     [Blog](https://scrapfly.io/blog)   /  [data-parsing](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/data-parsing)   /  [6 Best Ruby Web Scraping Libraries and APIs in 2026 (With a Working Scraper)](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/web-scraping-with-ruby)   # 6 Best Ruby Web Scraping Libraries and APIs in 2026 (With a Working Scraper)

 by [Ziad Shamndy](https://scrapfly.io/blog/author/ziad) Oct 22, 2026 18 min read [\#data-parsing](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/data-parsing) [\#ruby](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/ruby) [\#tools](https://scrapfly.io/blog/tag/tools) 

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Summarize this article with

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Ruby is a popular general purpose programming language with a strong presence in the web world, but can it be used for web scraping? It can, though web-scraping.dev's review page gave our Net::HTTP scraper a 200 with zero reviews.

In this article, we'll take a deep dive into Ruby as a web scraping platform and the best gems to use for each step in 2026. Finally, we'll wrap everything up with a working scraper for [web-scraping.dev](https://web-scraping.dev/)



## Which Ruby Web Scraping Library or API Is Best?

There's no single best one, as each of these covers a different niche of the web scraping process, like:

- HTTP Connections
- HTML Parsing
- Cookies and Forms
- Browser Automation
- Crawling

To collect data from a public resource, we need to establish connection with it first. Retrieving HTML documents is only one part of web scraping process, we also have to parse them for data we're looking for.

Here's a quick comparison of the six options:

| Option | Type | Returns | Runs JavaScript |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrapfly Web Scraping API | Web scraping API | HTML or JSON | Yes |
| Net::HTTP | HTTP client | `Net::HTTPResponse` | No |
| Nokogiri | HTML and XML parser | `Nokogiri::HTML4::Document` | No |
| Mechanize | HTTP agent | `Mechanize::Page` | No |
| Ferrum | Chrome driver (CDP) | `Ferrum::Node` | Yes |
| Vessel | Crawler | Ruby hashes | Ferrum driver only |

And these are the gem versions on RubyGems as of October 19, 2026:

| Gem | Version | Released | License | Ruby |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `net-http` | 0.10.0 | Oct 8, 2026 | Ruby, BSD-2-Clause | 2.7+ |
| `nokogiri` | 1.19.4 | Jun 18, 2026 | MIT | 3.2+ |
| `mechanize` | 2.14.1 | Aug 23, 2026 | MIT | 2.6+ |
| `ferrum` | 0.19.1 | Oct 16, 2026 | MIT | 3.1+ |
| `vessel` | 0.3.0 | Aug 27, 2026 | MIT | 3.1+ |

Note that Net::HTTP is a default gem, which means it comes with Ruby itself, so its version depends on the Ruby we have. If you're ever unsure, you can always check it from the terminal:

text

```text
$ ruby -v
ruby 4.0.7 (2026-09-15 revision 229531a6cf) +PRISM [x86_64-linux]
$ ruby -rnet/http -e 'puts Net::HTTP::VERSION'
0.9.1
```



So, our Ruby 4.0.7 came with net-http 0.9.1, even though 0.10.0 had been on RubyGems since October 8.

Now that we have an overview of the tools, let's take a look at each one, starting with Scrapfly!



illustration of a standard http exchange## 1. Scrapfly Web Scraping API: Best for Blocked and JavaScript-Heavy Pages

Web scraping with Ruby can be surprisingly accessible however scaling up Ruby scrapers can be difficult due to lacking infrastructure in Ruby language for bypass blocking and scaling. This is where Scrapfly can lend a hand!

ScrapFly is a [web scraping API](https://scrapfly.io/products/web-scraping-api) that automatically identifies and bypasses any anti-scraping protection. It also supports JavaScript rendering, which allows for scraping dynamic websites.

