pages.
  • Rich API
    Offers a rich set of APIs that can control browsers, manage cookies, intercept network requests, and handle various browser events, making it versatile for different use cases.
  • Active Community
    Highly active open-source community with regular updates and a plethora of plugins and extensions, providing robust support and continuous improvements.
  • Compatibility
    Supports the latest JavaScript features and works seamlessly with popular libraries and frameworks, providing a modern development experience.

Possible disadvantages of puppeteer

  • Restricted to Chrome/Chromium
    Puppeteer is primarily designed to work with Chrome and Chromium browsers, limiting cross-browser testing capabilities compared to other tools that support multiple browsers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running multiple instances of headless browsers can be resource-intensive in terms of CPU and memory usage, potentially affecting performance on limited hardware.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires some learning curve for developers unfamiliar with browser automation or the Puppeteer API, making initial setup and usage potentially time-consuming.
  • Lacks JavaScript Redaction
    Unlike some other tools, Puppeteer does not natively support JavaScript error redaction, which means developers must manage error handling and debugging themselves.
  • Not Ideal for GUI Tests
    Since Puppeteer is headless by default, it might not be ideal for GUI end-to-end tests that require visual validation, requiring additional tools or configurations to enable full browser displays.

Analysis of ParseHub

Overall verdict

  • ParseHub is generally a reliable and effective tool for web scraping purposes. Its ease of use and powerful features make it a strong choice for both beginners and experienced data analysts. However, users should be aware of potential limitations regarding speed and handling extremely large-scale data scraping tasks.

Why this product is good

  • ParseHub is considered a good tool due to its versatility in web scraping without requiring extensive programming knowledge. It provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to automate data extraction tasks from websites. Additionally, it supports complex website structures and can handle dynamic content and JavaScript-driven sites.

Recommended for

    ParseHub is recommended for business analysts, data scientists, researchers, and anyone who needs to extract data from websites regularly but does not wish to dive deeply into coding. It's also a good option for individuals or small businesses looking to gather market research, product pricing information, or other competitive intelligence from web sources.

Analysis of puppeteer

Overall verdict

  • Puppeteer is considered a strong choice for developers seeking a robust and efficient way to automate browser tasks. It is particularly favored in situations where headless browser actions are required due to its rich feature set and its solid support from both the community and its active development team. However, it may not be the best choice for those looking for cross-browser testing since it focuses specifically on Chrome or Chromium.

Why this product is good

  • Puppeteer is a Node.js library that provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium browsers. It is widely appreciated for its speed, reliability, and comprehensive feature set that makes it easy to automate tasks like web scraping, automated testing, and taking screenshots. Users benefit from the ability to programmatically control browser actions, which can be useful for testing user interactions and rendering dynamic content.

Recommended for

  • Web scraping projects that need to render dynamic web pages or deal with JavaScript-heavy sites.
  • Automated testing scenarios that involve simulating user interactions and verifying UI changes.
  • Performance analysis and monitoring of JavaScript execution in a controlled environment.
  • Developers who need to generate PDFs or capture screenshots from web pages programmatically.

ParseHub videos

ParseHub Tutorial: Scrape Ratings and Reviews from a Website

More videos:

  • Tutorial - ParseHub Tutorial: Scraping Product Details from Amazon

puppeteer videos

Puppeteer - Video Review

More videos:

  • Review - GameSpot Reviews - Puppeteer
  • Review - CGR Undertow - PUPPETEER review for PlayStation 3

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ParseHub and puppeteer)
Web Scraping
100 100%
0% 0
Automated Testing
0 0%
100% 100
Data Extraction
100 100%
0% 0
Browser Testing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ParseHub and puppeteer

ParseHub Reviews

Best Data Scraping Tools
Parsehub is a fantastic tool for people who want to extract data from websites without coding. It is used widely by data analysts, journalists, data scientists, and many fields. Parse Hub is easier to use; you can click on the data that you are working on to build a web scraper, which then exports the data in excel format or JSON.

