AI is the newest dimension of web scraping, but adoption remains cautious. According to the state of web scraping report 2026 by Apify and The Web Scraping Club, 54.2% of professionals do not yet use AI-assisted scraping tools, but rather continue to rely on traditional approaches.
Among those who do use AI, the most common application is code generation: 63.6% use AI to write scrapers, while 32.7% use it for data extraction and parsing. AI is also applied across APIs, custom workflows, data cleaning, and tool-integrated environments — with no single dominant pattern yet emerging.
Productivity gains are real. 72.7% of AI users report improved productivity, citing faster prototyping, easier parsing, and reduced manual effort. At the same time, concerns remain significant. Respondents frequently mentioned hallucinations, high costs, unreliable performance, and uncertainty about practical benefits or use cases.
What’s most telling is intent. 66.2% of non-AI users plan to try AI tools in the future, and 100% of current AI users plan to increase usage. While skepticism remains, momentum is clearly building.
In 2026, AI is not yet standard in web scraping, but for teams already using it, it’s firmly part of the roadmap ahead.
