--- title: "Web Scraper Chrome Extension: 4 Picks vs Cloud | Scrape.ly" description: "Web scraper Chrome extensions compared: Web Scraper, Instant Data Scraper, Data Miner and Evomi Web Data, and when a cloud scraper is the better tool." url: https://scrape.ly/blog/web-scraper-chrome-extension markdown: https://scrape.ly/blog/web-scraper-chrome-extension.md --- [Guides](https://scrape.ly/blog/category/guides.md) # Web Scraper Chrome Extensions: 4 Good Ones, and When to Use a Cloud Scraper The best web scraper Chrome extensions in 2026 (Web Scraper, Instant Data Scraper, Data Miner and Evomi Web Data), what each is good at, where every extension stops, and how a cloud scraper takes over for schedules, thousands of pages and API access. [Scrape.ly Team The team behind Scrape.ly](https://scrape.ly/blog/author/scrapely-team.md) - Published Nov 12, 2026 - Reading time 8 min read ![Pixel-art robot with an orange >\_ on its terminal head carries a data card out of a browser window showing the Chrome logo and rows of page data, towards a crate bearing the Scrape.ly logo](https://scrape.ly/media/web-scraper-chrome-extension.png?w=1080) A web scraper Chrome extension pulls data out of the page you have open, a table, a product list, search results, and saves it as CSV or Excel without any code. The good ones are Web Scraper for multi-page jobs you set up once, Instant Data Scraper for one-click tables, Data Miner for ready-made recipes, and Evomi Web Data for seeing and extracting a page as it appears in another country. When the job has to run on a schedule, cover thousands of pages or feed another program, a cloud scraper does it better. This guide covers what each extension does (taken from its Chrome Web Store listing on 12 November 2026), where extensions as a group run out of road, and what the same job looks like in the cloud, with a real run of 1,000 rows from 50 pages. ## The 4 best web scraper Chrome extensions at a glance | Extension | How you pick the data | Multi-page | Exports | Best for | | -------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | | Web Scraper | A "sitemap" of selectors you click together | Yes, pagination and links | CSV, XLSX | Repeatable jobs on one site | | Instant Data Scraper | Detected automatically, then adjusted | Next buttons and infinite scroll | CSV, XLS, XLSX | A quick table from one listing | | Data Miner | Shared recipes or your own | Yes, pagination | CSV, XLS, XLSX, TSV, Google Sheets | Popular sites someone already wrote a recipe for | | Evomi Web Data | Describe it in plain words to an AI | Page by page | CSV, JSON, copy | A page as people in another country see it | ## 1. Web Scraper [Web Scraper](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/web-scraper-free-web-scra/jnhgnonknehpejjnehehllkliplmbmhn) (webscraper.io) is the classic point-and-click scraper for Chrome, with 900,000 users on its listing. You open its tab in Chrome's developer tools, create a "sitemap" and add selectors that tell it how to move through the site and what to extract. It handles multiple pages, JavaScript-loaded content and infinite scroll, and exports CSV or XLSX. The sitemap takes a few minutes to build, and in return you can run the same job again next week. The listing points to Web Scraper Cloud for running sitemaps automatically. **Best for:** a job on one site you'll repeat, with pagination or detail pages. ## 2. Instant Data Scraper [Instant Data Scraper](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/instant-data-scraper/ofaokhiedipichpaobibbnahnkdoiiah) skips the setup. It looks at the page's HTML structure, guesses which repeating block is the data, and shows you a table; if the guess is wrong, you adjust the selection. It can click "next" buttons and follow infinite scroll, and exports Excel or CSV. It has 1,000,000 users and a 4.9 rating from 7,800 reviews, and the listing says the scraped data doesn't leave your browser. **Best for:** getting one listing page, or a few pages of it, into a spreadsheet in under a minute. ## 3. Data Miner [Data Miner](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/data-miner/nndknepjnldbdbepjfgmncbggmopgden) works from "recipes": extraction rules for specific sites, written by its users and shared. The listing says there are over a million of them, so for a popular site there's often one ready. You can write your own for the rest. It crawls paginated pages, can extract emails with regular expressions and fill forms from a spreadsheet, and exports XLS, CSV, XLSX or TSV, or uploads to Google Sheets. It has a free starter plan and paid plans. **Best for:** well-known sites where a shared recipe already exists. ## 4. Evomi Web Data [Evomi Web Data](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/evomi-web-data/apognfohgloodaihbplhgffhonmihpbd) solves a different problem: the page you see is not the page someone in another country sees. Prices, search results and stock change with location. The extension opens in Chrome's side panel, connects your browser through an Evomi proxy in the country (and city, if you need one) you choose, and shows your new IP, location, ping and speed. Then you ask its AI Scraper for what you want, for example "Extract every product name and price on this page", and it reads the page through that same