Answers · Legal & compliance · 8 questions
Updated 25 Oct 2026 · Reviewed by Mohammad Shakir, Co-founder & CEO
The honest answer to "is scraping legal" is: it depends on what, how and where - and the details decide. These answers lay out the frameworks in plain language, so you can ask counsel and vendors the right questions. None of this is legal advice.
There is no single answer: it depends on what is collected, how, from where, and what is done with it. Collecting publicly visible data is a widespread industry practice, and courts in several jurisdictions have distinguished public-data collection from unauthorized access - but site terms, copyright and data protection law all still apply.
This is general information, not legal advice. For any specific use, take advice from counsel who knows your jurisdiction and use case.
India has no statute that addresses scraping as such. The relevant frameworks are the IT Act's unauthorized-access provisions, contract law for site terms, copyright law for content, and the DPDP Act for personal data. Public price and product data sits differently under these than personal data does.
This is general information, not legal advice - Indian counsel should review any specific program.
robots.txt is a technical convention - a request to crawlers, not legislation. Courts have treated it as one signal of a site's wishes rather than a law in itself, but respecting it is part of operating responsibly.
Treat it as one input alongside site terms and the law, not as the whole compliance question.
Yes - most sites' terms restrict automated access, and terms can be enforceable as contracts, with enforceability varying by jurisdiction and by how the terms were presented. This is the ground where most scraping disputes actually live.
It is a reason to collect through a provider that evaluates this per source, and to put the question to counsel rather than assume.
Ideally, not at all: most commercial use cases - prices, products, availability, reviews in aggregate - don't need personal data, and excluding it by design avoids obligations under the DPDP Act, GDPR and similar laws.
Where personal data is unavoidable, those laws can apply even when the data is public, and that is a compliance project, not a footnote.
Public pages only, no personal data by design, request rates that don't burden the site, honest evaluation of each source's terms and legal posture, and records of what is collected and why.
Ask any vendor to describe its practice on each of these. A provider that can't answer in writing is answering.
The best-known line of cases - including hiQ v LinkedIn in the US - distinguished accessing publicly available pages from the unauthorized access that anti-hacking statutes target, while leaving contract and other claims open. Outcomes differ by country and keep evolving.
The practical reading: public-data collection is not automatically unlawful, and it is not automatically permitted either. Jurisdiction and specifics decide.
How data is collected, how source terms are evaluated, how personal data is excluded or handled, where data is stored, what indemnities and contractual protections are offered, and whether practices are documented in writing.
The vendor's answers belong in your contract, not just in a sales call. This is general information, not legal advice.
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