6 Best Node.js Web Scrapers in 2026

If you’re doing web scraping with JavaScript in 2026, you’ll usually pick between two approaches: fast HTTP requests to grab HTML/JSON, or real browser automation for dynamic web pages that only reveal content after scripts run.

This article covers both camps. Whether you’re building a quick NodeJS web scraper or tackling anti-bot roadblocks, you can choose the right tool and move on.

Quick Summary of Top 6 Node.js Web Scrapers

These days, Node.js web scraping usually splits into two workflows. For speed and scale across multiple pages, you’ll lean on request-first tools (Axios or Superagent) and focus on parsing html. But if your target element only appears after scripts run (I'm talking about dynamic content and JavaScript-heavy sites), you’ll need automation that drives real web browsers with a browser instance (Puppeteer/Playwright), typically in headless mode.

If you’d rather skip managing browsers and proxies yourself, a hosted web scraping API can handle rendering and delivery while your web scraping in JavaScript stays clean and maintainable.

1. Axios

Axios is a promise-based HTTP client that excels when your target URL returns JSON or simple HTML. It’s perfect for making HTTP requests to a web page, checking the status code, and working with a predictable response object. It's an ideal tool for dashboards, internal APIs, or scraping pages that don’t rely on heavy client-side rendering.

Here’s a minimal GET example to fetch HTML content and then extract data:

import axios from "axios";

async function run() {
  const res = await axios.get("https://example.com");
  const html = res.data; // page HTML
  console.log(res.status, html.slice(0, 120));
}
run();

Where Axios struggles is anything that needs a real page load in a browser: think SPAs, content behind script tags, or pages where you must execute JavaScript to see the final DOM. In those cases, you’ll typically jump to a headless browser tool (Puppeteer/Playwright) or a rendering API.

If you prefer a Fetch-style approach, this internal guide on node-fetch is a good companion read.

2. Puppeteer

Puppeteer is a high-level library to automate Chrome (and Firefox via modern protocols), which makes it a go-to for dynamic websites and UI-driven flows. It can drive a graphical user interface or run headless for servers/CI, and it’s famously useful to generate PDFs, take screenshots, or interact with complex components.

To get started with the Node package manager, run the following command (either line works):

# install puppeteer
npm install puppeteer

A basic scraping snippet (note the “real browser” feel):

import puppeteer from "puppeteer";

async function scraper() {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch({ headless: true }); // const browser
  const page = await browser.newPage();                       // const page (browser tab)
  await page.goto("https://example.com", { waitUntil: "networkidle2" }); // await page

  const data = await page.$$eval("h1, h2", els => els.map(e => e.textContent?.trim())); // const data
  console.log({ scrapedData: data }); // scraped data

  await browser.close(); // await browser
}
scraper();

Puppeteer is excellent when you must control Chrome and rely on full JavaScript execution (a.k.a. JS rendering) to see the final page. The tradeoff is a higher compute cost and more moving parts than plain requests.

If you’d rather offload browsers, this tutorial on getting started with ScrapingBee's NodeJS SDKshows an alternative approach.

3. Playwright

Playwright started as a testing tool, but it’s equally popular for scraping because it’s built for automated testing-level reliability: auto-waits, strong selectors, and first-class multi-browser support (Chromium, Firefox, WebKit) from a single API.

If your target web page is sensitive to timing, full of async requests, or relies on heavy network requests, Playwright’s waiting model can reduce flaky scrapers, especially on JS-driven sites. It also handles multiple elements extraction smoothly, but it can consume more system resources than Axios-style approaches.

Example navigation with extraction (using a “tab” variable to avoid confusion):

import { chromium } from "playwright";

(async () => {
  const engine = await chromium.launch();
  const ctx = await engine.newContext();
  const tab = await ctx.newPage();

  await tab.goto("https://example.com");
  const titles = await tab.locator("h2").allTextContents();
  console.log(titles);

  await engine.close();
})();

Playwright is also a strong fit for infinite scrolling feeds and scroll-triggered loading. If that’s your pain point, this tutorial on how to handle infinite scroll pages in NodeJS goes deep on patterns that work.

4. X-Ray

X-Ray is a minimalist Node scraper built around CSS selectors and structured extraction. It’s great for simple data collection across many pages because it was designed with concurrency in mind: fetch, parse, repeat. The big caveat: the npm package has been unchanged for years, so you should treat it as “works for simpler pages, but don’t expect modern browser features.”

