Web scraping can, and should, be a totally legal process if you're harvesting data that is indeed public on the web. The tricky stuff comes when you're dealing with private or copyrighted information. As the number of data-hungry teams around the world continues to swell, web scraping has reached an all-time high, and so has the confusion related to web scraping laws. In this article, we will explain when web scraping is allowed, what kinds of rules and limits you might encounter on some sites, and simple steps to stay compliant and respectful.
Web scraping, by itself, is not illegal. There is no one-size-fits-all statute that forbids this process, and many groups are engaging in this action for obvious and legal reasons. The question of what is or is not illegal relies heavily on how you fetch an open website and what kind of information you are looking to obtain. If you are accessing the open areas and are not entering areas that require a login or payment, you should be fine, because if you log into a website, you have probably agreed to their terms, which may prohibit this process.
Also, you should know that public doesn't mean free to copy. You should still consider privacy and intellectual property laws. Don't gather people's data unless a law supports this and you have a valid purpose. Examples of private information are names, email addresses, usernames attributed to a person, identification numbers, medical information, payment or bank account details. Furthermore, you should avoid replicating any form of creative material, including news articles, images, videos or logo designs since copyright protect this as well.
Even if the data isn't private and isn't copyrighted, other concerns may arise, like confidentiality or contractual obligations. Some websites simply don't allow any sort of automation, even if you scrape only for you own purposes.
Web scraping is a process of using a computer program to extract data from web pages automatically. Rather than manually copying data, a web scraper goes to a web page, locates data, and extracts the data of interest, such as titles, prices, or even ratings. Once the data is collected, it can be exported into a format that’s actually useful for people, like a spreadsheet or a database.
An example can be online shop which tracks competitor prices each morning. Its scraper visits 200 product pages, reads the price element for each item, writes the numbers into a sheet, and flags any price drops. Then, the team will open the sheet and see where to match or beat the market in minutes.
Public does not mean permission without boundaries. Even when information is visible to everyone, you can still run into rules about how much you take, how you reuse it, and whether the site’s terms allow automated collection. Large, repeated extractions or copying creative text and images can cross those lines. When in doubt, take only what you need and summarize instead of duplicating.
Making your scraper mimic a human visitor does not create permission. Authorization depends on things like logins, paywalls, rate limits, and the site’s written rules. Pushing past those controls, ignoring a stop request, or disguising access can be treated as going beyond what is allowed. The safer path is to stay on open pages and follow the conditions set by the site.
Fixing privacy after the fact is not enough. If the data can identify a person at the moment you collect it, you need a clear reason to take it and a plan to keep only what is necessary.
EU or California won't prohibit you from scraping, but you are governed by privacy laws as to what you can scrape and how you'll use it. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation says that any information that could be attributed to a person is considered to be personal data. If you're scraping such data, you'll need clear a purpose for it. And because it is not always realistic to get consent from everyone, most organizations will do a legitimate interest assessment.
Now, if you currently live in California, the California Consumer Privacy Act has established largely the same standards for covered businesses. If the CCPA applies to you, you must tell people what you collect, provide an opt-out of sale or share (for what that is worth) when applicable, honor their deletion request (when required), and do not discriminate or penalize anyone for exercising their rights.
In the United States, the focus is on authorization and not on scraping as a concept. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act prohibits accessing a computer without permission or going beyond what was allowed. For scrapers, the key question is simple. Are you staying on pages that are truly open to everyone, or are you trying to pass a login, a paywall, or another technical gate. Courts have recognized this difference. In hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, the Ninth Circuit treated access to public profiles differently from access behind authentication at the preliminary stage. You can read the opinion here. Separate from authorization, breaking technical measures to reach protected works can also raise anti circumvention issues under 17 U.S.C. § 1201.
If you want to understand web scraping law, the clearest guide is what courts have actually decided. The cases below show where judges draw the line between using publicly visible data and crossing into breach of contract or unauthorized access.
PR Aviation pulled fare data that anyone could see on Ryanair’s public site. The Dutch appellate court held that Ryanair’s browse-wrap terms did not bind PR Aviation because there was no clear moment where PR Aviation agreed to them. In other words, just loading a public page did not equal accepting hidden terms. The decision favored PR Aviation and highlighted that a site owner who wants to limit reuse of public data by contract needs real user assent.
Ryanair sued Expedia in U.S. federal court under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, claiming Expedia scraped its site. The judge let the case move forward and noted that the law applies to computers used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, so it can reach scraping with an international angle. The dispute ended the next year with a confidential settlement, after which Ryanair flights stopped appearing in Expedia’s search results.
hiQ collected data from LinkedIn profiles that users had chosen to make public. The Ninth Circuit kept in place a preliminary injunction blocking LinkedIn from using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to cut off access to those public pages, and it reaffirmed that view in 2022 after the Supreme Court’s Van Buren decision. The case wrapped up later in 2022 with a consent judgment that limited what hiQ could do going forward and required it to delete some of the data it had already gathered.
Meta contended that Bright Data's scraping of Facebook and Instagram breached Meta's service agreements. In January 2024, the court granted summary judgment in favor of Bright Data on the contract claim, determining that there was no clear prohibition of scraping while logged out, of information that was public to other users. Meta then voluntarily withdrew its only remaining claim, thus concluding the lawsuit in favor of Bright Data.
In the US, scraping data from pages that are genuinely open to the public is generally more defensible if you respect the barriers in place. The real risk starts when you go around logins or paywalls, ignore technical blocks, or hit a site so hard that you strain its systems. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) targets access that is “without authorization” or exceeds what was allowed, while contract and tort claims can still apply even when there is no CFAA violation. Privacy laws such as California’s CCPA and CPRA add duties once you collect personal data, including notice, limits on use and honoring user rights. Ticketing is treated separately: using or reselling tickets obtained by bots that evade controls is specifically outlawed at the federal level.
In the EU, scraping non personal, non copyrighted facts from publicly available pages is usually less risky. As soon as there’s a link to personal data, the GDPR applies to ensure that you have a legal ground, like genuine interest, as well as transparency, minimization, and heightened children’s details sensitivity. EU copyright rules and the sui generis database right can restrict large scale extraction of protected databases, including repeated smaller pulls that add up. The EU’s text and data mining (TDM) exceptions let certain automated analysis happen on lawfully accessible content, but they do not override GDPR or database rights, and rightsholders can sometimes opt out with machine readable signals.
In the UK, scraping that touches personal data is governed by UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, broadly mirroring EU style obligations around lawful basis, fairness, transparency, and security. The UK’s TDM exception is narrow: it only clearly covers non commercial research by someone with lawful access who gives proper acknowledgment, so there is no general right to mine data for commercial projects. UK copyright and database rights remain relevant and can limit extraction or reuse of substantial parts of protected databases, or systematic smaller extractions that are significant in aggregate.
Before you unleash your scraper, answer yourself to the 3 questions below.
So, if you answered with "no" to all three questions above usually means you are on solid ground. If any of these, have a "yes", take a pause and do a focused legal review.
Web scraping is a method, but it is not a decision. The question of whether it is legal or illegal depends on what you are extracting, how you are extracting it, and what laws are relevant to the countries where both you and the targeted systems are situated. As long as you are limited to pages that are genuinely public, avoid any login or technology-based restrictions, reduce or mask any personal information, and maintain all records, you reduce your risk significantly.
If your plan touches gated areas, large volumes of personal data, sensitive categories, protected databases, or republishes someone else’s content, pause and get a legal review before you ship. A short consult now almost always costs less than fixing a bad scrape later.
This article is informational and educational only. It is not legal advice and does not replace independent professional judgment.
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