I primarily use Python because of its community support and tools, but for sites with complex anti-bot measures, I sometimes switch to R for specialized parsing functions or use Rust when speed is critical.

Try loading pages in a headless browser to check for JavaScript traps. If the site redirects to a ‘we’re watching you’ page or doesn’t render correctly, you may be blocked. Simple checks like these can help.

Sometimes, the API endpoint is hinted at in the page’s HTML source. A quick search for URLs or ‘endpoint’ keywords can reveal hidden paths.

Use efficient parsers. Lxml and BeautifulSoup’s lxml parser are faster than BeautifulSoup’s default parser. For large datasets, I opt for lxml for speed.

Another trick is to rotate through multiple user sessions. Each session can then have its own set of cookies, avoiding overloading a single session.

APIs typically return structured JSON data, which is easier to parse and doesn’t require HTML parsing, saving time on data cleaning.