11 Best Social Media Scrapers & Scraping Tools for Data Extraction in 2024

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn contain a vast trove of valuable data for businesses and researchers. With over 4.65 billion social media users worldwide, these platforms offer unparalleled insights into consumer behavior, trends, demographics, sentiments, and more.

However, manually collecting large volumes of social media data is extremely tedious and time-consuming. This is where social media scrapers come in. These tools allow you to automatically extract data from social platforms quickly and efficiently.

In this guide, we will explore the top 11 social media scrapers and scraping tools to use in 2024 for data extraction. We will look at their key features, pricing, and ideal use cases.

Overview of the Best Social Media Scrapers of 2024

Here is a quick overview of the top social media scraping tools:

• Phantombuster – Top rated all-in-one social media automation and data extraction tool. Ideal for marketers.
• Oxylabs – Provides advanced proxy rotation and JavaScript support. Great for large-scale scraping.
• BrightData – Leading web data platform with powerful scraping infrastructure. Easy to use.
• ScraperAPI – Affordable proxy API for web scraping social media. For developers.
• Apify – Scalable web scraping with a focus on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
• ProxyCrawl – API and proxy network for web scraping. Integrates with Python, PHP, etc.
• Octoparse – Visual web scraper perfect for beginners. No coding required.
• ScrapingBee – Web scraping API with HTML/CSS extractors. Charges only for successful requests.
• Zyte – Full suite of web scraping tools including Smart Proxy rotational proxies.
• WebScraper.io – Browser extension for on-demand web scraping and data extraction.
• Jarvee – Leading social media automation tool with data scraping capabilities.

Next, let‘s look at each of these social media scraping tools in more detail.

1. Phantombuster

Overview: Phantombuster is an all-in-one web automation and data extraction tool designed specifically for social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It allows you to automate actions like following profiles, liking posts, extracting profiles data, and more.

Key Features:

• Point-and-click interface to set up bots and automate actions
• Extract data like profiles, posts, comments, followers, etc.
• Rotate proxies and residential IPs to avoid blocks
• Scheduling and automation capabilities
• Chatbot tools to auto-engage ideal prospects
• 14-day free trial

Pricing: Starts at $47/month for individuals. Custom enterprise pricing available.

Ideal For: Marketers, recruiters, researchers, social media managers, and anyone needing to extract social data.

More Info: Phantombuster Review

2. Oxylabs

Overview: Oxylabs provides advanced proxy services and data extraction tools for large-scale web scraping and data mining projects. It offers robust proxies, rotating IPs, and JavaScript support.

Key Features:

• Rapid proxy rotation to avoid blocks
• Millions of residential and datacenter IPs
• Scrape dynamic sites with Salvador headless browser
• Concurrent scraping for large datasets
• Integrates with Python, R, PHP, etc.
• Free trial with prepaid plans

Pricing: Pay as you go starting at $500/month. Enterprise plans available.

Ideal For: Large-scale web scraping projects that require advanced tools and proxies.

More Info: Oxylabs Review

3. BrightData

Overview: BrightData operates a massive web data collection network that can scrape any site quickly and reliably. Their self-service platform makes data collection easy for non-technical users.

Key Features:

• Scrape any site even behind captchas and checks
• Millions of residential IPs for high success rates
• Intuitive point-and-click interface
• Scalable scraping infrastructure
• 24/7 support from product experts
• Affordable payment plans

Pricing: Free trial. Starts at $99/month prepaid. Custom quotes available.

Ideal For: Beginners and users needing reliable data extraction without managing infrastructure.

More Info: BrightData Review

4. ScraperAPI

Overview: ScraperAPI provides an affordable web scraping API that handles proxies, browsers, and captchas so you can focus on data parsing. It‘s fast, reliable, and designed specifically for developers.

Key Features:

• Avoid blocks with reliable rotating proxies
• Low rates starting at $49/month
• Designed for developers to integrate web scraping into apps
• Scales to any scraping volume easily
• Generous free trial available
• Usage-based pricing model

Pricing: Starts at 300 API requests for free. Then $49+ monthly plans. Pay per API request.

