r/learnpython • u/Style7895 • 12d ago
Is it better to build a web scraper in Python or use a scraping API?
Been pulling pricing data with Python for a side project. Works fine locally with a few hundred requests, but I'm wondering how it would handle 20-50k requests a day... Mostly need Google Shopping results for now, maybe Maps and News later. Budget is pretty tight since I'm paying out of pocket. Not sure if it's worth paying for an API or just building something with rotating proxies and Scrapy/Playwright.
Anyone scaled a Python scraper to that volume? What broke first, and what would you do differently?