scrapy/docs/topics/optimize.rst

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Optimization

A crawl goes as fast as its slowest part allows. :ref:`Find out which part that is <optimize-bottleneck>` before changing any setting.

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:ref:`Broad crawls <broad-crawls>` have their own set of recommended adjustments.

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Finding the bottleneck

The bottleneck depends on the spider: on the same machine, one crawl can be limited by its own parsing code and another by the target website. So measure the crawl that you want to optimize.

:class:`~scrapy.extensions.logstats.LogStats` reports crawl speed every :setting:`LOGSTATS_INTERVAL` seconds:

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[scrapy.extensions.logstats] INFO: Crawled 1200 pages (at 60 pages/min), scraped 1150 items (at 58 items/min)

A rate that stays flat as you raise :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS` means something else is the limit.

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Reading the engine status

The :ref:`telnet console <topics-telnetconsole>` reports, through est(), what every part of the engine is doing at a given moment:

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len(engine.downloader.active)                   : 16
len(engine._slot.scheduler.mqs)                 : 92
len(engine.scraper.slot.active)                 : 0
engine.scraper.slot.active_size                 : 0
engine.scraper.slot.needs_backout()             : False

Take a few readings at different points of the crawl:

  • len(engine.downloader.active) stays at :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS`: the downloader is the limit. You are waiting on the network or on the target website. See :ref:`optimize-concurrency`.

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  • len(engine.downloader.active) stays below :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS` while the scheduler queues (mqs, dqs) hold requests: something throttles those requests before they reach the downloader, usually :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN`, :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY` or :ref:`AutoThrottle <topics-autothrottle>`.

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  • Both the downloader and the scheduler queues stay near empty: your spider is not producing requests fast enough. A crawl that walks pagination one page at a time cannot use more concurrency than it creates. See :ref:`optimize-requests`.

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  • needs_backout() is True, or active_size approaches :setting:`SCRAPER_SLOT_MAX_ACTIVE_SIZE`: responses arrive faster than your callbacks and :ref:`item pipelines <topics-item-pipeline>` handle them. The bottleneck is your own code.

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  • len(engine._slot.scheduler.mqs) grows without settling: the crawl discovers requests faster than it downloads them. This is what makes long crawls run out of memory.

Reading resource usage

CPU

Scrapy runs in a single process, and everything except DNS resolution and code you explicitly move to a thread runs in a single thread. One CPU core is the ceiling; a process sitting at 100% of a core is CPU-bound no matter how many cores the machine has.

Use a sampling profiler, such as py-spy, to find out which code is spending that CPU. :ref:`Selectors <topics-selectors>` and item pipelines are the usual answer.

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Memory

The :ref:`memory usage extension <topics-extensions-ref-memusage>` records :stat:`memusage/startup` and :stat:`memusage/max`. A :stat:`memusage/max` far above :stat:`memusage/startup` is expected; what matters is whether it keeps growing for as long as the crawl runs.

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Growth that tracks len(engine._slot.scheduler.mqs) is a scheduling problem, covered in :ref:`optimize-memory`. Growth that does not is a :ref:`memory leak <topics-leaks>`.

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Network

Compare :stat:`downloader/response_bytes` over the crawl time against your available bandwidth. Saturated bandwidth caps concurrency regardless of any setting.

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DNS resolution is separate: it runs on a thread pool of :setting:`REACTOR_THREADPOOL_MAXSIZE` threads, and results are cached (:setting:`DNSCACHE_ENABLED`, :setting:`DNSCACHE_SIZE`). It only becomes a limit of its own when there are many different domains to resolve, as in :ref:`broad crawls <broad-crawls>`, where it shows up as slow starts and DNS timeouts.

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Disk

:ref:`Feed exports <topics-feed-exports>` write to disk on most crawls, although item data is usually small enough for that not to matter. The ones to suspect are :class:`~scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpcache.HttpCacheMiddleware` and the :ref:`media pipelines <topics-media-pipeline>`, which write whole responses, and :setting:`JOBDIR`, which writes every scheduled request.

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Sending more requests at a time

:setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS` caps how many requests are being downloaded at any given moment, :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN` caps how many of those may target the same domain, and :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY` sets a minimum wait between two consecutive requests to the same domain. A project generated by :command:`startproject` gets one request per second per domain out of these.

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Raise them to crawl a single website faster, and see :ref:`broad-crawls-concurrency` to spread requests across many websites instead.

