Yes. Grabby is completely free right now, and everything is unlocked while it is in early access. Paid plans with cloud and team features are coming later.

No. Point and click, or let auto-detect do it.

What formats can I export to?

Download your data as CSV, JSON, Excel (TSV) or Markdown, or copy the whole table straight into Google Sheets or Excel. It all runs locally, so the file is yours.

Can it also grab emails, images, and detail pages?

Yes. Grabby extracts emails, social links, page metadata and images, and it can follow a column of links to pull fields from each detail page.

Is Grabby a free alternative to Instant Data Scraper?

Yes. Grabby is a free web scraper Chrome extension you can use in place of tools like Instant Data Scraper. It does point-and-click selection and auto-detect, handles pagination and infinite scroll, and also pulls emails, images, metadata and detail-page fields, then exports to CSV, JSON, Excel or Google Sheets.

Does it work on dynamic or logged-in sites?

Yes. It reads the page you actually see, so JavaScript content and logged-in pages both work.

Does it work on every website?

It works on virtually any site you can browse. Sites with heavy anti-bot protection or CAPTCHAs may block automated extraction, as they do with every scraper.

Where is my data stored?

Locally in your browser on the free plan. Nothing is uploaded.

Is web scraping legal?

Scraping public data is generally permissible, but many sites’ terms restrict it and personal data carries privacy obligations. Use responsibly and review each site’s terms. (Not legal advice.)

COMPARISONSeptember 1, 2026·7 min read·By the Grabby team

The best free Instant Data Scraper alternative (2026)

Instant Data Scraper is a great quick grab, until you need more than one page or clean fields. Here is a free, no-code alternative that goes further.

Instant Data Scraper is one of the most popular free, no-code web scrapers on the Chrome Web Store, and for good reason: you open a page, click a button, and it guesses the main table. But if you have used it for real work, you have probably hit its limits, pagination that stalls, one table at a time, columns that come out messy, and no way to follow links into detail pages. If that sounds familiar, here is a free alternative that goes further: Grabby.

What Instant Data Scraper does well

Credit where it is due. Instant Data Scraper is free, requires no account, and its one-click auto-detect is a genuinely fast way to grab a simple table off a page and export it to CSV or Excel. For a quick, one-off grab of a single tidy table, it is hard to beat on speed.

Where Instant Data Scraper falls short

The friction shows up the moment your job is more than one clean table:

One table at a time. It detects a single table or list. Pick the wrong one and you re-guess.
Pagination is fragile. It handles a simple “Next” button, but often stalls on infinite scroll and interaction-heavy pages, so you miss rows.
No detail-page scraping. It can’t follow each row’s link to pull extra fields from the product or profile page.
Messy columns. Auto-detected columns frequently need a cleanup pass, and there’s little built-in editing.
No templates, recipes, or history. Every run starts from scratch.

Meet Grabby, the free alternative that goes further

Grabby keeps the part people love about Instant Data Scraper, point-and-click with smart auto-detect, and adds the things you reach for once a job gets real. It is free while in early access, with every feature unlocked:

Point-and-click and auto-detect, just like you expect, with no XPath or code.
One-click templates for popular sites, so common scrapes take a single click.
Reliable pagination, infinite scroll, and load-more to collect data across every page.
Detail-page scraping: follow each row’s link and pull extra fields from every page.
An editable data table: rename columns, remove duplicate and empty rows, and clean up before export.
Exports to CSV, JSON, and Excel, or copy straight into Google Sheets.
Built-in extractors for emails, social links, images, and metadata, on one page or across a list of URLs.
Saved recipes and searchable history so you can re-run past work in one click.

Feature comparison of Grabby versus Instant Data Scraper — What each tool covers, side by side.

How Grabby handles what Instant Data Scraper can’t

Pagination and infinite scroll that actually finish

Point Grabby at a “Next” button or choose auto-scroll, set a page limit, and it walks the whole list while you watch the row counter climb, including on infinite-scroll feeds that trip up simpler tools.

Follow the links into detail pages

Have a list of products or profiles? Give Grabby the column of links and it opens each one to pull extra fields, like brand, description, or contact details, then merges them back into your table. That is the difference between a list and a full dataset.

Clean data, not a cleanup project

Results land in an editable table where you can dedupe, remove empty rows, rename and hide columns, and sort, all before you export, so the file comes out ready to use instead of needing a spreadsheet cleanup afterwards.

Grabby's editable data table producing a clean spreadsheet — An editable table means the export is clean the first time.

How to switch (it takes a minute)

Install the free Grabby extension.
Open the page you were scraping and click Scrape List (or pick a template).
Choose how to page through results, then Start.
Clean up in the table and export to Excel, CSV, or JSON.

The muscle memory is the same as Instant Data Scraper, so there is almost nothing to learn.

The honest verdict

Instant Data Scraper is still a great choice for a fast, one-off grab of a single clean table. But the moment you need multiple pages, infinite scroll, fields from detail pages, or a genuinely clean export, Grabby does more, and it is free too. If you have been fighting Instant Data Scraper’s limits, it is worth a try.

Frequently asked questions

Is Grabby free? Yes. It is free while in early access, with every feature unlocked and no sign-up.

Is it as easy as Instant Data Scraper? Yes. It is the same point-and-click and auto-detect, with more power when you need it.

Does it export to Excel? Yes, to CSV or Excel, JSON, or copy straight into Google Sheets.

Can it handle infinite scroll and multiple pages? Yes, that is one of the main reasons to switch.

Can it scrape emails? Yes, it has a built-in email extractor that works on a page or across a list of URLs.

Try it on your next scrape

New to no-code scraping? Start with our guides to scraping Amazon product data, Google Maps leads, or any website to Excel. Then install Grabby and put it up against the scrape that Instant Data Scraper couldn’t finish.