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How to Use Web Scraping Templates the Right Way

C
CrawlForge Team
Engineering Team
June 5, 2026
10 min read

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Quick Answer

A web scraping template is a ready-to-use JSON config that chains multiple CrawlForge tools into one workflow -- copy it, point it at your URLs, and run. CrawlForge ships 24 templates across 9 categories (e-commerce, research, SEO, sales, monitoring, and more), each costing 3 to 19 credits per run. Use them from an MCP client like Claude or Cursor, the crawlforge CLI, or the REST API.

Most web scraping projects are not unique snowflakes. Track competitor prices. Enrich a list of leads. Audit a site for SEO. Pull training data for a model. It is the same handful of recipes, over and over. A web scraping template is one of those recipes, pre-wired: a ready-to-use JSON config that chains the right CrawlForge tools in the right order, so you can copy it, point it at your targets, and run. CrawlForge ships 24 of them in the templates gallery. This guide is about using them well -- not just copy-paste, but read, adapt, and cost them out before you scale.

Table of Contents

  • What Is a Web Scraping Template?
  • Templates Gallery vs the scrape_template Tool
  • How to Use a Template the Right Way
  • 8 Templates Worth Copying First
  • The Other 16 Templates
  • Customizing or Building Your Own

What Is a Web Scraping Template?

A template is a saved configuration that orchestrates two or three CrawlForge tools into one workflow with a business outcome attached. Instead of wiring search_web then scrape_structured then analyze_content yourself -- and guessing every parameter -- you copy a config that already does it.

Each template in the gallery carries:

  • A category -- E-commerce, Research, Data Collection, Monitoring, AI & LLM, Sales, SEO, Content, or Advanced Scraping (nine in total).
  • A difficulty -- beginner, intermediate, or advanced.
  • The tool chain it runs and a fixed credit cost per run (3 to 19 credits).
  • A copy-paste JSON config with sensible default parameters.

You run that config from any MCP client (Claude, Cursor, Windsurf), the crawlforge CLI, or the REST API. Same config, same shape of result.

Templates Gallery vs the scrape_template Tool

This trips people up, so let's be precise. CrawlForge has two different things with "template" in the name:

Templates galleryscrape_template tool
What it isA library of multi-tool config chainsA single tool with 10 site schemas
ScopeAny workflow (pricing, SEO, research...)10 specific sites (Amazon, LinkedIn, GitHub...)
OutputWhatever the chained tools returnStructured JSON for that one site
Cost3-19 credits/run (sum of its tools)1 credit/call
Use whenYou want a whole workflow, ready-madeYou want data from one popular site

If your target is one of the ten supported sites, reach for the tool -- it is covered in depth in Scrape Amazon, LinkedIn & 8 More Sites With One Tool. For everything else -- a full pricing-monitoring or lead-enrichment pipeline -- you want a gallery template. This guide is about the gallery.

How to Use a Template the Right Way

Copy-paste is step one. Using a template well is six.

1. Pick by outcome, not by tool. Start from the job ("monitor competitor prices") and filter the gallery by category and difficulty. New to this? Start with the cheap, two-tool, beginner templates before reaching for a 19-credit research pipeline.

2. Read the config before you run it. Look at the tool order, the parameters, and whether it carries a schedule (hourly, daily, or weekly). Order matters: search_web finds the URLs, then scrape_structured extracts from them.

3. Swap the placeholders. Every config ships with example values -- https://competitor-a.com/pricing, {company_name}, "product name", a default schema. Replace those with your real targets and the exact fields you want back. The schema is your output contract; trim it to what you'll actually use.

