Web scraping tools divide into two general segments:
Partial tools
Complete tools
Partial tools. Partial tools are software for third-party plug-ins. This tool does not provide an API and usually focus on a specific scraping technique, like HTML tables.
A partial tool software may open PDF files, extract eight part or all of its content, and converts pdf to word, excel, and power point.
An example of a partial tool is the Google spreadsheets.
Complete tools. A complete tools are a web scraping services that has the following features for it to be considered as a good alternative:
A friendly and powerful graphical user interface
An API which is easy to use and can link and integrate data
Visual access to websites for data extraction
Has data caching and storage
Rational organization and query management for data extraction
A complete tool or a web scraping software provides the following advantages for users:
Data extraction automation saving time and cost
Retrieves static and dynamic web pages
Transforms page contents of various websites
Formulates vertical aggregation platforms that allows extraction of complicated data from different websites