BeautifulSoup vs. Selenium: Choosing the Right Scraping Tool

Data scraping is crucial in improving business intelligence. Companies use it to analyze data and take fact-based actions five times faster than usual. However, web scraping can be tedious. You must pick the right tool that matches the data you want to scrape. 

BeautifulSoup and Selenium are two of the best web scraping tools you can find. These two libraries make the scraping process easier and more efficient. 

This article will compare the two libraries to help you decide which one to use: BeautifulSoup vs. Selenium. Keep reading to know more about what makes the two different. 

Selenium and BeautifulSoup: Which One is Better?

Selenium and BeautifulSoup are both open-source libraries. They are excellent tools for web scraping projects. Each one offers features that will help speed up your scraping. However, they have differences that can affect your project.

If you can't decide between the two, here are some of their main differences:

Continue reading to get a better look at Selenium and BeautifulSoup. Understand what they are and how they work in the following sections. 

Understanding What Selenium Is

Selenium is an open-source tool suite used for automated web browser testing. It is efficient for scraping and checking web apps in various platforms and browsers. With Selenium, you can create testing scripts in several programming languages since it can support Python, Java, and C#.

Some of Selenium’s main frameworks are:

• Selenium IDE - for recording actions before automation
• Selenium WebDriver - used in running scripts in browsers
• Selenium Grid - for parallel implementations

Selenium has been around for around 20 years now since 2004. Here's a timeline that shows Selenium's development since its beginning:

Use Cases of Selenium

The typical use cases of Selenium are for scraping dynamic webpages. These pages are the ones that need user interaction to work.

Some web pages have the following with the help of Selenium:

• Forms: Make filling forms faster and achieve more efficient scraping
• Buttons: Automate button-clicking to scrape data from every page
• Navigations: Make navigation on every page automatic for easier data scraping
• Log-ins: Simplify logging in to access pages for scraping

Exploring How BeautifulSoup Works

BeautifulSoup is a tool Python package developers use to parse HTML and XML documents. It creates a parsing tree for pages, allowing quicker web scraping. BeautifulSoup also automates the document conversion to Unicode, so developers don't have to worry about encodings.

This tool has simple functions for developers to navigate, search, and update parsing trees. With BeautifulSoup, you can work on  and transform HTML or XML files into Python objects.

Its developer, Leonard Richardson, mentioned that hundreds of projects and companies have used BeautifulSoup. However, there's no data or record kept for it. Here are some of the top projects powered by BeautifulSoup: 

1. Movable Type: A digital artwork displayed in the New York Times building lobby uses BeautifulSoup to scrap news feeds.
2. DXY-COVID-19-Crawler: A work of Jiabao Lin that uses Beautiful Soup to scrape valuable COVID-19 data from Chinese medical sites. It helped researchers track the virus' spread.
3. Reddit: Reddit uses BeautifulSoup in a parsing project. It parses a page linked to the platform and finds a related image.
4. Python Developers: Python Developers used BeautifulSoup as a tool for a bug tracker migration project. 
5. Lawrence Journal-World: This news company uses BeautifulSoup on a project that gathers state election results.

Use Cases of BeautifulSoup

The typical use cases of BeautifulSoup are for scraping static webpages and XML. These pages have simple structures and don't need user interaction to work.

Some web pages that BeautifulSoup scrapes are:

• Blogs: Scrape texts and images on blogs with BeautifulSoup
• Online Stores: Extract data from online stores, like prices and product details
• Landing Pages: Scrape text and images from landing pages using BeautifulSoup
• Brochures: Brochures have static content, no clickable links or buttons, which makes it easy to scrape with BeautifulSoup.

Comparing BeautifulSoup and Selenium

It is apparent that while BeautifulSoup and Selenium are both vital elements when handling data, the two have clear distinctions. This section compares both libraries using several aspects to help you pick the best for your project. 

Here’s an in-depth comparison between BeautifulSoup and Selenium:

Functionality

Selenium is an automation tool, while BeautifulSoup is a parsing library. Due to the differences in nature, Selenium offers more functionality than BeautifulSoup. 

The former can connect with web pages, making it the ideal tool for scraping dynamic pages. Meanwhile, BeautifulSoup has limited features that work only on HTML and XML. 

Selenium has more features since it can run scripts for browser actions. It lets you fill out forms, click buttons, and navigate pages automatically for better scraping. On the other hand, BeautifulSoup only works for data parsing and extracting—making it more suitable for scraping data from static pages.

Speed

BeautifulSoup works faster than Selenium. Unlike the latter, the former does not need or use a browser. 

Another factor that slows Selenium down is that it waits for the entire page to load before it starts scraping. Meanwhile, BeautifulSoup only works on the page source. 

When used to scrape the same data, BeautifulSoup will work 70% quicker than Selenium. Regardless, you must also consider the type of data and page you're scraping. 

Ease of Use

BeautifulSoup is more effortless to use than Selenium. With BeautifulSoup, beginner developers can extract data with a simple API instead of web scraping scripts.

Users also only need a little experience to understand how this tool works. Meanwhile, Selenium isn't ideal for beginners because it has a tedious setup process. Moreover, using this tool requires at least the basic programming concepts. Selenium is more complex since it offers more functions and features.

Ecosystem

BeautifulSoup's ecosystem covers many dependencies. Thus, it won't work well with complicated data scraping projects.

On the other hand, Selenium offers a better ecosystem. The only downside is that setting it up is challenging when scraping web pages with proxies.

Project Scope

Another difference between Selenium and BeautifulSoup is the project scope where they work.

Selenium is the ideal option if you're scraping complex and dynamic pages. Since this tool automates browsers, you can scrape every data included in a single web page. 

Meanwhile, BeautifulSoup is the ideal option if you're working on simple projects. It offers simple scraping features, making it suitable for pages with well-structured sources. If you're scraping static pages, you can have a faster process using BeautifulSoup.

Each tool offers different features from the other. It is best to consider your project's scope before deciding what to use between the two. Here's a quick sum-up of where the two tools work best:

Selenium and other libraries work as BeautifulSoup alternatives is you’re working with dynamic pages which BeautifulSoup can't process.

Conclusion

Selenium and BeautifulSoup are useful libraries for web scraping projects. However, deciding which one is better depends on the project you have.

BeautifulSoup is ideal if you're only working on simple projects. It works best for web pages with well-structured sources and static content. Meanwhile, Selenium is your go-to option when scraping data from dynamic pages. It is also good for complex projects that require comprehensive scraping of several dynamic pages.