4. Do the credit math before you scale. A template's cost is just the sum of its tools' costs. Multiply by frequency: a 7-credit template run hourly is 168 credits/day. Here is the per-tool table the configs draw from:

CreditsTools
1fetch_url, extract_text, extract_links, extract_metadata, scrape_template
2scrape_structured, extract_content, map_site, process_document, localization
3analyze_content, track_changes, extract_structured, extract_with_llm
4summarize_content, crawl_deep
5stealth_mode, scrape_with_actions, batch_scrape, search_web, generate_llms_txt
10deep_research

5. Run it from your stack of choice. In an MCP client, paste the goal and let the agent call the tools. From a terminal or cron job, use the crawlforge CLI. In an app, hit the REST API. All three share one API key and one credit balance.

6. Schedule and monitor. Templates built for monitoring carry a schedule. Pair them with track_changes so you act on diffs, not on every identical run.

8 Templates Worth Copying First

The gallery has 24. These eight cover the highest-demand jobs and span beginner to advanced.

1. Competitor Pricing Monitor

E-commerce · intermediate · 7 credits/run · batch_scrape + scrape_structured

Scrape a set of competitor pricing pages on a schedule and normalize them into a clean plan / price / features structure.

Json

Adapt it: replace urls with your competitors' pricing pages, then tune selectors and schema to the fields you track. Keep schedule at daily for most pricing work. Full walkthrough: build an AI price-monitoring system.

2. Contact Enrichment Pipeline

Sales · intermediate · 7 credits/run · search_web + extract_metadata + extract_links

Turn a bare company name into an enriched record -- official site, social handles, and key links.

Json

Adapt it: drive {company_name} from your CRM export, and widen the extract_links filter to the domains you care about. Run it per row to enrich a whole list. Full walkthrough: build a lead-enrichment engine.

3. SEO Site Audit

SEO · beginner · 6 credits/run · map_site + extract_metadata + analyze_content

Crawl a site, pull every page's metadata, and score content quality -- a fast, repeatable audit.

Json

Adapt it: point url at your domain and raise or lower max_depth to control crawl breadth (and cost). One of the cheapest templates to run regularly. Full walkthrough: automating SEO audits with CrawlForge.

4. AI Training Data Collector

AI & LLM · intermediate · 7 credits/run · batch_scrape + extract_content

Collect and clean web pages at scale into model-ready text -- no navigation, no boilerplate.

Json

Adapt it: feed urls from a sitemap or CSV, and keep remove_navigation on so menus and footers don't pollute your dataset. Full walkthrough: web scraping for AI training data pipelines.

5. Market Intelligence Dashboard

Research · advanced · 19 credits/run · deep_research + batch_scrape + summarize_content

The flagship. Run multi-source research, scrape the key industry sources, and summarize it all into a daily briefing.

Json

Adapt it: change the query to your market and swap urls for your trusted sources. At 19 credits/run it is the most expensive template here -- run it daily, not hourly. Related reading: competitive intelligence with AI agents.

6. Review Sentiment Analyzer

E-commerce · intermediate · 10 credits/run · search_web + scrape_structured + analyze_content

Find reviews across platforms, structure them, and score sentiment and topics.

Json

Adapt it: put your product in the query, raise max_results for more coverage, and keep the schema tight so sentiment scoring stays clean. Related reading: e-commerce product data extraction at scale.

7. Job Listings Scraper

Data Collection · intermediate · 7 credits/run · search_web + scrape_structured

Search job boards and pull listings into a structured feed -- title, company, location, salary, date.

Json

Adapt it: change the query to your role and region, and add schema fields (remote flag, seniority) as needed. See it live on the Job Listings Scraper template page.

8. Website Change Detector

Monitoring · beginner · 6 credits/run · fetch_url + extract_content + analyze_content

Watch a single page and surface when its content shifts -- pricing, terms, or announcements.

Json

Adapt it: set url to the page you care about and dial schedule to your tolerance for staleness -- hourly for fast-moving pages, daily for the rest. Related reading: build a competitive-intelligence agent.

