[Answers](https://scrapfly.io/blog) / [css-selectors](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/css-selectors) / [What are devtools and how they're used in web scraping?](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/browser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) # What are devtools and how they're used in web scraping? by [Bernardas Alisauskas](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/bernardas) Apr 03, 2023 1 min read [\#css-selectors](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/css-selectors) [\#data-parsing](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/data-parsing) [\#hidden-api](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/hidden-api) [\#http](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/http) [\#xpath](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/xpath) [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping "Share on LinkedIn") Every modern web browser comes with a special suite of tools for web developers called the Developer Tools (or devtools for short). This suite contains a lot of powerful tools used in web scraper development that can help to debug and understand how the target websites work. Devtools can be launched on any website using the `F12` key or by right-clicking anywhere on the page and selecting "inspect" option. To start, the "Elements" tab allows for inspecting the final HTML structure of the page. This can be used to create CSS and XPath selectors for scraping: The "Network" tab (aka the Network Inspector) can be used to inspect the network traffic of the page. This can be used to understand how the website works and discover its backend and hidden APIs: One of the most popular features of Network devtools is the ability to export the requests to [cURL commands](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/what-is-curl-and-how-is-it-used-in-web-scraping) (right click -> copy as curl) that can be converted to scraping code using the [cURL to Python tool](https://scrapfly.io/web-scraping-tools/curl-python). Scale Your Web Scraping Anti-bot bypass, browser rendering, and rotating proxies, all in one API. Start with 1,000 free credits. No credit card required 1,000 free API credits Anti-bot bypass included [Start Free](https://scrapfly.io/register) [View Docs](https://scrapfly.io/docs/onboarding) Not ready? Get our newsletter instead. ## Explore this Article with AI [ ChatGPT ](https://chat.openai.com/?q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) [ Gemini ](https://www.google.com/search?udm=50&aep=11&q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) [ Grok ](https://x.com/i/grok?text=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) [ Perplexity ](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/new?q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) [ Claude ](https://claude.ai/new?q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fbrowser-developer-tools-in-web-scraping) ## Related Articles [ http data-parsing ### Web Scraping With Ruby Introduction to web scraping with Ruby. How to handle http connections, parse html files for data, best practices, tips ... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-ruby) [ python nodejs ### How to Scrape Sitemaps to Discover Scraping Targets Usually to find scrape targets we look at site search or category pages but there's a better way - sitemaps! In this tut... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-scrape-sitemaps) [ http python ### Web Scraping with Python Introduction tutorial to web scraping with Python. How to collect and parse public data. Challenges, best practices and ... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-python) ## Related Questions - [ Q How to edit cookies in Chrome devtools? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-edit-cookies-using-chrome-devtools) - [ Q What are some BeautifulSoup alternatives in Python? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/what-are-some-beautifulsoup-alternatives) - [ Q How to edit Local Storage data using browser Devtools ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-edit-local-storage-using-devtools) - [ Q What is MITM and how is it used in web scraping? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/what-is-mitm-proxy-and-how-is-it-used-web-scraping) Extract structured data with AI, **1,000 free credits** [Start Free](https://scrapfly.io/register)