The Best Cloud Web Scraper in 2024—Features, Reviews, and Prices

Web scraping allows businesses and individuals to collect data from different websites in minutes. This is undoubtedly much more convenient than browsing websites and writing down every important piece of info manually. ✍️

Businesses that want to effortlessly extract vast amounts of data from various websites without hiccups often turn to cloud web scraping. As you can find plenty of cloud web scraper solutions with varying features on the market, picking the right one could be challenging.

To help you make the best choice, our team shortlisted six fantastic cloud web scrapers offering extensive data extraction features. To ensure objectivity, we employed a unique approach:

• We analyzed dozens of cloud web scrapers and their strengths and weaknesses
• We consulted industry experts and influencers who shared their perspectives and offered recommendations
• We explored reviews on popular platforms like G2, Capterra, and Product Hunt to understand what users think about specific cloud-based web scrapers

How To Choose the Best Cloud Web Scraper

It’s worth keeping in mind that each cloud web scraper offers a unique feature set, so what works for someone else may not work for you. To ensure you’re making an informed decision, consider the following factors:

1. 🔨 Ease of use—Learning how to use the platform shouldn’t take months or require extensive training
2. 💰 Pricing—The platform should offer transparent and flexible pricing so that you can plan your budget. Ideally, it should have a free plan that lets you try out the features
3. ⚙️ Additional features—An ideal tool should save you from constantly jumping between apps by providing a comprehensive feature set covering prospecting, data enrichment, and message personalization

What Are the Benefits of a Cloud Web Scraper?

Before diving into reviews, let’s explain why you should consider a cloud web scraper in the first place. As its name says, a cloud web scraper leverages cloud servers to extract data—the scraping process takes place in a cloud-based infrastructure instead of your computer.

Here’s an overview of the benefits you’ll enjoy with cloud-based web scraping:

Top 6 Cloud Scraping Tools—Comprehensive Reviews

Here’s our list of the best cloud scraping tools to explore:

1. Clay
2. ParseHub
3. Scrapestack
4. Oxylabs
5. Bright Data Web Scraper APIs
6. ScraperAPI

1. Clay

If you want to scrape data from different websites and gather high-quality data for building lead lists, researching the market, or another purpose, Clay’s the way to go.

The platform features a Chrome extension that can help you pull data from any website, and setting it up requires only a few steps:

1. Download and set up the Chrome extension
2. Go to the website you want to scrape data from
3. Import the data to your Clay table

In many cases, Clay’s extension uses auto-detection or other people’s mappings to understand the page, so the scraping process is fully automated. When that doesn’t happen, you can quickly select the desired data and add it to your Clay table. 📂

While the extension is impressive, Clay’s revolutionary feature is Claygent—an AI web scraper that does the scraping work for you! You use a prompt to tell Claygent what data you need, and it will search every corner of the internet to retrieve it. Gather info on individuals and companies using simple prompts, such as:

• Is [company] hiring right now?
• Who are [company] investors?
• Who are [company] competitors?

You’ll need your OpenAPI key to use Claygent, but you can install it within the app in a few steps. You don’t trust Claygent just yet? Check the logic behind every answer and be confident of its accuracy.

As Clay integrates with over 50 data providers, the amount of data you can get your hands on is essentially unlimited. This also means you can save yourself from purchasing dozens of subscriptions for specific data providers. 💰

With Clay, you can save time and focus on other valuable tasks with the help of scraping templates for specific tasks, such as:

• Getting the number of business locations by scraping Indeed job listings
• Finding the number of open roles and employees based on a company URL
• Finding local businesses and their contact info from Google Maps

While Clay offers many templates for different purposes, some users would appreciate additional choices for an entirely hassle-free experience.

Flexible and transparent pricing is another perk—try the free plan to explore Clay’s features. If you like what you see, opt for one of the four paid plans:

1. Starter—$149/month
2. Explorer—$349/month
3. Pro—$800/month
4. Enterprise—Custom

2. ParseHub

ParseHub is a powerful cloud-based web scraper that can help you get data from any website. Installing the scraper is straightforward:

1. Download the app
2. Choose the site that you want to scrape
3. Collect the desired data
4. Access data via Excel, JSON, or API and import results into Tableau or Google Sheets

ParseHub can scrape any website, no matter how outdated, laggy, or complex. It can open drop-down lists, search through forms, and effortlessly scrape from websites with infinite scrolls and tabs.

