Top 7 Amazon Scrapers to Gather Data From Amazon in 2024

Amazon is the largest e-commerce platform in the world, with over $386 billion in net sales in 2021.1 With millions of products sold across categories like electronics, apparel, beauty, and more, Amazon offers a treasure trove of data for businesses looking to optimize their e-commerce strategy.

However, scraping data directly from Amazon can be challenging due to the platform‘s anti-scraping measures. This is where specialized web scraping tools for Amazon come in – they help automate data collection while handling roadblocks like captchas, IP blocks, and dynamic content.

In this comprehensive guide, we will cover:

  • An overview of web scraping and its use cases for Amazon data
  • Key features to look for in Amazon scrapers
  • A comparison of the top 7 Amazon scrapers
  • Step-by-step instructions to scrape Amazon using these tools
  • Best practices for legal and ethical web scraping

Let‘s get started!

Why Scrape Amazon Data? Key Use Cases and Benefits

Here are some of the most popular reasons businesses scrape data from Amazon:

  • Competitive pricing research: Scrape product prices and compare them against your own or competitors‘ pricing to optimize and adjust your strategies.

  • Market research: Identify best selling items in your product category and analyze customer sentiment through reviews. This provides valuable insights into product trends, pain points and more.

  • Dropshipping: Source reliable suppliers and stay updated with inventory levels by scraping Amazon seller information.

  • Product research: Scrape product descriptions, images, videos and other metadata to research manufacturing requirements for your own private label products.

  • Inventory monitoring: Track prices and availability of products you sell to analyze demand and make restocking decisions.

  • Price monitoring: Monitor your own product prices and competitor prices over time to implement dynamic pricing.

  • Lead generation: Extract customer contact information from Amazon seller profiles for sales prospecting.

The greatest benefit of scraping Amazon data is gaining valuable, actionable insights without manual data collection. Automated scraping can save countless hours and provide real-time data at scale.

Key Features of Amazon Scraping Tools

While you can scrape Amazon using general purpose web scraping libraries like Selenium and Beautiful Soup, purpose-built tools optimize the process significantly.

Here are some key features that enable Amazon scrapers to bypass anti-scraping measures and collect clean, structured data:

  • Handling of captcha and blocks: Amazon employs captcha and IP blocks to detect bots. Scrapers use OCR, captcha solvers and proxy rotation to bypass these.

  • Cookies/sessions: Scrapers rely on authenticated sessions rather than simple HTTP requests to mimic natural browsing behavior. This avoids detection.

  • JavaScript rendering: Dynamic content on Amazon is loaded via JS execution. Scrapers use headless browsers like Puppeteer to render JavaScript.

  • Cloud-based: Cloud-hosted scrapers distribute requests to avoid overloading Amazon servers and getting blocked.

  • Speed: Scrapers use techniques like async requests and browserless scraping to extract data rapidly without loading full webpages.

  • Structured data output: Scrapers automatically parse unstructured HTML into structured JSON/CSV output for easy analysis.

  • Customizability: Scrapers allow configuring parameters like target URLs, export format, scrape frequency etc as per use case.

  • Ease of use: Scrapers have intuitive dashboards and workflows so no coding is required.

Now let‘s compare some top scraping services for Amazon using these criteria.

Top 7 Amazon Scrapers Compared

Scraping Tool Starting Price Free Trial Ratings Key Features
BrightData $500/month 7 days 4.8/5 (913 reviews) Optimized proxy network, powerful JS rendering, wizard-based workflow
ScrapeHero $99/month 14 days 4.7/5 (66 reviews) Headless chrome rendering, captcha solving, visual workflow builder
ParseHub $99/month 15 days 4.6/5 (228 reviews) Visual AI modeling, structured data exports, cloud-based
ScrapeStack $30/month 1,000 free scrapes 4.3/5 (3 reviews) Proxy rotation, Xpath grabs, API and browser extensions
Octoparse $59+/month 7 days 4.5/5 (73 reviews) Visual workflow, built-in proxy rotation, daily data limits
Diggernaut $99/month 7 days 4.8/5 (27 reviews) Automatic captcha handling, custom JavaScript, exports to tabs
Station €99/month 14 days Headless browser rendering, custom user-agents, unified API

BrightData Scraping Tool

BrightData Amazon Scraper

BrightData is an industry-leading web data platform with optimized proxy networks and advanced tooling to handle complex sites like Amazon at scale. Their Amazon scraper offers:

  • Pre-built data models to extract key Amazon product attributes like price, rating, images etc without any setup.

  • Managed proxy infrastructure with millions of IPs to avoid blocks. BrightData claims 99.9% uptime.

  • Powerful JS rendering equivalent to headless browsers to handle dynamic content.

  • Integrations with 300+ apps via Zapier along with API access.

  • Intuitive workflow builder to configure scrapes through point and click, without coding.

BrightData is one of the best solutions for scraping large volumes of Amazon data reliably. Their optimized proxy network is capable of scraping at scale without getting blocked.

ScrapeHero

ScrapeHero

ScrapeHero is a visual web scraping tool that makes it easy to extract data from complex sites through its GUI workflow builder. For Amazon, they offer:

  • Headless browser rendering via Puppeteer to dynamically load pages before scraping.

  • Built-in captcha solver using Amazon specific OCR algorithms to detect and solve captchas automatically.

  • Element picker tool to visually select elements on Amazon product pages for scraping.

  • Team collaboration features like scraper sharing and access controls.

  • Trigger-based scrapes to schedule periodic data collection for continuous monitoring.

If your goal is ad-hoc Amazon scraping without much coding, ScrapeHero is a user-friendly option. However, their lack of proxies may cause issues with large volume scrapes.

