Web Scraper vs. API: Which one to choose for data extraction?
Web Scraper and APIs are web data extraction tools. Web scraping is generally used for research and data collection, while APIs are more apt for business use cases. Before deciding which option to choose, it is important to understand what each option offers. It’s a tough choice because either way you go, you lose something. Web scraper is excellent for flexibility and interactivity, but it's a little slow and can be troublesome when the data source updates or is taken down. API has a much faster turnaround time and an endless data archive, but there are limited options on what you can extract from the API due to its design constraints. So which one should you choose? After weighing all the pros and cons, we've found that web scraping might be a better choice for some people in specific scenarios. Data scraping vs. API Analyzing the pros and cons of a web crawler vs. web scraping, we’ve found that web scrapers win in terms of flexibility. API restricts the data that can be ex