Are you looking for the best web scraper to scrape data from Patreon? Then come in and discover some of the best Patreon scrapers that you can use in the market right now.
Overview of Patreon Scrapers
- Data Collector — Overall Best Patreon Scraper
- Octoparse — Best Patreon Scraper for Non-coder
- Apify Patreon Scraper — Best Patreon Scraper for Coders
- ScraperAPI — Best Scraping API for Patreon
- Helium Scraper — Best One-Time Payment Option
It is no news that data is highly important for decision-making in the 21st century and the Internet is one of the largest sources. Each website of value on the Internet has data available on it that can be useful for businesses, coders, and decision-makers.
Patreon, the website for creators to earn from their work is no exception. Patreon has publicly available data about creators, posts, follower count, and membership details. These are important to the creators themselves as well as those interested in creators' data on Patreon.
Whichever you are, you will agree with me that except if you are dealing with one creator or a few more, collecting required data manually can not only be tiring and error-prone but could be impossible as the number of creators in question grows. It is for this reason that Patreon scrapers were introduced — to make the process fast, making it possible for you to collect as much data as you need.
In this article, we will take a look at some of the best Patreon scrapers in the market. But before that, let’s take a look at an overview of Patreon scrapers.
Patreon Scrapers — An Overview
Patreon might not be in the league of the likes of Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity. However, it is not one to overlook. This creators platform has over 250K creators earning over 100M USD monthly. There are over 8 million users on the platforms.
These creators and their associated memberships and other data are valuable to those that need them. The Patreon platform is like every other popular web platform — you are not allowed to scrape data from it. And it does have an anti-spam system in place to discourage automated access.
For you to scrape data from Patreon, you will need to use web scrapers that are undetectable. This is important as Patreon scrapers if not well-engineered can reveal themselves quickly because of the too many requests they send. You will need proxies to get as many IP addresses as you require to avoid getting blocked. With residential proxies, you can collect the creator's details you need without getting blocked.
Best Patreon Scrapers
In this section, we’ll be taking a look at some of the best web scrapers you can use to scrape data from the Patreon platform. These Patreon scrapers can be used to scrape publicly available data such as creator details, membership details, and posts, among others. Some of the Patreon scrapers here are meant for coders while some are for non-coders.
1. Data Collector — Overall Best Patreon Scraper
- Pricing: Starts at $350 for 100K page loads
- Free Trials: Available
- Data Output Format: Excel
- Supported Platforms: web-based
Data Collector is one of the brainchildren of Bright Data, a leading proxy and data platform. Data Collector is a collection of web scrapers with each specifically meant for a target. Patreon scraper is one of the included web scrapers. With the Patreon scraper in Data Collector, you can scrape Patreon data to see what your competitor is doing, get new content ideas, and even gain new membership.
This Patreon scraper will help you collect all publicly available data including posts, membership details, and follower counts. One good thing you will come to like about Data Collector is that it does not require you to write a single line of code to make use of it. Interestingly, it also does offer an API that coders could utilize making it perfect for both coders and non-coder.
2. Octoparse — Best Patreon Scraper for Non-coder
- Pricing: Starts at $75 per month
- Free Trials: 14 days of free trial with limitations
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, SQLServer
- Supported Platform: Cloud, Desktop
Octoparse is another web scraper of choice you can use for scraping data from Patreon. Unlike in the case of Data Collector which is completely available as a web tool, you will need to install Octoparse on your computer. Octoparse is available for both Windows and macOS. One thing you will come to like about Octoparse is the point-and-click interface provided by Octoparse. With this, you point to and select the important data point on the Patreon webpage in other to train it on the data to scrape.
This point and select operations would then mean no coding is required. This makes it perfect for those that are non-coders and do not have technical skills. Octoparse is a general-purpose web scraper. Aside from Patreon, you can use it to scrape data from all kinds of websites including modern Ajaxified webpages.
3. Apify Patreon Scraper — Best Patreon Scraper for Coders
- Pricing: Starts at $49 per month for 100 Actor compute units
- Free Trials: Starter plan comes with 10 Actor compute units
- Data Output Format: JSON
If you are a coder looking to download posts on Patreon then the Apify Patreon Scraper is the web scraper for you to use. This Patreon scraper is made available on the Apify platform. Apify is a web automation and web scraping platform. On this platform, you get web scrapers named actors to help fasten your project execution.
