The Magpie blog, page 2
Field tests of scraping tools, APIs and extensions — run against real targets, priced at 1,000 pages, with every breakage noted and every $0 ceiling stated as a number.
Best Social Media Scrapers (2026) + What's Legal to Collect
Eight social media scrapers we ran or verified for October 2026, with real prices, live-test results, and the legal lines on public data, logins, GDPR.
Motherlode Lab · · 14 min read
Web Scraping Pricing: What You Actually Pay (2026)
Web scraping pricing in 2026, checked against vendor pages: credit multipliers, no-code burn rates, and the flat licences that ignore page counts.
Motherlode Lab · · 9 min read
25 Web Scraping Project Ideas (Beginner to Advanced)
25 web scraping project ideas ranked by the skill they teach, each with a data source that works, a definition of done, and the trap that kills it.
Motherlode Lab · · 14 min read
Web Scraping Services: Pricing and When You Don't Need One
Web scraping service prices verified from vendor pages, October 2026: $19 APIs, $99 managed plans, $8,000 retainers, and five tests for when you need none.
Motherlode Lab · · 14 min read
Web Scraping Statistics (2026): Every Number Sourced
Web scraping statistics for 2026: bot traffic share, market size, AI crawler growth, and court outcomes. Every number dated and linked to its source.
Motherlode Lab · · 10 min read
Best Web Scraping Tools in 2026 (Tested & Compared)
Nine scraping tools compared on real sites with prices checked this month - Bright Data, Apify, Octoparse, Diffbot, and the local-first pick.
Motherlode Lab · · 14 min read
Best Web Scraping APIs in 2026 (Pricing & Benchmarks)
Seven web scraping APIs benchmarked on independent success-rate data and 2026 pricing, plus a local option when the data can't leave your machine.
Motherlode Lab · · 13 min read
Best Free Web Scrapers (2026): Free Tools That Actually Work
Free web scrapers compared by their real $0 ceilings: open source tools, free tiers, and extensions. What each does before the meter starts running.
Motherlode Lab · · 13 min read
Best Web Scraper Chrome Extensions (2026)
Six web scraper Chrome extensions compared on live store data, real pricing, and failure modes, plus the point where a desktop scraper beats any extension.
Motherlode Lab · · 13 min read