--- title: "find() and find_all() in BeautifulSoup: 2026 Guide" slug: find-all-beautiful-soup date: 2025-01-30T09:43:15+00:00 modified: 2025-09-16T16:37:47+00:00 permalink: https://brightdata.com/blog/web-data/find-all-beautiful-soup type: blog --- [ Blog ](https://brightdata.com/blog "Blog") / [Web Data](https://brightdata.com/blog/web-data) [Web Data](https://brightdata.com/blog/web-data) # find() and find\_all() in BeautifulSoup: 2026 Guide Learn how to use BeautifulSoup’s find() and find_all() methods to efficiently scrape web data by class, ID, text, and attributes in Python. 12 min read [ ](https://brightdata.com/blog/authors/jake-nulty) [Jake Nulty Technical Writer ](https://brightdata.com/blog/authors/jake-nulty) ![How To Use BeautifulSoup’s find and find_all blog image](https://media.brightdata.com/2025/01/How-To-Use-BeautifulSoups-find-and-find_all.svg) `find()` and `find_all()` are essential methods for [web scraping with BeautifulSoup](/blog/how-tos/beautiful-soup-web-scraping), helping you extract data from HTML. The `find()` method retrieves the first element matching your criteria, such as `find("div")` to get the first `div` on a page, returning `None` if no match is found. Meanwhile, `find_all()` finds all matching elements and returns them as a list, making it perfect for extracting multiple elements like all `div` tags. Before starting your web scraping journey with BeautifulSoup, ensure you have both Requests and BeautifulSoup installed. **Install dependencies** ```none pip install requests ``` ```none pip install beautifulsoup4 ``` ## find() Let’s get acquainted with `find()`. In the examples below, we’ll use [Quotes To Scrape](https://quotes.toscrape.com/) and the [Fake Store API](https://fakestoreapi.com/) for finding elements on the page. Both of these sites were built for scraping. They don’t change much, so they’re perfect for learning. ### Find by Class To find an element using its `class`, we use the `class_` keyword. You might wonder why `class_` and not `class`? In Python, `class` is a keyword used for creating custom datatypes. The underscore in `class_` prevents this keyword from causing conflicts with our code. The example below finds the first `div` with the `class`: `quote`. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") first_quote = soup.find("div", class_="quote") print(first_quote.text) ``` Here is our output. ```none “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” by Albert Einstein (about) Tags: change deep-thoughts thinking world ``` ### Find By ID When scraping, you’ll also commonly need to look for elements using their `id`. In the example below, we use the `id` arg to find the menu on the page. Here, we find the menu on the page using its `id`. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://fakestoreapi.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") ul = soup.find("ul", id="menu") print(ul.text) ``` Here is the menu once we’ve extracted it and printed it to the terminal. ```none Home Docs GitHub Buy me a coffee ``` ### Find by Text We can also search for items using their text. To do this, we use the `string` argument. The example below finds the `Login` button on the page. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") login_button = soup.find("a", string="Login") print(login_button.text) ``` As you can see, `Login` is printed to the console. ```none Login ``` ### Find by Attribute We can also use different attributes for more precise searching. This time, we once again find the first quote from the page. However, we look for a `span` with the `itemprop` of `text`. This once again finds our first quote, but without all the extra stuff, like `author` and `tags`. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") first_clean_quote = soup.find("span", attrs={"itemprop": "text"}) print(first_clean_quote.text) ``` Here’s the clean version of our first quote. ```none “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ``` ### Find Using Multiple Criteria As you may have noticed earlier, the `attr` argument takes a `dict` instead of a single value. This allows us to pass in multiple criteria for even better filtering. Here, we find the first author on the page using the `class` and `itemprop` attributes. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") first_author = soup.find("small", attrs={"class": "author", "itemprop": "author"}) print(first_author.text) ``` When you run this, you should get `Albert Einstein` as output. ```none Albert Einstein ``` ## find\_all() Now, let’s go through these same examples using `find_all()`. Once again, we’ll use Quotes to Scrape and the Fake Store API. These examples are almost identical, but with one major difference. `find()` returns a single element. `find_all()` returns a `list` of page elements. ### Find by Class To find elements using their `class`, we use the `class_` keyword argument. The code below uses `find_all()` to extract each Quote using its CSS class. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") quotes = soup.find_all("div", class_="quote") for quote in quotes: print("-------------") print(quote.text) ``` When we extract and print the first page of quotes, it looks like this. ```none ------------- “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” by Albert Einstein (about) Tags: change deep-thoughts thinking world ------------- “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” by J.K. Rowling (about) Tags: abilities choices ------------- “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” by Albert Einstein (about) Tags: inspirational life live miracle miracles ------------- “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” by Jane Austen (about) Tags: aliteracy books classic humor ------------- “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” by Marilyn Monroe (about) Tags: be-yourself inspirational ------------- “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” by Albert Einstein (about) Tags: adulthood success value ------------- “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” by André Gide (about) Tags: life love ------------- “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” by Thomas A. Edison (about) Tags: edison failure inspirational paraphrased ------------- “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.” by Eleanor Roosevelt (about) Tags: misattributed-eleanor-roosevelt ------------- “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” by Steve Martin (about) Tags: humor obvious simile ``` ### Find by ID As we talked about when using `find()`, `id` is another one of the more common methods you might use to extract data from the page. To extract data using its `id`, we use the `id` argument… just like we did earlier. We then find all of the `ul` items with an `id` of `menu`. There’s only one menu, so we’ll actually only find one. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://fakestoreapi.