[Answers](https://scrapfly.io/blog)   /  [beautifulsoup](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/beautifulsoup)   /  [How to find HTML element by class with BeautifulSoup?](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-find-html-elements-by-class-with-beautifulsoup)   # How to find HTML element by class with BeautifulSoup?

 by [Bernardas Alisauskas](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/bernardas) Apr 13, 2026 1 min read [\#beautifulsoup](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/beautifulsoup) [\#css-selectors](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/css-selectors) [\#data-parsing](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/data-parsing) 

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Using Python and BeautifulSoup, to find elements by class name we can either use `find` and `find_all` functions with the `class_` parameter or [CSS selectors](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-find-html-elements-by-class):

python```python
import bs4
soup = bs4.BeautifulSoup('<a class="social-link">some link</a>')

# using find() and find_all() methods:
soup.find("a", class_="social-link")  # alternatively find_all can be used to find all
soup.find("a", {"class": "social-link"})
# to find by partial class name we can use regex:
import re
soup.find("a", class_=re.compile("link", re.I))  # tip: re.I parameter makes this case insensitive

# using css selectors via select() and select_one() methods
soup.select('.social-link')
# to find by partial class name we can use `*=` matcher:
soup.select('[class*="link"]') 
# or
soup.select('[class*="link" i]')  # "i" addition makes this case insensitive
```





 

    



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  ## Related Questions

- [ Q How to find HTML elements by attribute using BeautifulSoup? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-find-html-elements-by-attribute-with-beautifulsoup)
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