Zyte Web Scraping Review: Features, Cons, and Pricing

What is Zyte?

Zyte, formerly Scrapinghub, is a leading company in the web scraping industry. Pablo Hoffman and Shane Evans founded the company in 2010. The two had one dream: to make getting structured data from the Internet easier. Zyte has been fine-tuned over the years and now specializes in data extraction services, where companies can gather and collect data for business intelligence services like content monitoring, competitive research, and product pricing. 

Zyte uses patented AI to automate web scraping without sacrificing the quality of the data gathered. It also has built-in compliance tools to ensure users avoid legal issues when extracting data. Warner Music Group, Allegis Global Solutions, and Barcelo Hotel Group are examples of big companies using Zyte’s suite of products.

Zyte Product Offering

Zyte API handles various tasks, from ban handling to AI scraping. You can store the data you have gathered in Scrapy Cloud. You can also opt for Zyte API Enterprise for more features or enterprise solutions. Below are some of Zyte’s products.

1. Zyte API – Ban Handling

The Zyte API manages anti-scraping defenses and bans through various strategies that ensure uninterrupted data extraction. For instance, the API uses IP rotation, where it uses a large pool of proxy IP addresses and rotates them during scraping. This approach reduces ban chances, as the website you are scraping does not see requests from the same IP address.

Zyte API captures screenshots as you scrape websites, making it easy to manage cookies and sessions. You can also automate browser actions via the scriptable headless browser. This browser has a custom IDE where you can code and debug. 

Zyte can capture screenshots or browserHtml, depending on how you set Browser Rendering. In the following screenshot, Zyte handles anti-scraping bans on the Amazon e-commerce website. We have captured a screenshot of the homepage.

2. Zyte API – AI Scraping

Zyte AI Scraping tool automates the web scraping process end to end, allowing you to key in URLs and extract structured data. Its AI-driven Scrapy Spider handles parsing and crawling automatically to extract data with minimal effort. You can also fine-tune the spider code to meet your specific needs. 

The AI scrapper allows you to automate actions like clicking, scrolling, and typing. You can use AI to add or remove data, or complete the same actions manually. Create LLM prompts to pull only what is on the page and minimize the risk of AI hallucination. You can also create data points based on page contents, like summaries and comparisons. 

We scrapped the list of articles on the BBC homepage to demonstrate how AI scrapping works.

3. Zyte API Enterprise

Zyte API Enterprise is a premium package for large-scale data extraction needs. It is designed for enterprises and offers advanced features beyond the standard API. With this package, users can break the build, break, fix, ban, unblock, and automate maintenance and unblock script cycles. 

Zyte API Enterprise allows users to engage in developer-to-developer consultancy on scraping the web and writing better scripts. Developers also get hands-on training and strategic insights. This package guarantees performance and quality with 24/7 monitoring and support. All subscribers to this package get a free compliance assessment and access to compliance experts. 

4. Scrapy Cloud

Scrapy Cloud is a scalable cloud for Scrapy Spiders. Its web interface is easy to use, making it easy to run, monitor, and control your crawlers. The on-demand scaling makes it easy to scale your project based on needs. Integrate your web scraping stack with Zyte API and scrape the web at scale. 

Scrapy Cloud has a full suite of quality assurance tools, such as built-in spider monitoring and logging. You can also integrate it with Spidermon, an open-source spider monitoring framework that you can customize to suit your needs. Scrapy Cloud allows you to deploy scrapy projects in minutes on GitHub or via the command line.

Zyte Features

Zyte has basic and advanced features designed to meet the needs of business owners and developers. Below are some key features.

Smart Proxy Manager

Smart Proxy Manager is a solution that automatically rotates IP addresses to override captchas and prevent bans during web scraping. This tool continuously monitors IP address performance and dynamically adjusts requests to ensure seamless web scraping and data extraction. You can access Zyte API as a traditional Proxy API via proxy mode or as a Restful API. 

Unlike traditional proxy rotating services that rely on trial and error to handle bans related to web scraping, Smart Proxy Manager automates ban handling using artificial intelligence algorithms. This solution also saves you money as it continuously monitors your scraping needs and uses the most cost-effective proxies for every request. 

Automatic Data Extraction

Zyte API allows you to automatically parse web data at an unlimited scale. Users send URLs and get structured data in JSON format back. You don’t need to develop and maintain extraction rules for each site as Zyte uses AI and ML to automatically extract web data. The built-in ban handling ensures that you extract data from different websites and pay only for what you use. 

Users don’t have to create manual parsing code as the user interface allows you to select the data type you should extract. You also get an estimate of the upfront cost you are likely to incur for every data extraction request. This automatic data extraction tool will take screenshots and automate actions like scrolls and clicks, reducing manual intervention during scrapping. 

In the following screenshot, we used the automatic data extraction to show “Article List” on our website. This is a sample of what we got: 

Headless Browser

Zyte has a fully hosted scriptable headless browser made for web scraping. You can use the browser to automate interactions, unblock websites, capture screenshots, and render JavaScript. This browser is designed in a way that you only focus on data extraction and not managing infrastructure. 

