VK.Barkov

The website is very outdated, both in terms of design and the relevance of the services offered. If five years ago it was, let’s say, not at the top but still in demand (I reached out to them twice), now it’s unclear how it still exists (no offense to the owners).

Date of experience: June 29, 2022

"Barkov.net" offers the same features as "Cerebro," "TH," and other similar services. With it, you can quickly find a target audience that is highly likely to be interested in a specific topic, export it to a file, and use it for placing targeted ads on VKontakte. The selection is done using popular methods: by activity, similar groups, and intersections. Customizable scripts allow you to set scenarios of any complexity. The main downside is that as the complexity and size of the initial database increase, so does the volume of parsing. This happens in browsers, so it's recommended to close all open tabs and not overload the computer for faster system performance. If you accidentally close the parsing tab, you'll have to start over. However, this drawback is offset by free access. All scripts are available, but there are limitations on calculations.

Date of experience: April 13, 2025

I have used this service multiple times. Overall, my impression is positive, although I can't call it perfect. I'm especially pleased with the option for free use, considering the many available features. If targeted advertising is needed occasionally and there is no strong need for complex tools, this is a great option. However, you will have to get used to the interface and figure out what each script does. Fortunately, there are many manuals with detailed instructions. After a few test runs, everything becomes clear. Data can be easily exported to text formats. Now, about the drawbacks. The main one is the lagging scripts. Sometimes parsing takes 15-20 minutes, and it doesn't always finish successfully. I have had instances where the browser just froze. This, by the way, is the second downside. Since the system works in the browser, I can't turn off my computer and leave, then just check the results later. Any error, lag, or glitch forces you to start all over again. There is no option to pause the process – only to close the tab. That's the only way. Customer support constantly claims that the problem is not on their end, but with the user's computer, suggesting upgrading hardware. However, it would actually be better to improve the quality of the scripts and ideally move everything to the cloud, performing calculations on their own servers, especially considering the paid plans. It feels like you are paying for a subscription without a clear reason, as the same features are offered on the free plan.

Date of experience: December 21, 2024

I tried various parsing methods through this service, and the results were mixed. In terms of functionality, it hardly differs from many other services, so it should be evaluated based on its speed. It is excellent for simple tasks, especially considering the free usage. For example, parsing the audience of one group took just a second, while a more complex task—parsing 10 communities with an audience of about 10-15 thousand subscribers—took about 3 seconds. That's not too long, but the service is clearly struggling. When it comes to intersecting audiences, it works very slowly. I tested searching for an audience that is a member of three public groups simultaneously from ten selected large groups (with 2-3 million subscribers each). Out of curiosity, I also compared parsing in Chrome and Firefox. In both cases, it took 6 minutes, even though there was a video open in Chrome and 10 tabs. The search for intersections with 5 entries in the same groups took the same amount of time. So for the system, there’s no significant difference; it just lags when searching for intersections: the larger the audience, the longer it takes. During the test, the script for finding similar communities from the top without various keywords just froze. The search by post works great, parsing 500 people in half a second. However, when searching for activity, there’s no logic: it looks for likes and reposts from the last 10 posts in the group and filters communities of 2 million people in 5 minutes, while running a similar script on the last 30 posts takes 4 minutes. The service is clearly lagging, especially when dealing with large volumes of data and complex tasks. But for analyzing small communities, everything goes quickly and easily. And considering that payment is not mandatory, that’s simply wonderful.

Date of experience: March 16, 2026

VkBarkov has its own unique specifics. It differs significantly from popular services like Target Hunter, Cerebro, Pepper, and similar ones. However, these differences are not always for the better. The drawbacks include a complicated and overloaded interface. The scripts lack the structure I would like to see. There is enough information about them, for which I can express my gratitude. The author explains in detail the purpose of each script, possible settings, both standard and customizable, as well as the results they can show. But overall, the interface looks outdated and primitive. The main advantage is that the service is available for free use. The capabilities are not cut down: all functions available to paid users are also available to me, except for the volume of calculations. All training materials are provided, and support works in a general queue – in this regard, everything is standard. The prices are average – 400 rubles per month. For those who do not need long-term access and only require one day to set up an advertising campaign, there is an option to take it for a day.

Date of experience: October 21, 2024

An interesting service. In short, it allows you to parse users from VKontakte and create databases for retargeting in txt format. To elaborate, it’s a whole set of scripts with extensive capabilities. For example, you can gather an audience from a specific public page or do something more complex: collect data from 100 public pages, conduct a cross-search to select people who are subscribed to 3-4 of them, who like posts from a particular individual or community, and are friends/subscribers of a specific person. The accuracy of the settings is truly impressive. Overall, if we talk in general terms, it has the typical functions of any parser: searching for the audience of a specific channel (public page, person, etc.), parsing by activity, the ability to parse subscribers from multiple communities simultaneously, finding similar communities, and comparison – this service makes it convenient to create intersections, remove duplicates, and so on. All work is done in the browser, so if any issues arise, such as slow parsing, it’s not always related to the service itself. Most often, it's about the hardware, and you should pay attention to the RAM. Processing depends on the power of the computer: the higher it is, the faster the work goes. But, to be honest, the algorithms could be written better. I have a decent i5 and 8 GB of RAM, and I can't say that parsing happens very quickly. Therefore, for owners of weak and mid-range hardware, the service may not be suitable in terms of performance. Yes, familiar cloud tools will work faster. But considering the possibility of free use – I have no complaints. It fulfills its purpose, filters the audience – I have no issues.

Date of experience: April 22, 2026

I don't understand who came up with this system, but it's quite clever. There's no registration, you log in through social networks, but the main thing is that to gain access, almost all the information from your account is required! And it's not just data, but even the ability to create topics and posts. Why is this needed? For parsing or analytics? It would be worth contacting the relevant authorities with a request to check this kid out.

Date of experience: August 8, 2024

The service raises a lot of suspicions. It asks for a lot of your data and permissions, including the ability to post on your behalf, and authorization is done through VK. There are so many described features that it makes your head spin. However, I still haven't figured out how it all works. I wouldn't want to end up losing my VK account. All these permissions are essentially unnecessary for the program to function.

Date of experience: December 10, 2024

The service is extremely inconvenient. To upload your data for analysis, you need to spend a lot of time converting it into the required format, and then the analysis takes a long time. But the most "interesting" part is that the result cannot be downloaded for free, only after paying for a certain period. Although it is marketed as free. Moreover, it raises suspicions since it is blocked by VK.

Date of experience: June 18, 2024

The parser requires logging in with permission to your token, which raises some concerns. The set of features looks quite impressive, as if it was developed with key queries in mind. However, significant effort will be needed to launch some functions. It was particularly disappointing when it almost gathered the data: the free and paid plans impose limits on the volume of results that can be downloaded. It would have been nice to know about this in advance. Currently, all plans in the lineup are paid, and there should be no disappointments with the service.

Date of experience: June 5, 2024