Let's take a look how can we use ScrapFly's API to scrape content with all of these features in Ruby! All we have to do is enable the `unblocker` argument (formerly `asp`), `render_js` and `proxified_response`:

ruby

```ruby
require "net/http"
require "nokogiri"

uri = URI("https://api.scrapfly.io/scrape")
uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(
  key: ENV.fetch("SCRAPFLY_KEY"),
  url: "https://web-scraping.dev/products",
  # we can enable the "unblocker" (anti scraping protection) solution
  unblocker: true,
  # whether to use browser emulation to render javascript
  render_js: true,
  # return the page itself instead of a JSON response
  proxified_response: true
)

http = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
http.use_ssl = true
http.read_timeout = 155 # the API docs ask for 155 seconds
response = http.request(Net::HTTP::Get.new(uri))

doc = Nokogiri::HTML(response.body)
puts response.code
doc.css(".product h3 a").each { |link| puts link.text.strip }
```



The 2022 version of this example parsed a JSON response and read the HTML from `result.content`. With `proxified_response=true`, the API returns the scraped page itself, so Nokogiri gets it directly.

We also set `read_timeout` to 155 seconds, like the API docs ask. Net::HTTP's own default is 60.

With ScrapFly, we can set proxies to a specific country, which the easiest way to apply localization settings. Each request uses API credits though, and `cost_budget` caps what the unblocker can spend.

For more features, usage scenarios and other info see the [Scrapfly API parameters](https://scrapfly.io/docs/scrape-api/getting-started)! Next, let's take a look at Net::HTTP itself.



## 2. Net::HTTP: Best Built-In Ruby HTTP Client for Fetching Pages

Ruby has many HTTP client packages that implement this logic:

- [Faraday](https://github.com/lostisland/faraday)
- [Httparty](https://github.com/jnunemaker/httparty)
- [Typhoeus](https://github.com/typhoeus/typhoeus)

However, most of http clients can be used almost interchangeably. In this article we'll focus on Net::HTTP as it comes with Ruby itself, though Faraday is worth it for apps that already use its middleware.

Let's start off with a basic GET request from the terminal:

text

```text
$ ruby -rnet/http -e 'p Net::HTTP.get_response(URI("https://web-scraping.dev/products"))'
#<Net::HTTPOK 200 OK readbody=true>
$ ruby -rnet/http -e 'p Net::HTTP.get_response(URI("http://web-scraping.dev/products"))'
#<Net::HTTPMovedPermanently 301 Moved Permanently readbody=true>
$ ruby -rnet/http -e 'p Net::HTTP.get_response(URI("https://web-scraping.dev/product/9999"))'
#<Net::HTTPNotFound 404 Not Found readbody=true>
```



Conveniently, all HTTP responses come with a status code that indicates whether this request is a success, failure or some alternative action is requested (like request to authenticate).

Let's take a quick look at status codes that are most relevant to web scraping:

- 200 range codes generally mean success!
- 300 range codes tend to mean redirection, in other words if we request content at `/product1.html` it might be moved to a new location `/products/1.html` and server would inform us about that.
- 400 range codes mean request is malformed or denied. Our web scraper could be missing some headers, cookies or authentication details.
- 500 range codes typically mean server issues. The website might be unavailable right now or is purposefully disabling access to our web scraper.

So, the `http://` request above stopped at the 301 and didn't follow it to the HTTPS page. Net::HTTP leaves that next request to us.

Note that a new connection also has 60-second open, read and write timeouts by default, so we set them ourselves in the scraper later. For all the options, see the [Net::HTTP documentation](https://ruby-doc.org/3.4.1/stdlibs/net/http/Net/HTTP.html).

Now that we're familiar and comfortable with HTTP protocol in Ruby's Net::HTTP let's take a look how can we make sense from the HTML data we're retrieving.



## 3. Nokogiri: Best for Parsing HTML and XML in Ruby

Luckily, the HTML format is designed to be machine parsable, so we can take advantage of this and use special CSS or XPATH selector languages to find exact parts of the page to extract.

