Welcome to this Piloterr review π!
Web scraping is a pain. Between dealing with anti-bot systems, managing proxies, handling CAPTCHAs, and keeping up with website changes, what should be a simple data extraction task often turns into a complex engineering project.
That's where Piloterr comes in with an interesting proposition: instead of building and maintaining your own scraping infrastructure, why not use ready-made APIs that handle all the complexity for you?
With over 50 pre-built scraping endpoints covering everything from LinkedIn profiles to e-commerce data, Piloterr promises to make web scraping as simple as making an API call. But does it deliver on this promise? And more importantly, is it worth switching from your current scraping setup?
In this review, I'll take you through my hands-on experience with Piloterr, testing their APIs, exploring the platform, and seeing if this really is the "easy button" for web scraping they claim it to be. Let's dive in! π
The first thing that caught my attention on Piloterr's landing page was the interactive element in the hero section. Those floating cards showcasing different APIs (LinkedIn Job Suggest, Instagram User Info, etc.) aren't just for show - you can actually click on them to see what each API does! It's a clever way to immediately demonstrate the platform's capabilities, though I'll admit it took me a while to realize they were clickable π
The onboarding process is refreshingly straightforward:
That's it! No lengthy forms, no credit card required, and you immediately get 50 free credits to start testing.
After signing up, you're taken directly to the API Keys section. While there's no traditional dashboard with usage statistics or recent activity (something I'd love to see added), the interface is clean and functional. Creating your first API key is just a click away.
To really put Piloterr through its paces, I decided to test one of their most popular endpoints: the LinkedIn Profile scraper. This is typically one of the trickiest sites to scrape due to aggressive anti-bot measures.
Setting up the API call was straightforward:
https://piloterr.com/api/v2/linkedin/advanced/profile/info
x-api-key
The results? Impressive! In about 20 seconds, I received a huuuuge JSON response containing:
The data quality is excellent - everything is well-structured, properly parsed, and ready to use. For comparison, building a LinkedIn scraper from scratch would take weeks of work and constant maintenance as LinkedIn updates their anti-scraping measures.
Piloterr's API library is where the platform really shines. With over 50 endpoints organized by category, there's coverage for most common scraping needs:
Each API shows useful metrics like request count and votes, giving you an idea of what's popular and well-tested. The categorization makes it easy to find what you need, and there's a search function for quick access.
The documentation is clean and developer-friendly. Each endpoint includes:
One particularly nice touch is the timeout handling - failed requests are automatically retried for up to 30 seconds, reducing the need for complex retry logic in your code.
Piloterr offers four pricing tiers:
All paid plans include the same features - the only difference is the number of credits and request rate limits. The pricing is transparent with credits clearly mapped to requests (roughly $2.72 per 1,000 requests on the base plan).
There's also a 10% discount for annual subscriptions, which is always nice to see!
During my testing, here's what I observed:
The automatic retry mechanism is a thoughtful addition that handles temporary failures gracefully.
While Piloterr delivers on its core promise, there are a few areas for improvement:
After thoroughly testing Piloterr, I'm impressed by how well it delivers on its promise of making web scraping simple. The platform takes complex scraping challenges and reduces them to simple API calls - exactly what many developers need. To tell you the truth, I had no idea it was possible to scrape that much data, and it gave me a new project idea π!
But let's focus:
Who should use Piloterr?
Who might want to look elsewhere?
At $49/month for 18,000 credits (there's also a free plan), Piloterr offers excellent value compared to building and maintaining your own scraping infrastructure. The 50 free credits are generous enough to properly test the service, and the quality of data returned justifies the investment.
While there's room for improvement in the dashboard and monitoring features, the core product is solid. If you're tired of fighting anti-bot systems and maintaining scraping code, Piloterr is definitely worth trying π
In addition to this article, this product has also received a private review from our team. This feedback is divided into 4 categories. We don't share the content, but here are the numbers: