Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites and converting it into a structured format. Web scraping can be used for various purposes, such as:

• Content aggregation and curation
• Data analysis and visualization
• Market research and competitor analysis
• Lead generation and email marketing
• Price comparison and product review

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, powering over 40% of all websites. WordPress offers a lot of flexibility and functionality for web scraping, thanks to its rich ecosystem of plugins.

However, not all web scraping plugins are created equal. Some are more reliable, efficient, and user-friendly than others. Some have more features, options, and integrations than others. Some are more affordable, scalable, and secure than others.

In this article, we will review the best web scraping plugins for WordPress, based on their features, pros and cons, price, and user experience. We will also provide some tips on what you should be aware of when scraping with WordPress.

What You Should Be Aware of When Scaping With WordPress

Before you start scraping with WordPress, there are some things you should be aware of:

• Legal issues: Web scraping may violate the terms of service or privacy policy of some websites. You should always check the legal status of the websites you want to scrape and obtain their permission if necessary. You should also respect the robots.txt file of the websites, which specifies the rules for web crawlers.
• Ethical issues: Web scraping may infringe the intellectual property rights or harm the reputation of some websites. You should always give credit to the original sources of the data you scrape and avoid copying or plagiarizing their content. You should also avoid scraping sensitive or personal data that may compromise the privacy or security of the websites or their users.
• Technical issues: Web scraping may encounter some challenges or limitations due to the structure or dynamics of some websites. You should always test your scraping settings and results before publishing them on your WordPress site. You should also monitor your scraping performance and frequency to avoid overloading or blocking the websites or your server.

Scaring a small amount of data can work without issues and you will not get blocked by the site you are scraping on, but if you scrape a large amount of data you will get banned by the website you are trying to scrape protection.

What is actually happens is that your WordPress scraping plugins go outside to the internet with your server IP and will do this every time, if you are using shared hosting this is even worst as you will share the IP between multiple accounts and you couldn’t even scrape at all if other does the same and IP is blocked.

The solution for this problem is using a proxy to scrape data. Most of the plugins allow adding proxy into them to not get banned and be able to scrape. Such a service is brightdata, this is offering various types of proxies that can be used: residential, data center, ISP, mobile. For the ones with not a big budget, it offers pay-as-you-go plans. If you are serious about scraping data with WordPress then a proxy is a must.

Best Web Scraping Plugins For WordPress

Here are the best plugins that currently exist on the market, most of them cost money but the price is really low if you ask me for the level of functionality. There is also a free option but is quite limiting.

1. Scraper – Content Crawler Plugin for WordPress

Details about the plugin

Scraper is an automatic plugin designed for WordPress that simplifies the process of copying content and posting it automatically from any website. Developed by wpBots, this plugin offers a wide range of useful and unique features that take content creation to the next level. Let’s explore some of its key features.

Key Features in bullet points

Here are some of the standout features of the Scraper Content Crawler Plugin:

• Scrape Any Website: Scraper uses Xpath and regex methods, making it possible to scrape content from virtually any website.
• Get Attributes: The plugin can parse element attributes, allowing you to extract links, image sources, and video sources effortlessly.
• Set Feature Image: Scraper can automatically extract and set images as featured images for your posts.
• Duplicate Title Skip: It verifies that there are no previous posts with the same title, helping you avoid duplication.
• Fix Encoding: Scraper automatically fixes encoding errors in content before posting it.
• Language Translation: The plugin detects content language and can automatically translate it into any desired language.
• Support Categories: You can easily categorize your new content and post it to any category you’ve created.
• Regex (JSON) Parser: Scraper can parse information that contains JSON objects, making data extraction more versatile.
• Gallery Images: It can parse image sequences and create galleries from them.
• Search & Replace: Modify content with the search and replace feature, making customization a breeze.
• Content Template with Variables: Generate unique content templates using the transformation feature.
• WooCommerce Products: Easily create WooCommerce products with support for all product custom fields and types.
• Math Functions: Perform mathematical operations on numbers, useful for price calculations.
• Embed Any Post: Extract IDs from websites like YouTube, Instagram, or Vimeo and use them with the embed transform.
• Schedule Tasks: Plan and automate tasks at different intervals to keep your website updated.
• Post Update: Select specific posts to update with fresh content obtained through scraping.
• Proxy Support: Scraper supports proxies for anonymous scraping.
• Cookie Support: Define cookies for specific scraping tasks.
• Post Status: Set post statuses to draft or publish as needed.
• Community Templates: Access a library of templates for your scraping needs.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Comprehensive scraping capabilities, supporting a wide range of websites.
• Versatile content manipulation features.
• Automation and scheduling options for hands-free content updates.
• Language translation for global audience reach.
• WooCommerce support for e-commerce websites.
• Regular updates and active support from wpBots.

