Top 10 Web Scraping Practice Sites (2023)

Justin Shin

Are you looking to test your web scraping practical skills and looking for the best sites to test it out? Then read the article below to discover the best sites to practice web scraping.

Table Of Contents

Overview of Top 10 Web Scraping Practice Sites

Top 10 Web Scraping Practice Sites (Best Websites For Web Scraping)

Website Category Key Practice Areas
Toscrape General Varying difficulty, great overall practice
Scrapethissite General HTML, JavaScript, AJAX scraping
Reddit Forum/Discussion Posts, comments, metadata
Yahoo! Finance Finance Financial data, stocks
Google Search Engine Results pages, search data
Wikipedia Encyclopedia Structured data, IDs, properties
Indeed Job Listings Job posts, salaries, descriptions
Amazon E-commerce Products, pricing, reviews
Realtor Real Estate Listings, property data
Yelp Reviews/Directory Business info, reviews, ratings

In today's data-driven society, web scraping has become an essential skill. We can use it to automatically extract useful information from websites, giving us the ability to conduct analysis, make decisions based on data, and get insights.

Hence, web scraping practice is essential if you want to improve your abilities in this regard. Several connection requests coming from a single IP address could trigger some of the websites you are targeting to scrape. That means you may encounter a block or ban. Fortunately, some websites provide sandboxes for web scraping practices.

However, a fundamental understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is required in order to execute web scraping. This is so because they are the fundamental technologies used in building websites. In this article, I’ll be taking you through a few practice websites I used myself. We'll be looking at the top ten web scraping practice sites where you can hone your skills and get useful data for a variety of use cases.

1. Toscrape – Best Overall Web Scraping Practice Site

Toscrape is a fantastic web scraping sandbox that anyone can use to practice web scraping. It's a secure environment where both developers and beginners can test their web scraping tools. You can test out different scraping methods in this safe environment without being concerned about the legal implications or breaking any website terms of service.

It's one of the most recognized and, arguably, the best overall to test your web scraping technologies on. When I first started out, I did use it, and it was really useful. There are two parts to Toscrape. The first is a made-up bookstore with thousands of books for you to scrape through. The second is a collection of inspirational quotes.

As a result, it is frequently used as a test site for several web scraping methods. You can practice using real-world examples on books.toscrape.com to improve your data extraction skills. You would be able to extract information about costs, titles, authors, etc. Popular libraries such as Requests and Beautiful Soup can be quite helpful in this context.

This is because the website is fully static. On the other side, Quotes.toscrape.com presents numerous endpoints with tricky challenges. It can be used to learn how to log in and extract information from JavaScript-built websites. Especially those that make use of delayed rendering and lazy loading. For this section, a headless browser may be required.

2. Scrapethissite – Best Substitute to Toscrape

Scrapethissite is another excellent sandbox for learning web scraping, much like Toscrape. It is a custom-built website that is used by web scraping enthusiasts as a training ground. It provides a variety of web pages with various structures and data types, making it the perfect platform for developing your scraping skills. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced scraper, Scrapethissite gives you the chance to take on real scraping scenarios.

Numerous pages on Scrapethissite provide static material, like lists of hockey teams, country facts, and Oscar-winning movies. This website is also a wonderful resource for learning how to scrape dynamically generated content using JavaScript for more complex data retrieval. As such, Scrapethissite helps you practice how to handle logins, use session cookies, and spoof headers.

Additionally, you can practice looking for CSRF tokens and other common network issues. Additionally, you can learn to write Python scripts that search through the HTML structure, extract relevant data, and then save it in a structured format like CSV or JSON. Scrapethissite offers a great chance to study and practice online scraping methods in a safe environment.

3. Reddit – Best Practice Site  for Scraping a Forum

One of the biggest and most widely used social media platforms today is Reddit. It has a lot of data that can be tapped into for research, analysis, and insight. So, if you're looking for a forum to hone your web scraping techniques, I do suggest getting your hands messy on Reddit. Reddit is divided into "subreddits," or communities, each of which focuses on a particular subject.

Users publish text, links, pictures, and videos, and other users can participate by commenting and voting. Interestingly, you can determine the data you wish to scrape by simply becoming familiar with Reddit's fundamental elements.

