E-commerce websites contain a treasure trove of valuable data – product information, pricing, inventory, customer reviews and more. This data can provide key competitive insights for businesses in any industry. However, most major e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay and Walmart have implemented strict scraping defenses to prevent automated data extraction. To successfully scrape these sites at scale, you need an advanced web scraping tool capable of evading detection.
In this guide, we‘ll cover the top web scraping services for extracting data from leading e-commerce sites in 2024. We evaluated each platform based on features, evasion capabilities, e-commerce support, parsing accuracy, speed and pricing.
Contents
Why Scrape E-Commerce Websites?
Here are some of the main reasons businesses scrape e-commerce data:
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Competitive pricing research – Monitor competitor pricing across products to optimize your own pricing strategy.
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Market research – Analyze product search rankings, reviews and sales data to identify top selling items and consumer trends.
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Dropshipping – Source product data like descriptions, images and specs for creating dropshipping stores.
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Product research – Find top performing products to sell on your own e-commerce site.
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Supply chain optimization – Track inventory levels and availability for better supply chain planning.
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Lead generation – Extract business contact details from vendor profiles for sales prospecting.
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Brand monitoring – Monitor product listings and reviews for brand reputation management.
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Web analytics – Gather traffic stats for search rankings analysis and optimization.
Challenges of E-Commerce Scraping
While e-commerce sites offer a wealth of data, they also deploy advanced bot detection systems to prevent scraping, including:
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IP blocking – Blocking requests from known scraper IPs.
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CAPTCHAs – Challenges users to prove they are human.
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Rate limiting – Limits how many requests can be made from an IP.
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Server-side validation – Verifying requests come from a real browser.
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Obfuscation – Hiding data in page scripts rather than HTML.
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Legal threats – Threatening legal action under terms of service.
These measures make it very difficult to scrape e-commerce sites reliably at scale using tools like Python scripts or self-managed proxies. The scraping services covered in this guide use an array of evasion techniques to bypass these defenses undetected.
Evaluating the Top E-Commerce Scrapers
We thoroughly evaluated both dedicated e-commerce scrapers and general purpose web scraping tools on their effectiveness for extracting data from major online retail sites like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, Home Depot and more.
Here are the criteria we used for comparing the solutions:
- Supported sites – Number of built-in integrations for top e-commerce sites.
- Evasion capabilities – Techniques used to prevent bot detection, including proxy rotation, browsers, etc.
- Parsing capabilities – Ability to extract and structure clean, formatted data.
- Speed – How quickly pages are scraped to enable large-scale data extraction.
- Pricing – Cost structure and range from free plans to enterprise.
- Support options – Resources for integration help and technical assistance.
- Ease of use – Simplicity of API and overall onboarding experience.
Based on extensive hands-on testing and analysis of over 20 platforms, these are the top e-commerce scrapers that deliver reliable scraping at scale.
1. ScrapeOps
ScrapeOps is a dedicated web scraping API perfect for extracting huge volumes of product data from any e-commerce site.
Key Features
- Scrapes all major e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc.
- Rotating proxies with thousands of residential IPs provide high evasion.
- Integrated headless browsers evade JavaScript challenges.
- Built-in parsers extract structured data like product specs, pricing, reviews and more.
- Scales to millions of requests per day.
- Generous free plan available.
We found ScrapeOps to be the top performer in scraping Amazon product pages during testing. It achieved a 100% success rate at blazing fast speeds. The powerful evasion engine effortlessly handled heavy bot detection while returning perfectly structured data.
The Scraper API integrates in just a few lines of code with Python, Node.js, Postman and more. ScrapeOps also offers a suite of turnkey Chrome Extensions for DIY scraping without coding.
Pricing
ScrapeOps has a forever free plan with 50,000 requests/month. Paid plans start at $79/month for 5M requests. Enterprise pricing is available.
Verdict
With its unparalleled e-commerce scraping performance, generous free tier and easy integrations, ScrapeOps is our #1 choice for reliably extracting huge volumes of retail site data.
2. ParseHub
ParseHub is a visual web scraper perfect for parsing complex e-commerce sites without coding.
Key Features
- Visually build scrapers by selecting elements on target pages.
- Extracts text, prices, images and data tables.
- Built-in data exports, webhooks and integrations.
- Cloud-based proxy network maximizes uptime.
- Free plan available.
We were impressed by how quickly we could set up reliable scrapers for complex category and product pages on Walmart and other retail sites through ParseHub‘s visual interface. The tool automatically handles pagination when scraping multi-page listings.
