What are web scraping APIs and how do they work?
Tags: publicdata, webscraping, webdata, dataharvesting
Published: 2024-05-30 14:47:52

---
title: What are web scraping APIs and how do they work?
published: true
date: 2024-05-30 14:28:49 UTC
tags: publicdata,webscraping,webdata,dataharvesting
canonical_url: https://scrapeway.com/blog/what-are-web-scraping-apis-and-how-do-they-work
---

Modern web scraping can be **tough** but… not for reasons many people outside of the industry think of.

In short, web scraping involves sending HTTP requests or using headless browsers to retrieve page HTML. Then, the HTML pages are parsed using tools like BeautifulSoup.

It seems like a pretty straightforward process but in reality, this process is full of _unforeseen_ challenges that can be automated away with a bit of help. This help is provided by paid services — web scraping APIs and they’re becoming increasingly popular.

[Scrapeway - The Best Web Scraping APIs Evaluated](https://scrapeway.com/)

### What is a web scraping API?

Web scraping APIs are essentially SaaS products with one specific mission to simplify public data extraction.

The simplification happens through the automatic resolution of common web scraping problems:

- Scrape blocking bypass — to scrape any website without blocking
- Geolocation configuration — to access websites across the world
- Automatic scaling
- Automatic data parsing

Web scraping APIs are essentially middleware services that sit between you and the target website and solve all of the problems automatically when possible.

To further explain this, let’s take a look at how an API for web scraping works behind the scenes.

### How do web scraping APIs work?

Most [web scraping APIs](https://scrapeway.com/web-scraping-api) are real-time HTTP APIs that take scraping requests like:

> GET [https://example.com/product/1,](https://example.com/product/1,) bypass scraper blocking and return HTML

During this process, the request configuration is specified with exactly how to retrieve this data with details like:

- HTTP details, like the method and headers.
- Proxy pool and location.
- Whether to use headless browsers for JavaScript rendering.
- JavaScript code to be executed if needed for scrolling or clicking.
- Browser actions that should be executed.

🤖🤖🤖

However, the key action here is the automatic blocking bypass. Web scraping APIs will _modify_ and _retry_ requests to retrieve the page contents that otherwise would be unscrapable.

The request modification is the real secret sauce of each of these services. Each service can configure the request fingerprint in a unique way that allows them to bypass the blocking mechanisms.

✨✨✨

Another key ingredient is the ability to perform real browser actions before the page content is returned. This is being achieved by a pool of hundreds of real headless web browsers that are ready to execute tasks like button clicking, scrolling or even form filling.

This feature is great for web scraping tough dynamic pages that require interactions to load data like comments or product reviews.

### Why are web scraping APIs so popular now?

To understand why using an API for web scraping is convenient, let’s briefly review the history of web and web scraping.

As web started out, most websites were using simple static HTML documents linked together through internal and external links. These websites _were easy_ to scrape as they were simple, cheap and easy to access.

🌎🌎🌎

As web demand rose so did the required feature sets. Suddenly websites started to use dynamic elements that load on demand and hundreds of different assets just to show a single page.

In addition, the world started to realize the _value of data_ thus increasing the demand for its collection.

This combination of increased demand and web complexity is what led to web scraping becoming increasingly inaccessible and difficult to automate.

We can actually identify two main problems that web scraping APIs address here and thus being so popular.

### Highly dynamic & complex websites

Modern websites heavily rely on JavaScript and dynamic data loading. These modern techniques prevent HTTP-based clients from retrieving the desired data, as JavaScript is required to be enabled.

Therefore, web scraping many modern web pages is hard and requires using headless browsers, which are really _resource-intensive_ and very difficult to scale.

Having a service that provides, simplifies and scales headless browsers for the user is an invaluable asset.

### Anti-bot protection services

As web data value increased many websites started to protect their data from being scraped as a protection from competitor analysis or increase the value of their own data offerings.

The increased web complexity also means that web clients are easier to identify in track.

So, many anti-scraping and anti-bot tools were developed as paid enterprise services. Often powered by fingerprinting and AI these tools can identify robots, though, not web scraping APIs.

Web scraping API’s ability to bypass this opens up the public web for scraping unconditionally to everyone, making it by far the most popular feature.

### FAQ

### Should I use a web scraping API?

Most likely yes, but it depends. Web scraping APIs significantly simplify web scraping process by bypassing blocking and providing headless browser infrastructure. It’s easy to scale and progress quickly with your project. It’s not free though so it’s best to start with Python scrapers and scale up with APIs when needed.

### Which web scraping API should I choose?

There are a number of factors that determine the right web scraping API provider, including the price, features, success rate, and stability. See our [services overview](https://scrapeway.com/web-scraping-api) list for how to choose the right one for you.

### Summary

Web scraping APIs are services that allow for scraping at scale by providing the required infrastructure, including proxies and headless browsers. These APIs fine-tune the request configuration internally to bypass anti-bot protection services.

Convinced with the value of web scraping APIs? Check out our [benchmarks](https://scrapeway.com/#benchmarks-table) and [services overview](https://scrapeway.com/targets) pages to choose the right one for you!