Originally published as https://reurl.cc/N0knp5
Driven by the tide of big data, web scraping — a technique to collect data from web pages — has appeared on stage and is now the go-to solution for getting data. The advantage of web scraping is obvious: it helps collect a large amount of data from tons of websites in a fast and accurate way and unlocks the world of data. People use it to collect data for various applications like price monitoring, lead generation, market analysis, sentiment analysis, etc.
Although web scraping has become the most popular way to grab data for how it can be easily applied at reasonable costs, many businesses who want to use it have not taken their steps further just because they have no idea how much web scraping would cost. In this article, we will introduce some of the most-used approaches to web scraping and their cost structures to help you better understand which web scraping may better suit your needs and what is the cost to expect.
Web Scraping Approaches & Costs
People who wish to use web scraping in their businesses can do it in three ways: by contracting a third party, hiring a developer team, utilizing web scraping technologies, or acquiring data services.
Outsourcing to a third party
Outsourcing a web scraping project means hiring another team or person to do the scraping job for you. A business that does not have a dedicated tech team to scrape data can opt for the services of external bodies. These external bodies could be freelancers who are scraping professionals from freelancing sites like Upwork or Guru, or a web scraping team that specializes in web scraping.
Hire a team
The web scraping team is made up of technical gurus who come together to create a web scraping agency. Depending on the size of the project, the cost of a team service for web scraping may be expensive or low. Typically, prices fall between $600 and $1000. Before you sign a contract with a team to use their services, make sure to check their credibility.
Hire freelancers
Hiring freelancers is becoming a popular option with the rise of the gig economy. With freelancers, the web scraping cost is mainly based on the freelancer’s discretion, so the price varies greatly. You can get a good freelancer for as low as $30/hour, while more…