This Apify actor can be used to collect post information with JSON as the output format. You can actually make use of this actor from the web interface. However, to use in your code, you will need to install the Apify client library. This is available for both NodeJS and Python. Unlike in the case of Data Collector, you will need to purchase proxies to use successfully scrape using Apify. You will also have to pay for this actor but there is a trial offer available.
4. Scrapestorm — Best AI-Powered Patreon Scraper
- Pricing: Starts at $49.99 per month
- Free Trials: Starter plan is free – comes with limitations
- Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, MySQL, Google Sheets, etc.
- Supported Platforms: Desktop, Cloud
ScrapeStorm is a visual web scraper that makes use of the point-and-click operation — just like Octoparse. This makes it a good alternative to the Octoparse tool and in a good way. First, Octoparse does not have support for Linux, just Windows and macOS. Also, Scrapestorm has the advantage of being Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered. With this, it is not all the time you will have to use the point-and-click interface as it can automatically identify important data points on a page.
It is one of the web scrapers to use for scraping publicly available data from Patreon web pages. If you are looking for a web scraper that supports multiple export formats, then ScrapeStorm is the pick. It does support TXT, CSV, Excel, HTML, and some database systems, among others.
5. Patreon Scraper — Best Browser Extension for Scraping Patreon
- Pricing: Starts at $15 monthly
- Free Trials: Not available
- Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel
- Supported Platforms: Chrome extension
The Patreon Scraper is available as a browser extension on the Chrome store. This means that you can only use it on Chrome. As a browser extension, you can scrape posts from Patreon users. This scraper is not meant for scraping Patreon when you have hundreds of Patreon users as the target. This is because a good number of manual task is required. But for a few users, then Patreon Scraper is a good fit.
This is lightweight and works in the background and is easy to use. You are not required to provide your password or even log in via an API. The only major problem with this tool is that you are required to pay $15 monthly. This scraper has not got many downloads and as such, you will have to be careful with it. But for scraping Patreon posts, it does well.
6. ScraperAPI — Best Scraping API for Patreon
- Pricing: Starts from $49 for 100K Credits
- Free Trials: 5K Free Credits
- Data Output Format: HTML and JSON
- Supported Platform: API
Scraping APIs help you take care of proxies, captchas, and headless browsers so you focus on what matters — extracting required data from a web page. And ScraperAPI is the best scraping API right now. With ScraperAPI, you do not need to worry about blocks when scraping Patreon. This is because ScraperAPI has its own pool of residential proxies it uses. It is the best at evading anti-spam systems as it works well with Cloudflare, Datadome, and even PerimeterX.
Needless to say, ScraperAPI is meant for only coders as you need to write codes to use this. While ScraperAPI will take care of downloading the webpage for you, you will have to parse out the required data yourself as it does not provide you with a parser. ScraperAPI is a paid tool and pricing is based on successful requests.
7. ScrapingBee — Best ScraperAPI Alternative
ScraperAPI above has one major problem — it does not have a parser. If this is an issue for you and you are looking for a web scraping API you can use to scrape Patreon that comes with a parser then ScrapingBee is the scraper for you. ScrapingBee does come with an extraction API that allows you to parse required data from their server without you doing so. You only need to know how to use CSS selectors to use this feature.
In terms of scraping, ScrapingBee is a strong contender to ScraperAPI but still behind ScraperAPI. For you to scrape Patreon using ScrapingBee, you will need to use their premium proxies as their regular proxies will most likely get discovered and blocked. It pricing model is the same as ScraperAPI — you only get to pay for successful requests.
8. ParseHub — Best Free Patreon Scraper
- Pricing: Free with a paid plan
- Free Trials: Free – advance features come at an extra cost
- Data Output Format: Excel, JSON,
- Supported Platform: Cloud, Desktop
ParseHub is another visual web scraper you can use to scrape all kinds of websites. It is built for the modern web and provides you with a point-and-click interface for identifying important datapoint on a page. You can also use this web scraper to scrape data from Patreon users. It does have support for logging into an account and does render Javascript well. As in the case of Octoparse and Scrapestorm, ParseHub is also a paid tool.
However, ParseHub does have a free tier plan that is useful to small-scale web scrapers. If you only need to scrape a few details from Patreon, you can use this free tier at no cost to you. However, it is important you know that the true power of ParseHub is unleashed when you subscribe as a paid user.
9. Helium Scraper — Best One-Time Payment Option
- Pricing: Starts at a $99 one-time purchase
- Free Trials: 10 days free
- Data Output Format: CSV, Excel, JSON, SQLite, etc.