The service is beginner-friendly but also offers advanced options like dynamic scraping based on page content, drop-down menus for variant scraping, and AI training for boosted parsing accuracy.
Pricing
ParseHub has a free plan for students and individuals. Paid plans for businesses start at $99/month for 10K pages scraped.
Verdict
ParseHub strikes the perfect balance between ease of use and advanced capabilities for non-coders needing to extract data from retail sites. The cloud proxies also provide excellent uptime.
3. ScraperAPI
ScraperAPI is a general purpose API well-suited for scraping modest volumes of e-commerce data.
Key Features
- Scrapes any site with custom code or plugins for browsers.
- Integrates with Python, Node.js, Postman and more.
- Rotating proxy network helps avoid blocks.
- Free 1,000 request trial plan available.
During testing, ScraperAPI achieved reliable results scraping Amazon, eBay and other product listings at small scale. However, performance degraded significantly when trying larger volumes. The lack of built-in parsing also means added integration work.
Pricing
ScraperAPI has a free 1,000 request trial plan. Paid plans start at $49/month for 100,000 requests. add-ons like residential proxies cost extra.
Verdict
ScraperAPI is a cost-effective option for small, occasional e-commerce scraping jobs. But the proxy network lacks the scale and evasion capabilities necessary for large-scale retail scraping.
4. Apify
Apify is a cloud-based web scraping platform supporting both non-coders and developers.
Key Features
- Developer-friendly API and actor model.
- Visual web scraper builder for non-coders.
- Headless browser engine handles JS sites.
- Proxy rotation helps avoid blocks.
- Free account with limited scraping capacity.
Apify provides a unique combination of developer power and ease of use. Non-technical users can build scrapers visually while devs have access to advanced features like asynchronous scraping, webhooks and custom code injection.
Performance for e-commerce pages was solid for smaller volumes but struggled when we pushed larger amounts of concurrent requests. The lack of built-in parsing also adds dev time.
Pricing
Apify has a free forever account with limited monthly concurrency and compute units. Paid plans start at $49/month for standard scraping needs.
Verdict
Apify brings together strong features for both novice and advanced scraping users. While performance lags behind top services, it provides good value overall.
5. ProxyCrawl
ProxyCrawl is a new contender quickly gaining popularity for its ease of use and evasion power.
Key Features
- Broad proxy network across 130+ countries.
- Headless browser engine handles complex sites.
- Built-in device emulation for optimal evasion.
- Generous free plan with 15,000 requests/month.
- Simple APIs for Python, Node.js, PHP and more.
In testing, ProxyCrawl performed well scraping top retail sites at small to medium scale thanks to its proxy network and headless Chrome engine. The lack of parsing does mean added integration work.
Pricing
ProxyCrawl offers a free 15,000 request/month plan. Paid plans start at €39/month for 300,000 requests.
Verdict
ProxyCrawl is easy to integrate and provides reliable scraping capabilities for personal use and smaller business needs. Performance lags top services for large-scale projects.
Choosing the Right E-Commerce Scraper
When choosing an e-commerce scraping tool, first clearly identify your use cases and data needs.
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For large-scale price monitoring, product research or other data-intensive applications, a robust service like ScrapeOps is ideal.
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If you want to scrape e-commerce sites without coding, ParseHub provides excellent visual DIY scraping.
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For developers needing to integrate scrapers into their apps, ScraperAPI or Apify offer flexible APIs.
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If you just need occasional scrapers for personal research, try ProxyCrawl.
The most capable services like ScrapeOps offer free trials and demo scrapers to "test drive" before committing to a paid plan.
Overall, ScrapeOps stands out as the top e-commerce web scraper thanks to its unparalleled performance, evasion and support for massive scraping scale.
Scraping E-Commerce Sites Ethically
When scraping e-commerce data, be sure to do so ethically and legally by following these best practices:
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Respect robots.txt: Avoid scraping pages blocked in a site‘s robots.txt file.
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Limit bandwidth usage: Scrape at reasonable speeds to avoid overloading servers.
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Don‘t resell data: Don‘t directly sell scraped content or media.
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Attribute properly: If publishing scraped data, attribute it to the original site.
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Consult terms of service: Understand any scraping restrictions in a site‘s ToS.
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Rotate proxies and bots: Use proxies and headless browsers to distribute requests and mimic organic traffic.
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Don‘t spam: Practice responsible data collection to avoid triggering spam detection.
By following ethical scraping principles and leveraging tools like ScrapeOps you can access e-commerce data at scale without risking blocks or legal issues.