Ideal For: Developers wanting an API for web scraping sites like social media, ecommerce, classifieds, etc.

More Info: ScraperAPI Review

5. Apify

Overview: Apify is a scalable web automation platform designed for web data extraction. It provides actor tools tailored for major sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

Key Features:

• Ready-made actor tools for social media scraping
• Scales to process massive datasets
• Integrates proxies to prevent blocks
• Comes with tools like Puppeteer, Playwright, & Cheerio
• Fully managed cloud platform
• Generous free trial

Pricing: Free trial. Paid plans start at $99/month. Custom pricing available.

Ideal For: Large-scale social media scraping and process automation.

More Info: Apify

6. ProxyCrawl

Overview: ProxyCrawl offers a web scraping API and proxy network that works seamlessly together for high-success scraping of sites like social media, ecommerce, classifieds, and more.

Key Features:

• JavaScript rendering for dynamic sites
• Integrates with Python, PHP, Node, etc.
• Millions of proxies for high uptime
• Powerful extraction tools
• Affordable pricing model
• Generous free trial

Pricing: Free 300 API calls trial. Plans start at $75/month for 5,000 calls.

Ideal For: Developers wanting an all-in-one API for web scraping and proxy services.

More Info: ProxyCrawl

7. Octoparse

Overview: Octoparse is a visual web scraping tool perfect for non-technical users. It uses an intuitive click-and-point interface to build scrapers without needing to code.

Key Features:

• No coding required
• Supports web scraping and data extraction
• Point-and-click interface to set up scrapers
• Cloud-based and desktop apps available
• 2-week free trial

Pricing: Free trial. Paid plans start at $99/month.

Ideal For: Beginners wanting an easy introduction to web scraping and data mining.

More Info: Octoparse

8. ScrapingBee

Overview: ScrapingBee provides a web scraping API that handles proxies, browsers, and rotations for high-success data extraction across any site.

Key Features:

• Extract data from any site with a single API
• Charges only for successful requests
• Integrates proxies and browsers
• Scalable for big data projects
• Affordable pay-as-you-go pricing
• Powerful tools like HTML and CSS extractors

Pricing: Plans start at $39/month for 5,000 API requests. Pay per successful request.

Ideal For: Developers who want an easy API for web scraping sites like social networks.

More Info: ScrapingBee

9. Zyte

Overview: Zyte (formerly Scrapinghub) provides a full suite of web data extraction tools including proxies and Crawlers. It‘s the company behind popular scraping tools like Scrapy.

Key Features:

• Battle-tested web scraping tools
• Smart Proxy hides scrapers behind residential IPs
• Powerful crawling with Scrapy
• Integrates with Python for automation
• Scales for big data extraction projects
• Pricing for small to enterprise

Pricing: Free Scrapy. Paid plans start $39/month. Custom enterprise pricing available.

Ideal For: Large-scale data mining projects and developers.

More Info: Zyte

10. WebScraper.io

Overview: WebScraper.io is a browser extension that allows for quick and easy web scraping from your browser. It uses an intuitive point-and-click interface.

Key Features:

• Browser extension for on-demand scraping
• No coding necessary
• Exports data to CSV/JSON
• Create site maps to customize data extraction
• Supports modern JavaScript sites
• Affordable pricing

Pricing: Free 7-day trial. Paid plans start at $14.50/month billed annually.

Ideal For: Occasional web scraping and data extraction needs.

More Info: WebScraper.io

11. Jarvee

Overview: Jarvee is social media automation software with data scraping capabilities. It supports major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more.

Key Features:

• Automate following, commenting, liking, DMing, and more
• Extract data like usernames, comments, followers, etc.
• Ready-made scraping templates
• Affordable Windows-based software
• Generous trial available

Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $49.95/month.

Ideal For: Social media marketers who also need data extraction capabilities.

More Info: Jarvee

What are Social Media Scraping Tools?

Social media scraping tools, also known as social media crawlers or data extractors, are software programs designed to automatically scrape and collect data from social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more.

