NIH RePORTER Grant Search Scraper

Export grant and project records from the official NIH RePORTER API.

The actor turns NIH RePORTER searches into clean dataset rows with project numbers, titles, award amounts, recipient organizations, principal investigators, institutes, project dates, abstracts, and optional raw API records.

What does NIH RePORTER Grant Search Scraper do?

NIH RePORTER Grant Search Scraper searches api.reporter.nih.gov and saves matching grant projects to an Apify dataset.

It is built for repeatable research workflows where you need more than a one-off website search.

• 🔎 Search by terms such as disease area, therapy, method, or technology
• 📅 Filter by fiscal year
• 🏛️ Filter by NIH institute / center codes
• 🧑‍🔬 Filter by principal investigator
• 🏫 Filter by recipient organization
• 📄 Export abstracts and funding metadata
• ⚙️ Use raw NIH criteria JSON for advanced searches

Who is it for?

This scraper is useful for teams that monitor public biomedical funding.

• University research offices tracking awards in a department
• Biotech business-development teams looking for collaboration leads
• Grant consultants building opportunity maps
• Competitive-intelligence analysts monitoring funded science
• Nonprofits following disease-area funding
• Data teams enriching grant dashboards

Why use this actor?

NIH RePORTER is public, but manual searches are hard to repeat at scale.

This actor provides:

• Structured dataset exports
• Pagination handling
• Flattened fields for spreadsheets and BI tools
• Optional raw records for data engineering
• Apify API, scheduling, webhooks, and integrations
• Pay-per-event billing tied to returned rows

Data you can extract

Field	Description
projectNumber	NIH project identifier
projectTitle	Project title
fiscalYear	Fiscal year
awardAmount	Award amount when available
organizationName	Recipient organization
organizationCity	Recipient city
organizationState	Recipient state
organizationCountry	Recipient country
organizationUei	Recipient UEI
contactPiName	Contact PI or first PI
principalInvestigators	All PI names returned by NIH
agencyCode	NIH institute / center code
agencyName	NIH institute / center name
activityCode	Grant activity code when available
applicationType	Application type when available
projectStartDate	Project start date
projectEndDate	Project end date
abstractText	Abstract text
reporterUrl	Link back to NIH RePORTER
rawResult	Optional raw NIH API object

How much does it cost to scrape NIH RePORTER grants?

The actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

• A small start event is charged once per run.
• A result event is charged for each saved grant row.
• You control spend with maxResults.
• The default input saves a modest sample so first runs stay cheap.

How to use

1. Open the actor on Apify.
2. Enter search terms such as cancer immunotherapy.
3. Choose one or more fiscal years.
4. Optionally add NIH institute codes, organizations, PIs, or activity codes.
5. Set maxResults.
6. Run the actor.
7. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS.

Input options

Search terms

Use terms for the main NIH RePORTER keyword search.

Examples:

• cancer immunotherapy
• Alzheimer biomarkers
• CRISPR delivery
• opioid prevention

Fiscal years

Use fiscalYears to limit records to one or more NIH fiscal years.

Example:

[2024, 2023]

NIH agency / IC codes

Use agencyIcCodes for institute or center filters.

Examples:

• NCI
• NIAID
• NHLBI
• DK

Organization names

Use organizationNames to focus on recipient institutions.

Examples:

• JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
• DANA-FARBER CANCER INST
• UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PI names

Use piNames to find awards tied to specific investigators.

Project numbers

Use projectNumbers for exact lookup workflows.

Activity codes

Use activityCodes to focus on mechanisms such as R01, U01, F32, or P30.

Raw criteria

Use rawCriteria when you know NIH RePORTER v2 criteria keys that are not exposed as first-class inputs.

Structured fields are merged with raw criteria and override matching keys.

Example input

{
  "terms": "cancer immunotherapy",
  "fiscalYears": [2024],
  "agencyIcCodes": ["NCI"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "pageSize": 100,
  "includeRawResult": false
}

Example output

{
  "projectNumber": "5F32DK132864-03",
  "projectTitle": "Elucidating novel molecular mechanisms of irisin-mediated effects via integrin",
  "fiscalYear": 2024,
  "awardAmount": 56728,
  "organizationName": "DANA-FARBER CANCER INST",
  "organizationCity": "BOSTON",
  "organizationState": "MA",
  "organizationCountry": "UNITED STATES",
  "contactPiName": "Mu A",
  "principalInvestigators": ["Mu A"],
  "agencyCode": "DK",
  "agencyName": "National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases",
  "projectStartDate": "2022-05-01",
  "projectEndDate": "2024-12-31",
  "reporterUrl": "https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/5F32DK132864-03"
}

Tips for better searches

• Start broad, then add filters.
• Use fiscal years to reduce result volume.
• Use activity codes when you only need a grant mechanism.
• Use organization filters for account-based prospecting.
• Enable raw records only when you need full NIH API detail.

Integrations

The dataset can feed many workflows:

• 📊 Export to Google Sheets or Excel for grant landscape review
• 🧩 Send rows to Airtable or Notion through Apify integrations
• 🔔 Schedule weekly monitoring and send webhooks to Slack
• 🧠 Feed grant abstracts into LLM classification pipelines
• 🧪 Enrich CRM accounts with NIH funding signals

API usage with Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/nih-reporter-grant-search-scraper').call({
  terms: 'cancer immunotherapy',
  fiscalYears: [2024],
  maxResults: 100
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

API usage with Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
import os

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/nih-reporter-grant-search-scraper').call(run_input={
    'terms': 'cancer immunotherapy',
    'fiscalYears': [2024],
    'maxResults': 100,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items[0])

API usage with cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~nih-reporter-grant-search-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"terms":"cancer immunotherapy","fiscalYears":[2024],"maxResults":100}'

MCP usage

Use this actor from Apify MCP in Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or other MCP clients.

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/nih-reporter-grant-search-scraper

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/nih-reporter-grant-search-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Find 100 NIH RePORTER cancer immunotherapy grants from 2024 and summarize top recipient organizations."
• "Export NIH grants for Alzheimer biomarkers and group them by institute."
• "Look up R01 grants mentioning CRISPR delivery and list contact PIs."

Scheduling and monitoring

You can schedule the actor to run weekly or monthly.

Typical monitoring ideas:

• New awards in a disease area
• New grants to target organizations
• New awards for a PI list
• Changes in funding by institute

Legality and data source

This actor uses the official public NIH RePORTER API.

Users are responsible for complying with Apify terms, NIH API expectations, and applicable laws. The actor does not bypass logins, paywalls, or private systems.

FAQ

Does this scraper use the official NIH RePORTER API?

Yes. It sends HTTPS requests to the public NIH RePORTER v2 projects search API.

Can I export raw NIH records?

Yes. Enable includeRawResult to attach the raw API object to each dataset row.

Troubleshooting

Why did I get fewer rows than expected?

Your filters may be narrow, or the NIH API may have fewer matching records than maxResults. Try broader terms or remove organization/PI filters.

Why is activityCode empty?

Some NIH API result shapes do not include every requested field for every record. Use includeRawResult to inspect the original NIH object.

Related scrapers

Explore other automation-lab actors for research and lead workflows:

• https://apify.com/automation-lab/website-contact-finder
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/company-website-scraper
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/google-news-scraper

Changelog

Initial version supports NIH RePORTER project search through the official API, flattened grant rows, structured filters, pagination, and optional raw records.