I need to scrape thousands of product pages. What tool should I use?

For thousands of product pages, the best tool depends on whether the pages are static or JavaScript-rendered:

Best default choice: Python + Scrapy

Use Scrapy if:

• the pages are mostly HTML in the initial response
• you need speed and scale
• you want built-in crawling, retries, throttling, and data export

Why it’s good:

• very fast for large-scale scraping
• handles thousands/millions of pages well
• easy to add pipelines for cleaning and saving data
• supports concurrency out of the box

If the site uses JavaScript heavily: Playwright

Use Playwright if:

• product data loads after page render
• content depends on clicks, scrolling, or API calls
• you need to interact with the page like a browser

For many projects, a good setup is:

• Scrapy for crawling
• Playwright only for pages that require JS

If you want something no-code / low-code:

• Apify — good hosted scraping platform
• Octoparse or ParseHub — easier, but less scalable/flexible

My recommendation

• Static pages: Scrapy
• JS-heavy pages: Playwright
• Large-scale mixed sites: Scrapy + Playwright

If you want, I can recommend the best tool for your specific site if you tell me:

1. whether the pages need JavaScript,
2. how many pages you need,
3. whether you want code or no-code.