Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Web Scraper VS Diffbot

Compare Web Scraper VS Diffbot and see what are their differences

Web Scraper logo Web Scraper

Web site data extraction tool ⚒️

Diffbot logo Diffbot

Get data from web pages automatically
  • Web Scraper Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-28
  • Diffbot Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-02

Web Scraper features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Web Scraper offers a user-friendly interface with a visual scraper builder that makes it accessible for users with minimal technical expertise. The browser extension facilitates easy setup and execution of scraping tasks.
  • Cost-effective
    It has a free tier that supports a wide range of scraping needs. The paid plans are reasonably priced, offering advanced features and capabilities for those who need them.
  • Multi-site Scraping
    Users can scrape data from multiple websites with support for pagination, which is essential for scraping large datasets spread across different web pages.
  • Cloud Scraping
    Web Scraper provides cloud services that allow users to run scraping jobs on their servers, thus freeing up local resources and ensuring more reliable execution of tasks.
  • Data Export Options
    It supports various data export formats, including CSV, JSON, and Excel. This flexibility makes it easier to integrate scraped data into different data processing workflows.

Possible disadvantages of Web Scraper

  • Limited Free Plan
    The free tier has limitations in terms of the number of scrapers, sitemap sizes, and scraping frequency. Users with higher demands may need to upgrade to a paid plan.
  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is user-friendly, there is still a learning curve, especially for more complex scraping tasks involving intricate website structures or dynamic content loaded via JavaScript.
  • Cloud Dependency
    For large-scale scraping tasks, reliance on the cloud service can be a downside if there are any service outages or latency issues, which could disrupt scraping jobs.
  • Limited Dynamic Content Handling
    Handling websites with heavy JavaScript content can be challenging. Although there are some capabilities for dealing with dynamic content, it might require additional tools or manual interventions for more complex scenarios.
  • Browser Extension Compatibility
    The Web Scraper extension is primarily designed for Google Chrome, which may be a drawback for users who prefer or are restricted to using other browsers.

Diffbot features and specs

  • Automation
    Diffbot automates the process of extracting structured data from web pages, saving time and reducing the need for manual data entry.
  • Accuracy
    By using machine learning and AI, Diffbot provides highly accurate data extraction, reducing errors compared to manual scraping.
  • Scalability
    Diffbot can handle large-scale data extraction, making it suitable for businesses with high-volume data needs.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform is user-friendly and provides APIs and tools that simplify the process of integrating data extraction into various applications.
  • Customizable
    Diffbot offers customization options to fine-tune the data extraction process according to specific requirements, ensuring relevance and precision.

Possible disadvantages of Diffbot

  • Cost
    Diffbot can be expensive, especially for small businesses or individual developers, as pricing scales with usage.
  • Learning Curve
    While the platform is powerful, it may have a steeper learning curve for users unfamiliar with API usage or web scraping concepts.
  • Dependency
    Relying on an external service like Diffbot can create dependencies, meaning any downtime or changes in the service can impact your operations.
  • Limited Control
    Using an automated service can limit the control users have over the data extraction process compared to custom-built scrapers.
  • Compliance
    There may be concerns about compliance with website terms of service or legal regulations regarding data scraping, which users need to manage responsibly.

Web Scraper videos

Web Scraper intro tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Web scraper review
  • Tutorial - How to Extract Multiple Web Pages by Using Google Chorme Web Scraper Extension

Diffbot videos

Correcting Diffbot API Output Using the Custom API Toolkit

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Web Scraper and Diffbot)
Web Scraping
44 44%
56% 56
Data Extraction
41 41%
59% 59
Data
52 52%
48% 48
Web Scraping And Crawling

User comments

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Reviews

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

Web Scraper Reviews

We have no reviews of Web Scraper yet.
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Diffbot Reviews

Best Data Scraping Tools
Diffbot uses computer vision, unlike any other tools to identify relevant information on a page. As long as the page looks the same visually, the web scrapers will never break even if the HTML structures change.
Creating an Automated Text Extraction Workflow — Part 1
The 600 lbs gorilla, Diffbot, comes with a swath of solid APIs but starts at $300, which is ridiculous if you’re just extracting text. Scrapinghub’s News API, Extractor API, and plenty more are better priced if you want an affordable alternative; plus, Extractor API includes a visual online tool for extracting hundreds of articles at once, if you want to do things via UI.
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Web Scraper seems to be a lot more popular than Diffbot. While we know about 34 links to Web Scraper, we've tracked only 1 mention of Diffbot. 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.

Web Scraper mentions (34)

  • How do I create a script that inspect the website and click all the button(parse address)?
    Point and click web browser plugin GUI: https://webscraper.io/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Web scraper for a flight price comparison website?
    In my 5+ years of experience as the scraper guy in the office, paying for these services could take a lot of money. So automated scraping might be your option. If you need help, tap me. Or you could use webscraper.io for easier nocode approach to it if you wanna do it yourself. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Data from EuroNews.com
    I don't know what corpus linguistic analysis is, but you can scrape the articles off of their website and analyse it in whichever software you're comfortable with. If you're not familiar with a programming language, you can use a GUI scraper like this one. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Issues scouting the right web scraper
    I'm looking into VPNs that have rotating IPs with time-set features. Didnt find any yet that I can try for free first. For the scraping Im using a free chrome browser extension from https://webscraper.io/. Source: about 2 years ago
  • [Help] how to make a copy of an online database
    For text only dbs a even a scraper addon would do. Try something like webscraper.io, it takes a bit of fucking around to get it working but it's foolproof. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Diffbot mentions (1)

  • Social Impact Trends / Emergent Issues using Data Science
    I work in non-profit/social impact and I'm trying to get a snapshot of themes/issues that concern a subset of organizations (say a total of 500) in our network via news/articles that these orgs may have published or that these orgs may have been referenced in within the last 30-60 days. Using Diffbot (diffbot.com), I can get a list of articles, news, content etc. That relate to these orgs. Understandably, this... Source: almost 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Web Scraper and Diffbot, you can also consider the following products

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

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.

Scrapy - Scrapy | A Fast and Powerful Scraping and Web Crawling Framework

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

Data Miner - Data Miner is a Google Chrome extension that helps you scrape data from web pages and into a CSV file or Excel spreadsheet.

Content Grabber - Content Grabber is an automated web scraping tool.