Effective web scraping with n8n involves using a combination of nodes to fetch, parse, and process data from websites. The core of this process relies on the HTTP Request node to retrieve a site’s raw HTML and the HTML Extract node to pinpoint and pull specific information using CSS selectors. For more complex scenarios, n8n can handle pagination by looping through pages, integrate with headless browsers like Browserless for dynamic JavaScript-heavy sites, and manage data flow into databases or spreadsheets, making it a versatile tool for any scraping task.
The Core of n8n Scraping: Your Essential Toolkit
So, you want to pull data from a website. Where do you even start? Think of n8n as your command center for this mission. At its heart, web scraping in n8n is surprisingly straightforward and revolves around two superstar nodes.
First up is the HTTP Request node. Imagine you want to read a newspaper. You first have to go get it, right? The HTTP Request node does just that. You give it a URL, and it goes and fetches the entire page’s underlying code (the HTML). It’s the digital equivalent of knocking on a website’s door and asking for a copy of their content. For most basic scraping, a simple GET request is all you need.
Once you have the raw HTML, it’s a jumbled mess of code. This is where the HTML Extract node comes in to save the day. This node is your data detective. You provide it with a specific “address” called a CSS selector to tell it exactly what to find. For example, if you want the title of every article, you’d find the CSS selector for the titles (like h2.article-title) and the node will pull out just that text, ignoring everything else. It’s incredibly precise.
These two nodes form the foundation of almost every scraping n8n workflow you’ll build.
A Practical Example: Scraping Product Information
Let’s make this real. Theory is great, but seeing it in action is better. We’ll build a simple workflow to scrape book titles and prices from Books to Scrape, a website designed for this very purpose.
Our Goal: To create an automated list of all books and their prices from the first page.
Step 1: Fetching the Page
Start with an HTTP Request node. In the URL field, enter http://books.toscrape.com. Leave the request method as GET. When you execute this, the node will output the entire HTML code of the homepage.
Step 2: Pinpointing the Data
Now, for the detective work. Open the website in your browser (like Chrome or Firefox), right-click on a book’s title, and select “Inspect.” This opens the developer tools and highlights the exact line of HTML code for that title. You’ll see it’s inside an <h3> tag. For the price, you’ll find it’s inside a <p> tag with the class price_color. These are our CSS selectors!
- For all book containers:
article.product_pod - For the title (within each container):
h3 > a - For the price (within each container):
div.product_price > p.price_color
Step 3: Extracting with the HTML Extract Node
Add an HTML Extract node after the HTTP Request node. Configure it to look at the data coming from the previous node. First, let’s grab each book’s container. Add an extraction value:
- Key:
books - CSS Selector:
article.product_pod - Return Value:
HTML - Enable
Return Array
This gives you a list of items, where each item is the HTML for one book. Now, you can add another HTML Extract node to process each book individually, pulling out the title and price with the selectors we found earlier. It’s like a two-step filtering process that gets you exactly what you need.
From there, you can easily use a Google Sheets node or a Convert to File node to save your structured data. Voila! You’ve built your first scraper.
Leveling Up: Advanced Scraping n8n Techniques
Once you’ve got the basics down, you’ll quickly run into more challenging websites. Let’s be honest, not every site lays out its data on a single, simple page.
Tackling Multi-Page Websites (Pagination)
What happens when the data you want is spread across 10, 20, or 100 pages? This is called pagination, and manually changing the URL is not an option. n8n handles this with loops. You can build a workflow that scrapes the first page, finds the link to the “Next” page, and then automatically feeds that URL back into the HTTP Request node to do it all over again until there are no more pages left. The Loop Over Items node can be a great starting point for this.
The Elephant in the Room: Dynamic JavaScript Content
I remember the first time I tried to scrape a modern e-commerce site. My HTTP Request node came back with a nearly empty shell. Why? Because the content was loaded by JavaScript after the initial page load. Basic scraping is like reading a printed newspaper—what you see is what you get. Dynamic sites are like a live news feed that updates itself.
To scrape these, you need a headless browser—a tool that acts like a real browser, running all the JavaScript to render the full page. Services like Browserless or ScrapingBee are perfect for this. You can use n8n’s HTTP Request node to send your target URL to their API. They’ll render the page for you and send back the complete HTML, which you can then parse with the HTML Extract node as usual. It’s a powerful workaround that unlocks a huge number of modern websites.
Staying Under the Radar: Proxies and Etiquette
When you’re scraping, it’s crucial to be a good internet citizen. Bombarding a website with hundreds of requests per second can get your IP address blocked. Always check a site’s robots.txt file (e.g., website.com/robots.txt) and its Terms of Service to see their scraping policies. To avoid getting blocked, use a Wait node in your loop to pause between requests. For larger-scale scraping, consider using proxy services that rotate your IP address, making your workflow’s activity appear more natural.
Quick Comparison: Which Scraping Technique to Use?
| Technique | Best For | Key n8n Nodes | Main Challenge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Scraping | Simple, static websites with all data on one page. | HTTP Request, HTML Extract |
Doesn’t work on sites that require JavaScript to load content. |
| Multi-Page Scraping | Paginated lists, like blog archives or e-commerce categories. | HTTP Request, HTML Extract, Loop Over Items or custom loop logic. |
Managing the state and logic to correctly find the “next page” link. |
| Dynamic Site Scraping | Modern web apps built with frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular. | HTTP Request (to call a headless browser API), HTML Extract |
Requires a third-party service (like Browserless) and is generally slower and more costly. |
You’re Now Ready for Scraping with n8n
Web scraping can seem intimidating, but with n8n, you have a powerful and flexible visual tool at your disposal. You’ve learned how to handle everything from simple data grabs on static pages to navigating complex, multi-page, and dynamic websites. The key is to start simple, understand the structure of the site you’re targeting, and then choose the right technique for the job.
So go ahead, find a project, and start building. You’ll be amazed at the data you can unlock and the manual work you can automate away.
