WebRobot

Cloud Web Scraper for Cloud Based Web Scraping That Runs With Your Laptop Closed

A cloud web scraper runs the job on servers, not on the laptop that built it. With WebRobot you describe the columns in a sentence, a hosted robot reads the site in a real browser every day or every hour, follows pagination, detail pages and logins, and the rows land in Google Sheets, Excel, CSV or a JSON API whether anyone is online or not.

For teams whose browser extension or desktop scraper only works while someone keeps a machine awake. Flat plans from $79 a month.

Run the robot

Robot console

No account needed Running · s Complete · rows

Or try:

Reads one page, up to 25 rows, usually in under a minute.

Agent log

▌

Extracted data ·

The page was read, but none of the data you described is on it. Try describing it the way it reads on the page, or another page.

more rows found on this page. Confirm your email to see every row and download the CSV.

Want this data fresh every morning? A plan runs this robot on a schedule, follows Next pages and feeds Sheets and the API.

Schedule this robot See plans

The difference

One day of the same scraping job on a laptop and in the cloud

The extension run stops when the lid closes. The cloud run does not know the laptop exists.

The run notes are illustrative, but the pattern is the reason people search for cloud scraping. A scheduled job that depends on one person's machine misses the overnight runs, which are exactly the ones that catch a competitor's price change before your team starts work.

Compare

Cloud based web scraper options and what each one bills

Entry prices from each vendor's public pricing page. Every one of these runs in the cloud; the meters and the amount of building you do yourself are what differ.
Tool How you set up a job Entry cloud plan What the meter counts Logins Best for
Web Scraper Cloud Point-and-click sitemap in the Chrome extension, then import to Cloud Project $50 a month ($40 annual), 5,000 URL credits, 2 concurrent scrapers Pages loaded, one URL credit each Yes, log-in feature on every Cloud plan People who already built sitemaps in the free extension
Octoparse Desktop app with templates and a visual workflow Standard $69 a month billed annually ($83 monthly), 3 concurrent cloud processes Tasks and concurrent cloud processes Yes, built in the workflow Analysts comfortable with a desktop builder
ParseHub Desktop app to build projects, runs on ParseHub servers Standard $189 a month, 10,000 pages per run Pages per run and number of projects Yes Complex click paths on older sites
Apify Pick a marketplace actor or write your own code Starter $19 a month plus usage Compute units, proxies and actor fees Depends on the actor Developers and teams who tune actors
WebRobot Paste a URL and describe the columns in plain English Launch $79 a month ($39 billed yearly), 5 robots, 10,000 records, daily runs Records delivered Yes, on Scale ($249) and above Business teams with no one to build or fix selectors

Honest read: if you already have a working sitemap in the Web Scraper extension and the site is simple, importing it into Web Scraper Cloud is the shortest path, and the Webscraper.io pricing breakdown shows what each plan buys. If you would rather not build selectors at all, or the job needs to survive redesigns without anyone re-clicking it, a described robot is the better fit. Octoparse's full plan grid is in Octoparse pricing, and Apify's usage meter in Apify pricing.

Operations desk with a monitor showing a structured table of extracted records next to printed invoices and a product catalog

Delivery

Cloud scraping that ends in your spreadsheet or your database

Running in the cloud is half the job. The other half is getting clean rows to the place your team already works, without someone downloading a file every morning.

  • Google Sheets feed. One IMPORTDATA formula reads the robot's latest run, so the tab updates itself. The Google Sheets web scraper page shows the setup.
  • Excel and CSV. Every run can be downloaded as a workbook with a timestamp, so last Tuesday's prices are still there.
  • JSON API. Your warehouse or app pulls records over REST on every plan. See the web scraping API page for the endpoints.
  • Change alerts. On Scale, a Slack message or webhook fires when a tracked value changes, so nobody scans the sheet for differences.

How it works

From a URL to a scraper in the cloud in four steps

STEP 1

Describe the data

Paste the listing, search or directory URL and write one row in plain English, for example "company, city, phone, website, rating".

STEP 2

Watch a live run

The robot opens the page in a real browser, follows next pages and detail links, and shows you the rows before anything is saved.

STEP 3

Schedule it

Daily on Launch, hourly on Scale, real-time monitors on Autopilot. Runs happen on our servers, so nothing on your side has to stay on.

STEP 4

Connect the output

Point a sheet at the feed, pull JSON from the API, or turn on Slack and webhook alerts for changes.

Build or buy

Running your own web scraper on AWS or Google Cloud

Plenty of teams start here, and for a developer with a stable target it is cheap. A small Python or Node script on a scheduled function costs cents a day in compute. What the cloud bill does not show is the list on the right, which lands on whoever wrote the script.