If you need to scrape only specific data points (and not the entire page), you can click on the desired data, and ParseHub will extract it. The platform employs advanced screening processes to understand webpage hierarchy, so it will extract the data as is.

ParseHub is equipped with automatic IP rotation to guarantee your anonymity, help you bypass captchas and bans, and pick up on accurate data from various sources.

Another convenient option is scheduled collection—choose when you want ParseHub to extract data to automate the scraping process and always have fresh information at your disposal.

In terms of pricing, ParseHub features a free plan and three paid plans:

1. Standard—$189/month
2. Professional—$599/month
3. ParseHub Plus—Custom

As for user reviews, many people mention the platform’s ease of setup and helpful customer service. A potential drawback often mentioned in reviews is pricing—considering the platform focuses only on data scraping, its plans are quite expensive.

3. Scrapestack

Scrapestack is a REST API service that lets you scrape any website and extract its full HTML content without worrying about geo-targeting, proxies, and CAPTCHA.

The platform is easy to use:

1. Set up the API
2. Enter the URL of the website you want to scrape
3. Watch Scrapestack API report back with the website’s HTML content

As the service is built on APIlayer cloud infrastructure, scalability is no issue—the service can handle millions of API requests per day, making it suitable for those who want to scrape vast amounts of data.

With over 35 million datacenter and residential IP addresses and 100+ global locations, the platform allows users to avoid IP blocks and server overload and access geo-restricted content. A convenient option is concurrent API requests—there’s no need to wait for one API request to complete before sending a new one. Thanks to this, users can boost efficiency and quickly scrape data.

As far as pricing goes, Scrapestack offers a free forever plan to get a feel for the platform. You can later opt for one of the four paid plans:

1. Basic—$19.99/month
2. Professional—$79.99/month
3. Business—$199.99/month
4. Enterprise—Custom

In terms of drawbacks, it’s important to mention the limited free plan—users get 100 requests and standard proxies, with no customer support.

4. Oxylabs

Oxylabs features advanced scraping solutions for businesses of all sizes and has over 100 million residential proxies. The platform’s web scraping API is a maintenance-free infrastructure with options that overcome CAPTCHA and IP blocks. This API can deliver an HTML code of a desired page complete with JavaScript rendering (for websites that use JavaScript for dynamic content loading).

With Oxlabs web scraping API, you can extract data for various use cases—from real estate and travel to automotive purposes. Users can gather the latest prices for specific flights, retrieve vehicle specifications, or investigate properties in only a few clicks.

The API is equipped with options such as:

• Smart proxy management—Proxies are selected and rotated with the help of machine learning technology
• Scheduler—Customize the frequency of recurring web scraping
• CAPTCHA bypass—Avoid CAPTCHA to ensure uninterrupted web scraping

Besides a web scraper, Oxylabs offers a SERP scraper API and an e-commerce scraper API.

As far as pricing goes, you have three options:

1. Micro—$49/month
2. Starter—$99/month
3. Advanced—$249/month

The platform also has special plans suitable for enterprises, and the prices start at $499/month. Unfortunately, Oxylabs doesn’t offer a free plan—you can try out its features during a seven-day trial, but you’ll have to subscribe after that.

High pricing is one of the most frequently mentioned potential drawbacks. Users say that it’s more expensive compared to other available proxies, but it does the job.

5. Bright Data Web Scraper APIs

Bright Data offers several scraping solutions, with Web Scraper APIs being the newest addition. This cloud-based service is designed for developers and allows effortless and efficient scraping for various uses—from market trend analysis to benchmarking and sentiment extraction.

The web scraping solution has impressive data discovery features that automatically detect data structures and patterns to guarantee targeted extraction with minimal involvement on your end.

Thanks to bulk request handling, the service can handle large-scale scraping tasks with zero issues. It optimizes data collection without server overload, so it’s ideal for users who need to extract vast amounts of data on a regular basis. The service is equipped with options for avoiding CAPTCHAs and blocks, so you don’t have to worry about your scraping processes being interrupted.

