Should I use CSS selectors or XPath for web scraping?

CSS selectors and XPath are both powerful tools for web scraping, each with distinct advantages.

CSS selector advantages:

• Cleaner, more readable syntax
• Faster performance for most selection tasks
• Easier to read and write, making code more maintainable
• More familiar to web developers
• Work consistently across scraping libraries

Comparison example:

CSS: div.product > h2.title XPath: //div[@class='product']/h2[@class='title']

The CSS version is more concise and readable.

When XPath excels:

• Selecting elements based on text content: //button[contains(text(), "Add to Cart")]
• Navigating upward in the DOM tree: parent::div
• Complex conditional logic and predicates
• Selecting attributes directly as values (CSS requires an additional extraction step)

Recommendation:

For most web scraping projects, CSS selectors are the better default choice due to their simplicity and performance. Reserve XPath for cases where you need its unique capabilities, like text-based selection or parent traversal.

Strategic use:

Many experienced scrapers use both strategically:

• CSS selectors for structure-based extraction (90% of cases)
• XPath when text content or complex conditions are involved (10% of cases)

Start with CSS selectors and only switch to XPath when you encounter specific scenarios that CSS cannot handle efficiently.