The Other 16 Templates

The remaining gallery entries, grouped by category -- each is a copy-paste config on the templates page:

  • Research: News Aggregation Pipeline (11cr), Multi-Source Research Agent (12cr), Academic Paper Research (14cr).
  • Data Collection: Real Estate Listings Tracker (7cr), PDF Document Processor (6cr), Government Data Extractor (5cr).
  • Monitoring: Compliance Monitoring (9cr), Social Media Monitoring (12cr).
  • E-commerce: E-commerce Product Extraction (3cr).
  • AI & LLM: Documentation Knowledge Base (10cr).
  • Sales: Tech Stack Detector (3cr).
  • SEO: Link Building Prospector (7cr).
  • Content: Content Migration Tool (7cr), Localization Content Audit (7cr).
  • Advanced Scraping: Dynamic SPA Scraper (7cr), Stealth Data Extraction (7cr).

Customizing or Building Your Own

No template is a perfect fit out of the box -- that is the point of step three. When a config gets you 80% there, swap the parameters and schema and you are done. When nothing fits:

  • Start from the closest template and rewrite its schema and parameters.
  • Compose tools yourself. Use scrape_structured when you know stable CSS selectors, or extract_with_llm when the layout shifts and you want schema-driven, layout-resilient extraction.
  • Request a template. If you want a recipe we don't ship yet, ask on Discord -- popular requests get added to the gallery.

Ready to run your first template? Start free with 1,000 credits -- no credit card required. Browse the full templates gallery, grab the scrape_template tool for single-site jobs, or watch a template run in production in the e-commerce extraction guide.

Tags

web-scraping-templatesMCPtutorialsprice-monitoringlead-enrichmentautomationAI-agents

About the Author

C

CrawlForge Team

Engineering Team

Building the most comprehensive web scraping MCP server. We create tools that help developers extract, analyze, and transform web data for AI applications.

On this page

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a web scraping template?+

A web scraping template is a ready-to-use JSON config that chains multiple CrawlForge tools into one workflow with a specific outcome -- price monitoring, lead enrichment, SEO auditing, and so on. Instead of wiring tools and parameters yourself, you copy the config, swap in your URLs and schema, and run it from an MCP client, the crawlforge CLI, or the REST API. CrawlForge ships 24 templates across 9 categories.

What is the difference between the templates gallery and the scrape_template tool?+

The templates gallery is a library of multi-tool config chains for complete workflows (e.g. a pricing monitor that runs batch_scrape then scrape_structured), costing 3 to 19 credits per run. The scrape_template tool is a single tool with pre-built schemas for 10 popular sites (Amazon, LinkedIn, GitHub, and more) at 1 credit per call. Use a gallery template for a whole workflow; use scrape_template when you just want data from one of the ten supported sites.

How many credits does a template cost to run?+

A template costs the sum of its tools per run, ranging from 3 credits (E-commerce Product Extraction, Tech Stack Detector) to 19 credits (Market Intelligence Dashboard). For example, a Competitor Pricing Monitor runs batch_scrape (5) plus scrape_structured (2) for 7 credits. Multiply by your schedule to budget: a 7-credit template run hourly is 168 credits per day.

Can I customize a template or change its schema?+

Yes -- that is the intended workflow. Every template ships with placeholder values (example URLs, a default schema, sample queries) that you replace with your real targets. The schema defines your output contract, so trim or extend it to the exact fields you need. If no template fits, start from the closest one or compose tools yourself with scrape_structured or extract_with_llm.

How do I run a CrawlForge template?+

Three ways, all sharing one API key and credit balance: paste the goal into an MCP client like Claude, Cursor, or Windsurf and let the agent call the tools; run it from a terminal or cron job with the crawlforge CLI; or call the REST API directly from an application. The same config produces the same result across all three.

Are the templates free to use?+

The templates themselves are free to copy. You only spend CrawlForge credits when you run one. New accounts get 1,000 free credits with no credit card, which is enough to test most templates many times over -- a 6-credit SEO Site Audit runs about 160 times on the free tier.

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