Insights & Engineering

Deep dives into web data infrastructure, extraction techniques, and the future of structured data at scale.

Latest Articles

12 Best Free Web Scraping Tools in 2026: Compared

TL;DR: The 12 best free web scraping tools in 2026 split into four buckets: managed APIs with free credits, open-source frameworks, no-code browser extensions, and AI extractors. Pick by use case first (one-off scrape vs. scheduled pipeline), then by skill level. Most free tiers cover evaluation, not production; the moment your success rate drops below ~90% or you burn more hours on blocks than on data, it is time to graduate to a paid API.

Suciu Dan23 min read
May 13, 2026

Is Web Scraping Legal in 2026? Compliance Framework

TL;DR: Is web scraping legal? Usually yes, with caveats. Legality depends on the data type, the access path, the jurisdictions involved, and what you do with the output. This guide gives you a direct verdict, a five-minute pre-scrape framework, the cases that matter, and a checklist you can run before you ship.

Suciu Dan12 min read
May 13, 2026

The 9 Best Google Image Search APIs 2022

Explore the top 9 Google Image Search API tools for efficient image scraping. Learn how to optimize your image search and improve your data collection with these powerful APIs.

Raluca Penciuc9 min read
Apr 22, 2026

How to Test Proxies: 6 Practical Methods

TL;DR: Bad proxies are expensive. They burn bandwidth, trigger bans, and silently corrupt the data your scrapers depend on. This guide shows how to test proxies across five health signals (connectivity, exit IP, speed, anonymity, and reputation) using ping, curl, online checkers, IP databases, and a reusable Python script you can drop into your CI pipeline.

Robert Munceanu9 min read
May 12, 2026