The main factors affecting the cost of web scraping services

Crawling or scraping data from websites is not just about extracting data from websites. This is not an easy process, where there are several levels between targeting sources and obtaining useful data in the right amount. After analyzing the requirements, you can determine many factors that determine the cost of web scraping services.

Reliable web scanning infrastructure:

There are several aspects that define a capable web scanning infrastructure. It’s pretty easy to write a script and run it when it’s needed, but it’s not just about the script, it’s about the infrastructure it needs. Developing and maintaining such a system requires well-trained labor, a system that can manage, deploy, and run custom scripts for a variety of purposes, and a mechanism to process this valuable data. All this can potentially affect the cost.

Amount of data:

The amount of data downloaded depends on the industry and the specific use case. The cost of web scraping, processing and crawling the quality of web pages depends on the amount of data downloaded and viewed. Sometimes you need specific information that is not contained on all pages of the website. To extract this information, you must scan the entire site for such pages. It takes time, resources. To accommodate a larger volume, an efficient infrastructure consisting of high-performance machines, a skilled workforce, and sometimes premium third-party services directly proportional to the effective costs will be required.

Complexity:

Data from some websites may not be easy to extract. The structure of many sites is not a template, more complex. Therefore, web crawling and web scraping of such sites may require additional settings, individual solutions. As a result, it is personal attention, time and resources that increase the cost of web scraping.

Number of sites to scan:

Perhaps you will be enough web scraping one web site to obtain the necessary information, and may be to achieve the desired result need to extract information from 100 or more web sites. As mentioned above, the structure of web sites can be complex, require additional development of each web site. The information you need can be found only on two pages of the web site with millions of pages, but you will need to scan the entire million pages, which requires additional costs and resources. All these factors are summarized in the total cost of web scraping. Therefore, the more sites, the greater the cost of web scraping.

Web scraping frequency:

Frequency is another important factor affecting the cost of web scraping services. The frequency of scraping may vary depending on the type of business. Web scraping may need one time, and may be necessary every day. The longer the web scraper runs, the more it uses the server, which also increases the cost.

The increase in web scraping frequency causes some serious technical problems and an even larger amount of data, which requires a better storage mechanism and more manpower, which will definitely affect the cost.

Customer service:

The sites required for web scraping may change and the scripts for web scraping of such sites must also be changed to extract the correct information. These changes to the scripts also affect costs.

Support service:

Support is an important factor affecting the cost of web scraping. Support service is very important for any business to help with emerging questions. It requires human interaction, and the costs are associated with it.

 Conclusion:

The factors described in this article are not the only factors that affect the cost of web crawling and web scraping. When choosing a web scraper for your business, be careful: some may offer low cost web scraping services, but the result will not be satisfactory, and some web scraping services can give an excellent result, but its cost will be unreasonably expensive. Before you order web scraping services you need to carefully study the market of these services.