In Ruby, the most popular package for these selectors is [Nokogiri](https://nokogiri.org/). Nokogiri is a full feature XML and HTML parser. Let's take a look at some practical examples of using CSS and XPATH selectors:

ruby

```ruby
require 'nokogiri'

html_doc = Nokogiri::HTML(
'<div class="links">
  <a href="https://twitter.com/@scrapfly_dev">Twitter</a>
  <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/scrapfly/">LinkedIn</a>
</div>'
)
# we can extra nodes text:
puts html_doc.css('div').text
# or nodes attributes:
puts html_doc.css('div').attribute('class')
# or xpath:
puts html_doc.xpath('//div/a[contains(@href,"twitter")]/@href').text

# we can also iterate through multiple nodes
for link in html_doc.css('a')
    puts link.text
end
```



When we ran it with Nokogiri 1.19.4, which installed as a precompiled gem, it printed:

text

```text

  Twitter
  LinkedIn
links
https://twitter.com/@scrapfly_dev
Twitter
LinkedIn
```



In the example above we see that Nokogiri features all parsing features a web scraper might require, like selecting node's text and attribute values as well as supporting multiple node selection!

Note that `.text` on the `div` kept the line breaks and spaces from the HTML, which is why we `strip` the text in our scraper later.

Nokogiri only parses the HTML it's given though, and on web-scraping.dev's review page, it found zero reviews.

We've covered both CSS and XPATH selectors in great detail previous articles, see our [CSS selector syntax](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/parsing-html-with-css) and [XPath selector syntax](https://scrapfly.io/blog/posts/parsing-html-with-xpath) guides.

Nokogiri also parses the pages of our next gem, Mechanize, which adds cookies and forms on top.



## 4. Mechanize: Best for Stateful Forms and Sessions

Sometimes when web-scraping we care about persistent connection state. For website where we need to login or configure website (like change currency) cookies are vital part of web scraping process.

So, cookies are essentially just HTTP headers that are managed by a web browser or an HTTP client as a memory store.

This is where [Mechanize](https://github.com/sparklemotion/mechanize) comes in. As its README puts it, "Mechanize automatically stores and sends cookies, follows redirects, and can follow links and submit forms. Form fields can be populated and submitted."

Another valuable use case of web scraping using cookies is to scrape pages that require a login. Let's take a look at the [login page](https://web-scraping.dev/login) on web-scraping.dev.

This website controls login through authentication cookies so to scrape this page we must replicate the authentication process. With Mechanize, we only fill in the login form and submit it:

ruby

```ruby
require 'mechanize'

agent = Mechanize.new

# get the login page and fill in the first form on it
page = agent.get("https://web-scraping.dev/login")
form = page.forms.first
form.username = "user123"
form.password = "password"
agent.submit(form)

# the auth cookie we got back is saved in the agent's cookie jar
puts agent.cookie_jar.find { |cookie| cookie.name == "auth" }.value

# so any next request with the same agent is logged in:
page = agent.get("https://web-scraping.dev/login")
puts page.at(".login .form-text").text
```



Running it with Mechanize 2.14.1 printed:

text

```text
user123-secret-token
Logged in as User123
```



In the above code, we start by initiating a Mechanize agent and use it to send the form POST request for the **auth token cookie retrieval**. Then, we **utilize the obtained auth token** while requesting the target web page itself.

Note that the first request for retrieving the auth token can **follow redirects**, which dispenses the need for manual cookie configuration. Mechanize's `agent.submit` followed the 302 redirect from `/api/login` back to `/login`, and that page was already logged in.

Whenever you visit a web page in your web browser identifies itself with a User-Agent string that looks something like "Browser Name, Operating System, Some version numbers". This helps the server to determine whether to serve or deny the client.

In web scraping, we don't want to be denied content, so we have to blend in by faking our user agent to look like that one of a browser.

Mechanize's default is `Mechanize/2.14.1 Ruby/4.0.7p0 (http://github.com/sparklemotion/mechanize/)`, so we can set our own with `agent.user_agent`, as its `"Windows Chrome"` alias still says `Chrome/120.0.0.0`.

Dynamic pages use complex javascript-powered web technologies that unload processing to the client. In other words, it gives users the data and logic but they have to put them together to see the whole, rendered web page.

Mechanize doesn't run any javascript, so on web-scraping.dev's review page it got zero reviews just like Net::HTTP. For pages like this, let's take a look at Ferrum.



Scrapfly

#### Extract structured data automatically?

Scrapfly's Extraction API uses AI to turn any webpage into structured data — no selectors needed.

