Top 10 URL Getter Tools to Extract Links AutomaticallyExtracting URLs from web pages, documents, or large datasets is a common task for web developers, SEO specialists, researchers, and anyone working with content aggregation. URL getters automate the process of finding and collecting links, saving time and reducing human error. This article reviews the top 10 URL getter tools available as of 2025, explains how they work, highlights use cases, gives setup tips, and covers legal and ethical considerations.
What is a URL getter?
A URL getter is a tool or script that automatically discovers and extracts URLs from inputs such as webpages (HTML), PDF files, text files, sitemaps, or APIs. Outputs typically include raw lists of links, filtered subsets (e.g., same-domain only), and structured exports (CSV, JSON). Tools range from simple command-line utilities and browser extensions to cloud services and custom code libraries.
Selection criteria
I evaluated tools based on:
- Ease of use and setup
- Extraction accuracy and robustness (handles JavaScript-rendered pages, pagination)
- Filtering and export options
- Performance and scalability
- Pricing and licensing
- Platform support (Windows, macOS, Linux, cloud)
- Privacy/security features
1. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Overview: Screaming Frog is a desktop-based website crawler designed primarily for SEO audits but widely used as a reliable URL getter.
Key features:
- Crawl entire sites to extract internal and external URLs
- Supports custom extraction via XPath, regex, CSS selectors
- Handles redirects, canonical tags, hreflang, and pagination
- Exports to CSV, Excel, and integrates with Google Analytics/Search Console
Best for: SEO specialists and site auditors who need a GUI tool for large sites.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Powerful GUI with visual reports | Desktop-bound; large crawls require machine resources |
| Custom extraction rules | Commercial license for full features |
| Accurate link discovery | Limited JavaScript rendering (improves with configuration) |
2. Beautiful Soup (Python library)
Overview: Beautiful Soup is a Python library for parsing HTML and XML. It’s lightweight and excellent for building custom URL getters.
Key features:
- Parses malformed HTML gracefully
- Works well with requests, aiohttp for downloading pages
- Easy to use with CSS selectors or tag traversal
- Ideal for small-to-medium scraping tasks and custom pipelines
Best for: Developers who prefer coding flexible extractors.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly customizable | Requires coding knowledge |
| Great community and docs | Needs additional tools to handle JS-rendered content |
Example (basic extraction):
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import requests resp = requests.get("https://example.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "html.parser") urls = [a['href'] for a in soup.find_all('a', href=True)] print(urls) 3. Puppeteer / Playwright (headless browsers)
Overview: Puppeteer (Node) and Playwright (Node/Python/.NET) control headless browsers to render JavaScript-heavy sites and extract links after client-side rendering.
Key features:
- Full browser context, runs JavaScript, interacts with dynamic pages
- Can wait for network idle or specific elements before extracting
- Supports parallelization and browser isolation
- Useful for single-page applications (SPAs) and sites relying on client-side routing
Best for: Developers needing robust link discovery on dynamic sites.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Handles JS-rendered content | Higher resource usage |
| Precise control over page lifecycle | More complex setup than simple parsers |
Example (Playwright Python):
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright with sync_playwright() as p: browser = p.chromium.launch() page = browser.new_page() page.goto("https://example.com") links = page.eval_on_selector_all("a[href]", "els => els.map(e => e.href)") print(links) browser.close() 4. URL Profiler
Overview: URL Profiler is a desktop app focused on SEO and content workflows, combining multiple data sources to extract and enrich lists of URLs.
Key features:
- Bulk URL extraction and enrichment (page titles, metadata, response codes)
- Integrates with Google APIs, Majestic, Ahrefs
- Exports to Excel and CSV; supports custom workflows
Best for: Agencies and SEO teams needing enriched URL lists.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Combines extraction with data enrichment | Paid license; Windows-centric |
| Good for bulk operations | Learning curve for advanced features |
5. wget / cURL (command-line)
Overview: wget and cURL are classic command-line tools to fetch webpages; combined with grep/sed/awk or pipelines they serve as lightweight URL getters.
