Python is full of great HTTP client libraries but which one is best for web scraping?
By far the most popular choices are httpx, requests and aiohttp - so here are the key differences:
requests - is the oldest and most mature library. It's easy to learn as there are many resources but it doesn't support asyncio or http2aiohttp - is asynchronous take on requests so it fully supports asyncio which can be a major speed boost for web scrapers. Aiohttp also offers a http server making it great for creating web scraping applications that can scrape data and deliver it.httpx - is the new de facto standard when it comes to HTTP clients in Python. It offers vital HTTP2 support and is fully compatible with asyncio making it the best choice for web scraping.For more on how to use HTTPX in web scraping see our hands-on introduction article
In this article, we'll explore how to scrape Reddit. We'll extract various social data types from subreddits, posts, and user pages. All of which through plain HTTP requests without headless browser usage.
Discover how to use headless Firefox with Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer for web scraping, including practical examples for each library.
In this scrape guide we'll be taking a look at one of the most popular web scraping targets - LinkedIn.com. We'll be scraping people profiles, company profiles as well as job listings and search.