[Try Free →](https://scrapfly.io/register)## 5. Ferrum: Best for JavaScript-Rendered Pages

Alternatively, we can **automate a real web browser** to scrape dynamic web pages by integrating it into our web scraper program.

Modern browsers such as Chrome and Firefox (and their derivatives) come with built-in automation protocols allowing other programs to control these web browsers. [Ferrum](https://github.com/rubycdp/ferrum) uses the newer **Chrome DevTools Protocol** (**CDP** for short).

Unlike webdriver, the CDP control layer is implicitly available in most modern browsers. Here's how Ferrum describes itself in its README:

> It is Ruby clean and high-level API to Chrome. Runs headless by default, but you can configure it to run in a headful mode. All you need is Ruby and Chrome or Chromium.

In a May 2022 [r/rails thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/rails/comments/ukb9gd/best_library_for_scraping_dynamic_page_in_sidekiq/) about scraping a dynamic page in Sidekiq, the poster wrote "I don't want to complicate my stack with any Node or other languages," and the top reply was "<https://github.com/rubycdp/ferrum> is great."

Without browser emulation, we'd have to reverse-engineer the website's javascript code before we could see and scrape its full HTML content. However, with browser automation, our process is much more straightforward:

1. Launch a web browser (like Chrome or Chromium).
2. Go to the page [web-scraping.dev/reviews](https://web-scraping.dev/reviews).
3. Wait for the dynamic contents to page load and render.
4. Scrape the full page source contents and parse it with the usual tools like Nokogiri.

Let's take a look at how we can use Ferrum to do this in Ruby:

ruby

```ruby
require 'ferrum'
require 'nokogiri'

browser = Ferrum::Browser.new  # start a web browser
browser.go_to("https://web-scraping.dev/reviews")  # navigate to URL

# wait for page to load
# by waiting for the first review to appear on the page
browser.wait_for_selector(css: "#latest-reviews .review")

# retrieve fully rendered HTML content
html_doc = Nokogiri::HTML(browser.body)
browser.quit

reviews = html_doc.css("#latest-reviews .review")
puts reviews.size
for review in reviews.first(2)
    puts review.css('[data-testid="review-date"]').text + " " + review.css("p").text
end
```



With Ferrum 0.19.1 and our installed Chrome 155, it printed:

text

```text
20
2023-05-18 Unique flavor and great energy boost. It's the perfect gamer's drink!
2023-05-17 Good flavor and keeps me energized. The bottle design is really fun.
```



Above, we start by initiating a web browser window and navigate to web-scraping.dev's review page. We then wait for the page to load by waiting for the first review element to appear on the page.

Finally, we extract the fully loaded HTML content and parse it with Nokogiri. When we took out the `wait_for_selector` line, the same script found 0 reviews.

Note that `wait_for_selector` came with Ferrum 0.19.0 on October 15, 2026, and it takes the selector as a `css:` keyword. A plain string raised `ArgumentError` with `wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 0)`.

Ferrum doesn't download a browser, so Chrome has to be installed wherever the scraper runs. The README says the "Chrome binary should be in the `PATH` or `BROWSER_PATH` and you can pass it as an option to browser instance".

Its headless mode also shows in the user agent, which said `HeadlessChrome/155.0.0.0`, and each run of the script above took between 2.7 and 4.2 seconds for a single page.

Using browser automation toolkits we can click around, scroll and replicate all the user interactions a normal browser could do! So far, we've scraped one page at a time, so let's take a look at Vessel for crawling whole websites.



## 6. Vessel: Best for Multi-Page Crawling and Structured Items

In essence, crawling *is* web scraping with *exploration capabilities*. Web crawling is simply more resource-intensive and harder to develop as we need to consider a whole series of new problems related to this exploration component.

Most commonly, web crawlers are used to discover targets when the website doesn't have a target directory or a sitemap.

[Vessel](https://github.com/rubycdp/vessel) comes from the same RubyCDP team as Ferrum, and its README calls it "Fast as Chrome, dead simple and yet extendable."

