Sunsetting ScrapeShark
It's time to set the shark loose.
After nearly four years, I’m shutting down ScrapeShark. What began as a side project scraping real estate listings in 2016 evolved into a standalone service in 2020, but never quite found its footing in the market.
ScrapeShark provided an API that allowed anyone to extract content from virtually any webpage and convert it into structured formats like JSON. Despite its technical capabilities, we faced several key challenges:
The product occupied an extremely niche space, making it difficult to reach potential customers beyond those finding us through organic search.
Most of our users were technically savvy developers who already had custom scraping solutions. ScrapeShark typically supplemented rather than replaced these existing systems, offering helpful features like browser cycling and proxy rotation without becoming essential to their operations.
As a “peripheral service” not tied to any company’s core business, we were easily replaceable. Without data lock-in or deep integration possibilities, customers could switch to competitors with minimal friction.
From a technical perspective, I’m proud of what we built - a system that handled tens of thousands of daily requests, provided millions of unique browser instances, and maintained its own network of rotating proxies.
I plan to open-source ScrapeShark’s engine in the future, hoping it might benefit others in the developer community.
Thanks to everyone who supported us along the way. It’s been a valuable learning experience in both technology and business, the first side project that turned into an actual business.