Cons:

• May not work with Ajax-heavy websites due to technical limitations.
• Some websites like Amazon and AliExpress have blocked Scraper’s servers.
• Users need to ensure they have a Google Translate API key for translation services.

Price and Experience

The Scraper Content Crawler Plugin is available on CodeCanyon at a price of $29 for a regular license. This license includes quality checks, future updates, and 6 months of support from wpBots. Users can extend support to 12 months for an additional $9.

In conclusion, the Scraper Content Crawler Plugin for WordPress offers a powerful solution for automating content updates on your website. With its extensive features and reasonable pricing, it’s a valuable tool for bloggers, content creators, and website owners looking to streamline their content management processes. Keep in mind the technical limitations and ensure compatibility with your target websites before purchasing.

2. WP Content Crawler

Details about the Plugin

WP Content Crawler is a powerful WordPress plugin that enables you to effortlessly fetch content from almost any website and have it automatically published on your WordPress blog. Whether you want to aggregate news, collect products from e-commerce sites, or curate content for your blog, this plugin can simplify the process.

Key Features in Bullet Points

Here are some of the standout features of WP Content Crawler:

• Versatile Data Collection: Collect a wide range of data including titles, excerpts, content, tags, categories, slugs, dates, custom meta, taxonomies, and more.
• Visual Inspector: Easily find CSS selectors for elements on target websites directly from your WordPress admin panel.
• Automated Crawling: Configure settings, and the plugin automatically finds and crawls URLs of posts in the background.
• Recrawl and Update: Keep your content fresh by setting intervals for automatic post updates.
• Category Creation: Automatically create target categories for your posts, even as subcategories.
• Custom Post Meta: Define custom post meta using CSS selectors or manual entry.
• Content Templates: Create templates for post content, titles, excerpts, and more using shortcodes.
• Pagination Support: Save paginated posts and list-type posts effortlessly.
• Remove Unwanted Elements: Eliminate unwanted elements like ads and comments by specifying CSS selectors.
• Proxy Support: Access content from sites with IP restrictions using proxies.
• Automatic Translation: Translate posts using AI-powered services like DeepL Translate, Google Cloud Translation, and more.
• Duplicate Post Check: Avoid posting duplicate content by checking URLs, titles, and content.
• Scheduled Posts: Schedule posts for publication at specific times.
• WooCommerce Integration: Save WooCommerce product details, including prices, inventory, and attributes.
• Interactive Guides: Step-by-step guides for easy configuration.
• Regular Updates: The plugin is regularly updated for compatibility and security.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Powerful and flexible content scraping and automation.
• User-friendly with step-by-step guides and documentation.
• Versatile in data collection and post customization.
• Supports WooCommerce integration.
• Regular updates for ongoing compatibility.

Cons:

• Cannot retrieve content generated via JavaScript.
• Advanced features may require some learning curve.
• Some features may require knowledge of HTML and CSS.

Price and Experience

• Regular License: $25 (includes 6 months of support and future updates).
• Extended Support (12 months): Additional $7.50.

WP Content Crawler is a valuable tool for website owners, bloggers, and e-commerce site managers who want to streamline content aggregation and posting. While it offers advanced features, it may require some technical knowledge to leverage its full potential.

In conclusion, WP Content Crawler is a robust solution for automating content collection and posting on your WordPress site. It can save you time and effort in managing your website’s content, making it a valuable addition to your WordPress toolkit.

3. Crawlomatic

Details about the Plugin:

Same as the other plugins can help you crawl almost any website with auto-posting and login cookies. It is using javascript to perform the crawling. It is having great reviews and a 49$ price tag. You can check this video for details also: Video

If you’re a WordPress enthusiast or a content marketer looking to automate your website’s content generation process, you may have come across the Crawlomatic Multisite Scraper Post Generator Plugin for WordPress by CodeRevolution. This plugin promises to revolutionize your content strategy by automating the crawling, scraping, and posting of content from various websites. In this comprehensive review, we’ll delve into the details, key features, pros, and cons of this powerful plugin to help you determine if it’s the right choice for you.

Key Features:

This plugin comes with a plethora of features designed to make content automation a breeze. Here are some key features in bullet points:

• Website Crawling and Scraping: Automatically crawl and scrape content from various websites.
• Customizable Crawling: Set crawling depth, crawling rate, maximum crawled article count, and more.
• Live Scraper Shortcode: Implement a web data extractor for real-time data display in posts, pages, or sidebar.
• Custom Template Tags: Display scraped content through custom template tags and shortcodes.
• Caching: Configure caching of scraped data to reduce resource usage.
• Useragent Configuration: Set a custom user agent for each scrape.
• Content Parsing: Use CSS Selector, XPath, or Regex for content parsing.
• JavaScript Execution: Execute JavaScript code on scraped HTML for dynamic content scraping.
• Support for Various Websites: Scrape content from almost any website, even those using JavaScript.
• Continuous Updates: Regular updates and improvements to the plugin’s functionality.