location. From its listing: - You describe the data in plain words; no code or CSS selectors. - Results come back as tables you can copy, or download as CSV or JSON, and numbers are charted automatically. - You can watch each step the AI takes, or click page elements to guide it. - For pages you're logged into, it can use your session for that one request; the listing says nothing is stored or shared. It needs an Evomi account with a proxy plan, and the AI Scraper uses Evomi scraper credits. Evomi is the proxy company behind Scrape.ly; the extension is Evomi's product. **Best for:** price and product research across countries, and checking how a site, ad or search result looks somewhere else. ## Where every Chrome extension stops Extensions are the fastest way to get data from the page in front of you. Their limits come from the same place as their speed: they run in your browser. - **Your browser has to stay open.** Close the laptop and the job stops. There's no running it at 6 a.m. every day while you sleep. - **One page at a time, from one IP.** Extensions scrape at the speed of your browser, through your own connection. Big sites notice hundreds of fast requests from one home IP, and CAPTCHAs and blocks follow. (Evomi Web Data routes through proxies, but still one page at a time.) - **Not an API.** Another program can't call your Chrome extension. To put the data into a database, a CRM or an AI agent, someone has to export a file and move it. - **You maintain it.** When the site changes its layout, your sitemap or recipe breaks, and you find out when the export comes back empty. None of that matters for a one-off table. All of it matters once the scrape becomes part of how you work. ## When to use a cloud scraper instead A cloud scraper runs on someone else's servers, so it keeps going without your browser, runs many pages in parallel through rotating proxies, and returns the data over an API. On [Scrape.ly](https://scrape.ly/index.md) there are two ways in. **A ready-made scraper for the site.** The [Scrape.ly Store](https://scrape.ly/store.md) has 620+ scrapers that already know how to read Google Maps, Amazon, LinkedIn, Zillow, YouTube, TikTok and more, and are fixed by their maintainers when the site changes. You fill in a form, for example a search term and a city for the [Google Maps Scraper](https://scrape.ly/store/cornerledger/google-maps-scraper.md), from $1.27 per 1,000 places, and export to Excel, CSV or JSON. You can also describe what you want to Scrape.ly's AI chat, and it picks and runs the scraper. **Any other site.** The [Web Scraper](https://scrape.ly/store/querystone/web-scraper.md) Actor crawls a site and runs one short function on each page to pick out the fields, the same job as an extension's sitemap, written as a few lines of jQuery. On 12 November 2026 we pointed it at books.toscrape.com, a practice site with 1,000 books across 50 listing pages: ```javascript async function pageFunction(context) { const $ = context.jQuery; return $('article.product_pod').map((i, el) => ({ title: $(el).find('h3 a').attr('title'), price: $(el).find('.price_color').text().trim(), rating: ($(el).find('.star-rating').attr('class') '').replace('star-rating', '').trim(), inStock: $(el).find('.availability').text().includes('In stock'), })).get(); } ``` With the link selector `li.next a`, it followed the pagination by itself. The run finished in 18 seconds with the status "Saved 1000 results from 50 pages". The first row: ```json { "title": "A Light in the Attic", "price": "£51.77", "rating": "Three", "inStock": true, "url": "https://books.toscrape.com/catalogue/a-light-in-the-attic_1000/index.html" } ``` The Web Scraper costs from $0.572 per 1,000 results, platform usage included, so this run comes to from $0.57. For step-by-step help with selectors, see [how to scrape data from a website](https://scrape.ly/blog/how-to-scrape-a-website.md). ### Put it on a schedule Any run can be saved and repeated. An automation runs a saved input hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or on a cron expression, in your time zone, and can send the results to Google Sheets, Slack, email or a webhook when the run finishes ([automations docs](https://scrape.ly/docs/automations.md)). The Free plan includes 5 schedules and $5 of usage every month, without a card. ### Call it from your code The same run is one HTTP request. Short runs can use the synchronous endpoint, which returns the rows in the response: ```shell curl -X POST "https://api.scrape.ly/v2/actors/cornerledger~google-maps-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items" -H "Authorization: Bearer $SCRAPELY_TOKEN" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"searchStringsArray": ["coffee shop"], "locationQuery": "Austin, TX", "maxCrawledPlacesPerSearch": 20}' ``` Create the token under **Settings → API & Integrations**. AI agents can do the same through the [Scrape.ly MCP server](https://scrape.ly/mcp.md). ## Extension or cloud: how to choose | You want to… | Use | | ----------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | | Copy one table or listing into a spreadsheet, now | Instant Data Scraper | | Repeat a multi-page job on one site by hand | Web Scraper or Data Miner | | See and extract a page as it looks in another country | Evomi Web