Scrapejig

Instant Data Scraper checked against its Chrome Web Store listing and its publisher's privacy policy on 2026-09-10

Scrapejig vs Instant Data Scraper: a CSV now, or a script you keep

One of these is free, has a million users and needs no setup at all. The other costs £29 and needs Python. This page is written so you can check it — every factual statement about Instant Data Scraper below is quoted from its own Web Store listing or its publisher's privacy policy, and the sources are listed at the end.

The short version. Instant Data Scraper looks at the page you are on, guesses where the table is, and hands you an Excel or CSV file. It is free and it is very good at that guess. Scrapejig does not hand you data at all — it writes a Playwright script in Python, and the script gets the data, on your machine, as many times as you run it.

If you need this page's rows once, install theirs. If you will need the same rows again next month, the question is whether you want to do the clicks again or keep the file that does them.

What each one does with the page.

Instant Data Scraper's listing describes the approach plainly: it uses AI to predict which data is most relevant on a HTML page and, if the guess is wrong, lets the user customize the selections. In practice that is a button — the original developer's own instructions call it Try another table. You do not pick fields; you accept or reject a guess. For a listing page with an obvious repeating block, the guess is usually right, and that is the whole reason a million people installed it.

Scrapejig makes you point. You click a price, a title, a link; it infers a CSS selector for each and for the repeating item that contains them, and fills a preview table as you go. That is more work than pressing one button, and it is also how you get a column you chose rather than the columns a heuristic chose for you.

Then the two part ways completely. Instant Data Scraper runs the scrape itself, in the tab, and gives you a spreadsheet. Scrapejig generates scrape.py and stops. Running it is your job, in a terminal, with Python and Playwright installed.

 Instant Data ScraperScrapejig
How fields are chosen Guessed by the extension from the page structure; you can ask for another guess You click each field; the extension infers the selectors and previews the rows
Who performs the scrape The extension, in your browser tab A Python file on your machine. The extension never runs a scrape
Other software needed None Python 3 and Playwright, installed by you
Many pages Next-button pagination and infinite scroll, with a configurable delay, from inside the extension Pagination, infinite scroll, load-more and drill-down into detail pages, written into the script with a page cap
What you have when it finishes An XLSX or CSV file of that crawl A standalone scrape.py, plus the CSV and JSON it writes each time you run it
What you have in six months The same spreadsheet. For fresh rows, open the site and do the clicks again The same script. For fresh rows, run it again, or put it on cron
What you get when you stop paying Nothing changes — there is nothing to pay Nothing changes either. £29 is paid once, and the script never contacts us
Price Free. The listing says completely FREE Free to pick and preview. £29 once for the Python export

What leaves the browser.

This is the section to read slowly, because the two documents that describe Instant Data Scraper say different things about different data, and both can be true at once.

Instant Data Scraper

The Web Store listing says that the scraped data does not leave your browser. We have no reason to doubt that as a statement about the rows you extract.

The extension is now published by Flavr Technology, LP. The original developer, Web Robots, states on its own site that Instant Data is no longer owned, developed or supported by Web Robots. Flavr's privacy policy — last updated, at the time of writing, on 30 July 2026 — governs the extension, and it is about the browsing around the scrape rather than the scrape itself. It says the extension automatically collects Browsing and URL Data, defined as the full page URL, time and date of each visit, and associated clickstream and interaction data, and that this is transmitted to our servers upon collection. It says the same of SERP Data, which it defines to include the full content of search results pages, and of E-commerce Data, meaning products viewed, added to cart, or purchased. The Web Store's own data-practices panel for the extension lists Web history as data it handles.

The policy also says where that goes: the company's affiliates may share such information with their customers for purposes such as market analysis or research into consumer trends, under contracts not to re-identify you. And it describes an opt-out — by adjusting your settings within the Extension's settings panel, or by uninstalling.

We have not instrumented the extension to watch its traffic, and we are not claiming anything beyond what the policy states. But if the reason you want a browser scraper is that the data stays with you, the policy is the document to read, not the listing.

Scrapejig

Selector inference, the live preview and the code generation all run inside the extension. There is no telemetry of any kind: no usage analytics, no crash reporting, no event pings, in the free or the paid build. The extension never sees your browsing history, because it has no tabs or history permission to see it with. The only request it ever makes is the licence-key check, and the privacy page names every request that exists in the codebase.

The generated script is stricter still. It imports Playwright and the standard library, and it contacts the site you are scraping. It does not know we exist.

The spreadsheet and the Python file are not the same kind of object.

Instant Data Scraper's output is a record of one crawl. That is exactly what a lot of jobs need: a directory into a spreadsheet, a search result into a CSV, done. It is also all you have. There is nothing to save except the data, so when the data goes stale, you go back to the site and press the button again — and if the site has changed its layout, you hope the guess still lands.

Scrapejig's output is a program. Your picks arrive as constants at the top — START_URL, ITEM_SELECTOR, FIELDS, NEXT_SELECTOR, MAX_PAGES — and the rest is ordinary Playwright. When the site changes a class name, you edit a string. When you want a delay, a different output format, or a field the picker cannot express, it is a text edit, because it is just Python. The full exported file is printed here, line by line, so you can judge it before paying.

The claim we make is narrow: if Scrapejig disappeared tomorrow, your script would still run. It depends on Playwright and nothing of ours.

When Instant Data Scraper is the right answer.

Often, and the honest list is longer than a comparison page usually admits:

  • You need the data once. A one-off export is their entire product, and it takes about four clicks. Scrapejig's four clicks give you a file you then have to run.
  • You do not want to install Python. This is the big one. Their extension scrapes on its own; ours requires a working python3, a pip3 install playwright and a browser download. If that sentence sounds like a chore, it is, and it is ours.
  • You want the guess, not the picking. On a plain listing page, their table detection is genuinely good, and not having to choose columns is faster than choosing them.
  • You want Excel out. They write XLSX directly. Scrapejig's panel copies CSV, and the script writes CSV and JSON.
  • It costs nothing to try. Free with a million users and a 4.9 rating is a better first step than any comparison table, including this one.

If two or more of those describe you, install theirs. We would rather say that here than have you discover it after paying us £29.

When Scrapejig is the right answer.

  • You will need the same data again. A price check every Monday, a listings feed every morning, a directory that gets re-pulled each quarter. A script does that unattended; a button does not.
  • You already have Python. The setup cost that sinks the case above is roughly zero for you, and the output is a file in a language you already read.
  • You want to choose the columns. Not the ones a heuristic found, the ones you pointed at, with a link column that follows through to each detail page.
  • You want nothing leaving the browser, including the browsing. No telemetry, no history permission, no policy to opt out of.
  • You would rather pay once. £29 for the Python export, no renewal, no per-URL credits. Picking and previewing stay free either way.

Sources.

Every statement above about Instant Data Scraper comes from one of these pages, read on 2026-09-10. Products and policies change; if you are reading this much later, check them rather than us.

Instant Data Scraper is its owner's trade mark. Scrapejig is not affiliated with Flavr Technology or Web Robots, and this page is not endorsed by them. If you believe something here misstates their product or their policy, write to support@scrapejig.com and we will correct it.