Pros and Cons:

Let’s break down the advantages and disadvantages of using the Crawlomatic Multisite Scraper Post Generator Plugin for WordPress:

Price and Experience:

The regular license for the Crawlomatic Multisite Scraper Post Generator Plugin for WordPress is priced at $49, which includes 6 months of support. You can also extend support to 12 months for an additional fee of $16.50.

In terms of experience, this plugin is well-suited for users who are comfortable with WordPress and have a need for automated content scraping and posting. It’s particularly useful for content marketers, bloggers, and website owners who want to streamline their content creation process and keep their websites updated with fresh content.

4. WordPress Automatic Plugin

Details about the Plugin:

In the world of WordPress automation, the WordPress Automatic Plugin by ValvePress stands out as a powerful tool that can significantly simplify content management. This plugin allows you to post content from various sources to your WordPress site automatically, making it a valuable asset for bloggers, content marketers, and website owners. In this review, we will delve into the key features, advantages, and disadvantages of the WordPress Automatic Plugin to help you make an informed decision about whether it’s the right tool for your needs.

Key Features in Bullet Points:

Let’s explore the standout features of the WordPress Automatic Plugin:

• Multi-Source Content Import: This plugin allows you to import content from various sources, including popular websites like YouTube, Twitter, and more, using their APIs or scraping modules.
• OpenAI Integration: The WordPress Automatic Plugin now supports content generation using OpenAI GPT-3. You can add keywords, and the plugin will generate articles matching your criteria.
• RSS Feeds Integration: You can automatically post content from RSS feeds, including full content, author, tags, categories, and featured images.
• E-commerce Product Import: Import products from Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and ClickBank by keywords, with support for WooCommerce integration.
• Social Media Import: Automatically import content from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and more, based on keywords, hashtags, or specific profiles.
• Content Filtering: The plugin offers extensive filtering options, allowing you to control what content gets imported based on various criteria.
• Content Translation: Automatically translate content before posting using Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, Deepl, or Yandex Translate.
• Custom Fields: You can add custom fields to posts automatically, containing information like title, author, content, image, price, and rating.
• SEO Optimization: Generate SEO meta descriptions from content using OpenAI GPT-3, improving your site’s search engine visibility.
• Auto Hyperlinking: Automatically hyperlink specified keywords with affiliate links or other specified URLs.
• Automatic Image Caching: The plugin can cache images to your server and change their links to your site’s links, reducing load times.

Pros and Cons:

Let’s evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the WordPress Automatic Plugin:

Pros:

• Content Automation: Saves time and effort by automatically importing and posting content from various sources.
• Versatility: Supports a wide range of content sources, including social media, e-commerce sites, RSS feeds, and more.
• OpenAI Integration: The ability to generate content using OpenAI GPT-3 enhances content quality and diversity.
• Customization: Offers various options for content filtering, translation, and custom fields, allowing you to tailor posts to your site’s needs.
• SEO Benefits: Generates SEO-friendly meta descriptions and provides tools for SEO optimization.
• Regular Updates: The plugin is actively maintained, with frequent updates and improvements.

Cons:

• Learning Curve: Configuring the plugin’s settings may require some technical knowledge and experimentation.
• Resource Intensive: Depending on your configuration and the number of sources, the plugin can be resource-intensive, potentially impacting site performance.

Price and Experience:

The WordPress Automatic Plugin by ValvePress is available for purchase on CodeCanyon at $39. The pricing may vary depending on the license you choose. It offers a range of features suitable for both beginners and experienced WordPress users. For those looking to automate content management and boost their website’s capabilities, it can be a valuable investment.

In conclusion, the WordPress Automatic Plugin by ValvePress is a robust tool for automating content import and generation in WordPress. Its wide range of features and integration options make it a powerful asset for anyone looking to streamline content management and improve their website’s efficiency. However, users should be prepared to invest time in configuring the plugin to suit their specific needs and ensure it doesn’t negatively impact site performance.

5. Octolooks Scrapes

Details about the Plugin

The Scrapes plugin is a feature-rich solution that allows you to automate the process of gathering content from various websites. Whether you’re looking to curate news articles, product listings, or any other type of content, this plugin offers three distinct modes to cater to your needs:

Mode 1: Single Scraping – This mode enables you to extract specific data from a web page and publish it as a single post on your WordPress website. It’s perfect for those who want to curate individual pieces of content.

Mode 2: Serial Scraping – With this mode, you can track and publish all articles from a website by following detail pages and pagination links. It’s ideal for creating comprehensive collections of content from a single source.