In order to show you how Vessel works we are going to crawl together [web-scraping.dev's product pages](https://web-scraping.dev/products) with the Mechanize driver:

ruby

```ruby
require "logger"
require "vessel"

# vessel logs to $stdout at the debug level, so we send the log to a file
Vessel::Logger.instance = Logger.new("vessel.log", level: Logger::INFO)

class ProductsCrawler < Vessel::Cargo
  domain "web-scraping.dev"
  start_urls "https://web-scraping.dev/products"
  # plain HTTP requests, the default :ferrum driver uses a real Chrome
  driver :mechanize

  def parse
    css(".product h3 a").each do |link|
      yield({ title: link.text.strip, url: link[:href] })
    end
    # schedule every page link with the same parse method as a handler
    css(".paging a[href]").each do |link|
      yield request(url: absolute_url(link[:href]), handler: :parse)
    end
  end
end

products = []
ProductsCrawler.run { |product| products << product }
puts products.size
puts products.uniq.size
puts products.first
```



With Vessel 0.3.0, we got back:

text

```text
30
25
{title: "Box of Chocolate Candy", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/1"}
```



In the README's words, "First Vessel using the driver goes to one or more urls in `start_urls`, in our case it's only one."

Each `parse` call yields our product hashes and new requests for the page links. This loop is repeated until no new URLs are found or a certain end condition is met like crawling depth or collected URL count is reached.

By default, the same URL isn't visited twice. Still, `/products` and `/products?page=1` are two different URLs, so we got the first 5 products twice.

"Vessel logs to `$stdout` at the debug level by default, so either send the log somewhere else (see [Logging](https://github.com/rubycdp/vessel#logging)) or write your items to a file instead of `$stdout`," as the README says.

Switching to `driver :ferrum` gave us the same 30 products, but in 3.5 to 3.7 seconds instead of 2.3 to 3.4 with Mechanize.

For a single listing page, Net::HTTP and Nokogiri are enough, so let's put them together in a working scraper.



## How Do You Build a Working Ruby Scraper With Net::HTTP and Nokogiri?

To solidify our knowledge of web scraping in Ruby let's write a short web scraper for [web-scraping.dev](https://web-scraping.dev/products).

First, we should take a look at the product listing page and design our scraping strategy. Each product on the list is a `.product` box, and the title link is inside its `h3`.

With this markup we can design our scraping and html parsing algorithms. Our general algorithm will look something like this:

1. Go to [web-scraping.dev/products](https://web-scraping.dev/products)
2. Collect product information from each of the product boxes, the title and the url

For this we'll be using simple functional programming script with the tools we've covered in this article, Net::HTTP for http connections and Nokogiri for parsing. Only Nokogiri needs installing, as Net::HTTP comes with Ruby:

bash

```bash
gem install nokogiri
```



ruby

```ruby
require "net/http"
require "nokogiri"

URL = URI("https://web-scraping.dev/products")

def fetch(uri)
  Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port, use_ssl: true, open_timeout: 10, read_timeout: 30) do |http|
    response = http.get(uri.request_uri)
    response.value # raises an error for anything other than 2xx
    response.body
  end
end

def parse_products(html, base_url)
  doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html)
  doc.css(".product h3 a").map do |link|
    {
      title: link.text.strip,
      url: URI.join(base_url, link["href"]).to_s
    }
  end
end

products = parse_products(fetch(URL), URL)
puts "found #{products.size} products"
products.each { |product| p product }
```



In the functions above, we used all the knowledge we've learned in this article:

- We used `Net::HTTP.start` with timeouts, and `response.value` to raise an error for anything other than 2xx.
- We used Nokogiri to extract parts of HTML using CSS selectors.
- We used `URI.join` to make sure every product url is absolute.

If we run this script we should see results similar to:

text

```text
found 5 products
{title: "Box of Chocolate Candy", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/1"}
{title: "Dark Red Energy Potion", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/2"}
{title: "Teal Energy Potion", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/3"}
{title: "Red Energy Potion", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/4"}
{title: "Blue Energy Potion", url: "https://web-scraping.dev/product/5"}
```



Using these existing tools in Ruby's ecosystem we wrote a full, fast scraper in few lines of code but skipped major pain points of web scraping, like error handling and retries.

