[Answers](https://scrapfly.io/blog) / [crawling](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/crawling) / [What's the difference between Web Scraping and Crawling?](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/whats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) # What's the difference between Web Scraping and Crawling? by [Bernardas Alisauskas](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/bernardas) Apr 18, 2026 2 min read [\#crawling](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/crawling) [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling "Share on LinkedIn") Web crawling and web scraping are two intertwined concepts in the world of data gathering, each with unique exploration capabilities. ## What is Web Crawling? Web crawling is a web scraping process used by search engines and data scientists to visit websites and systematically "crawl" through various pages to gather information. It has broad exploration logic that allows it to navigate through a multitude of website domains and diverse web structures. ## Web Crawling Vs. Web Scraping While web scraping and web crawling are related, they have distinct differences. Web **scraping** focuses on extracting **specific data from the web pages** - for instance, "a list of product URLs from X e-commerce website." On the other hand, web **crawling** goes a step further by not only extracting the specific data but **also exploring and indexing the website**, akin to how search engines work. ## Implementing Web Crawling in Web Scraping In most cases, web scrapers employ some level of web crawling functionality. For instance, if the aim is to scrape product details from an e-commerce website, the process would involve first scraping the page containing product URLs (such as product category pages or search results), then moving on to scrape each product page. This would be a form of web crawling in web scraping. ## Broad Crawling: An Extreme Form of Web Crawling A more extensive form of web crawling is called "broad crawling." It involves crawling and scraping across numerous website domains and varied web structures. This approach is commonly used by search engines like Google and Bing. These platforms use broad crawling to scour the internet, index the contents, and provide accurate search capabilities. --- So, to summarize web crawling is a form of web scraping but more often than not both of these techniques are closely related as scraping and crawling are often used together. For managed crawling without building spider logic, Scrapfly's [Crawler API](https://scrapfly.io/crawler-api) handles automatic URL discovery, link following, and data extraction across entire domains. [How to Crawl the Web with PythonIntroduction to web crawling with Python. What is web crawling? How it differs from web scraping? And a deep dive into code, building our own crawler and an example project crawling Shopify-powered websites.](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/crawling-with-python) Table of Contents- [What is Web Crawling?](#what-is-web-crawling) - [Web Crawling Vs. Web Scraping](#web-crawling-vs-web-scraping) - [Implementing Web Crawling in Web Scraping](#implementing-web-crawling-in-web-scraping) - [Broad Crawling: An Extreme Form of Web Crawling](#broad-crawling-an-extreme-form-of-web-crawling) Join the Newsletter Get monthly web scraping insights 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%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) [ Gemini ](https://www.google.com/search?udm=50&aep=11&q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) [ Grok ](https://x.com/i/grok?text=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) [ Perplexity ](https://www.perplexity.ai/search/new?q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) [ Claude ](https://claude.ai/new?q=Summarize%20this%20page%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fscrapfly.io%2Fblog%2Fanswers%2Fwhats-the-difference-between-scraping-and-crawling) ## Related Articles [ http ### What is HTTP 406 Error? (Not Acceptable) HTTP status code 406 generally means wrong Accept- header family configuration. Here's how to prevent it. ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/what-is-http-error-406-not-acceptable) [ proxies ### SOCKS5 vs HTTP Proxy: Key Differences and When to Use Each A deep dive into the key differences between HTTPS and SOCKS proxies, helping you choose the right protocol for your web... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/https-vs-socks-proxies) [ http python ### Guide to Python requests POST method Discover how to use Python's requests library for POST requests, including JSON, form data, and file uploads, along with... ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/how-to-python-requests-post) ## Related Questions - [ Q What is the difference between IPv4 vs IPv6 in web scraping? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/ipv4-vs-ipv6-in-web-scraping) - [ Q How to select HTML elements by text using CSS Selectors? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-select-elements-by-text-using-css-selectors) - [ Q XPath vs CSS selectors: what's the difference? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/xpath-vs-css-selectors) - [ Q How to ignore non HTML URLs when web crawling? ](https://scrapfly.io/blog/answers/how-to-ignore-non-html-urls-when-web-crawling) Scale your web scraping effortlessly, **1,000 free credits** [Start Free](https://scrapfly.io/register)