puppeteer Reviews

Top Selenium Alternatives
Puppeteer offers more direct and tighter integration with Chrome or Chromium through the DevTools Protocol, unlike Selenium which abstracts the browser interaction through WebDriver, making it more versatile across different browsers but potentially less optimized for specific browser internals like those Puppeteer accesses in Chrome.
Source: bugbug.io
Best Data Scraping Tools
It is completely free. Puppeteer is well backed and supported by Google Chrome and hence replacing Selenium and PhantomJS. It automatically installs an efficient, compatible Chromium binary in its setup, therefore reducing the burden of keeping track on your browser.
Puppeteer vs Selenium
If you're looking for a better alternative, try Endtest. It has Puppeteer's speed, it supports Selenium's browsers AND it has all the features that they're missing.
Source: dev.to
Introduction to Headless Browser Testing
The Puppeteer API can be used to take screenshots, create PDFs, navigate pages, and fetch information from pages. We’ll write some example code to see Puppeteer in action.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, puppeteer seems to be a lot more popular than ParseHub. While we know about 106 links to puppeteer, we've tracked only 3 mentions of ParseHub. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ParseHub mentions (3)

  • Home Depot price data using IMPORTXML?
    I've heard some folks have success with "parsehub.com", though I once tried it for a project and found it a bit intimidating... Source: over 3 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Parsehub.com — Extract data from dynamic sites, turn dynamic websites into APIs, 5 projects free. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Turn any website into an API with no code
    Parsehub is a powerful web scraping GUI tool for efficient fetching and manipulating data from any webpage. It helps you create an API output for a given website. You can even sanitize your content by using regex or replace function. So the input is a URL and the output is a structured json file. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

puppeteer mentions (106)

  • Top React Testing Libraries in 2025
    Puppeteer is a headless browser automation tool built on Chromium. It allows developers to simulate user interactions, capture screenshots, and perform UI tests with a high degree of accuracy. Puppeteer is particularly useful for testing cross-browser compatibility and visual elements in React applications. Its robust API enables precise control over browser actions, making it a valuable tool for UI testing and... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • End-to-End SEO Testing with Playwright and Lighthouse
    Vitest is a next-generation JavaScript testing framework powered by Vite. It’s an excellent alternative to Jest, offering native TypeScript support, a fast setup, and solid performance. However, while it has an experimental headless browser, it’s not ideal for advanced scenarios like running SEO audits in CI/CD pipelines. Instead, we can pair Vitest with Pupetter, a more mature tool for headless browser automation. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The Puppeteer Language Experiment
    This project tests how the browser language can be changed with Puppeteer. It implements multiple options to set the language of Chrome and checks each option against BrowserLeaks to see how it affected the JavaScript proeprties and HTTP headers available by the browser. For more information, see my article The Puppeteer Language Experiment on DEV.to. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Scrapy Vs. Crawlee
    In Crawlee, you can scrape JavaScript rendered websites using the built-in headless Puppeteer and Playwright browsers. It is important to note that, by default, Crawlee scrapes in headless mode. If you don't want headless, then just set headless: false. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Sometimes things simply don't work
    I am not in any way associated with the developers at puppeteer, but if you are looking for a way to contribute, they are open source. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing ParseHub and puppeteer, you can also consider the following products

import.io - Import. io helps its users find the internet data they need, organize and store it, and transform it into a format that provides them with the context they need.

Selenium - Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that.

Octoparse - Octoparse provides easy web scraping for anyone. Our advanced web crawler, allows users to turn web pages into structured spreadsheets within clicks.

Cypress.io - Slow, difficult and unreliable testing for anything that runs in a browser. Install Cypress in seconds and take the pain out of front-end testing.

Apify - Apify is a web scraping and automation platform that can turn any website into an API.

Playwright - Playwright is automation software for Chromium, Firefox, Webkit using the Node.js library having a single API in place.