6 Of The Best Languages For Web Scraping
What is the meaning of life? Do we have free will? What is the best language for web scraping?
Some questions never have a definitive answer, but that hasn’t stopped people from taking a shot! Now, while we talk at length and we’re rarely understood, we’re not actually philosophers, so we can’t help with the first two. But, if you’re an eager web scraper looking to find the best programming language, we’re actually useful people to have around!
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Whether you’re new to this whole web scraping thing and want to know which programming language to learn, or you’re a seasoned web scraper looking to expand their skillset, we’ve got the TL;DR on the X best languages for web scraping.
Because – spoiler alert! – there is no one best language for web scraping…
What Are We Looking For In A Programming Language?
Every programming language has their ups and downs. If there was one true scientifically-calculated ‘best programming language’ then we’d probably all know and use it already.
But, at the very least, we still want to define what we’re looking for: what makes something the best language for web scraping, specifically?
Ultimately, it’s a personal choice. A programming language you’re already inherently familiar with is going to have an advantage, for example. And that’s a good thing. Whatever makes makes your web scraping tasks easier!
Popularity
We know life isn’t high school, but popular programming languages are generally better for you. They’re more well supported, whether that’s officially or by the community. Got a problem with you can’t solve? Larger community support will likewise have a greater chance of knowing the answer.
Libraries and Frameworks
No matter what you’re doing, library support is always appreciated. Nobody wants to manually implement the most basic aspects of any coding language. A few libraries can make the world of difference but more usually is more.
This basically correlates with how widely used the language is – the most popular programming languages will have much more extensive libraries and frameworks. And that increases our chances of finding effective web scraping libraries.
Ease of Use
Even with the best web scraping libraries, you still have to write some of your own code. And if you have to choose between something that’s easy to use and something that’s a pain in the ass, we all know where we stand. The best language for web scraping shouldn’t be one that gives you a headache or requires a hot minute just to understand.
This is even more critical for team projects, where a steeper learning curve will only extend a project’s timeline.
Performance
Efficient web scraping typically involves handling numerous tasks at the same time, and often extracting data in large volumes. Consequently, an efficient language will help you get more out of your web scraping projects.
For simple web scraping activities, this might not be an issue, but for large scale scraping projects, then you may want to favor a scalable programming language.
The 6 Best Programming Languages for Web Scraping
Okay. Boring technical criteria out of the way, let’s get to the point. What is the best language for web scraping? Whether you value efficiency and performance, or ease of use and a strong sense of support, we’ve shortlisted it to 6 options.
And while other languages do exist, here’s what we think are the best languages for building and maintaining web scrapers.
Python
We’ve all heard of Python. It’s the most popular programming language in general so, whilst it’s not developed specifically for web scraping, it is still a very viable option.
As a generalist can-do-all programming language, Python is highly appreciated for its ease-of-use and clear syntax. So while its not built as a language for web scraping, its flexibility means its significantly less of a headache.
The popularity of Python over other languages also means it has some of the best options when it comes to web scraping libraries. Popular go-to tools include:
- BeautifulSoup – great for parsing HTML data and handling XML documents.
- Scrapy – ideal for extracting data and processing it as you require.
- Selenium – a handy tool for automated browsers, whilst also supporting JavaScript rendering.
Whatever you need, there’s probably a Python library for it. In fact, if you want to get started, take a look at our University course on Python Web Scraping. We’ve also got a course on Selenium, to further put your Python web scraper skills to the test.
Pros: Python is easy to use, making it the best language for complete beginners. It’s also well supported and has great web scraping libraries, frameworks and tools to help you out.
Cons: As a generalist language, Python isn’t the best language for web scraping if you value a high performance language over all else.
PHP
Logically, when choosing web scraping languages, a programming language designed with web development in mind would make a great choice, right?
PHP is certainly one of the better web scraping languages, but we won’t lie that it’s not without its share of challenges. While there are many benefits, such as being an open source programming language, it’s not something we recommend learning purely for web scraping.
Furthermore, whilst PHP Is a very well supported programming language, its specific web scraping libraries are less numerous than, say, Python. For scraping tasks, we recommend:
- cURL – This module lets you make requests to websites directly from your PHP code.
- Goutte – a library designed for web scraping and web crawling in PHP. A good way to get started with a basic web scraper.
- Guzzle – an HTTP client for simple requests.
Now, if you’re already something of a PHP wizard – and you might already think its the best language for web development – the good news is that you can use PHP for simple to moderate web scraping tasks. In fact, we even have a course on PHP web scraping to get you started 😉
Pros: PHP is a widely popular language and well supported in general, so you know it’s not going anywhere! It’s also great for people with wider web development needs, rather than just specifically web scraping tasks.
Cons: PHP isn’t great at multithreading or asynchronous tasks, so you need to put some work in during large scale web scraping projects. It’s primarily a server side scripting language, so without additional support, you may encounter such problems.
Ruby
Another broad purpose option, Ruby is nonetheless a suitable language for web scraping. It’s easy to learn, thanks to its simple syntax, and it’s open-source, which makes it highly accessible. It also supports multithreading so you can even optimize your web scraper to some degree.
However, we’d generally say that Ruby is no where close to the level of community support as other entries on this list. That’s okay for veteran web scrapers or ruby programmers, but for the rest of us, there’s a lot of extra risk.
That’s not to say support isn’t available. There are a lot of libraries, such as:
- Kimurai – a data scraping framework for use with headless browsers, which can be useful when websites require JavaScript.
- OpenURI – a simple web scraping tool for HTTP requests.
- Nokogiri – this library is useful for parsing both HTML and XML documents.