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") uls = soup.find_all("ul", id="menu") for ul in uls: print("-------------") print(ul.text) ``` Since there is only one menu on the page, our output is exactly the same as it was when using `find()`. ```none ------------- Home Docs GitHub Buy me a coffee ``` ### Find by Text Now, we’ll extract items from a page using their text. We’ll use the `string` argument. In the example below, we find all `a` elements containing the `string`: `Login`. Once again, there’s only one. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") login_buttons = soup.find_all("a", string="Login") for button in login_buttons: print("-------------") print(button) ``` Your output should look like this. ```none ------------- Login ``` ### Find by Attribute When you move on to scraping in the wild, you’ll often need to use other attributes to extract items from the page. Remember how messy output from the first example? In this next snippet, we’ll use the `itemprop` attribute and only extract the quotes this time. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") clean_quotes = soup.find_all("span", attrs={"itemprop": "text"}) for quote in clean_quotes: print("-------------") print(quote.text) ``` Look how clean our output is! ```none ------------- “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ------------- “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” ------------- “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ------------- “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” ------------- “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” ------------- “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” ------------- “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” ------------- “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” ------------- “A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.” ------------- “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” ``` ### Find Using Multiple Criteria This time, we’ll use the `attrs` argument in a more complex way. Here, we find all `small` elements that have a `class` of `author` **and** an `itemprop` of `author`. We do this by passing both attributes into our `attrs` dictionary. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") authors = soup.find_all("small", attrs={"class": "author", "itemprop": "author"}) for author in authors: print("-------------") print(author.text) ``` Here’s our list of authors in the console. ```none ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- J.K. Rowling ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- Jane Austen ------------- Marilyn Monroe ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- André Gide ------------- Thomas A. Edison ------------- Eleanor Roosevelt ------------- Steve Martin ``` ## Advanced Techniques Here are some more advanced techniques. In the examples below, we use `find_all()` but these methods are equally compatible when using `find()`. Just remember, do you want a single element, or a list of them? ### Regex Regex is a very powerful tool for string matching. In this code example, we combine it with the `string` article to find all elements containing `einstein`, regardless of their capitalization. ```none import requests import re from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") pattern = re.compile(r"einstein", re.IGNORECASE) tags = soup.find_all(string=pattern) print(f"Total Einstein quotes: {len(tags)}") ``` There are 3 quotes found on the page. ```none Total Einstein quotes: 3 ``` ### Custom Functions Now, let’s write a custom function to return all actual quotes from Einstein. In the example below, we expand on the regex. We use the `parent` method to traverse and find the card containing the quote. Next, we find all the spans. The first `span` on the card contains the actual quote. We print its contents to the console. ```none import requests import re from bs4 import BeautifulSoup def find_einstein_quotes(http_response): soup = BeautifulSoup(http_response.text, "html.parser") #find all einstein tags pattern = re.compile(r"einstein", re.IGNORECASE) tags = soup.find_all(string=pattern) for tag in tags: #follow the parents until we have the quote card full_card = tag.parent.parent.parent #find the spans spans = full_card.find_all("span") #print the first span, it contains the actual quote print(spans[0].text) if __name__ == "__main__": response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") find_einstein_quotes(response) ``` Here is our output. ```none “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” ``` ## Bonus: Find Using CSS Selectors BeautifulSoup’s `select` method works almost exactly like `find_all()`, but it’s a bit more flexible. This method takes in a CSS Selector. If you can write a [selector](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Core/Styling_basics/Basic_selectors), you can find it. In this code, we find all of our authors using multiple attributes again. However, we can pass these in as a single selector. ```none import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup response = requests.get("https://quotes.toscrape.com") soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser") authors = soup.select("small[class='author'][itemprop='author']") for author in authors: print("-------------") print(author.text) ``` Here is our output. ```none ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- J.K. Rowling ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- Jane Austen ------------- Marilyn Monroe ------------- Albert Einstein ------------- André Gide ------------- Thomas A. Edison ------------- Eleanor Roosevelt ------------- Steve Martin ``` ## Conclusion Now you know just about every aspect of `find()` and `find_all()` in BeautifulSoup. You don’t need to master all of these methods. The large variety of find methods allow you to choose what you’re comfortable with. Most importantly, you can use them to extract data from any web page. In production, especially for fast and reliable results with a high success rate, you might want to consider our [Residential Proxies](/proxy-types/residential-proxies) or even [Scraping Browser](/products/scraping-browser) that has a built-in proxy management system and [CAPTCHA solving capabilities](/products/web-unlocker/captcha-solver). Sign up and start your free trial today to find the perfect product for your needs. Contact usStart free trial No credit card required [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-nulty-682803187/) Jake Nulty Technical Writer 6 years experience Jacob Nulty is a Detroit-based software developer and technical writer exploring AI and human philosophy, with experience in Python, Rust, and blockchain. Expertise Data Structures Python Rust [ View all articles ](https://brightdata.com/blog/authors/jake-nulty) Table of Contents Dedicated Scraper APIs & No-Code Scrapers Over 1000 scrapers for all popular domains. Simplify your web scraping. [See pricing](/pricing/web-scraper "See pricing") Just want data? Skip scraping. Hundreds of ready-to-use datasets from all popular domains. 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