Is Free Scraping Really Free? What Are the Hidden Costs? or How Reliable Is Free Scraping for Data Co

Free scraping is only free if your time is worthless.

Captchas, rate limits, broken selectors… ugh. I gave up and use Apify now. Not free, but way less rage-inducing.

Pro tip: Always check robots.txt. Some sites are cool with scraping, others will nuke your IP.