The 6 Best Facebook Scraping Tools of 2024

Is it Legal to Scrape Facebook?

Websites, especially social media platforms, make it their life’s mission to fight against web scrapers. So, many think that automated data collection is illegal. That’s not really the case: web scraping is legal, but there are several things to know before collecting data from Facebook.

In essence, you can scrape only publicly available Facebook data that’s not subject to intellectual property rights. Several legal cases have highlighted the contentious nature of web scraping. But each web scraping case is individual, so if you’re not sure about yours, it’s better to seek legal advice.

How Does Facebook Identify You?

Facebook uses a range of techniques to detect and block web scrapers. Here are some methods to keep an eye out:

IP address monitoring. Facebook tracks the number of requests coming from a single IP address and your location. This helps to monitor unusual activity that may indicate automated scraping tools.
Dynamic content loading. Instead of rendering all the data in the HTML response, Facebook loads data via JavaScript once the page is loaded in the browser. Facebook can see whether your browser executes JavaScript before loading the page. And bots usually skip this step.
Digital fingerprint monitoring. A digital fingerprint consists of various data points from your device and browser like browser type and version, operating system, screen resolution. By comparing these parameters across sessions, Facebook can identify when the same device or browser is being used, even if you switch your IP addresses.

What Is the Best Facebook Scraping Tool?

There’s no universal tool that is the best for Facebook web scraping. But we’ll break them down into three major categories based on the setup difficulty:

Pre-made web scrapers are designed for users with little to no programming skills. They come with a visual interface where you can point, click, and define what data you want to scrape. No-code tools are quick to set up, and you won’t need to write any code. However, they’re often less customizable and not as robust as the other approaches.
Alternatively, you can get a web scraping API or proxy API. With just a few lines of code, you can send a request to the API, which then manages the scraping process, automatically handling proxies and unblocking mechanisms. The main distinction between a web scraping API and a proxy API is that the latter integrates as a proxy server.
The most advanced way is to build your own Facebook scraper. You can create a tool tailored to your specific needs. Custom-built scrapers give you complete control over the entire scraping process. However, this approach requires handling proxy rotation, CAPTCHAs, and other challenges.

The Best Facebook Scraping Tools in 2024

1. Bright Data

The most robust Facebook scrapers.

9.3/10 ★

Add up to $500 to your account and get double the amount.

Locations: global with city & country targeting
Pricing model: based on successful requests
Data parsing: yes, with Web Scraper API and Web Scraper IDE
Free trial: 7 days free trial for business clients
Pricing:

– Web Scraper IDE: $4/1K requests (standard domains) or $8/1K requests (premium domains)
– Web Unlocker: $3/1,000 requests
– Web Scraper API: $1/CPM

When it comes to web scraping Facebook, Bright Data will cover all aspects of your project. It has three robust scrapers that work almost without fail.

The provider offers a dedicated Facebook Scraper API that comes with three available templates: Facebook Comment Scraper, Facebook Posts Scraper, and Facebook Reels Scraper. The tool has a no-code interface, and you can retrieve results in multiple formats. The scraper is able to parse data, handle multiple requests at once, and there’s no usage limits.

If you prefer proxy-like integration, go with Bright Data’s Web Unlocker. It’s a general-purpose web scraper that can scrape Facebook data. You can easily place a designated endpoint in your existing code, just like with any of Bright Data’s proxy networks.

Bright Data also offers a powerful cloud-based environment – Web Scraping IDE – for large-scale Facebook scraping. It comes with pre-built scraping functions and code templates. You can customize your tasks however you like, but a heads up – the tool isn’t beginner-friendly, and it locks you into the platform.

All Bright Data’s services come with one of the largest residential proxy networks with over 72 million IPs, extensive documentation, and great usage tracking.

For more information and performance tests, read our Bright Data review.

2. Smartproxy

Affordable and performant Facebook scrapers.

9.3/10 ★

Try 100 MB for free.

Locations: 195 with country-level targeting.
Pricing model: based on successful requests (both) or traffic (Site Unlocker)
Data parsing: ability to specify selectors for Web Scraping API
Free trial: 7 days
Pricing:

– Site Unblocker: $50 for 25K requests ($2/1K requests)
– Web Scraping API: $28 for 2GB ($14/GB) or $34 for 15K requests ($2.25/1K requests)

Smartproxy is the provider to choose if you’re looking for well-maintained products at affordable prices. It doesn’t have a dedicated Facebook scraper but offers robust general-purpose tools – Web Scraping API and Site Unblocker.

