Skip to content
Get Started
G2G2
4.7/5
Excellent
Trustpilot

What Is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is the automatic collection of data from web pages: a program requests pages, extracts the fields it needs, such as prices, rankings or listings, and stores them in a structured form. Responsible scraping reads public data, respects site rules and rate limits, and uses official APIs where they exist.

Try Now for $4.99Continue with Google
  • Session Control
  • High Speed
  • Privacy First
Best fit for Web scrapingRotating Residential Proxiesfrom$0.63/GB
how it works

How web scraping works

A scraper has three parts. A fetcher downloads pages, either with a plain HTTP client for server-rendered HTML or with a headless browser for pages that build their content with JavaScript. A parser pulls out the fields you need with CSS selectors, XPath or the JSON a page already loads. A store writes the results to a file or database, usually with a timestamp so you can track changes.

Common uses are price monitoring, search ranking tracking, ad verification, market research and building datasets from public listings. Proxies sit between the fetcher and the site, giving each request an IP in the right location and spreading load across addresses.

why it matters

Why responsible scraping matters for proxy users

Scraping that stays polite keeps working, and it keeps you on the right side of the sites you depend on. The basics:

Web scraping: what it means for you
  • Collect only public data. Don't scrape behind logins you are not authorised to use, and don't collect personal data you have no lawful basis to process.
  • Read robots.txt, the standard defined in RFC 9309, and the site's terms before you start.
  • Use the official API when the site offers one; it is more stable than parsing HTML.
  • Keep request rates low per site, honour rate limiting and Retry-After headers, and cache pages you have already fetched.
  • Send an honest user agent that names your tool.
try it

Example: check robots.txt before fetching

See proxies for web scraping for choosing a proxy type per job. CleanProxies rotating residential proxies give public data jobs a 50M+ IP pool in 190+ countries, as low as $0.63 per GB that never expires.

Python robots.txt checkPython
from urllib import robotparser
import requests

UA = "ExampleCoBot/1.0"
rp = robotparser.RobotFileParser("https://example.com/robots.txt")
rp.read()

url = "https://example.com/products"
if rp.can_fetch(UA, url):
    r = requests.get(url, headers={"User-Agent": UA}, timeout=30)
    print(r.status_code)

Rotating residential proxies from $0.63/GB

The CleanProxies proxy that fits best here, with a $4.99 trial to test it first.

Go deeper

Guides from the blog

Setup guides and best practices from the CleanProxies blog.

Get the latest insightsAll Blogs

Related terms

Terms that come up alongside Web scraping.

All glossary terms

Web scraping FAQs

Straight answers about Web scraping.

Collecting publicly available data is lawful in many cases, but the answer depends on the data, the site's terms and the laws where you operate. Avoid personal data and content behind logins, and take legal advice for large projects.

Got more questions?All FAQs