I am looking at purchasing a Dracal USB sensor for continuous monitoring. I am not sure if I need the VCP option. Am I able to use python to grab data continuously without the VCP?

Yes, you can do it without the VCP option (Virtual COM Port) for every Dracal USB sensor.
You can either:
1) Use our command-line tool dracal-usb-get  that is packaged with the DracalView download.
See the Python (and 10+ other language) code example with the CLI here.

2) Use our REST JSON API.

Here is the documentation, and the Python code example section is here.
A comparison of all integration options is available in the article Which integration tool do I need?
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