How much is web scraping API?

I have no idea about web scraping API.

But I need to know what is the price of web scraping API and how to use it.

The price of web scraping API depends on the service you want to use. Most free scraping services are based on simple SQL queries over a database, so they are pretty cheap.

On the other hand, if you want to develop your own scraping solution, you will probably need to invest a lot of time and effort to learn how to do that, which will make the price really high.

What is price scraping?

We've received multiple questions about price scraping.

We're happy to answer as many of these questions as we can.

As a marketer, there's a time and a place for price comparisons. If we don't show the prices for one or more competing brands, our customers have no way to find the best price.

But sometimes, it makes sense to gather some prices - because it saves you time and reduces the amount of data you need to search. A lot of marketers call this price scraping. A simple search on Google reveals a handful of online sources that will scrape any business's websites for pricing data. You may also use an app like App Annie that will scrape data for you.

Once you have this data, what should you do with it? As we learned in our How to Do Research on Amazon and eBay guide, you should evaluate the quality of the information. A price scrape won't provide the same level of insight as a third-party data source, but it's probably better than nothing.

However, you'll still have to do some research. The data from price scraping isn't great and it has its own limitations. For instance, it doesn't always include any data for third-party sales. Price scraping often only includes prices on the seller's website. It may also contain fake prices, broken links, outdated data, or incorrect information.

Is price scraping a good way to find a price? Absolutely not. But it's often the only option when a brand doesn't want to pay to access competitive data. And it could be your only option if you don't have a budget for research.

Do you scrap prices for brands you work with? We scrap all sorts of prices. Here are a few examples.

Sometimes, it makes sense to scrape prices that are associated with our brand. If we're working on a content marketing campaign, for example, we may pull prices from a site that offers our products.

Sometimes, it makes sense to scrape prices that aren't associated with our brand. As mentioned above, we might pull a list of prices for some competing products.

Is API scraping legal?

The first time you hear this question, its going to freak you out.

Yes, API scraping is legal. But, the answer is still a no. It should be, but as is life - things are never that simple in law (which is one reason it is legal!). And the answer may well be no, depending on where you are. For example, I found some useful information at the Data Privacy and The Arts Society which is worth looking into. They explain things a bit more clearly than the Wikipedia article would suggest. Unfortunately for them, their own site notes "Data Privacy and The Arts Society does not accept payment or offers of sponsorship from third parties for hosting this resource." Thats fine, but doesn't make the information wrong. You will have to check yourself in your jurisdiction, which makes it important you consult the relevant authority in your country - it may tell you what you should be doing, and/or it may tell you that you are in the wrong place. For example, I have only ever heard of scraping on the west coast of the US, as far as I know. The US Patent and Trademark Office have an API that lets people submit ideas etc. It is called the Electronic System and Method of Processing Patent Applications Program, or EPO Patents for short. As per their web pages: "No application, response, or information submitted to EAS via the program shall be considered confidential and will not constitute attorney client communication," So we might need to look elsewhere.

Why not do it? You might argue that if it's ok to scrape some websites, why not scrap APIs. The simple answer is that APIs have been built in a way specifically for scraping to be anti-feature. Generally APIs will check whether your request is meant to be an individual action or a batch action. If you ask for 1000 records, the service may choose to throw in a 1 extra call to ensure that the action is done one call, rather than 1000 (not to mention the extra data storage). So by scraping, you will likely make all your requests to hit 1000 times because the scraping code was written specifically for that end. I've seen sites in the past where this was a real problem - especially with those APIs that had limits.

But does that matter? Maybe not. It's not like a web crawler is illegal in itself. There are probably ways of scraping around the problems.

Is price scraping legal?

Forget copyright or trade marks.

In recent weeks both Google and Amazon have been accused of 'price scraping' - copying other people's prices without permission - by a major electronics retailer in the US.

According to the Register the issue is this: the big box retailer has launched a new website offering instant price savings on more than 300,000 popular products. You just enter the price you want to pay and the website uses search engines to find an identical deal for you. Then there's a choice to proceed straight to the checkout to buy from that site or to visit their own online store instead. The retailer has made much of the fact that they are offering one-click checkout with an automatic credit card transaction for a simple transaction with high turnover. So why are they complaining about price scraping? It's the retailer's belief that the use of search engine technology is a breach of their copyright and they are seeking damages.

There are two main issues here, one legal and one moral. The legal issue is whether any use of information in a search engine can be a copyright infringement. The key phrase in the law is information not only the information stored in the data source. This is often overlooked when thinking about search engines but in reality the data that powers your search engine will often contain a number of different types of content, both content that is owned by others and content that is licensed. It could be argued that if you are paying for access to someone else's content through a search engine then that is a breach of copyright. Of course you may already be paying a subscription fee to someone for access to their data but when you use a search engine you are also using the raw search engine technology - all of the search algorithms, the servers it talks to, etc.

The second part of the legal issue is around how that raw information is used. If the search engine doesn't return the same results as the original data then is it still a breach of copyright? That is, as long as someone is making money out of search engine use. If we're talking about a free Google search then is the use of the raw software a breach of copyright and if so can they be sued? The problem arises because they charge money for access to their data and search engine technology, whereas the competitor (who wants to defend their copyright) don't charge anything at all.