A tiny example that grabs headings from a target website and returns all the data you ask for:

const Xray = require("x-ray");
const x = Xray();

const target = "https://example.com"; // target web
x(target, { titles: ["h2"] })((err, obj) => {
  const titles = obj.titles; // const titles
  console.log(titles);
});

This approach is best when your target page is mostly static HTML, and you want quick HTML parsing without spinning up a browser. For pages that require script execution, X-Ray won’t magically render the DOM, so you’ll need a browser-based tool or a rendering API.

For a modern parsing companion, see Cheerio NPM.

5. Osmosis

Osmosis is an older-but-interesting scraper that focuses on chainable workflows: .get(), .find(), .set(), .follow(), and .data() let you express a crawling pipeline in a readable way. It supports HTML/XML/JSON extraction patterns and includes conveniences like pagination helpers and retries.

Here’s a simple “scrape then emit” flow using set() and data():

const osmosis = require("osmosis");

osmosis
  .get("https://example.com")
  .find("article")
  .set({ title: "h2", url: "a@href" }) // html code selectors
  .data(item => {
    console.log(item);
  });

This style can be handy when your scraping setup is basically “crawl a list, follow links, extract fields,” and you want the chain to read like a recipe. As with X-Ray, don’t expect it to handle modern JS-heavy UIs reliably without help.

If you’re scaling crawling, you’ll also want concurrency patterns. This guide on how to make concurrent requests in NodeJS is a strong next step.

6. Superagent

Superagent is a lightweight HTTP client with a fluent API, often paired with Cheerio to do jQuery-like DOM extraction. It’s a sweet spot when you want speed, control, and a familiar jQuery style api for parsing, without paying the “full browser” tax.

Here’s the complete code that fetches a page, parses it, and handles failures:

import superagent from "superagent";
import * as cheerio from "cheerio";

async function run() {
  try {
    const res = await superagent.get("https://example.com");
    const $ = cheerio.load(res.text);
    const headline = $("h1").text().trim();
    console.log(headline);
  } catch (err) {
    console.error("error fetching,,", err); // error handling
  }
}
run();

This is perfect for static pages (or pages where the data is already in the HTML). For sites with aggressive bot detection or heavy script rendering, consider a browser tool—or a hosted rendering + proxy stack.

If proxies are on your roadmap, check out the "How to use a proxy with node-fetch?" guide

Using ScrapingBee With Node.js

Once you move beyond hobby scale, most scraping pain comes from infrastructure: blocks, CAPTCHAs, fingerprints, and the proxy treadmill. ScrapingBee's web scraping API can simplify that by bundling rotating proxies, optional rendering, and higher concurrency, so your Node scraper focuses on extracting fields instead of babysitting browsers.

The current plans start at $49/mo (Freelance) with 250,000 API credits and 10 concurrent requests, and go up to $99/mo (Startup, 1,000,000 credits/50 concurrency) and beyond; there’s also 1,000 free API calls to test without a card.

In practice, this means fewer brittle local browser runs, fewer IP headaches, and faster iteration when you’re pulling Google search results or scraping a JS-heavy target web that would otherwise require running Chrome at scale. It also helps in complex scraping scenarios where rendering, proxies, and retries need to be coordinated, especially if you’re migrating from the previous code that only handled static HTML.

Pick Your Scraper, Not Your Headaches

Axios and Superagent are unbeatable for fast static extraction. Puppeteer and Playwright win when you need real browser behavior. X-Ray and Osmosis are convenient for simple pipelines (with the tradeoff of age). And when your real bottleneck becomes blocking, retries, and scaling, ScrapingBee can handle the infrastructure so your scraper function stays small and maintainable.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Which Node.js scraper is best for beginners?

Start with Axios, Superagent, or Cheerio: they’re straightforward, teach you the basics of requests and parsing, and keep your stack simple. When you hit JavaScript-rendered pages, graduate to Puppeteer or Playwright.

Can I scrape JavaScript-heavy websites with Axios?

Not reliably. Axios downloads raw HTML/JSON but doesn’t run scripts, so it won’t render client-side content on SPAs. If the data isn’t already in the response, use a headless browser (Puppeteer/Playwright) or a rendering service.

How do I handle rate limits and proxies in Node.js scraping?

Throttle concurrency, add retries with backoff, rotate IPs, and vary headers. For production, proxy pools and automatic retry logic save time. Many teams use hosted scraping APIs to manage proxies and consistency while their Node code focuses on extraction.

Should I use Puppeteer or Playwright for large-scale scraping?

Playwright tends to be more robust on tricky timing and cross-browser quirks, while Puppeteer is a classic for Chrome-first automation (and great for PDFs/screenshots). At scale, both can be heavy; plan for orchestration, caching, and resource limits, or offload rendering.