Zyte Headless Browser has a Lightweight Client for those who don’t want a fully-fledged browser. This cost-effective allows you to toggle JS on and off to suit your needs. You can also store and manage cookies whenever needed. You can also automate common browser actions or even code your own. The browser also allows you to the image of the entire website you are scraping or its viewport.

IDE

Zyte API comes with a web-based integrated development environment (IDE) to help users write and debug code for web scraping. The IDE is built by web scraping experts to streamline scraping configuration. It comes with pre-made code blocks that you can use to test browser actions and scrape data. Developers can test the effectiveness of their code live as Zyte IDE offers real-time access. 

Zyte IDE works on modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Brave. You also need to enable third-party cookies on the zyte.group domain if your browser is set to block third-party cookies. The IDE is designed to help you build Zyte API requests visually and debug errors as you build.

Scalability and Reliability

Zyte proxies are designed to handle large-scale scraping projects. The tool has a large proxies pool with automatic rotation to reduce website bans, provide low latency, and reduce response times. This tool is designed to handle concurrent requests, where users can scale their operations upward or downward without affecting performance. 

Zyte has a cloud-based Infrastructure, meaning users don’t have to maintain physical servers. This approach allows users to add or remove scraping tasks based on needs. The platform also features built-in monitoring tools to provide real-time alerts on job statuses and performance of the web scraper.

Zyte Pricing

Zyte uses Pay-as-you-go and Priced per Request pricing models. It also comes with a cost calculator that you can use to estimate how much you are likely to spend for every request. This tool offers different pricing models for different products like Zyte API – Ban Handling, AI Scraping, Enterprise, and Scrapy Cloud. 

Zyte Use Cases

Below are some use cases of Zyte.

• Data for AI: Artificial intelligence is affecting almost all sectors of the economy. AI models need a lot of data to function optimally. Zyte provides structured data for machine learning and Natural Language Processing applications. 
• News data: Zyte API provides over 10 million news articles to companies like Kinzen. The AI-enabled automatic data extraction allows such companies to extract millions of articles at a scale in a fraction of the time it would take manual extraction processes. 
• Social Media: Businesses gather real-time social media data using Zyte. Such businesses can monitor customer sentiments, brand mentions, and trends to improve their marketing strategies. 
• Real Estate: Zyte simplifies the collection of data from property listings. Real estate firms can use data from Zyte to analyze property prices, availability, and market trends. 

Customer Support

Zyte has round-the-clock customer support to address all your technical issues. You can refer to documentation, use AI assistant or submit a ticket for personalized issues. After testing the AI assistant, we found it useful for general queries and links with documentation and useful articles. 

However, people have mixed reactions on Trustpilot, where some feel that the support is nice, but they give one response every 24-48 hours and nothing on a weekend. You can also contact sales to learn more about plans, pricing, and payment issues through the contact form. Email and phone support are also available for various issues like compliance, legal, and bounties. 

Zyte Pros and Cons

Pros 

• Wide range of products: Zyte offers various products for unblocking bans, managing proxies, and Scrapy Cloud for all your scrapping needs. 
• Offers geolocation unblocking: Zyte has Residential IPs from more than 200 countries to easily unblock localized and geo-blocked websites. 
• Develop and debug: Zyte has a web-based IDE for writing and testing code scripts
• Headless browser for web scripting: Users don’t have to manage browsers during web scraping as Zyte comes with a scriptable headless browser for web scraping. 
• Integrates with Scrapy: Zyte integrates with Scrapy, an open-source framework that makes it easy to customize scripting. 

Cons

• Limited free tier: Zyte has a free tier through Scrapy Cloud. However, this package lacks advanced features like job scheduling. 
• Complex for beginners: Even though Zyte offers automatic data extraction, it might be complex for beginners who want to extract specific datasets. 

To summarize, Zyte succeeds in all the areas that make a good web scraper. It offers smart proxy management, a headless browser, an anti-ban bot, is scalable, and has an IDE for developing and testing. However, it has a limited free tier and can be complex for beginners. 

Zyte Alternatives

Zyte has various competitors like ScrapingBee, Scrapy (different from Scrapy Cloud discussed above), and Bright Data that offer similar services. The below table will compare it with the alternatives based on pricing, performance, features, and product offerings.

Zyte Verdict

Based on our tests and experience, Zyte qualifies to be on our list of the top web scrapers and is a good fit for full-stack web scraping. This platform offers various products like Zyte API – Ban Handling, Zyte API – AI Scraping, Zyte API – Enterprise, and Scrapy Cloud to ensure that you get all the tools you need for your data extraction needs. The product has also been around for 14 years and has been evolving to suit modern-day users. 

Zyte receives Geekflare’s Innovation Award due to its smart proxy management feature, automatic ban handling, Scrapy Cloud, and automatic data extraction feature. It is ideal for individuals and businesses looking for an extraction service that is easy to use but scalable. 

The pay-as-you-go model makes it attractive to users who want to pay only for what they use. However, though Zyte provides a free plan under Scrapy Cloud, the plan is limited with features like job scheduling missing.