Data | | Run the job every day without your laptop | A cloud scraper with a schedule | | Scrape thousands of pages, or many sites | A cloud scraper | | Send the data to a database, CRM or AI agent | A cloud scraper with an API | Many people use both: an extension to explore a site and work out which fields matter, then a cloud scraper once the job needs to run on its own. ## FAQ ### What is the best web scraper Chrome extension? It depends on the job. Instant Data Scraper is the fastest for a single table, Web Scraper is the best for multi-page jobs you'll repeat, Data Miner has the most ready-made recipes for popular sites, and Evomi Web Data is the one to use when you need a page as it appears in another country. ### Is there a free web scraper Chrome extension? Yes. Instant Data Scraper's listing says it is completely free, and the Web Scraper extension is free to use in your own browser. Data Miner has a free starter plan. For cloud runs, Scrape.ly's Free plan includes $5 of usage every month with no card. ### Can a Chrome extension scrape on a schedule? Not on its own, because it runs only while Chrome is open on your computer. For scheduled scraping you need a cloud service. Scrape.ly runs a saved scraper hourly, daily, weekly or on any cron schedule and can send the results to Google Sheets or a webhook. ### Can a Chrome extension scrape multiple pages? Yes. Web Scraper, Instant Data Scraper and Data Miner all follow pagination. They do it at the speed of your browser and through your own IP, which is fine for tens of pages and slow or blocked for thousands. ### Is web scraping with a Chrome extension legal? Scraping publicly available data is generally legal, but terms of service, personal data rules such as GDPR, and copyright still apply, whatever tool you use. Be most careful with data behind a login and with personal data. ### Can websites detect scraper extensions? They can detect the traffic pattern: many fast page loads from one IP and session. That's why large scrapes from a browser hit CAPTCHAs. Cloud scrapers spread requests across rotating proxies and retry failed pages. About the author [Scrape.ly Team](https://scrape.ly/blog/author/scrapely-team.md) The team behind Scrape.ly Scrape.ly is the web data platform from TeraShift GmbH in Switzerland, powered by Evomi: ready-made scrapers in the Scrape.ly Store, a cloud runtime, an API with JavaScript and Python SDKs, proxies, a hosted anti-bot browser and an MCP server for AI agents. - [Website](https://scrape.ly/index.md) Keep reading ## More in Guides - [![Pixel-art robot with an orange >\_ on its terminal head reaches out to drive a browser window showing the green Puppeteer and the Playwright logos, fed by a cable with data packets from a dark workflow node bearing the pink n8n logo](https://scrape.ly/media/n8n-puppeteer-node.png?w=750)](https://scrape.ly/blog/n8n-puppeteer-node.md) ### [n8n Puppeteer Node: Puppeteer and Playwright in n8n Without Self-Hosting Chrome](https://scrape.ly/blog/n8n-puppeteer-node.md) [The n8n Puppeteer node needs Chromium inside your n8n container and installs only on self-hosted n8n. How it and the Playwright nodes install, where they break, and how to run the same browser scrape on Scrape.ly from n8n instead, with a real tested run.](https://scrape.ly/blog/n8n-puppeteer-node.md) - [![Pixel-art robot with an orange >\_ on its terminal head stands thinking between two matching arcade cabinets, one with the green Puppeteer logo and one with the green Selenium logo, next to a crate bearing the Scrape.ly logo](https://scrape.ly/media/puppeteer-vs-selenium.png?w=750)](https://scrape.ly/blog/puppeteer-vs-selenium.md) ### [Puppeteer vs Selenium for Web Scraping: The Same Scraper in Both](https://scrape.ly/blog/puppeteer-vs-selenium.md) [Puppeteer vs Selenium for web scraping: languages, browsers, protocols, waiting, request blocking and parallel sessions, from the official docs on 28 October 2026, plus the same scraper written in Puppeteer and Selenium and tested on a JavaScript-rendered page.](https://scrape.ly/blog/puppeteer-vs-selenium.md) - [![Pixel-art robot with an orange >\_ on its terminal head reaches up to take a JSON card with curly braces from a hook at the end of a cable that runs from a server rack, an amber bell ringing on top of the rack, a crate beside it](https://scrape.ly/media/webhooks-for-scraping.png?w=750)](https://scrape.ly/blog/webhooks-for-scraping.md) ### [Get Notified When a Scrape Finishes: Webhooks, Slack and Email](https://scrape.ly/blog/webhooks-for-scraping.md) [How to use webhooks for web scraping: get an HTTP call, a Slack or Discord message or an email the moment a scraper run finishes, with the run and dataset IDs to fetch results. Event types, payload templates, retries, a tested Python receiver and the API calls to set it up.](https://scrape.ly/blog/webhooks-for-scraping.md) ## The internet is full of data. Start owning yours. Scrape.ly gives you the infrastructure, the tooling, and the team to extract, process, and operationalize web data at any scale. Setup takes minutes. [Get Started Free](https://my.scrape.ly/register) [Chat with Support](mailto:hello@scrape.ly?subject=Question%20about%20Scrape.ly\&body=Hi%2C%20I%20have%20a%20question%20about%20Scrape.ly.) No credit card. No setup calls.