Since we're working with an internet source we can never be sure of its stability and accessibility. Sometimes the website might be down, or our scraper can be identified and blocked from accessing the website.

### When Should a Ruby Scraper Move From Net::HTTP to Ferrum?

One of the most commonly encountered web scraping issues is, why can't my scraper see the data I see in the web browser? On web-scraping.dev's [review page](https://web-scraping.dev/reviews), Net::HTTP got a 200, but Nokogiri found zero reviews.

This is because the reviews are loaded from a GraphQL API using javascript after the page loads. So, the scraper doesn't see the fully rendered page as it's not a web browser capable of loading pages with javascript.

There are a few ways to deal with dynamic javascript-generated content when scraping. First, we could **reverse engineer website's behavior** and replicate it in our scraper program, which here means calling `/api/graphql` ourselves.

Unfortunately, this approach is very time-consuming and challenging. It requires in-depth web development skills and specialty tools.

Otherwise, Ferrum found all 20 reviews on the same page, and Scrapfly's `render_js` can render it for us too. So, if the data is already in the Net::HTTP response, there's no reason to start Chrome.



## FAQ

Is Ruby Good for Web Scraping in 2026?Yes. Ruby has a gem for every step of web scraping, and all five gems in this article had a release in 2026. It's especially handy when the scraper is part of a Ruby or Rails app.







 Can Nokogiri Scrape JavaScript-Rendered Pages?No. Nokogiri only parses the HTML we give it and can't run JavaScript. For pages like web-scraping.dev's reviews, we can render the page with Ferrum, or call the GraphQL API the page gets its reviews from.









## Summary

In this article, we've covered the best Ruby web scraping libraries, like Net::HTTP for HTTP requests, Nokogiri for parsing, Mechanize for cookies and forms, Ferrum for dynamic pages and Vessel for crawling.

Finally, we've solidified our knowledge with a working scraper for web-scraping.dev. For anti-bot protection and javascript rendering, check out [ScrapFly](https://scrapfly.io/products/web-scraping-api) for free today!



Legal Disclaimer and PrecautionsThis tutorial covers popular web scraping techniques for education. Interacting with public servers requires diligence and respect:

- Do not scrape at rates that could damage the website.
- Do not scrape data that's not available publicly.
- Do not store PII of EU citizens protected by GDPR.
- Do not repurpose *entire* public datasets which can be illegal in some countries.

Scrapfly does not offer legal advice but these are good general rules to follow. For more you should consult a lawyer.

 

   [  Add as a preferred source ](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=scrapfly.io) Table of Contents















 

  Table of Contents

- [Which Ruby Web Scraping Library or API Is Best?](#which-ruby-web-scraping-library-or-api-is-best)
- [1. Scrapfly Web Scraping API: Best for Blocked and JavaScript-Heavy Pages](#1-scrapfly-web-scraping-api-best-for-blocked-and-javascript-heavy-pages)
- [2. Net::HTTP: Best Built-In Ruby HTTP Client for Fetching Pages](#2-net-http-best-built-in-ruby-http-client-for-fetching-pages)
- [3. Nokogiri: Best for Parsing HTML and XML in Ruby](#3-nokogiri-best-for-parsing-html-and-xml-in-ruby)
- [4. Mechanize: Best for Stateful Forms and Sessions](#4-mechanize-best-for-stateful-forms-and-sessions)
- [5. Ferrum: Best for JavaScript-Rendered Pages](#5-ferrum-best-for-javascript-rendered-pages)
- [6. Vessel: Best for Multi-Page Crawling and Structured Items](#6-vessel-best-for-multi-page-crawling-and-structured-items)
- [How Do You Build a Working Ruby Scraper With Net::HTTP and Nokogiri?](#how-do-you-build-a-working-ruby-scraper-with-net-http-and-nokogiri)
- [When Should a Ruby Scraper Move From Net::HTTP to Ferrum?](#when-should-a-ruby-scraper-move-from-net-http-to-ferrum)
- [FAQ](#faq)
- [Summary](#summary)
 
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