The possibilities are endless when you scrape a forum. Who knows? It might help you develop some unique strategies for marketing, gain a more thorough understanding of demographics, or perhaps come up with a profitable business idea. Additionally, Reddit comments offer valuable insight and viewpoints. You can also learn how to retrieve user-related data using Reddit.

For instance, usernames, the date an account was created, and karma ratings. This opens up possibilities for user behavior analysis. You should be aware, though, that since Reddit's redesign, scraping hasn't been as straightforward as it used to be. So, for practice, I do suggest using the old layout at old.reddit.com.

4. Yahoo! Finance – Best Practice Site for Scraping Updated Finance Records

One popular website for financial information is Yahoo! Finance. In addition to stock prices and company details, it offers a wealth of market and investment-related data. This huge database has millions of recent financial records that contain the most up-to-date data. As such, it provides a perfect platform for learning web scraping techniques for financial data from the real world.

Tracking price movements, pulling financial statement and stock data, and performing a bit of number crunching are all possible. Due to the fact that all the elements are in tables and are located on different pages, the website's layout makes it simple to do text scraping. You can thus leverage this website to practice scraping tables and charts.

To help with tasks like calculating your stock returns, I'd advise formatting your web data into a CSV file format or an Excel Spreadsheet. Particularly if you want to perform the calculation in Python. It is also possible to develop trading models, do investment research, and perform financial analysis using data that has been scraped from Yahoo! Finance. You can learn how to scrape dynamic data and deal with anti-scraping methods by practicing on financial websites.

5. Google – Best Practice Sites for Scraping a Search Engine Data

Google holds a significant amount of data that can be scraped and examined because it is the most widely used search engine. Google may soon develop a machine learning system so sophisticated that it can comprehend its users' needs and wants better than their friends and family. This is why it remains one of the best search engines for honing your web scraping skills.

There are a few things to keep in mind, though. While it's generally acceptable to scrape publicly available data from Google, it's important to read the website's terms of service. Therefore, it's essential to comprehend the ethical and legal implications before using Google to practice web scraping skills. This prevents the possibility of scraping confidential or protected information.

Additionally, while practicing, watch out for overtaxing the website's servers with your scraping activity. Thus, using Google to practice web scraping can provide a variety of useful information and data. You should be aware that you might need some level of programming skills to conduct web scraping on Google. It would give you leverage.

6. Wikipedia – Best for Scraping Data with Properties and Ids

Wikipedia is one of the biggest online information databases. It is an excellent source of information on a huge variety of subjects. Hence, there is a wealth of information available on it that can be gleaned from it. Hence, you can improve your skills by web scraping on Wikipedia, whether you're an aspiring data scientist, researcher, or just curious.

It gives you the opportunity to learn how to extract article titles, synopses, content, and citations. You also get to examine the way that articles are linked together. Wikipedia is a great platform to gain some experience because the majority of the content there is already in HTML5 format. The easiest way to learn how to work with IDs and properties is to use them via this website.

You can develop your skills in scraping tables, images, and graphs just like on Reddit and Yahoo! Finance. However, you should know that if your scraper moves too fast, you risk having the connection blocked. Therefore, before beginning to practice scraping on Wikipedia, consistently review the terms of service and the legality of web scraping.

7. Indeed – Best for Job Scraping

Indeed is the best option if you want to try out a job listing platform. It's one of the major job search engines, and it provides millions of job ads from different fields and locations. On Indeed, job seekers can create free personal profiles, upload resumes, and view open positions.

In order to practice job scraping, Indeed offers one of the best and most comprehensive repositories of data linked to employment, including job titles, descriptions, locations, incomes, and many more. You can potentially learn useful information about hiring patterns, salary standards, and the necessary skills needed for certain professions by scraping data from Indeed.

Besides, HR professionals, researchers, potential job hoppers, and job seekers interested in hiring and the labor market all significantly value job data. Indeed has grown to be a popular and reliable resource for both job seekers and companies. I believe, as a beginner, this website would help you sharpen your scraping abilities, having practiced with it myself.