- Supported Platforms: Desktop
Most web scrapers in the market come as monthly subscription services. This means that you keep paying for them monthly —for the periods you need them. The cost can quickly hike up if you are a long-term user. Instead of using a monthly subscription-based web scraper, why not use one you will pay ones and use forever? And that is where Helium Scraper comes in. Helium Scraper is one of the best visual web scrapers and you only get to pay for it one time.
Price starts from $99 all the way to $66 depending on the number of users and other features. Helium scraper is quite fast as it is multithreaded and will even disable some of the web page content not required to make pages load faster. It does have support for multiple formats including SQLite storage.
10. WebHarvy — Feature-Packed General-Purpose Web Scraper for Patreon
- Pricing: Starts at $139 for a single-user license
- Free Trials: Not available
- Data Output Format: TXT, CSV, Excel, JSON, XML. TSV, etc.
- Supported Platforms: Desktop
WebHarvy is one of the most advanced web scrapers out there. As in the case with the other visual web scrapers described here, it is a general-purpose web scraper that you can use for scraping all kinds of websites.
WebHarvy however, stands out because of the features it comes packed in. These features will make your Patreon scraping experience better.
With this web scraper, you can scrape not just text but also images. You can also use it to scrape the whole HTML of a page. It handles pagination well and you can scrape data by providing it with keywords. This web scraper is also one of the few scrapers that can scrape data using Regular Expression (Regex). With this, you can scrape data from a page that meet certain text pattern.
How to Scrape Patreon (Using Apify Patreon Scraper)
In this section of the article, we’ll take a look at how to scrape Patreon data using one of the web scrapers above. The Patreon scraper chosen here is the Apify Patreon Scraper. This is a web scraper meant for coders. You will need to register and create an account then have the Apify client library. Below are the steps to follow to scrape Patreon data.
Step 1: You’ll need to register an account on Apify. If you are already a registered member, you can skip this step.
Step 2: Go to the store section of the Apify website. Go to the search box and enter the keyword, ‘Patreon scraper”.
Step 3: Choose the Patreon.com Scraper and go to the Patreon page and copy the URL of the page. You will need it to scrape the post data.
Step 4: Enter the URL of the page in the Apify actor and click “Save & Run”.
Step 5: Once you see that it succeeded, click on the Dataset tab to see the results of your scraping.
Step 10: The data in the Dataset tab is available to you in useful formats like CSV, Excel, HTML tables, JSON, etc. You can open it by clicking the View or Download button.
FAQs About Patreon Scrapers
Q. Is Using Patreon Scraping Legal?
Patreon is just like any other popular website on the Internet and like the others, it does not support web scraping. The team at Patreon has even complained about the effect of web scrapers on their platform.
However, regardless of the fact that Patreon does not like web scrapers, scraping is still legal in most cases.
We recommend you seek legal advice from a competent legal practitioner in your region as nothing you read on this page should be considered legal advice.
We, however, recommend you scrape politely and avoid overwhelming their system.
Q. Does Scraping Patreon Require Coding?
In the past, all forms of web scraping including Patreon will require coding skills. However, this is no longer the case. And you do not need to be a coder to be able to scrape publicly available data from the Patreon website.
Even from the list of web scrapers mentioned above, you will see that 5 out of the 10 web scrapers do not require you to write a single line of code.
You can make use of the point-and-click interface-based web scrapers or the much simpler Data Collector to scrape Patreon without writing a single line of code.
Q. Are Proxies Needed for Patreon Scraping?
Proxies are a requirement for scraping Patreon. This is because sending too many requests from a single IP address will get such IP blocked. You need proxies to provide you with as many IP addresses as required. However, it is not compulsory for you to deal with proxies yourself.
Some of the web scrapers mentioned above do require you to provide your own proxies as in the case of Octoparse, ScrapeStorm, WebHarvy, and Helium Scraper.
There are some web scrapers on the other hand that do not need you to provide proxies — they use their own in-house proxies as in the case of Data Collector
Conclusion
Looking at the above, you can see that there are a good number of web scrapers out there that you can use to scrape Patreon. And the good part is; many of these web scrapers do not require coding skills. However, you need to know that you can hardly scrape Patreon without spending money.
Most of the web scrapers out there are paid. For the free tiers, you can’t use them for collecting a large amount of data effectively. So, be ready to spend money when planning a Patreon scraping task for collecting large among of data.