ParseHub

ParseHub

ParseHub specializes in using AI and machine learning to automate web scraping. Their visual modeling tool lets you "train" scrapers by highlighting sections on target pages like Amazon product listings. The scraper then learns to extract similar data from other pages autonomously.

Key capabilities include:

  • Visual modeling with AI assists to train parsers instead of writing code.

  • Structured exports to JSON, XML, CSV etc.

  • Cloud-based platform to distribute scraping load preventing blocks.

  • Post-processing tools like filters and calculations on extracted data.

  • Dashboard analytics for monitoring scraper performance.

If your priority is ease of use for beginners, ParseHub is worth considering. However, more advanced use cases may require custom coding.

ScrapeStack

ScrapeStack

ScrapeStack is a cloud-based web scraper focusing on scalability and customizability. For Amazon, they provide:

  • Rotating proxy network to mask scraping traffic and prevent IP blocks.

  • Headless browser and scraper API options for JavaScript rendering.

  • Granular XPath configurations to precisely capture Amazon product data.

  • Browser extensions for ad-hoc scraping and inspector integration.

  • Web hook support to push scraped data to apps like Google Sheets, Slack etc.

If you have more complex scraping needs and are comfortable with some development work, ScrapeStack provides flexible tools to build custom scrapers.

Octoparse

Octoparse

Octoparse is a visual web scraping tool aimed at non-technical users. Their workflow builder has click and select tools to mimic manual browsing. For Amazon, they offer:

  • Visual scraper configuration with toggle buttons to add scraping steps.

  • In-built proxies that automatically rotate to avoid blocks from Amazon.

  • Daily scraping limits based on pricing plans to manage load on Amazon‘s servers.

  • Cloud platform to distribute scraping tasks across multiple machines.

If you need a quick and easy scraper for small Amazon projects, Octoparse is a suitable option. However, efficiency and output quality may lag coding-based solutions.

Diggernaut

Diggernaut

Diggernaut markets itself as the best web scraping service for complex sites like Amazon and this shows in its feature set:

  • Automatic captcha solving using computer vision and OCR techniques specific to Amazon captchas.

  • Powerful JS rendering via Puppeteer headless browser to fully load dynamic content.

  • Custom JavaScript injection to manipulate page content before scraping.

  • Export data to tabs for quick Excel-like editing and analysis.

  • Unified scraping API across sites for easy integration into data pipelines.

For technically skilled users, Diggernaut provides robust tools to build scrapers that can evade Amazon‘s anti-bot measures at scale.

Station by WebScraper.io

Station

Station is the Amazon scraper product from WebScraper.io, a browser-based web scraping solution. It offers:

  • Headless browser rendering via Chromium to fetch dynamic content.

  • Extraction via CSS selectors and XPath for flexibility.

  • Customizable user-agents to mimic real visitors.

  • Unified REST API to integrate across services and apps.

  • Collaboration features like sharing scrapers across teams.

As an engineering-first service, Station provides expert tools for customized scraping jobs. Their browser-based approach may have scalability constraints compared to proxy-based solutions however.

How to Scrape Amazon Product Data Step-by-Step

Now that we‘ve compared some leading options, let‘s walk through the scraper setup process using BrightData as the example:

Step 1 – Sign up for a BrightData account

Go to the BrightData signup page and create a new account. They offer a 7-day free trial without credit card.

Step 2 – Create a new Amazon scraper workflow

From the BrightData dashboard, click "New Scraper" and select the Amazon template to preconfigure common product fields.

New Amazon Scraper

Step 3 – Configure URLs to scrape

Enter your starting Amazon category or product URL in the URLs section. The scraper will automatically extract links to paginate through multiple pages.

Amazon Scraper URL

Step 4 – Identify data to extract

Click elements on the sample product page on the right to identify data fields like title, rating, images etc. The relevant HTML elements will be auto-selected.

Select Amazon Elements

Step 5 – Set export format

Choose output as JSON, CSV, Excel etc. You can export files to Dropbox, Google Drive or download locally.

Amazon Scraper Export

Step 6 – Run the scraper

Click "Run Scraper" to start extraction. Captchas and blocks will be automatically handled in the background via BrightData‘s proxy network.

That‘s it! The scraper will now extract the configured data from Amazon based on the inputs. You can schedule periodic runs for continuous data collection.

Tips for Legal and Ethical Amazon Scraping

While most public Amazon data can be scraped, make sure to scrape responsibly:

  • Only extract data you actually plan to use instead of mass downloads.

  • Do not overload Amazon‘s servers with an unreasonable number of scraping requests.

  • Employ throttling and delays between requests to avoid disrupting Amazon‘s services.

  • Do not attempt to circumvent Amazon‘s technical countermeasures by bypassing captchas or evading blocks after warnings.

  • Do not use Amazon data for unethical purposes like harvesting customer emails for spamming.

  • Only use the data for your own internal analytics. Do not resell Amazon data directly.

  • Consult Amazon‘s robots.txt and Terms of Use to stay updated on permissible scraping activities.

For large scale projects, it is recommended to consult a lawyer to review your approach based on your specific use case and location.

Conclusion

Scraping Amazon offers e-commerce brands valuable data to optimize their businesses – be it pricing, product discovery or market research. However, specialized tools are essential for reliable large-scale extraction.

As we learned, solutions like BrightData, ScrapeHero and ParseHub make Amazon scraping accessible without coding skills. For advanced use cases demanding customization, services like ScrapeStack, Diggernaut and Station are more suitable.

The key is choosing a scraping provider aligned with your use case, technical proficiency and scalability needs. With responsible data collection practices, you can unlock Amazon‘s treasure trove of data to gain competitive insights using scraping.