8. Amazon – Best for Scraping Ecommerce Website

Amazon is one of the most often targeted websites for web scraping. It also happens to be the best e-commerce site for learning web scraping. This is because it is the biggest online marketplace in the world. You can practice using this website to extract useful data from Amazon's vast catalog, including product specifications, user reviews, pricing information, and other relevant details.

Your examination of the Amazon website will teach you how to manage dynamic web pages and pagination. This website would be a work over, especially if you have mastered web scraping pagination with Toscrape and Scrapethissite. However, like with other platforms like Google and Wikipedia, leveraging Amazon to perform web scraping operations could result in legal problems and possible repercussions.

It can be a block or a legal action against your scraper. Either way, it's important to remember that web scraping ought to be done professionally and ethically. You are required to abide by the terms of service for the website and refrain from engaging in any illegal activity.

9. Realtor – Best for scraping real estate data

In the United States, Realtor.com is a popular online real estate marketplace. It provides a platform for connecting and facilitating real estate transactions between homebuyers, sellers, tenants, and real estate professionals. The website offers thorough real estate listings, including details on selling dates, houses and apartments for rent, and other properties.

Users can use several search criteria, including location, cost category, number of bedrooms, and more, to find homes, condominiums, land, and other sorts of properties. Realtor.com is a wonderful place to prepare for web scraping because it is so simple to use.

Given the massive amount of data on this platform, you can now see that this is an excellent website for learning and practicing the best techniques for extracting real estate data. For a better data extraction experience, you would also need to spend some time studying the HTML structure of the platform, just like with every other website I've covered so far.

10. Yelp – Best to Practice Scraping Directories

Yelp is undoubtedly a platform with a sizable database that is excellent for developing your web scraping skills. It is essentially a website and mobile app that offers evaluations and recommendations from the general public for a variety of local companies, including print shops, restaurants, cafes, pubs, shops, salons, and a ton of other services.

Users of Yelp can search for local businesses and read reviews and ratings left by other users. In order to assist others in making informed decisions regarding where to eat, buy, or travel, users can also add their own reviews, images, and ratings. Fundamentally, the platform offers details about companies, such as their address, phone number, website, and, if necessary, their operating hours.

This is a fantastic tool for practicing directory scraping, as I can attest from personal experience. If you need to scrape data for things like competitor analysis, price assessment, and sentimental analysis, this is an excellent place to start. So, if you haven't scraped this website, I suppose it's about time you did.

FAQs

Q. What Websites Are Easy to Scrape?

There are several websites that are simple to scrape, especially Toscrape, Scrapethissite, Google, Reddit, and others. Two of them are web scraping sandboxes built to practice web scraping. These help to establish a favorable environment for learning how to scrape the web. In the aforementioned section, I spoke about a few of them. It is important to keep in mind that some of these websites have restrictions, so it is only appropriate to read the terms of use before continuing.

Q. Is Web Scraping Permitted on All Websites?

There are some websites that permit scraping and some that do not. For instance, you would need to study the terms of service of services like Wikipedia and Google before scraping them. By adding "/robots.txt" to the end of the URL of the website you want to scrape, you can determine whether it supports web scraping. However, regardless of whether a service permits it or not, it has been ruled that scraping publicly available data is generally legal provided you didn't cause any harm to the service. On your own part, you only need to be polite on your scraping targets.

Q. Are The Data from These Practice Web Scraping Websites Really Useful?

Yes, the extracted data from these practice websites can be great for other analytical purposes. For instance, Yahoo! Finance is a very good place to gather financial data. Most of the data is up-to-date. However, what is important are the use cases for which you scraped the data. If you take a look at the list, you will that the sites have been selected across different categories,  most of which are real sites you get real data, not dummy data. Aside from the ToScrape and ScrapeThisSite, all the other sites are big sites that millions of users visit monthly for their respective tasks.

Conclusion

As was already mentioned, practice is a must if you want to become an expert in the field of web scraping. As such, I've listed some of the best websites for honing your craft. You'll see that I chose them with attention to various use cases and scenarios. The purpose is to make it easier for you to comprehend various website layouts and what to watch out for when data is being scraped for particular industries or use cases. I'm hoping this information will help you out as you begin your web scraping training and projects.

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