InsightSocial vs Instant Data Scraper
Instant Data Scraper is free and grabs any table it can see. InsightSocial keeps review and comment structure: stars, verified flags, owner replies and reply depth as their own columns.
The short answer
Instant Data Scraper is free, needs no account, and turns any repeating list on a page into a CSV or Excel file; for a one-off table it is hard to beat. On review and comment pages it reads what is rendered, so the columns are whatever its detection finds: a star rating drawn as an image has no text to capture, an owner reply sits inside the review it answers, and only the replies expanded on screen are there to read. InsightSocial is free up to 500 exported rows a month and reads 10 review and discussion sites with a fixed schema per site: rating, title, text, date, verified flag, helpful votes, the owner's reply as its own row, and depth and parent for threaded comments. The trade-off is scope: Instant Data Scraper works on any website, InsightSocial only on the sites it supports (those 10 plus 9 social platforms).
InsightSocial vs Instant Data Scraper, feature by feature
A green check marks where each tool genuinely wins. Both columns have them.
| Feature | InsightSocial | Instant Data Scraper |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free: 500 exported rows a month. Pro $9.99/mo for 10,000 | Free, no account |
| Sites it works on | 9 social platforms, plus 10 review and discussion sites | Any website with a repeating list or table |
| Review columns | Rating, title, text, date, verified flag, helpful votes, fixed per site | Columns detected automatically from the page markup |
| Owner, seller and developer replies | Their own rows, linked to the review they answer | Read as part of the review block it sits in, when it is on screen |
| Threaded comments (Hacker News, Quora, Product Hunt) | Depth and parent id on every row, including replies hidden behind "more" | Flattened to what is expanded on screen |
| Pagination and infinite scroll | Handled per site; most runs page over HTTP and keep going in a background tab | Supports pagination, automatic navigation to the next page and infinite scroll on the page you have open |
| Google Maps reviews | Opens the Reviews tab, sorts newest first and scrolls it (tab in front, Google sign-in, up to 5,000) | Works only as far as you can make the scrolling panel load |
| Where the data goes | Your InsightSocial dashboard, then CSV, Excel, JSON or Google Sheets | Straight to a CSV or XLSX download; nothing leaves your browser |
| Account needed | Sign in with Google | None |
| Ask questions of the data | Ask your data (Pro): plain-English questions over a finished run | Not included |
Pricing, side by side
Published list prices, checked on .
InsightSocial
- Free
- $0/mo
- Unlimited scraping, 500 rows exported per month
- Pro monthly
- $9.99/mo
- 10,000 rows exported per month
- Pro yearly
- $7.99/mo
- $95.88 billed yearly, 10,000 rows every month
- Studio
- $49/mo
- 150,000 rows exported per month
Instant Data Scraper
- Instant Data Scraper
- Free
- Generic list and table detection, CSV and XLSX download, no account
Instant Data Scraper is free, and that is a real advantage: if a free tool gives you the file you need, use it. Its Chrome Web Store listing showed 1,000,000 users and a 4.9-star rating from about 7,800 ratings when we checked in October 2026, and the listing names Flavr Technology, LP as its developer and says "This extension is completely FREE"; scraped data does not leave your browser. InsightSocial's free plan scrapes without limit and meters only exports: 500 rows a month, and a row you already exported is free to export again. Pro raises that to 10,000 rows a month.
Check Instant Data Scraper’s current pricingWhy generic table scraping struggles with reviews
Instant Data Scraper finds the biggest repeating block on a page and turns each repetition into a row, naming columns after the CSS classes it finds. That is exactly right for a product grid or a directory. A review is a different shape: the stars are usually an image or an aria-label rather than text, the date is often relative ("3 weeks ago"), and the business's reply sits inside the same block as the review it answers. A per-site extractor reads those as data.
