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ScrapingBee VS Distill Web Monitor

Compare ScrapingBee VS Distill Web Monitor and see what are their differences

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Ensure healthy website performance, uptime, and free from vulnerabilities. Automatic checks for SSL Certificates, domains and monitor issues with your websites all from one console and get instant notifications on any issues. featured
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Contents:
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ScrapingBee logo ScrapingBee

ScrapingBee is a Web Scraping API that handles proxies and Headless browser for you, so you can focus on extracting the data you want, and nothing else.

Distill Web Monitor logo Distill Web Monitor

Distill is a web monitoring tool. It can monitor RSS feeds, a webpage or a part of webpage. Alerts in the form of pop-up, audio or emails can be received.
  • ScrapingBee Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-12

Web Scraping is hard, scraping at scale can be very challenging.

You have to handle:

  • Javascript rendering 💻
  • Chrome headless 🛠
  • Captcha 🤖
  • Proxy 🕵️‍♀️

ScrapingBee is a simple API that does all the above for you, and much more.

  • Distill Web Monitor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-07

Distill is a web monitoring tool. It can monitor RSS feeds, a webpage or a part of webpage. Alerts in the form of pop-up, audio or emails can be received.

Featured highlights:

• Content selection from any webpage including iframes. • Supported actions: • Push notifications on phone • Pop-up • Audio • Email • SMS • Webhook • Easy to use inbox style Watchlist with label, trash etc. • Conditions for smart actions. • History of previous changes for each monitor. • Powerful expressions to select source content. Supports XPath expression, CSS rule or JavaScript expression to select content. • View highlighted changes.

ScrapingBee

Website
scrapingbee.com
Pricing URL
Official ScrapingBee Pricing
$ Details
freemium $49.0 / Monthly (Freelance / 10,000 searches / 100,000 credits)
Platforms
REST API
Release Date
2019 July
Edit details

Distill Web Monitor

Website
distill.io
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-
Edit details

ScrapingBee features and specs

  • Easy to Use
    ScrapingBee provides a simple API that allows developers to scrape web pages without worrying about handling proxies or web browser rendering.
  • JavaScript Rendering
    With built-in JavaScript rendering, ScrapingBee can handle complex web pages that rely heavily on JavaScript for content display, making it suitable for scraping modern websites.
  • Proxy Management
    ScrapingBee automatically manages proxies, meaning developers don't have to deal with proxy rotation, blacklisting, or bans.
  • Rate Limiting Control
    The service offers control over rate limits, making it possible to scrape at a custom speed that suits your needs and prevents being blocked by target websites.
  • Custom Headers Support
    ScrapingBee allows the use of custom headers, enabling users to mimic different browsers or add specific headers required by the target site.
  • Geolocation
    It provides geolocation-based scraping, which is useful for accessing content that is region-restricted.

Possible disadvantages of ScrapingBee

  • Cost
    ScrapingBee is a paid service, and costs can add up depending on the volume and complexity of your scraping needs.
  • Rate Limits
    Even though it offers control over rate limits, there are still predefined limits depending on your plan, which might not suit very high-volume scraping needs.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Relying on an external service means that you are dependent on ScrapingBee's uptime and performance, which may affect your operations if the service faces downtime.
  • Data Privacy
    Using a third-party service for web scraping means sharing your scraping activities with ScrapingBee, which could raise data privacy concerns.
  • Limited Customization
    While ScrapingBee handles many aspects of web scraping for you, it may not offer the level of customization that a self-built scraping solution could provide.

Distill Web Monitor features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Distill Web Monitor features an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface, making it accessible even for users with limited technical skills.
  • Multi-Platform Support
    It supports multiple browsers and platforms including Chrome, Firefox, and iOS, providing flexibility for users.
  • Customizable Notifications
    Users can tailor notification settings to receive alerts via email, SMS, or push notifications, ensuring they stay informed in real-time.
  • Advanced Monitoring Options
    Offers a range of monitoring options including visual comparison, text recognition, and element-based tracking, catering to various monitoring needs.
  • Free Version Available
    A free basic version of Distill Web Monitor is available, allowing users to try out the service before committing to a paid plan.

Possible disadvantages of Distill Web Monitor

  • Limited Features in Free Plan
    The free version has limited functionalities, such as fewer checks and longer intervals, which may be inadequate for intensive monitoring needs.
  • Pricing
    The cost of premium plans can be relatively high for individuals or small businesses, potentially limiting accessibility for cost-sensitive users.
  • Resource-Intensive
    Running continuous monitoring can consume significant system resources, particularly affecting performance on lower-end hardware.
  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is user-friendly, some of the advanced features and customization options may require a learning curve for less tech-savvy users.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Monitoring sensitive or personal data on some websites could present privacy risks, depending on the sites being tracked and how data is handled.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ScrapingBee and Distill Web Monitor)

ScrapingBee

Distill Web Monitor

Web Scraping
100 100%
Web Scraping
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
Monitoring Tools
100% 100
Data Extraction
100 100%
Data Extraction
0% 0
Website Monitoring
0 0%
Website Monitoring
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using ScrapingBee and Distill Web Monitor. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ScrapingBee and Distill Web Monitor

ScrapingBee Reviews

We have no reviews of ScrapingBee yet.
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Distill Web Monitor Reviews

  1. Tarun Jain
    Great tool to keep track of competitor's website

    One of the best tools I have used to keep track of changes on my competitors website. I love the chrome extension and its ease of use.

    👍 Pros:    Advanced features|Easy to use|Chrome extension available|Sync across all my devices

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ScrapingBee should be more popular than Distill Web Monitor. It has been mentiond 3 times since March 2021. 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.

ScrapingBee mentions (3)

  • Self-hosted, simple web browser service – send URL, get screenshots
    If you’re worried about the security risks, edge cases, maintenance pain and scaling challenges of self hosting there are various solid hosted alternatives: - https://browserless.io - low level browser control - https://scrapingbee.com - scraping specialists - https://urlbox.com - screenshot specialists* They’re all profitable and have been around for years so you can depend on the businesses and the tech. *... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Are there any APIs that maintain a database of subscriptions?
    If you really just need the data you can use something like https://scrapingbee.com to scrape the info from the various price pages to make sure your info is always up to date. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Our bootstrapped SaaS just turned 3 and reached $1.5m ARR: the lessons learned.
    Well done! And posting here was a great idea. Not sure I would have found scrapingbee.com otherwise. We will probably become a customer. Signed up for the trial account. Source: almost 3 years ago

Distill Web Monitor mentions (2)

  • looking for a specific software
    I haven't used any in recent years so I'm not up to speed with the pros/cons of each, but PageProbe, SiteDelta Watch, and Distill Web Monitor are a few to try. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • App monitoring and reading parts of the screen
    I’ve had pretty good luck with the distill web monitor https://distill.io/apps/web-monitor. Source: about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ScrapingBee and Distill Web Monitor, you can also consider the following products

Zyte - We're Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub), the central point of entry for all your web data needs.

Visualping - Visualping is the easiest to use website checker, webpage change monitoring, website change detector and website change alert software of the web. Read more about Visualping.

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

Wachete - Track web page changes and get notified. Free Sign-up. Have all data in one place

Bright Data - World's largest proxy service with a residential proxy network of 72M IPs worldwide and proxy management interface for zero coding.

WebSite-Watcher - WebSite-Watcher detects website updates and highlights all changes in the text. WebSite-Watcher monitors web pages, password protected pages, disucssion forums and much more.

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