# How do I build an AI web scraper in Excel using Python?

Yes - you can run one **inside Excel** with **xlwings Lite** (Python in Excel). Paste a list of URLs, describe what you want in **plain English**, and it writes clean structured data back to the sheet along with per-URL status, error logs and a scraping dashboard. The instructions are conversational: *filter* ("drop records from Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi"), *select* ("keep only the first phone number"), *normalize* ("expand UP to Uttar Pradesh"), *derive* ("combine first name and city into an all-caps ID, no spaces").

How it works: **Jina.ai** fetches the page text, an **LLM (Gemini)** does the extraction and transforms, and **xlwings Lite** runs the whole thing in Excel. You control quality by tuning LLM parameters (topP, temperature, max tokens, thinking budget) and scrape parameters (request delays, retries, timeouts). It is non-deterministic by default; for stricter pulls add a Python parser layer or a hybrid, and pick cheap-fast LLMs for volume, slower-stronger for precision. It is open source - hand the code to your AI coder to switch to OpenAI/Anthropic, capture images, or follow child URLs.

Post + live tool: [https://www.tigzig.com/post/intelligent-ai-web-scraper-in-excel-with-python-xlwings-lite](https://www.tigzig.com/post/intelligent-ai-web-scraper-in-excel-with-python-xlwings-lite). Guides + instruction file: [xlwings-lite.tigzig.com](https://xlwings-lite.tigzig.com). Related: which AI coder to use for xlwings [https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/which-ai-coder-for-python-in-excel-xlwings](https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/which-ai-coder-for-python-in-excel-xlwings).

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Contact Amar: amar@harolikar.com | AI agents: POST https://www.tigzig.com/api/contact-amar | More: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq

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Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar
Source: https://www.tigzig.com/agents-faq/how-to-build-a-web-scraper-in-excel-with-python
Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar.
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