- Stars become a number from 1 to 5, not an empty cell or an icon class
- Owner, seller and developer replies become their own rows, so you can count or exclude them
- The verified-purchase or verified-reviewer flag gets a column of its own on Amazon and Trustpilot
- The site's own date wording is kept next to the parsed date
Threads are trees, not tables
On Hacker News, Quora and Product Hunt launches, the reply structure is the point: who answered whom. A table scraper sees only the comments that are expanded on screen, in display order. InsightSocial reads the whole tree, including replies behind "more" links on Hacker News, and gives every row a depth and the id of the comment it answers.
- Hacker News: the full comment tree, measured at 2,484 comments in 2 minutes 22 seconds (October 2026)
- Quora: answers, then their comments one level deeper, up to about 3,000 rows
- Product Hunt: launch comments with maker replies nested under the question
What each tool can and cannot reach
Neither tool gets past a site's own limits. Signed out, Trustpilot shows at most 10 pages of reviews per filter; InsightSocial goes through each language and star rating separately to reach further, but on very large companies it still often stops short of every review. Amazon shows signed-out visitors only a handful of reviews. Google Maps shows the full list only to signed-in visitors. Instant Data Scraper sees exactly what the page shows you, which is the same ceiling or lower.
- Trustpilot: one company with 20,624 reviews returned 4,994 in our runs (October 2026)
- Steam: the 10,000 newest reviews per game
- Google Maps: up to 5,000 reviews of the place you open, with the tab in front
- One page per run on every site. Neither tool takes a list of URLs for review sites
When Instant Data Scraper is the better choice
Instant Data Scraper is free, fast and works almost anywhere. Choose it when:
- The site you need is not one of InsightSocial's supported sites (Yelp, G2, Capterra, TripAdvisor, app stores and so on)
- You need a one-off table, not review fields, and do not want to create an account
- You want nothing to leave your browser at all: no dashboard, no sync
- You want a quick look at a product grid, directory or search-results page
Why teams switch from Instant Data Scraper
What you get when the scrape runs in your own browser
Review fields, not guessed columns
Rating, title, text, date, verified flag and helpful votes, named the same on every run.
Replies kept apart
The owner's, seller's or developer's reply is its own row under the review it answers.
Background runs
Most review sites page over HTTP, so you can switch tabs while a run keeps going. Google Maps is the exception.
CSV, Excel, JSON or Sheets
Every run lands in your dashboard first, so you can filter before you export.
Still no code
Open the page, click Scrape. The side panel names the company, product or thread it found.
Asks for each site once
Chrome asks permission for a review site the first time you use it, and only that site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. It has no paid plan and needs no account. Its Chrome Web Store listing showed 1,000,000 users and a 4.9-star rating when we checked in October 2026.
Partly. It reads the reviews panel as far as you can get it to load, and the columns depend on Google's markup at the time. InsightSocial opens the Reviews tab, sorts it newest first and scrolls it for you, keeping owner replies as separate rows. It needs you signed in to Google and the tab in front, and stops at 5,000 reviews.
If your reviews are on Trustpilot, Amazon, Google Maps, Etsy, Steam or Product Hunt, a per-site exporter such as InsightSocial keeps the review fields Instant Data Scraper has to guess. If they are on Yelp, G2, Capterra or TripAdvisor, InsightSocial does not cover those sites; a cloud tool such as Outscraper or a site-specific extension is the better fit.
No. It works on 9 social platforms and 10 review and discussion sites: Trustpilot, Amazon, Google Maps, Etsy, Steam, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Quora, Blind and Notion. For any other site, Instant Data Scraper is the better tool.
Yes. Since version 4.7.0 the extension exports Trustpilot, Google Maps, Amazon, Etsy, Steam and Product Hunt reviews, plus Hacker News, Quora, Blind and Notion.
Scraping and reading results in the dashboard are free on every plan. Exports use credits, one per row: the free plan includes 500 a month, Pro $9.99 a month includes 10,000, and a row you already exported is free to export again.
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Unlimited scraping, plus 500 rows exported a month. No credit card.
No credit card required · Works on Chrome, Edge, Brave