Choose Web Scraper when you need many pages of a site collected with a reusable configuration, and you are comfortable working in a developer-tools panel. Choose Pulse Extractor when you want the page in front of you structured in one click, plus capture, text recognition or editable Office documents.
Side by side
The Web Scraper column restates what Web Scraper publishes about itself; each statement links to its source. The Pulse column describes Pulse Extractor 0.5.8, the current Chrome Web Store release.
| Web Scraper | Pulse Extractor | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | Build a sitemap of selectors in a Chrome developer-tools panel[1] | Open the page and click Extract Page. No selectors, recipes or robots to build; repeated items are detected whether or not they are a table |
| Scope | Multiple pages and dynamic pages, including JavaScript and infinite scroll[2] | One page at a time, when you click. Pulse does not follow next-page buttons, crawl a site or run on a schedule. Extract Page reads the rows a page has drawn; large tables that load as you scroll come out in full with the large-table export (Live in 0.5.8) |
| Output | CSV or XLSX[3] | A genuine .xlsx workbook with typed cells (several worksheets where the page has several tables), plus CSV and JSON from the same result. Also Word, PowerPoint, PDF report |
| Price | Free extension; paid Web Scraper Cloud with a 7-day free trial[4] | Free plan, no card (20 Full-Page Captures, 20 Smart Snips and 20 Page Extractions a month); Starter $12 a month or $120 a year, Pro $29, Intelligence $59. Lite $6.99 a month or $69 a year |
| Images, capture, documents | Not described in its listing[5] | Smart Snip reads text and tables inside images, on your own computer, in English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian, with Arabic and Traditional Chinese in Beta; it also opens PNG, JPEG, WebP and PDF files from your computer. Capture Full Page saves the whole page as one high-resolution PNG or a multi-page PDF (Live in 0.5.8) |
What Web Scraper says it does
People who will set up a reusable scraper once and run it across many pages of a site, locally or in the cloud.
- You build a "sitemap" of selectors in a panel inside Chrome developer tools that tells it how to move through a site and what to extract.[1]
- Scrapes multiple pages and dynamic pages, including JavaScript, AJAX and infinite scroll.[2]
- Exports scraped data as CSV or XLSX.[3]
- The extension is free; Web Scraper Cloud is a paid, managed service for running scrapers at scale, with a 7-day free trial.[4]
- Listed on the Chrome Web Store at version 1.111.13, updated 15 July 2026, with about 900,000 users.[6]
- Does not describe text recognition from images, screenshots, or Word and PowerPoint export.[5]
Choose Web Scraper when
- You need many pages of a site collected by a reusable configuration
- You are comfortable building selectors in a developer-tools panel
- You want to move the same job to a scheduled cloud service later
Choose Pulse Extractor when
- You want the page in front of you structured in one click, with nothing to configure
- You need a capture, text recognition or editable Office documents as well as rows
- The job changes from page to page, so a saved scraper would rarely be reused
See what Pulse produced on real public pages, with the original files, in the Proof Lab.
Using both
A configured scraper pays off when the same job runs again and again. Pulse pays off when every page is a different job. If you do both kinds of work, use each where it is strongest.
How this comparison was made
We read Web Scraper's own public pages and store listing on and restated only what they say, in our own words, with a link to each source. We did not test Web Scraper, so its column reports its claims, not our measurements. Products change: check the sources before you decide, and tell us if something here is out of date.
Web Scraper (webscraper.io) is a trademark of its owner. Pulse Extractor is a separate product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Web Scraper.
Questions
Do I need to learn selectors to use Pulse?
No. Pulse has nothing to configure: open the page and click Extract Page.
Can Pulse run a scraper across a whole site?
No. Pulse works on the page you are viewing, when you click. Web Scraper lists multi-page scraping and a cloud service for that.
Which one exports a real Excel file?
Both list XLSX. Pulse also produces Word, PowerPoint, a PDF report, CSV and JSON from the same result.
Sources
- Web Scraper: Chrome Web Store listing, checked
- Web Scraper: Chrome Web Store listing, checked
- Web Scraper: Chrome Web Store listing, checked
- Web Scraper: webscraper.io/pricing, checked
- Web Scraper: Chrome Web Store listing, checked
- Web Scraper: Chrome Web Store listing, checked