While you do have the tools for web scraping in Ruby, we should note that most of these are open source as well. This gives you lots of freedom, but it once again means that your web scraping is relying on a lot of tools that aren’t professionally developed or maintained.
Pros: Easy to both use and learn, Ruby has a broad range of supporting libraries and tools to help you efficiently scrape web pages.
Cons: It’s mostly open-source nature means support isn’t guaranteed. It’s also not a performance powerhouse, so it might struggle in larger projects.
JavaScript
At first, you might think that JavaScript is worse than PHP for web scraping projects. It’s designed to support browsers in terms of scripting and not a lot else. And technically you’re right – out of the box, JavaScript is not the best language for web scraping, but there are two supporting tools that really are game-changers.
Node.JS
The first is Node.JS, which opens up JavaScript to servers and generally makes JavaScript much more accessible for sending requests and handling web scraping activities. What’s more, it supports parallelism as each process only requires a single CPU core, so you’ve already got a scalable web scraping asset.
Node.JS is also highly supported in web scraping specifics. Most notably, you’re going to want to use the following:
- Puppeteer: This library will help you automate activities in either Chrome or Firefox, which can help you automate your web scraping.
- Playwright: This automation library can also help with web scraping, including a headless mode.
Alongside this, Node.JS comes with many libraries for headless browsing and dynamic web scraping. You’ll find many of the tools, such as the above, support many languages. They’re not unique to Node.JS, but they’re often originally written in it, which goes to show its potential in web scraping 💪
TypeScript
Other than Node.JS, you should also have a look at TypeScript. Since this is a compile-only language – a superset of JavaScript – its essentially giving you much more freedom in JavaScript. You can implement the web scraping you need, and let TypeScript worry about converting it back to JavaScript.
As such, you won’t be using TypeScript alone for web scraping, and it’s commonly paired with Node.JS. But you should still use it, as it also comes with wider web scraping support:
- Cheerio: Other than being fun to say, this is an easy to use HTML parser, common in most TypeScript web scraping.
- Axios: A similarly common companion to Cheerio, Axious provides a robust HTTP client.
- Puppeteer: This library is written in TypeScript, so you can simple use it here, too.
- Crawlee: A dedicated web scraping framework that will help get your projects up and running.
So… circling back to JavaScript as a language for web scraping, it’s best to look at it in the wider picture. Let’s also not forget that JavaScript is a very popular language overall, so you will find strong community support for sure!
Pros: Node.JS an TypeScript are very well supported and include some of the most beloved web scraping tools, such as Puppeteer, alongside decent community support.
Cons: Base JavaScript on its own will simply annoy you. To even consider as the best language for web scraping, you need to be familiar with TypeScript, Node.JS and the wider supporting tools.
Java
Some, but not all, appreciate Java as an object oriented programming language, but it’s more widely known for its performance and reliability. And it’s in this latter area that Java excels.
Popular web scraping libraries include:
- Jsoup: An open source HTML parser, giving you plenty of support in finding and extracting data.
- Apache HttpClient: A simple library for sending HTTP requests and receiving the responses. A key part of any web scraper 😉
- Selenium: This automated browser tool works with Java as well as Python
The trade off with Java is that it’s a little more technical. Python, for example, is easier to use at the start, whilst Java can offer more complex syntax, strong typing, multithreading and more. So if you’re willing to put a little more work in, Java generally tends be the best language for web scraping at a larger scale over Python.
Pros: Java is a very popular language and continues to be well supported. Whilst its not built as a language for web scraping, like Python, its generalist nature combined with a range of supporting libraries and tools means that it can easily do the job.
Cons: It’s not as easy as Python to use, so you might spend longer building your web scraper in the first place.
C++
C++ and, to a wider extent, C, represent another extremely popular programming language. C++ is also something of a generalist, which gives it a great deal of flexibility. It’s relatively scalable, too, supporting parallel web scraping.
As you might have guessed, we also need to look at the library support, since web scraping depends on a lot of aspects few languages include by default. Thanks to its large usage, C++ is fairly well supported:
- Libcurl: This is a popular URL transfer library supporting HTTP and other web content formats.
- CPR: A wrapper for libcurl that supports asynchronous calls and other extra capabilities.
- Libxml2: A helpful parser for both XML and HTML documents.
The biggest downside, however, is that if you’re not familiar with C++ already, it’s not the best programming language to learn… unless you like a challenge 😎
When it comes to C++ and Python, for example, we’d wager the latter is nearly always the best language for web scraping if you’re a complete beginner. Python was developed with easier syntax and understanding in mind, so it’s the better language in terms of ease-of-use.
Pros: Both C and C++ are widely used and therefore widely supported.
Cons: It’s not the best language to pick up easily so, for those not already familiar, it’s not the best choice.
What Else Do Web Scraping Projects Need?
You might be fluent in all the programming languages in the world, but you need more than coding skills alone.
Whatever your web scraping tasks, you still need to ensure you don’t get blocked or trigger anti-spam or anti-bot measures. The best way to do this is to utilize proxies: multiple IPs, used in rotation, to help further your web scraping success.
We say this for two reasons. The first is that, yes, we sell proxies. It’s kind of our job. But that also means we’re here to answer any questions you might have. Not all web pages are equal, so the choice of proxy can sometimes make a real difference.
Secondly, we say it because even the best language for web scraping isn’t going to get past modern anti-spam or anti-bot measures. Sure, it might work the first few times, but once you start to automate or get more repetitive in your web scraping tasks, you’re going to hit the limit in terms of any given web page’s tolerance.
And when large scale scraping tasks also focus on multiple websites, geolocations and more, the need for high performance proxy pools only grows.
So, we hope you find the best language for web scraping that suits your specific needs! And if you need any support, we’re here to help 😉
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