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The limit that matters, though, is the one the target website tolerates. Exceeding it gets you throttled, served errors or banned, all of which make the crawl slower than a lower concurrency would have been. To find that limit:

  • Read the :ref:`robots.txt <topics-dlmw-robots>` file of the website. Scrapy does not act on its Crawl-delay and Request-rate directives, so when they are present, translate them into :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY` and concurrency settings yourself.

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  • Check the traffic that the website already gets, using a service like SimilarWeb or Cloudflare Radar. A rate that is a rounding error next to what the website serves anyway is unlikely to be a problem for it.

  • Look for a documented way in. An API, a bulk export or a search endpoint is both faster for you and cheaper for the website than crawling its pages, and the terms of service may state a rate.

  • Crawl when the website is idle, in its own timezone, so that the capacity you take is capacity nobody else wanted.

  • Raise concurrency gradually and watch the website respond. :stat:`downloader/response_status_count/{status_code}` counts for 429, 503 or the ban page of the website, growing :stat:`retry/count`, or a :ref:`download latency <download-latency>` that climbs as you push harder, all mean you have gone past the limit.

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Producing requests faster

A spider that discovers its requests one response at a time keeps the downloader idle no matter how high you set :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS`. To put more requests in the scheduler earlier:

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  • Request every page at once when you can work out how many there are, e.g. from a page count or from a result count and a page size in the first response, instead of following a link to the next page on every response.

  • Get URLs from a source that lists many of them at once, such as a sitemap or a search or export endpoint of the target website. For a crawl that needs nothing else, :class:`~scrapy.spiders.SitemapSpider` reads sitemaps for you.

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  • Raise the :attr:`~scrapy.Request.priority` of pagination requests, so that they are downloaded before the requests that they compete with, and discover the rest of the crawl sooner.

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Each of these trades memory for speed: a request produced before the downloader can take it waits in the scheduler, or on disk if you set :setting:`JOBDIR`. Pushed far enough, they turn memory or disk into your new bottleneck, which is why :ref:`optimize-memory` recommends the reverse of the last point.

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Lowering resource usage

Lowering memory usage

  • Lower :setting:`SCRAPER_SLOT_MAX_ACTIVE_SIZE`.

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  • Lower :setting:`DOWNLOAD_MAXSIZE`, which allows a single response to take up to 1 GiB of memory by default, multiplied by your concurrency. Set :setting:`DOWNLOAD_WARNSIZE` first to find out whether the website actually serves responses that big.

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  • Lower the number of :ref:`scheduled requests <topics-scheduler>` held in memory:

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    • Increase the :attr:`~scrapy.Request.priority` of requests whose :attr:`~scrapy.Request.callback` cannot yield additional requests.

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      For example, the following spider uses a higher priority (1) for book requests than for pagination requests:

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      .. code-block:: python
      
          from scrapy import Spider
      
      
          class BooksToScrapeComSpider(Spider):
              name = "books_toscrape_com"
              start_urls = [
                  "http://books.toscrape.com/catalogue/category/books/mystery_3/index.html"
              ]
      
              def parse(self, response):
                  next_page_links = response.css(".next a")
                  yield from response.follow_all(next_page_links)
                  book_links = response.css("article a")
                  yield from response.follow_all(book_links, callback=self.parse_book, priority=1)
      
              def parse_book(self, response):
                  yield {
                      "name": response.css("h1::text").get(),
                      "price": response.css(".price_color::text").re_first("£(.*)"),
                      "url": response.url,
                  }
      
      

      Note

      If the number of request-yielding, low-priority requests scheduled at any given time is lower than concurrency settings (:setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN` or :setting:`CONCURRENT_REQUESTS`), as in the example above, this can slow down your crawl by turning those requests into a bottleneck.

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    • If you have many :ref:`start requests <start-requests>`, consider :ref:`delaying their iteration <start-requests-lazy>`.

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    • Set :setting:`JOBDIR` to offload all scheduled requests to disk.

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  • Be on the lookout for :ref:`memory leaks <topics-leaks>`.

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Lowering network usage

Lowering CPU usage

  • Set :setting:`LOG_LEVEL` to "INFO" or higher.

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  • Restrict what you parse. A :ref:`selector <topics-selectors>` over a smaller part of the response, or a single query whose result you reuse, beats repeated queries over the whole document.

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Other tips

Speeding up broad crawls

While Scrapy is well suited for broad crawls, i.e. crawls that target many websites, the default :ref:`settings <topics-settings>` are optimized for crawls targeting a single website.

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For broad crawls, consider these adjustments:

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