openFDA Drug Label & NDC lookup — FDA drug labels as citation-ready rows

Look up approved FDA drug labels via the public openFDA drug/label API. Bring a drug brand name, generic name, active ingredient or NDC; the Actor returns one normalized, citation-ready row per matching label record — brand name, generic name, dosage form, route, active ingredient, warnings, indications, SPL ID, set_id — plus DailyMed and openFDA API citation links, ready for AI-assistant consumption.

Actor: apex-nexus~openfda-drug-label-lookup Store listing: FREE — openFDA Drug Label & NDC lookup

What it is for

A stateless agent tool for pharmacists, medical-affairs teams, health writers/patient-education platforms and clinical-informatics teams who need approved drug-label content inside assistant or workflow tools.

Run the Actor with a list of drugs and it:

1. Queries the public openFDA drug/label API (https://api.fda.gov/drug/label.json) for each term — one request per term covering brand name, generic name, active ingredient and NDC fields.
2. Returns one row per matching label record with the label fields above and citation links (SPL ID, set_id, DailyMed link, openFDA API URL).
3. Finishes fast: openFDA answers in ~2 s, so the default run returns rows in seconds, always well under 5 minutes.

Typical workflows:

• Pharmacist — check a label. Look up TYLENOL and get the brand name, generic name (ACETAMINOPHEN), route (ORAL), warnings and indications, with the DailyMed citation link for verification.
• Medical-affairs — ingredient index. Look up an active ingredient such as ACETAMINOPHEN and see every brand/SPL that carries it.
• Health writer — patient-education source. Pull indications and warnings for ADVIL with citation links to the approved label.
• Informatics — NDC-to-label. Look up an NDC such as 50580-590-02 and get the label record it belongs to.

What this is NOT

This is explicitly not a tracker: there are no checkpoints, no delta alerts, no watchlist state, and nothing is remembered between runs. Each run is stateless and independent. It does not monitor labels, watch NDCs, or alert on changes (apex-nexus trackers are frozen by policy). The Actor is free when there is nothing to return (an empty dataset costs nothing).

Buyer

Pharmacists, medical-affairs teams, health writers/patient-education platforms, and clinical-informatics teams who need approved drug-label content inside assistant/workflow tools. FREE-first listing; any pay-per-event monetization flip only after usage evidence.

Data sources

Public US government data only, via the official openFDA API:

• https://api.fda.gov/drug/label.json — openFDA drug label API, public, no API key required (240 requests/minute and 1,000 requests/day per IP without a key), JSON, public domain (https://open.fda.gov/apis/drug/label/)
• Citation links resolve to DailyMed (https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?set_id={set_id})

No credentials, no proxies, no scraping of anti-bot pages, and no commercial inference (no LLMs) inside the product. One request per input drug, so openFDA rate guidance is respected trivially.

openFDA disclaimer applies: https://open.fda.gov/terms/ — do not rely on openFDA to make decisions regarding medical care.

Search terms (Store discovery)

Users find this Actor on the Apify Store with terms such as:

• openFDA drug label lookup
• FDA drug label agent tool
• drug label API for AI assistant
• NDC label lookup
• SPL label extractor
• openFDA brand name search
• TYLENOL acetaminophen label
• DailyMed SPL lookup

The Store title and description carry the core terms ("openFDA Drug Label & NDC lookup", "FDA drug label", "NDC lookup", "SPL ID", "set_id"); this section lists them for reference when updating the listing metadata.

Input

See .actor/input_schema.json. Every field is optional; the default run looks up ["TYLENOL", "ADVIL", "LIPITOR"].

Field	Type	Default	Description
drugs	array of strings	["TYLENOL", "ADVIL", "LIPITOR"]	Drug brand names, generic names, active ingredients or NDCs to look up. Deduplicated, order preserved, max 50 per run.
limit	integer	3	Max label records returned per drug, 1-10.

