Octoparse alternative: Web Scraper vs Octoparse
Both products extract structured data without writing a crawler. They differ in where you build the scraper, how capacity is sold, and what a run costs once volume grows.
Reviewed October 2026 Every claim below links to a current vendor page.
You want to build sitemaps in the browser, run them on Cloud capacity you can scale, and keep URL volume off the invoice.
You prefer a desktop application with a template library for common consumer sites, and your volume stays inside a task-based plan.
Web Scraper vs Octoparse: features and pricing
Compare how Web Scraper and Octoparse handle setup, Cloud automation, integrations, proxies, and scaling. Web Scraper Scale is compared with Octoparse Professional, the highest self-service plan each vendor prices publicly.
| CAPABILITY | Web Scraper Scale, $200 per month | Octoparse Professional, $299 per month |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and creation | ||
| Where scrapers are built | Visual sitemap builder in a browser extension Free extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, with no code or desktop application required. | Desktop application Custom tasks are built in the Octoparse desktop app; selected preset templates run without building a workflow. |
| AI-assisted setup | AI Sitemap Wizard Maps repeated listing data, detects pagination and infinite scrolling, and follows item links to collect fields from detail pages. | Auto-detect and AI Field Fixer Auto-detect identifies listing fields and can generate a workflow for pagination, load more, or infinite scrolling. AI Field Fixer renames fields, reformats values, and updates XPaths on request. |
| Manual selector control | Advanced Sitemap Builder Point and click, AI selector generation for listing and detail pages, and 10+ selector types for data, navigation, and clicks. | Workflow task builder Point and click with manually configurable workflow steps. |
| Logins and site setup | Website State Setup Signs in or sets location, language, or currency before scraping, only when that state is missing, with passwords encrypted in Cloud. | Login steps or saved cookies Text and click steps sign in or set options, or a saved session is reused. |
| Ready-made starting points | Sitemap Marketplace Ready-made sitemaps maintained by Web Scraper, available at no additional cost. | 500+ preset templates Some templates use pay-per-result pricing. |
| Cloud automation | ||
| Cloud execution | Web Scraper Cloud Runs sitemaps created in the Web Scraper extension remotely after sync or import. | Cloud Extraction Runs saved tasks on Octoparse servers. |
| Scheduling | Daily, interval, and custom CRON Intervals as short as 1 minute, with a selectable time zone and driver, proxy, and priority set per schedule. | Task scheduling Saved tasks run on a schedule in the cloud. |
| Rendering and execution modes | Full JS and Fast drivers Full JS loads pages in a full browser environment; Fast skips page JavaScript to scrape faster. | No rendering choice - |
| Retry behavior | Automatic retries of empty or failed pages Retries use a different proxy IP and browser fingerprint, and do not consume URL credits. CAPTCHAs and bot check pages are solved automatically. | Manual retry rules Set up by hand on the steps that load pages, with your own conditions and retry count; proxy and user agent rotation are optional. |
| Concurrency model | Concurrent scrapers Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers and scales with no set ceiling; add capacity at any time. A single job can expand to up to 5 concurrent scrapers. | Up to 20 concurrent cloud processes A single task may use multiple cloud processes. |
| Data and integrations | ||
| Data cleaning | Parser, with no code Regex, replace, HTML stripping, virtual columns, and timestamp conversion, previewed on sample records and applied in Cloud. | Built-in cleaning steps Replace, regex, trim, prefix and suffix, and date, timestamp, and time zone conversion. |
| Data quality checks | Thresholds on every job Minimum records, maximum failed or empty pages, and minimum filled fields, with suggested values from a previous run. | Conditions on task metrics A condition on a chosen metric, such as result count; no failed-page, empty-page, or fill-rate checks. |
| API | Cloud API with an OpenAPI description Manage sitemaps, jobs, and schedules, and download results, with code examples for every programming language. | Data Export and task control APIs APIs start and stop Cloud Extraction, check its status, and update supported task parameters. |
| Webhooks | Job status webhooks Sent when a job finishes, stops, or fails, with job and sitemap IDs and an optional custom ID, and retried if your endpoint does not respond. | None published No webhooks are documented. |
| Data export formats | CSV, XLSX, JSON Each scraping job's data can be downloaded in all three formats. | Excel, CSV, HTML, JSON, XML Excel covers XLSX and XLS; an HTML export saves each data line as its own file. |
| Export integrations | Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, Google Cloud, Azure The complete dataset is sent after each job finishes. | Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, S3, databases, Zapier The databases are SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. |
| Notifications | Email and in-app alerts Alerts when a job fails or misses its data quality thresholds, with email and in-app channels set per alert type. | Email, Slack, and in-app alerts Alerts on task completion, cloud metrics such as result counts, and scheduled tasks that fail to start. |
| Image and file handling | Image export Downloads images during the scraping job using the Image selector and delivers the files to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Azure Blob Storage. | None - |
| Scale and pricing | ||
| Plan compared | Scale, $200 per month $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month. | Professional, $299 per month Or $2,999 per year billed annually, about $250 per month. |
| What the plan fee buys | Unlimited URL credits The fee buys concurrent scraping capacity, and page volume does not change it. | Up to 250 tasks Capacity is set by task count and concurrent cloud processes. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies | From $0.03 Fast driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 4.3M URLs. | No published URL rate The plan buys 250 tasks and 20 cloud processes, with no page allowance or throughput published. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies | From $0.05 Full JS driver on the included datacenter proxies; two scrapers at $200 per month cover about 2.2M URLs. | No published URL rate Cloud runs have no rendering choice, and no per-page rate is published. |
| Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies | From $0.681 Full JS driver plus residential traffic, sold separately at $2.50 per GB. | No published URL rate; residential adds $0.751 Residential traffic is an add-on, sold separately at $3 per GB. |
| Unused capacity | No credit ceiling Unlimited URL credits leave no balance to forfeit at the end of a cycle. | No page credits Capacity is gated by task count and concurrent cloud processes rather than a monthly credit pool. |
| Included datacenter proxies | US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies Included at no additional cost. | Built-in IP rotation Included in the plan fee; residential traffic is not. |
| Residential proxies | Available at $2.50 per GB In 47 locations, billed on bandwidth used. | Available at $3 per GB Sold as an add-on. |
| Third-party fees | Marketplace sitemaps at no extra cost They run on your own plan, with no separate per-result charge. | Pay-per-result templates Some preset templates bill per result on top of the plan fee. |
| Cloud data retention | 60 days Scraped data stays available to download from Cloud for that period. | 60 days Cloud Extraction data is kept for that period. |
1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Reasons to choose Web Scraper
Build the scraper where the page is
Sitemaps are defined in the Chrome, Firefox, or Edge extension against the live page, by point and click or with the AI Sitemap Wizard, then synced to Cloud. There is no separate desktop application to install or keep updated.
