Web Scraping is easier than you think.

Especially when you are using the right tools.

And you might be wondering, what tools should I use for my next web scraping project?

Today, we’ll discuss some of the best options to scrape, edit and present data from the web.

Best Web Scraper

First, you will need a powerful and easy-to-use web scraper.

While there are many options out there for web scraping software, there are a few features that are definite must-haves.

For example, a good web scraper needs to be reliable and powerful, meaning that it can work with any website you throw at it.

Ease of use is also key, in this field, point-and-click scrapers excel thanks to how they select the data you want to extract from a website.

Other features that will significantly improve your web scraping experience include Cloud Scraping, Automatic IP Rotation, Pagination Features and more.

In fact, we’ve written an in-depth guide on what features make the best web scraper.

When it comes to a specific web scraper, we recommend ParseHub a powerful web scraper that has all the features we’ve mentioned so far.

Best part yet, you can download and use ParseHub for free.

Get ParseHub now and get started with step-by-step guide on how to scrape data from any website.

Best Spreadsheet Editor for Web Scraping

Once your first web scraping job is complete, you might want to go through the data you’ve collected for further review. You might want to remove irrelevant data points, filter the entries or check for duplicates.

The best way to do this is with a spreadsheet editor. For this task, we have a few favorites.

First, the obvious choice is Microsoft Excel, the industry standard for web scraping data. While Excel will be able to meet most of your spreadsheet needs, it can also be expensive. Specially since the Microsoft Office suite has switched to a subscription model.

Google Sheets works great as a free alternative. Better yet, it saves your work to the cloud, meaning that you can have access to your dataset from anywhere with an internet connection.

Better yet, with Google Sheets you can create online spreadsheets that auto-update every time you run a new scrape job (be it hourly, daily, or weekly). Learn more with our guide on how to integrate Google Sheets and ParseHub.

Best Data Visualization

After scraping and cleaning up the data you want, you’ll want to be able to present it in the best way possible.

When it comes to Data Visualization tools, we love the following ones.

First up, Tableau, a pioneer in the field of data visualizations. With Tableau, you can create simple charts or complex graphs from multiple datasets and integrations.

Better yet, we’ve written a guide with multiple methods to integrate Tableau and ParseHub.

Lastly, we also love Flourish, another data visualizer with a long list of useful features. We personally love their animation features which allowed us to put together videos like the one below.

Both of these tools offer free plans / trials to get started with and learn their tools.

Closing Thoughts

Web scraping doesn’t have to be a challenge. In most cases, you might just be using a tool that is not powerful or versatile enough.

With the proper tools, there won’t be a web scraping project that you cannot complete.

If you want to learn more about web scraping, check out our guide on common web scraping uses.

Happy Scraping!