If that person exists and enjoys the work, keep building. If the scraper is one of many things on a sales, pricing or ops lead's plate, paying for a hosted robot is usually cheaper than the hours, and web scraping services compares the agency route as well.

Headless browser packaging

Chrome does not ship in a serverless function by default. You bundle a trimmed browser layer and keep it in step with your Puppeteer or Playwright version.

Time limits

AWS Lambda stops a function after 15 minutes, so a long crawl has to be split into batches with a queue between them.

Blocking

Cloud provider IP ranges are well known and many retailers refuse them. You add and pay for a proxy service.

Selectors that break

A redesign renames a class and the price column fills with blanks. Someone has to notice and fix the script.

Storage and delivery

Rows need a database or bucket, history, deduplication and an export to wherever the team reads them.

Who uses it

Cloud scraping jobs that cannot wait for someone to open a laptop

Each of these needs a run at a fixed time, every day, with history.

Overnight price checks

Rival prices and stock read at 5 a.m. so the pricing team starts with yesterday's changes, not last week's. See competitor price monitoring.

New listings first

Marketplace and store listings read every hour so new items and sell-outs show up the same day. See ecommerce data scraping.

Weekly lead lists

Directories and maps refreshed every Monday with the qualifying fields reps filter on. See lead scraper.

Listings and price cuts

Brokerage and rental sites read daily per market, with days on market and price drops. See real estate data scraping.

Page change watch

Terms, pricing pages and policy pages checked on a schedule, with an alert when the text moves. See website monitoring.

Portal exports behind a login

Supplier and partner portals you have an account on, read daily into a clean table on Scale. See browser automation.

Sizing

Which plan fits your cloud web scraper job

One row read once is one record. A row re-read every day for a month is 30 records.

about 9,000

records a month

300 product or listing rows read once a day, the job most extension users are trying to automate.

Launch, $79 a month, 5 robots, daily

about 80,000

records a month

100 items read hourly through the working day plus a daily portal export behind a login, with Slack alerts.

Scale, $249 a month, 25 robots, hourly, logins

up to 1,000,000

records a month

Agencies and data teams running 100 robots with real-time monitors and 15 seats.

Autopilot, $699 a month

Yearly billing halves the monthly price ($39, $124 or $349). Every limit is on the pricing page. Still choosing the type of tool? The no code web scraper comparison covers the point-and-click products side by side.

FAQ

Cloud web scraper questions buyers ask

A cloud web scraper runs your scraping jobs on the vendor's servers instead of your own computer. You set the job up once, and it keeps running on a schedule with your laptop closed, stores each run, and sends the rows to a spreadsheet, storage bucket or API. Browser extensions and desktop apps, by contrast, stop when your machine sleeps.

Yes. You can rent a hosted scraper that runs on its own servers, or run your own code on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure. The hosted route handles browsers, proxies, retries and scheduling for you. The do-it-yourself route is cheaper per page but leaves the script, the headless browser, the scheduler and the fixes after every site redesign with your team.

It depends on who will own the job. Developers who want raw pages per request do well with an API such as Apify or ScraperAPI. Teams that want a point-and-click builder often pick Octoparse or Web Scraper Cloud. Business teams that want named columns delivered daily without building selectors fit WebRobot, which takes a plain-English description and runs it in the cloud.

Paid cloud plans start around $19 to $100 a month. Apify Starter is $19 plus usage, Web Scraper Cloud's Project plan is $50 for 5,000 pages, Octoparse Standard is $69 a month billed annually, and WebRobot Launch is $79 for 10,000 records with daily runs. Volume, JavaScript rendering and residential proxies push the bill up on metered plans.

Yes, by importing the same sitemap into Web Scraper Cloud, which is a paid service. The free extension only scrapes while your browser is open on your computer. Cloud adds scheduling, the API, proxies, exports to Sheets or S3 and data quality alerts, and bills one URL credit for each page it loads.

Less often than a script on an office IP, because good cloud scrapers rotate IP addresses, pace their requests and retry failed pages. They are not immune. Sites with strict bot protection can still refuse traffic, and a polite scraper should slow down rather than hammer them. WebRobot paces requests like a person and honors robots.txt on every site it reads.

Collecting publicly available data is generally lawful in the US, and the hiQ v. LinkedIn rulings narrowed how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act applies to public pages. Site terms of service, copyright and privacy laws still apply, and logins change the picture. Scrape what you are allowed to access and read the site's terms before you schedule anything.

Many can. On WebRobot Scale and above, a robot signs in to an account you own, then walks the pages behind the login on its schedule. Use it only on accounts and sites you are authorized to access, and prefer an official export or API where the site offers one.

Put the scraper on a server and close the laptop

Describe the columns, check a live run, and get rows in Sheets, Excel or the API on schedule. Plans from $79 a month.