Cheerio vs node-html-parser

Cheerio is the default choice for parsing HTML in Node.js, but node-html-parser is a popular lighter alternative. Both take an HTML string and let you query it with CSS selectors. The difference is how much they do and how fast they do it.

The quick comparison

• node-html-parser is small and fast. It parses HTML into a simple DOM-like tree and supports common CSS selectors. The API is closer to the browser DOM (querySelector, textContent).
• Cheerio gives you a near-complete jQuery API (.find, .each, .attr, .closest, traversal helpers) and broader selector support. It is heavier and a bit slower, but more capable.

If you only need to pull a few values out of well-formed HTML, node-html-parser is often all you need. If you do complex traversal or you already think in jQuery, Cheerio is more comfortable.

The same task in each

With node-html-parser:

const { parse } = require('node-html-parser')

const root = parse('<ul><li class="a">one</li><li>two</li></ul>')
root.querySelector('.a').textContent // "one"
root.querySelectorAll('li').map((el) => el.textContent) // ["one", "two"]

With Cheerio:

const cheerio = require('cheerio')

const $ = cheerio.load('<ul><li class="a">one</li><li>two</li></ul>')
$('.a').text() // "one"
$('li').map((i, el) => $(el).text()).get() // ["one", "two"]

How to choose

• Want the smallest, fastest parser and a DOM-like API? Use node-html-parser.
• Want jQuery-style traversal, the widest selector support, and the most examples online? Use Cheerio.
• Parsing messy or malformed HTML? Cheerio's parser tends to be more forgiving.

For most scraping projects either works. Pick node-html-parser when speed and size are the priority, and Cheerio when you want the richer API.

Related

• Web scraping with Node, Axios and Cheerio: the full Cheerio walkthrough.
• Cheerio vs Puppeteer: when you need a real browser instead of a parser.