Mode 3: Feed Scraping – In this mode, you can track and publish summaries of articles from RSS feeds or follow detail page links. It turns your website into an RSS aggregator, keeping your content fresh and up-to-date.

Key Features

The Scrapes plugin boasts a wide range of features that make it a must-have tool for content scraping and curation:

• Instant Control with Detailed Dashboard: Easily manage all your scraping tasks from a single, user-friendly dashboard.
• Support for All WordPress Fields: Scrapes automatically fills in all supported WordPress fields, ensuring seamless integration with your website.
• Visual Selector: No programming skills are required; simply use the visual selector to match the parts you want to scrape with the corresponding WordPress fields.
• RSS Aggregator Plugin: Gather up-to-date content from websites that aren’t suitable for HTML scraping, making it a versatile choice for content aggregation.
• Works in the Background: Set it up and let it run 24/7, even with your browser turned off, ensuring that your website is constantly updated with fresh content.
• Multiple Tasks: The plugin’s multitasking capability allows you to scrape content from multiple sources simultaneously.
• High Performance: Scrapes leverages state-of-the-art technology to deliver top-notch scraping performance.
• Minimum Requirements: It works in virtually any environment, including shared hosting with minimal system configurations.

Pros and Cons

Here’s a quick overview of the pros and cons of the Scrapes plugin:

Pros

• Versatile Content Scraping: Scrapes can be used for a wide range of content types, from news articles to product listings, making it highly versatile.
• User-Friendly Interface: The visual selector and intuitive dashboard make it easy for users of all skill levels to set up and manage scraping tasks.
• Background Operation: The plugin operates in the background, ensuring that your website stays updated even when you’re not actively using it.
• Support for Custom Fields: Scrapes can automatically pull content into custom fields used by other themes and plugins, enhancing its compatibility.

Cons

• Learning Curve: While the plugin is user-friendly, there may still be a slight learning curve for beginners.
• Content Quality: The quality of scraped content depends on the source websites, and some websites may not be suitable for scraping.

Price and Experience

The Scrapes plugin offers a straightforward pricing structure with a limited-time offer:

• Standard License: $25 per license (50% OFF Limited time offer)

With this purchase, you get lifetime updates and technical support, instant download and use, and a 14-day refund guarantee.

In conclusion, the Automatic WordPress Scraper and Content Crawler Plugin – Scrapes is a valuable tool for anyone looking to automate content gathering and curation. Its user-friendly interface, versatile scraping modes, and background operation make it a powerful asset for WordPress users. While there may be a learning curve for beginners, the benefits far outweigh the cons, especially with the current limited-time offer. So, if you’re looking to supercharge your content strategy, consider giving Scrapes a try today.

6.WP Scraper

Details about the Plugin:

WP Scraper is a user-friendly WordPress plugin developed by Robert Macchi. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the migration of web content from non-WordPress websites to WordPress sites. Unlike many web migration tools that require intricate CSS selector knowledge, WP Scraper offers a straightforward visual interface integrated into your WordPress site.

With WP Scraper, you can:

• Easily copy pages of content, including images, from your old website.
• Create new WordPress pages and posts effortlessly.
• Import images directly into your WordPress media library.
• Add the URL of the source content and begin the content extraction process.
• Automatically populate essential details such as the featured image, title, tags, and categories.
• Choose to save the content as a draft, post, or page.
• Customize content by stripping unwanted CSS, iframes, and videos.
• Remove external links from the content.
• Post the content to a selected category.

Key Features in Bullet Points:

• User-friendly visual interface, no CSS selector knowledge required.
• Seamless migration of content and images from old websites to WordPress.
• Automatic population of key details like featured images, titles, tags, and categories.
• Customization options to remove unwanted CSS, iframes, videos, and external links.
• Support for different post types: Post or Page.
• Easy categorization and tagging of content.
• Efficiently add source links to the imported content.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Simplifies website migration, making it accessible to non-technical users.
• Visual interface eliminates the need for CSS selector expertise.
• Automates the import of images, saving time and effort.
• Customization options enhance control over the imported content.
• Supports various post types, providing flexibility in content creation.

Cons:

• Limited information about compatibility with the latest WordPress versions.

Conclusions

Web scraping is a useful and powerful technique to extract data from websites and display it on your WordPress site. Web scraping can help you create engaging and informative content for your WordPress site, such as news articles, product reviews, price comparisons, etc.

However, web scraping also comes with some challenges and risks, such as legal, ethical, and technical issues. You should always be careful and respectful when scraping website content and follow the best practices and guidelines of web scraping.

To help you with web scraping, we have reviewed the best web scraping plugins for WordPress in this article. We have compared their features, pros and cons, price, and user experience. We hope this article will help you choose the best web scraping plugin for your WordPress site.

If you have any questions or feedback about this article or web scraping in general, please feel free to leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you. Thank you for reading!