Web Scraping API supports two API methods: synchronous and asynchronous. The synchronous method provides real-time data, while the asynchronous method uses a callback function, so you can retrieve data later without maintaining an open connection.

Site Unblocker integrates as a proxy server and has all the necessary Facebook unblocking features. The biggest benefit is Smartproxy’s versatile pricing: you can pay for successful requests or traffic.

The provider puts a lot of effort into the user interface. Its services are easy to set up and use. Both scrapers have wide location coverage – you can target any country from 195 locations. There’s also an API playground for live testing, 24/7 customer support, and great documentation.

For more information and performance tests, read our Smartproxy review.

3. Zyte API

Facebook scraper for developers.

8.8/10 ★

Locations: 150 with automatic country selection
Pricing model: based on optional features
Data parsing: no
Free trial: $5 credit
Pricing: custom

Zyte offers a general-purpose web scraper that you can use to scrape Facebook. The tool primarily targets developers, but the provider’s team is working on a no-code interface.

The scraper primarily integrates as an HTTP API. The provider supports proxy-like integration, but it doesn’t include features like browser rendering. What’s more, there’s a plug-in for Scrapy and an asyncio-based Python library as alternative integration methods.

Zyte’s API can render pages like a browser, execute browser instructions, and includes a dashboard playground that generates code snippets based on selected parameters. Enterprise clients can access a cloud-hosted Visual Studio Code environment to write complete automation scripts.

Zyte uses a dynamic pricing model that calculates the cost of requests based on factors like website difficulty, residential proxies, and headless browsers.

For more information and performance tests, read our Zyte API review.

4. ScraperAPI

Facebook scraper with many integration options.

Locations: 12 (50+ available upon request)
Pricing model: based on successful requests & optional features
Data parsing: no
Free trial: 7-day free trial with 5,000 requests
Pricing: Starts from $49/100,000 API credits

ScraperAPI is another general-purpose scraper for Facebook scraping.

ScraperAPI provides detailed examples of web scraping with Python, PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, and Java programming languages. Also, unlike other providers, ScraperAPI has four integration methods: proxy server, library/SDK, and two API methods (open connection and asynchronous). The asynchronous option supports batch requests, though the tool lacks a built-in Facebook parser.

ScraperAPI offers a free plan with 1,000 API credits per month and up to 5 concurrent connections. While this might not be enough for extensive use, it can help you get started. If that’s not enough, a 7-day free trial with 5,000 requests is available.

However, residential proxies come as a paid feature, and JavaScript rendering consumes more credits. This means that the total cost of the scraper will grow once you enable these modifiers.

5. Crawlbase

Affordable Facebook scrapers.

Locations: 30 with country-level targeting.
Pricing model: based on successful requests & optional features
Data parsing: yes
Free trial: 1000-5000 requests depending on the product
Pricing:

– Crawling API: $0.3/1 request or $0.6/1 request if you enable JS
– Smart Proxy: $99/ month for 200K credits

Crawlbase has two general-purpose Facebook web scrapers: Crawling API and Smart Proxy.

Crawling API is an HTTP API. It can scrape publicly available Facebook pages and crawl data like news feeds, search results, and public groups. The tool can take screenshots of an entire Facebook page if you need to track any visual changes. For larger scraping tasks, you can use the API with asynchronous callbacks to reduce bandwidth.

If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, go with Crawlbase’s Smart Proxy. It has similar parameters as Crawling API. However, cheaper plans lock some features. Once you sign up for the tool, you’ll get 5,000 credits free of charge.

Crawlbase is one of the cheaper providers, but modifiers like JavaScript rendering double the price.

6. Apify

No-code Facebook Scraper.

Locations: unknown
Pricing model: based on usage
Data parsing: yes
Free trial: a free plan with $5 platform credits is available
Pricing: monthly plans starting from $49 with $49 platform credits and 30 shared datacenter proxies.

Apify has a strong focus on no-code web scraping. It offers many pre-made templates for scraping Facebook like pages, posts, ads scraper, and more.

If you can’t find the template you need, there’s an option to build your own. The provider also has various scraper templates in Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript. Alternatively, you can write it from scratch using an open-source library Crawlee.

Apify provides two web scraping methods: URL or search term. You can see the results in the provider’s dashboard. You can also choose in which format to download your Facebook data: CSV, Excel spreadsheet, JSON, JSONL, HTML table, or XML.

Apify uses a credit-based pricing model. Features like residential proxies cost an additional $10 per GB. Otherwise, each plan includes datacenter IPs at no extra cost.