Powered by big data, web scraping - to collect data from web pages - has come to the fore and is now the go-to solution. Web scraping is used to collect data for various purposes: price monitoring, lead generation, marketing analysis, etc. Some companies collect customer reviews to understand the pros and cons of their products. Web scraping helps collect data from a large number of websites quickly and accurately and opens up the world of possibilities. For how easy it is to apply at reasonable costs, web scraping has become the most popular way to grab data. Nevertheless, many businesses who want to use web scraping haven't taken it further because they don't know how much it will cost. Despite the huge cost, they still watch from afar. In this article, we will present some of the most popular approaches to web scraping and their cost structure to help you better understand which approach is best for your needs and what is the cost involved.

What is Web Scraping?

We should review the basics first. We must discuss how web scraping works in order to understand the costs involved. The purpose of a web scraper is to extract information from a webpage or website. There are several ways to scrape data. You can scrape it manually or automate it with software scrapers.

Uses of Web Scraping

Getting content quickly is possible through web scraping. Web scraping is a specially trained algorithm that gets content from the Internet. It is designed to go to the particular page of a webpage and begin collecting the contents of the tags you specified when configuring the script. You receive a prepared file containing all the necessary information in strict order. In other words, there is almost no information that you cannot find on our site. There are also multithreading opportunities: scripts collect information simultaneously from several web pages. The information can be put to use in several ways:

Producing unique content

Using web scraping, almost exclusive content can be created. Some tools offer export options, and one of the most popular export formats is CSV.

Detect plagiarism

Imagine that you have written a large manuscript (let's say 100-200 pages). You think it's unique, but it probably isn't. It is almost impossible for a large document to be 100% unique and pass all plagiarism checks. So, you’ll probably require an in-depth plagiarism scan. The idea is to receive small pieces of text from hundreds of websites. Afterwards, you can match them with your document and provide a reference if it is required, or rewrite content to make it fully unique.

Gathering data

With web-scraping, users are able to look up a vast amount of information from the Internet in minutes since data extraction occurs automatically. The user does not need to spend time manually processing each page; software can extract the data more efficiently.

More lead generation (outbound marketing)

During web scraping, you get not only articles, prices, and other data, but you also get various types of contact information like emails, phone numbers, or social profile links. By using that information you can create a network of contacts.

Implementing marketing automation

For Google SERP tracking (Rank tracking), web scraping is widely used. Researchers regularly scrape Google Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) to get information about the factors that influence rankings on a page. It is essential to learn how on-page SEO factors influence the site's ranking in search results. You can get a complete picture of search results by using a rank tracking tool. Here are the details:

• Identify which on-page SEO factors result in increased traffic;
• A specific keyword appears in a SERP for your domain;
• Are your competitors performing better or worse than you? By analyzing these data, you can decide whether you should optimize content to outperform your competitors or to focus on other keywords.

  Specifications tracking and comparison

  Web scraping is a perfect tool not only for marketers, programmers, or other people, who want to benefit from business research. It’s ideal for everyone who wants to buy a product cheaply. Well-known online catalogues scrap hundreds of websites each day to provide live information about the actual prices for their users.

  A Web Scraping Solution: 3 Things To Consider

  So now you are aware of the ways to achieve web scraping. Next, you need to decide which approach suits your needs. Consider a few things before picking a web scraping technique that will affect your web scraping cost and determine the quality of data you get.

  1. Regularity of scraping

  You might be blocked from scraping after some time if you plan to scrape a lot of data frequently. You need to make sure that your web scraping tool has IP rotation to avoid getting banned, or that your scraping team can resolve anti-scraping issues. ProxyCrawl has auto-IP rotation for cloud extraction as well as local extraction.

  2. How many sites you wish to scrape data from

  In addition to the method you select, you should also consider the amount of sites you need to scrape. Scraping crawlers can be difficult with so many sites. Businesses prefer to use a web scraping service since they won't have to worry about maintenance. In order to do this yourself, you should use a web scraping tool that will allow you to handle a wide range of websites at once, and integrate to different systems for data transfer and data management. In addition to that, you can hire a team or freelancer to take care of the whole project for you.

  3. Qualitative aspects of the scraped data

  The frequency of scraping and the number of scraping sites should not be your only consideration, because you should also consider the data quality, including the coverage and accuracy of the data. Depending on your approach, you should ensure that the scraping won't miss any important data or misplace the data. Data analysis may require some data cleaning in some situations. Make sure you inform us of your data requirements before paying. Moreover, always ask for sample data to ensure that the results will meet your needs.

  Cost of Web Scraping

  Web scraping is approached in several ways, and each one has a different cost structure. We'll go over some popular methods.

  Creating A Scraper

  Outsourcing web scraping is quite common. This may be your best option if your project is quite straightforward and requires very little explanation. You will be billed for these projects on an hourly basis. On Upwork, web scraping jobs range from $30 to $60 on the low end to around $100 in the high end. This could rapidly escalate costs for ongoing projects.

  Web Scraping Tools: How to Create a Scraper

  Making a scraper from scratch is time-consuming. It is much simpler to use a web scraping tool to make a scraper if you don't want to create it yourself. The tools are designed to collect and collate data online and to make web scraping easy. Web scraping tools are becoming easier and easier to use, with intuitive interfaces and pre-maintained workflows to empower everyone to get data for free. In most cases, using such a tool will be cheaper. Prices and features vary. You should choose the right package for your needs. There are many web scrapers with free trials and free plans with limited features, but with flat fees instead of high hourly rates. Here are our top picks for web scraping tools:

  1. ProxyCrawl

  ProxyCrawl gets data within minutes with its auto-detect algorithm. It then scans the webpage and pulls the data automatically. By requesting a page to be scraped, you are ready to scrape. A good choice for beginners. ProxyCrawl offers a free plan, which is powerful enough for most scraping needs. The free plan still has many limitations. Go for a paid plan if you want more features, especially to scrape dynamic websites. Standard ($29 per 50,000 credits per month with tax for EU residents), advanced ($79 per month), and professional ($149 per year). Choose a plan according to your scraping needs. Learn more about ProxyCrawl's pricing.

  2. ParseHub

  Several web scrapers use ParseHub to extract data from complex websites. Although the free plan is quite limited, it is still a good option for those who want to try web scraping. Pricing plans include the standard plan ($189 per month), professional plan ($599 per month), and enterprise plan (they will give you a quote when you contact them).

  3. Mozenda

  This is one of the earliest web scraping tools available, with three pricing plans. Standard, Corporate, and Enterprise plans are available. Mozenda's website does not show detailed pricing. Mozenda's web scraping features may meet your needs, so you can request a quote.

  Using an existing web scraper

  A web scraper may be the best solution for your web scraping needs in most cases. Scrapers have been developed and improved over several years, allowing them to scrape many different kinds of websites. They also come with fewer bugs and errors. Prices vary based on the web scraper you choose and your project needs. Web scrapers offer free plans and paid plans with flat fees for your projects, eliminating hourly rates.

  To Sum Up

  In this article, we figured out the main idea of web scraping and its methods and showed some domains to use web scraping for. Finally, we described the most popular scraping and crawling tools and their costs. This article should have helped you understand the main differences between platforms and custom solutions.