Web Scraper APIs let you download your data through API delivery or Webhooks or in the following file formats:

• JSON
• NDJSON
• CSV 

The pricing is just as flexible—it starts from $0.001 per record. You can also take advantage of a free trial to see if the solution fits your workflows.

Regarding user reviews, many mention the platform’s extensive options and helpful customer support. A potential red flag to consider is that getting used to the scraper takes some time. If you need the information yesterday, Bright Data Web Scraper APIs aren’t the best fit. ⌛

💡 Did you know? Bright Data integrates with Clay, so you can enjoy both platforms’ functionalities without compromises. 😍

6. ScraperAPI

ScraperAPI is a low-code solution for scraping any public website. Features like advanced anti-bot bypassing, IP and headers rotation, CAPTCHA handling, and fingerprint management give you quick and easy access to the desired data and eliminate the risk of interruptions and issues.

The service has advanced geotargeting functionalities to help users retrieve the right data from any website. They can use proxies from the desired country by simply entering a code. With over 40 million proxies in 50+ countries to choose from, users will easily find the right option and scrape the required data.

ScraperAPI helps you scrape dynamic data without relying on resource-intensive headless browsers. By adding render=true to your payload, you’ll effortlessly render JavaScript pages and reduce development time.

The service also supports concurrent threads, allowing you to run multiple requests simultaneously.

If you’re interested in ScraperAPI, you can test it for free for seven days. If you like it, opt for one of the following plans:

1. Hobby—$49/month
2. Startup—$149/month
3. Business—$299/month
4. Enterprise—Custom

All plans include JS rendering, proxy rotation, CAPTCHA and anti-bot detection, and professional support. They differ in the number of API credits and concurrent threads and geotargetting options.

Many user reviews praise the platform’s affordability and well-designed plans. However, they criticize ScraperAPI’s inconsistency—in some cases, it works perfectly, while in others, scrape requests will timeout for no obvious reason.

The Verdict—Which Cloud Web Scraper Should You Choose?

Every web scraper we’ve discussed can help you extract the desired data from millions of websites. Which one you’ll choose ultimately depends on your preferences and needs.

We’ve covered the factors you should focus on when selecting the right cloud web scraper. The platform should: 

1. Save you time and resources
2. Offer consistent performance
3. Have additional options for handling other processes, like data enrichment

If we compare the listed platforms and analyze their features, only one offers the perfect combo of affordability, ease of use, and features that go beyond scraping—Clay. 🌈

With Clay, you get advanced and easy-to-use scraping features, as well as options for data enrichment and drafting emails. This makes it ideal for anyone who wants to leverage the scraped data to generate quality leads and manage outbound campaigns. 

Don’t believe us? See what one user had to say about the tool:

Clay—More Than a Web Scraper

A Chrome extension, AI web scraper, and integrations with 50+ data providers are just a few items on Clay’s long list of valuable features. 🗒️

One of the most notable features is waterfall enrichment—Clay searches sequentially across providers until it finds the required information about companies or people. In only a few clicks, you can find info like: 

• Validated emails
• Phone numbers
• Company domains
• Employee counts

You customize the order of the providers and pay only for the info you get, so there are no cost overruns.

Once you scrape and enrich data, you can leverage this info to craft hyper-personalized messages and impress your prospects. 

Scraped data can often be messy, and organizing it can take ages. That’s not the case when you’re using Clay since the platform boasts impressive formatting capabilities with which you can:

• Normalize first and last names—Remove nicknames and emojis from people’s names and say goodbye to messy naming conventions
• Normalize company names—Ensure all company names are uniform by controlling capitalization spelling, capitalization, and abbreviations
• Normalize job titles—Keep job titles that count and ensure your data is clean and organized

All these features help you minimize jumping between apps and platforms—you can centralize your work and manage processes from start to finish within Clay.

Create Your Clay Account

Creating a Clay account won’t take much of your time:

1. Go to the signup page 👈
2. Enter the required info
3. Explore the platform’s features

If you want to explore Clay’s features in more detail and watch tutorials, visit Clay University. We also recommend joining the Slack community and signing up for the platform’s newsletter to stay updated. 💌