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Playground

Enter a URL, configure extraction settings, and preview the result. Open the homepage to start.

Extract from a URL

A URL is required to preview extraction. Enter a URL into the input field and press Crawl URL — the page is crawled server-side and the extraction result is previewed.

  • Enter a URL into the input field on the homepage
  • Select output formats and configure extraction settings
  • Press Crawl URL to extract content

Every setting has an inline ? help button. Click it to read what the setting does, along with its npm library field name, CLI switch, and Apify input key — so you can carry the same configuration across the playground, the CLI, and the Apify Actor.

Operations

The playground has one tab per operation, mirroring the CLI subcommands:

  • Extract — crawl one or more URLs and save results to storage
  • Extract one — extract a single URL with no link-following
  • Export — export stored content to a folder of files
  • Purge — clear the storage

The What to do selector at the bottom switches each operation between the Crawl URL online preview and ready-to-run commands or code for the npm CLI, the npm library, the Apify CLI, and the Apify API.

Run on Apify at scale

For crawling websites, scheduling runs, and processing many URLs, use the Apify Actor. The Actor accepts the same extraction settings as the playground.

Output formats

Choose your preferred output format. Each name links to a general explainer of the format itself:

  • Plain text — clean text with no markup (what plain text is)
  • Markdown — preserves headings, lists, links, and basic formatting (what Markdown is)
  • JSON — structured output with metadata, title, author, date, and more (what JSON is)
  • HTML — cleaned HTML retaining structure (what HTML is)
  • Original raw HTML — the page HTML exactly as the crawler saw it, useful for comparing the extraction against the source

These five formats are peers of the same save-format set. In the playground the first four are the Output checkboxes and Original raw HTML is exposed as a separate checkbox.

Download or copy

After extraction, you can:

  • Copy the result to your clipboard
  • Download the extracted content as a file

Where to go next

  • Help hub — the index of every Contextractor help page.
  • Apify Actor — run extraction at scale on the Apify platform.
  • npm CLI — the command-line tool, flag reference, and JSON config.
  • npm library — embed extraction in your own Node.js application.
  • PyPI package — extract from Python with the contextractor PyPI wrapper.

Updated: June 13, 2026