Web agents, Web crawlers or sometimes known as internet bots are what help in indexing the pages. Without the right web crawlers, you wouldn’t be able to see any kind of content online. So, we decided to dedicate this blog to web spiders (not the creepy kind). Here’s a web crawlers list that we think everyone should know about.
When these bots crawl the pages and index the content published by a party, it’s called web crawling.
While the web crawlers serve a number of features their primary function is to read and save data from all over the web.
Now that the internet is available almost everywhere, the need and the popularity of these tools have increased. Fortunately, data crawling has become incredibly simple and smooth with automation. This is why we did some research on web crawler lists.
Almost all search engines use a web crawler to collect and index the data. Market researchers and data analysis professionals often rely on web crawlers list to gauge market trends and changing customer behaviors.
Overview of Top Web Crawlers List
| Web Crawler | Language | Deployment | Price |
| Cyotek WebCopy | .NET | Windows | Free |
| HTTrack | C++ | Cross-Platform | Free |
| Sitechecker | Information not available | Cross-Platform | Basic Plan – $23 per monthStart Up $39 per monthGrowing – $79 per monthCustom Enterprise Plan – Custom pricing |
| Octoparse | .NET | Windows | Free PlanStandard Plan – $75 per monthProfessional Plan – $209/monthCustom enterprise Plan – Custom pricing |
| Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Information not available | Cross-platform | Free with a Crawl Limit of 500 URLs.Unlimited Crawling costs $160/year |
Detailed Review of Web Crawlers List 2022/23
We’ve picked the top 5 web crawlers for this web crawlers list, so let’s break them down and see what they have to offer.
1. Cyotek WebCopy – Best for Downloading Websites
Kickstarting our web crawlers list is Cyotek WebCopy. It’s best known for scanning and content downloading.
With Cyotek WebCopy, you can copy almost every website on your hard disk for browsing offline. You can set your configurations and you can tweak with the settings till you find something optimal. You can tell the crawler how you want a page to be crawled.
That’s not where the tweaking prowess ends, you can also configure user-agent strings, domain aliases, and default documents.
Whenever you crawl a website, the tool will automatically remap links to resources to match the exact format of the website. If your goal is to access the source code of a website and find all the links on the website, then don’t go beyond Cyotek WebCopy.
Features of Cyotek:
- Makes a local copy of a static website
- Complete configuration options
- Content downloader
- Can scan complete websites
Pros of using Cyotek:
- Easy to navigate and learn
- No software/app installation is needed
- Can even identify linked content resources
- Offers the best customization features
- Download websites to hard disk completely or partially
Cons of Using Cyotek:
- Can not analyze JavaScript
- No Virtual DOM
at its core, Cyotek can copy any website you want into your local device. the tool is super easy to use and can be customized as per your preference. Definitely deserves to rank in the first position in our web crawlers list.
Cyotek Pricing:
- Free
2. HTTrack – For People With Advanced Programming Knowledge
Every SEO personnel knows about HTTrack and the features it offers. The reason it’s so famous among SEO company is that it can download complete website data to your PC.
You can use HTTrack to copy one or multiple websites together. You can also customize how many connections you want to open at the same time while downloading web pages.
HTTrack can work in two ways. You can either use it as a command line or you can use it for personal use. But, there’s one issue with HTTrack. It is suitable for only those who have advanced programming language commands.
Features of HTTrack:
- Customize and arrange link structure
- Resume interrupted downloads
- Download one or multiple websites into local drive
- Update mirror sites
Pros of HTTrack:
- Easy to view website structure
- Proxy available for use
- Can resume stopped/interrupted downloads
- Works as a command-line program
Cons of HTTrack:
- Only those with advanced programming language knowledge can use the website seamlessly.
While HTTrack offers endless features and functionalities, it is not suitable for every kind of user. If you have the appropriate knowledge, then you will not find a better web crawler.
Pricing Policy:
- Free
3. Sitechecker – Best for Technical SEO Auditing
If you want real-time website crawling, then Sitechecker is the tool for you. It ranks in the third position on our web crawlers list for a number of reason. Not only you can crawl entire websites, you can even find technical issues in the website that need fixing.
Sitechecker has made its name in the market as one of the fastest web crawlers. With Sitechecker, you can test over 300 pages of a website in less than 2 minutes. We tested the tool to see if the data was true or not, you’d be happy to know that it did crawled 312 pages in 133 seconds.
The best part is that you can customize the tool to find errors, pages, or both. Based on the site-level and page-level issues, Sitechecker also offers score to the website attributing website health.
