What is the difference between a Crawler and an API on our website?

What is the difference between a Crawler and an API on our website?

Our Marketplace has two types of self-service offerings
  1. Crawlers
  2. APIs

Crawlers:

A Crawler is something anyone can use - you can signup and use a crawler by simply copying and pasting some links you need data from and download the data.
You do not need to know programming or any other skill - as long as you can use a browser and can download files.

APIs:

APIs on the other hand need computer programming skills.
Your computer programs will talk to our computer programs and automatically get the data from us to you.
Once programmed, an API does not need human intervention. You do not need to visit our website to do anything more.
Your programs or scripts will call our APIs and our APIs will get you the data.
So you will need to know basic computer programming or hire someone to write and maintain the API interface on your side. We will run and maintain our side of the API.

Summary

Crawlers
APIs
Anyone can use
Only computers can use
Cannot be customized
Can be customized

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