These tools work by programmatically browsing to social media sites, extracting the page content, and parsing out the data you want – like usernames, comments, posts, followers, etc. The data can then be exported into a spreadsheet or database for analysis.

Some common use cases of social media scrapers include:

• Social listening and monitoring brand mentions
• Gathering user-generated content for research
• Building targeted sales prospect lists
• Competitor analysis
• Collecting data for machine learning datasets

Social media scraping can be done through browser extensions, stand-alone software tools, web scraping APIs, or by coding your own web scraper using languages like Python or Java. Many tools also integrate proxy services to avoid IP blocks when scraping data at scale.

Why Scrape Social Media Platforms?

Here are some of the top reasons organizations and researchers turn to social media scraping:

Lead Generation

Social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are treasure troves for sales and business leads. With the right scraping tools, you can discover prospect contact details for targeted outreach and conversions.

Sentiment Analysis

Understanding how people feel about brands, products, politicians, events, and more can be hugely valuable for organizations. Analyzing scraped social data gives incredible insights into public sentiment and opinions.

Marketing and Social Research

Scraped social data powers much of today‘s marketing and social science research. Organizations use this data to analyze trends, monitor their brands, benchmark competitors, and more.

Target Market Segmentation

Segmenting target buyer personas is critical for effective marketing. Scraped social data helps identify common interests, demographics, behaviors, and needs among different customer groups.

Monitoring Online Branding

Scraping brand mentions on social platforms allows organizations to monitor their online reputation and respond appropriately. This helps manage PR crises and maximize positive exposure.

Identifying Market Trends

Analyzing scraped social content over time makes it possible to identify rising trends in your industry. This competitive intelligence enables companies to align their strategies accordingly.

How to Scrape Data from Social Media Websites

There are a few general steps to follow when scraping data from social media platforms:

1. Choose your target website – Decide which social site(s) have the data you want. Popular options include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok, Pinterest, and more.

2. Review robots.txt – Look at the target website‘s robots.txt file. This gives guidance for automated scrapers. Respect the restrictions to avoid blocks.

3. Identify data to scrape – Inspect the site‘s HTML source to locate the right elements that contain your target data. For example, the text of tweets or Instagram photo captions.

4. Select a scraping method – Choose a suitable tool for extracting the data whether it‘s coding a custom scraper, using scraping software, or leveraging a web scraping API.

5. Extract the data – Run your web scraper to crawl the social site and extract all the data points you need. Test and tweak as required.

6. Store the scraped data – Export the extracted social data into a spreadsheet, database, or data lake for further analysis and use in applications.

7. Analyze and visualize – With the data collected, dig into it to identify insights and trends. Create charts, graphs, and dashboards to share findings.

FAQs About Social Media Scraping

What is social media scraping?

Social media scraping refers to the automated collection of public data from social platforms through web scraping and data extraction tools. This allows gathering content for research and analytics at scale.

Is web scraping legal?

In most countries, scraping publicly accessible data is legal with some exceptions. However, websites‘ terms of service often prohibit scraping. So consult an attorney before scraping any commercial site.

What can I expect to pay?

Social media scraping software ranges from free open-source tools to premium products and enterprise services costing over $1,000/month. For occasional needs, look for affordable software as a service solutions.

Is customer support important?

For business applications, strong customer support can be invaluable when issues arise. Look for providers with multiple support channels like live chat, phone, help tickets, docs, and active forums.

What features should I look for?

Key features to look for include proxy support, JavaScript rendering, CAPTCHA solving, export options, data parsing tools, automation capabilities, and integrations with databases, BI tools, etc.

Conclusion

Scraping social sites provides access to rich data for a huge range of applications from marketing analytics to academic research. The key is choosing the right web scraping tool for your specific needs whether using open-source software, commercial tools, or web data APIs.

Look for solutions that align with your use case, data volumes required, technical capabilities, and budget. Validate legal compliance and website terms before deploying any scraper at scale.

With the exponential growth of social media, data extraction tools open vast possibilities to leverage these platforms for business growth, research insights, data science applications and more. Approach your project thoughtfully and take advantage of the wealth of publicly available social data waiting to be unlocked.