Features of Sitechecker:
- Site auditing
- Site tracker
- Backlink tracker
- Track website rankings on keywords
Pros of Sitechecker:
- One of the fastest web crawlers in the market
- Website scoring
- Offers complete technical site audit
- Can use a chrome extension to crawl websites
Cons of Sitechecker:
- No free plan available
What we love more about Sitechecker is its ability to provide a technical audit of any website you want. This is a great tool for all SEO professionals. Based on the data provided, you can improve your website health and also improve your overall keyword rankings.
Pricing Policy:
- Basic Plan – $23 per month
- Start Up $39 per month
- Growing – $79 per month
- Custom Enterprise Plan – Custom pricing
4. Octoparse
Octoparse is another great web crawler that we thought should be mentioned on our web crawlers list. It can collect data from all across the web. The software is super easy to use and is perfect for those who have no coding knowledge.
If you love spreadsheets, then you can get data in XML. Or, if you want some other format, Octorparse offers data in multiple options:
- HTML
- Excel
- CSV, and more.
What makes Octoparse better than its counterparts is the pre-built scrapers and auto-detection features. Pre-built scrapers, scrape data from several websites.
Auto-detectors can figure out structured data on whatever target URL you offer. After all the data is found, Octoparse downloads it.
Features of Octoparse:
- Data mining functionality
- Auto structured data detectors
- Easy to use interface
- In-built scraping capabilities
Pros of Octoparse:
- Auto detection features
- Quick multiple data extraction
- In-build scrapers for data collection
- Includes 2 learning modes
Cons of Octoparse:
- No customer support and tutorials
The best thing about Octoparse is you can get it up and running in less than a minute. It takes almost the same amount of time to convert website data into spreadsheets. You don’t need to have coding knowledge to use this tool.
Pricing Policy:
- Free Plan
- Standard Plan – $75 per month
- Professional Plan – $209/month
- Custom enterprise Plan – Custom pricing
5. Screaming Frog SEO Spider – Best for Crawling Small and Large Websites
Screaming Frog web crawler ranks last on our web crawlers list but it is in no way the least useful software. The tool can instantly crawl complete websites to figure out errors, broken links, temporary, and permanent redirection, and plagiarized content. Moreover, you can save this information in bulk and fix the issues one by one.
Screaming Frog allows you to mine data from any type of data from the HTML of a website. The best part is that you can view all the URLs that are blocked by robots.txt or Meta robot directives.
Features of Screaming Frog:
- Data extractions
- Data audits
- Analyzing website titles and metadata
- Visualize site architecture
Pros of Screaming Frog:
- Helps in finding broken links and errors
- Helps in finding duplicate content
- Almost instant sitemap generation
- Can integrate Google Search Console
Cons of Screaming Frog:
All the advanced functionalities are paid
If you don’t want to spend money, then you should definitely try out Screaming Frog. It allows you to crawl 500 websites for free. They also help in significantly improving your website’s overall performance and reducing bounce rates.
The tool is completely free of cost for up to 500 URLs. For unlimited crawling, you’ll have to pay $160 per month.
Some Other Web Crawlers List to Try Out
| Web Crawlers | Language | OS Supported |
|---|---|---|
| Nutch | Java | Cross-Platform |
| GRUB | C, Python, Perl, C# | Cross-Platform |
| DataparkSearch | C++ | Cross-Platform |
| Scrapy | Python | Cross-Platform |
| Heritrix | Java | Linux |
| GNU Wget | C | Linux |
| WebLech | Java | Cross-Platform |
| YaCy | Java | Cross-Platform |
| mnoGoSearch | C | Windows |
| ICDL Crawler | C++ | Cross-Platform |
| ht://Dig | C++ | Unix |
| Norconex HTTP Collector | Java | Cross-Platform |
| WebSPHINX | Java | Cross-Platform |
| PHP-Crawler | PHP | Cross-Platform |
| Arale | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Arachnid | Java | Cross-Platform |
| PySpider | Python | Cross-Platform |
| LARM | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Metis | Java | Cross-Platform |
| HyperSpider | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Capek | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Bixo | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Ebot | Erland | Linux |
| Aspeek | C++ | Linux |
| Web Harvest | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Hyper Estraier | C/C++ | Cross-Platform |
| Hounder | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Aperture | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Ccrawler | C# | Windows |
| Andjing | Java | NA |
| Opese | C++ | Linux |
| Xapian | C++ | Cross-Platform |
| Sphider | PHP | Cross-Platform |
| Pavuk | C | Linux |
| Crawwwler | C++ | Java |
| OpenWebSpider | C#, PHP | Cross-Platform |
| Pycreep | Java | Cross-Platform |
| iCrawler | Java | Cross-Platform |
| Distributed Web Crawler | C, Python, Java | Cross-Platform |
| JoBo | Java | Cross-Platform |
| WebEater | Java | Cross-Platform |
| StormCrawler | Java | Cross-Platform |
| NodeCrawler | JavaScript | Cross-Platform |