Web Scraper extensionStart from a Marketplace sitemap
Marketplace sitemaps cover common e-commerce, real estate, and job board targets and are available at no additional cost. Web Scraper builds and maintains them, so a project can start from a working sitemap instead of a blank one.
Sitemap MarketplacePricing follows capacity, not URL volume
Unlimited URL credits are included, so pricing scales with concurrent scraping capacity rather than URL volume. Optional residential proxy traffic is billed on usage.
Web Scraper pricingWeb Scraper Scale vs Octoparse Professional
Each side is shown at its highest self-service plan with published pricing, on the same billing basis. Entry and mid-tier plans are excluded.
Web Scraper Cloud · Scale
$200 per month
Or $2,000 per year billed annually, $167 per month
- Capacity
- Unlimited URL credits
- Concurrency
- Starts at 2 concurrent scrapers, scales with no set ceiling; a single job can use up to 5
- Proxies
- US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies included; residential in 47 locations at $2.50 per GB
- Plan limitation
- Capacity grows by adding concurrent scrapers, at a lower price per scraper as you add more; residential proxy traffic is billed on usage
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- From $0.03
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- From $0.05
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- From $0.681
Octoparse · Professional
$299 per month
Or $2,999 per year billed annually, about $250 per month.
- Capacity
- Up to 250 tasks
- Concurrency
- Up to 20 concurrent cloud processes; one task may use several
- Proxies
- Built-in IP rotation; residential add-on at $3 per GB
- Plan limitation
- Capacity is set by task count and cloud processes, not by pages or URLs
- Cost per 1,000 URLs no JS, DC proxies
- No published URL rate
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, DC proxies
- No published URL rate
- Cost per 1,000 URLs JS, Residential proxies
- No published URL rate; residential adds $0.751
The two prices do not buy the same unit
Web Scraper charges for concurrent scraping capacity, with unlimited URL credits. Octoparse capacity is set by task count and concurrent cloud processes, with no page allowance or speed published, so no cost per 1,000 URLs can be worked out for it.
- Both prices are monthly list prices from each vendor's public pricing page, with the annual equivalent shown alongside.
- Proxy cost is counted wherever it is billed, inside the plan or as a separate bandwidth line.
- 1 Proxy traffic is sold separately, so the price is calculated based on a 250 KB page size.
Octoparse suits teams that prefer a desktop workflow builder, want its 500+ preset templates, need direct export to a database, or rely on downloading image and document files during local runs.
Switching from Octoparse
Can an Octoparse task be imported?
Scrapers move over as Web Scraper sitemaps built in the free browser extension, where the AI Sitemap Wizard maps listing pages for you. Many common targets also have a ready-made Marketplace sitemap that you can import into Web Scraper Cloud.
Do proxies need to be purchased separately?
US, GB, and DE datacenter proxies are included at no additional cost. Residential proxies are available at $2.50 per GB when a target website requires them.
What happens when a target website changes?
Page outcomes, logs, and data quality rules help identify failures or missing values. Sitemap maintenance remains the user's responsibility, and support can help troubleshoot.
How does data reach our systems?
Results are retrieved through the API or delivered to Google Sheets, Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure after each job. Webhook notifications report job status and identifiers.
See it applied to your use case
Compare Web Scraper with other tools
Most teams shortlist two or three tools. These pages cover the same capabilities and plan tiers.
Try it on the website you want to scrape
Use the 7-day free trial, with no credit card required, to run Web Scraper Cloud on the website you need data from.
This comparison reflects publicly available information and our understanding of the products as of October 2026. Features, pricing, and other details may change over time, so we recommend verifying current information directly with each provider before making a decision. All product names, trademarks, logos, and brands belong to their respective owners and are referenced solely for identification and comparison purposes. No affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied.