OpenClaw Web Scraping: How to Extract Data from Any Website

OpenClaw turns web scraping from a coding task into a conversation. Tell it what data you need, from which website, and in what format. It handles navigation, extraction, pagination, and formatting.

How OpenClaw Scraping Works

Unlike traditional scrapers that require CSS selectors and XPath, OpenClaw reads pages the way a human does. It understands page structure, identifies data tables, and extracts information by meaning — not by DOM position.

You: "Go to producthunt.com and get me the top 10 products today
      with their names, taglines, and upvote counts."

OpenClaw: Navigates → reads → extracts → formats → returns a table.

Setup

Built-in Web Reading (No Setup)

OpenClaw can fetch and read any public webpage out of the box:

"Read the pricing page at example.com and extract all plan names and prices"

Headless Browser (For JS-Heavy Sites)

For sites that require JavaScript rendering:

openclaw plugins install @anthropic/mcp-browser

This adds a headless Chromium that can handle:

• Single-page applications (React, Vue, Angular)
• Infinite scroll pages
• Sites that load data via AJAX
• Pages behind cookie consent walls

Browser Relay (For Authenticated Sites)

The Chrome extension approach lets OpenClaw use your logged-in browser session:

1. Install the OpenClaw Browser Relay extension
2. Connect to your OpenClaw instance
3. Scrape data from sites where you're already authenticated

Practical Scraping Examples

Price Monitoring

"Check the price of the Sony WH-1000XM5 on Amazon, BestBuy, and
 B&H Photo every 6 hours. Send me a Telegram alert if any
 price drops below $280."

OpenClaw creates a cron job that:

1. Visits each retailer
2. Finds the product page
3. Extracts the current price
4. Compares against your threshold
5. Alerts you on Telegram with the deal link

Competitor Research

"Go to [competitor.com]/pricing and extract all plan names,
 prices, and feature lists. Format as a comparison table."

Job Listings

"Search LinkedIn Jobs for 'senior frontend engineer' in Berlin.
 Get the first 20 results with company name, salary range,
 and posting date."

Real Estate

"Find 3-bedroom apartments for rent in Austin, TX under $2500
 on Zillow. Get address, price, square footage, and listing URL."

News Aggregation

"Check TechCrunch, The Verge, and Ars Technica for articles
 about AI regulation published this week. List the headlines
 and URLs."

Review Scraping

"Get the latest 20 reviews for [product] on Amazon. Include
 the rating, review title, and first two sentences of each."

Working with Extracted Data

Export to CSV

"Scrape the product catalog at [url] and save it as a CSV file."

Export to JSON

"Extract all team members from [company]/about and return
 as JSON with name, role, and LinkedIn URL."

Direct to Spreadsheet

"Extract the data table from [url] and add it to my
 Google Sheet named 'Market Research'."

Multi-Page Scraping

OpenClaw handles pagination automatically:

"Go to [blog.example.com] and get all article titles and
 dates. Follow the 'Next Page' link until you've collected
 at least 50 articles."

It detects pagination patterns (next buttons, page numbers, infinite scroll) and crawls through them.

Scheduled Scraping

Combine scraping with cron scheduling for automated data collection:

"Every Monday morning, scrape the top posts from Hacker News
 and send me a summary of the top 10 on Telegram."

"Every day at 9am, check my competitor's changelog page for
 new entries. If there's anything new, summarize it and
 send it to me."

Ethical Scraping

OpenClaw follows responsible scraping practices:

• Respects robots.txt by default
• Rate limits requests to avoid overwhelming servers
• CAPTCHAs are respected — OpenClaw won't bypass them
• Login walls require your explicit authentication (via Browser Relay)

For sites that explicitly prohibit scraping, OpenClaw will inform you and suggest alternatives (official APIs, RSS feeds, etc.).

Limitations

• Heavy anti-bot sites: Some sites actively detect and block automated access
• CAPTCHAs: OpenClaw won't solve CAPTCHAs
• Dynamic content: Very complex SPAs may require the headless browser setup
• Large-scale scraping: OpenClaw is designed for targeted extraction, not crawling millions of pages

Scraping-Ready Instances

ClawTank containers include the headless browser runtime pre-installed. Start scraping immediately after deployment — no Chromium installation or plugin setup needed.