Key features:
- Fetch pages and follow links (wget’s recursive mode)
- Output raw HTML for downstream parsing
- Easy to script for automation and run in minimal environments
Best for: Sysadmins and quick command-line extractions.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Preinstalled on many systems | Not specialized for extraction |
| Lightweight and scriptable | Needs parsing tools for extraction |
Example (simple grep):
curl -s https://example.com | grep -oP '(?<=href=")[^"]+' 6. Octoparse (visual scraper)
Overview: Octoparse is a no-code visual web scraping tool that lets non-programmers build extraction workflows, including URL extraction.
Key features:
- Point-and-click interface to select link lists and pagination
- Cloud-run extraction and scheduling
- Exports CSV/JSON and integrates with APIs
Best for: Non-developers who need a GUI scraper.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| No coding required | Subscription pricing |
| Cloud extraction options | Less flexible than code-based tools |
7. Link Klipper (Chrome extension)
Overview: Link Klipper is a browser extension that quickly extracts all links from the current page and exports them to CSV.
Key features:
- Extract links from active tab or selection
- Simple export and copy-to-clipboard options
- Lightweight and fast for ad-hoc tasks
Best for: Quick, manual link extraction from pages during browsing.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Fast and easy | Manual; not for large-scale automation |
| No coding required | Browser-limited functionality |
8. Scrapy (Python framework)
Overview: Scrapy is a powerful Python scraping framework built for large-scale crawling and extraction.
Key features:
- Built-in crawling, link extraction, and item pipelines
- Asynchronous by default — high throughput
- Extensible middlewares, spiders, and feed exports
Best for: Production-grade crawlers and scalable extraction projects.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Scales well for large crawls | Steeper learning curve |
| Robust community and extensions | Requires deployment infrastructure |
Basic spider example:
import scrapy class LinkSpider(scrapy.Spider): name = "links" start_urls = ["https://example.com"] def parse(self, response): for href in response.css("a::attr(href)").getall(): yield {"url": response.urljoin(href)} 9. Diffbot (AI-powered API)
Overview: Diffbot offers paid APIs that analyze web pages and return structured data, including extracted links, using machine vision and NLP.
Key features:
- Robust extraction across varied layouts
- Article, product, and custom extractors
- Handles heavy-scale needs with an API-first approach
Best for: Enterprises needing high-accuracy, hands-off extraction.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| High accuracy without custom code | Costly at scale |
| Handles varied page types | Cloud API dependency |
10. LinkExtractor libraries / small tools
Overview: Various lightweight link extractor libraries and utilities (e.g., href-extractor NPM packages, PHP Simple HTML DOM) provide focused URL-getting functions for specific ecosystems.
Key features:
- Minimal dependencies and simple APIs
- Good for embedding in existing apps or quick scripts
- Often available for Node, PHP, Ruby, Go, etc.
Best for: Developers needing a tiny dependency to extract links.
Pros/Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Simple to integrate | Varies in quality and maintenance |
| Low overhead | May lack advanced features |
Use cases and recommended choices
- Quick ad-hoc extraction while browsing: Link Klipper or browser devtools.
- Large-scale website crawling with SEO metrics: Screaming Frog or URL Profiler.
- Production-grade, scalable crawlers: Scrapy.
- JavaScript-heavy sites: Playwright or Puppeteer.
- Non-programmers: Octoparse.
- Enterprise-level, hands-off extraction: Diffbot.
- Custom lightweight scripts: Beautiful Soup or small link-extractor libraries.
- Quick command-line tasks: wget/cURL.
Legal and ethical considerations
- Respect robots.txt and site terms of service.
- Rate-limit crawlers to avoid overloading servers.
- Avoid scraping personal or sensitive data without consent.
- For commercial use, verify license terms of tools and data providers.
Setup tips and best practices
- Use user-agent strings that identify your crawler and include contact info if running large crawls.
- Implement exponential backoff and concurrency limits.
- Normalize and deduplicate URLs (resolve relative URLs, remove fragments).
- Store URLs with metadata (HTTP status, timestamp, source page) for better pipelines.
- Monitor and log errors to handle site changes and anti-bot measures.
Conclusion
Choosing the right URL getter depends on scale, technical skill, and target site complexity. For code flexibility, Scrapy or Beautiful Soup paired with headless browsers covers most needs. For non-developers and quick tasks, Octoparse or browser extensions work well. Enterprises can rely on services like Diffbot when accuracy and maintenance overhead justify the cost.
Which environment or use case are you targeting?
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