Example input (default run):

{
  "drugs": ["TYLENOL", "ADVIL", "LIPITOR"]
}

Example input (NDC lookup, one record per term):

{
  "drugs": ["50580-590-02", "ACETAMINOPHEN"],
  "limit": 1
}

Output

One dataset item per matching openFDA label record. Download the whole dataset as CSV or JSON from the Apify run. See .actor/output_schema.json and .actor/dataset_schema.json.

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Drug term searched
brand_name	string|null	Brand name (e.g. TYLENOL Extra Strength)
generic_name	string|null	Generic name (e.g. ACETAMINOPHEN)
dosage_form	string|null	Dosage form (e.g. TABLET)
route	string|null	Route of administration (e.g. ORAL)
active_ingredient	string|null	Active ingredient (e.g. ACETAMINOPHEN)
spl_id	string|null	SPL ID — citation anchor for the label
set_id	string|null	SPL set ID — used for the DailyMed link
product_ndc	string|null	Product NDC
warnings	string|null	Warnings section text
indications	string|null	Indications & usage section text
found	boolean	True when openFDA returned a match for the query
label_url	string|null	DailyMed citation link (from set_id)
openfda_api_url	string	openFDA API URL used to source the row
retrieved_at	string	UTC timestamp (ISO 8601)

Example output item (TYLENOL, first record):

{
  "query": "TYLENOL",
  "brand_name": "TYLENOL Extra Strength",
  "generic_name": "ACETAMINOPHEN",
  "dosage_form": null,
  "route": "ORAL",
  "active_ingredient": "ACETAMINOPHEN",
  "spl_id": "22d94fd9-9488-a812-e063-6394a90a7ffc",
  "set_id": "015a6179-bacb-452d-b594-4de628ddc11d",
  "product_ndc": "50580-590",
  "warnings": "Warnings Liver warning This product contains acetaminophen. ...",
  "indications": "Uses temporarily relieves minor aches and pains due to: ...",
  "found": true,
  "label_url": "https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?set_id=015a6179-bacb-452d-b594-4de628ddc11d",
  "openfda_api_url": "https://api.fda.gov/drug/label.json?search=openfda.brand_name:%22TYLENOL%22+OR+...&limit=3",
  "retrieved_at": "2026-11-04T14:00:00+00:00"
}

A term with no matches yields one row with "found": false and empty label fields, so the caller can distinguish "checked, nothing approved" from "not looked up".

Example runs

Default run — TYLENOL, ADVIL, LIPITOR (3 records each, ~2 s per term):

{
  "drugs": ["TYLENOL", "ADVIL", "LIPITOR"]
}

NDC lookup:

{
  "drugs": ["50580-590-02"],
  "limit": 1
}

Active ingredient lookup:

{
  "drugs": ["ACETAMINOPHEN", "ATORVASTATIN"],
  "limit": 5
}

Limits

• One openFDA request per input drug; limit caps records per drug at 1-10; drugs capped at 50 terms per run — far below openFDA's keyless rate guidance (240 req/min, 1,000 req/day per IP).
• Terms are searched across brand name, generic name, active ingredient and NDC fields in a single OR query.
• openFDA result order is used as-is; rows are deduplicated only within the input list, not across terms.
• Invalid input finishes with an empty dataset rather than crashing.
• openFDA may limit or restrict access per its Terms of Service.

Quality gate (live, verified)

The default input (["TYLENOL", "ADVIL", "LIPITOR"]) returns more than 0 citation-ready label rows in under 5 minutes on the live Apify platform (see the run ID and gate result recorded with the build). Competing store drug/label actors are per-result paid scrapers; this Actor returns structured label rows with citations for free.

Claims statement

All claims in this README are limited to what the product verifiably does: it reads public openFDA drug label data through the official openFDA API and returns normalized CSV/JSON rows with citation links. This README contains no revenue, user, or adoption claims, because none are verified.