ClinicalTrials.gov Scraper & Trial Change Tracker: PubMed + FDA

ClinicalTrials.gov Scraper & Clinical Trial Change Tracker (PubMed + FDA)

Clinical Trial & Cure Tracker turns the official ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 into a clean, analysis-ready feed of clinical trials, and, unlike a plain scraper, it tells you what changed: status changes (recruiting → completed / terminated), completion dates that slip, enrollment changes, recruiting sites added or closed, and results posted. Optional add-ons attach linked PubMed papers and the FDA approval status of each studied drug.

Built for biotech and pharma competitive-intelligence teams, investors and analysts, CROs and site-selection teams, patient-advocacy groups, medical writers and health journalists.

• Search by condition, intervention/drug, sponsor, free text, location, NCT ID watchlist, recruitment status, phase, study type, lead-sponsor type (industry / NIH / federal) and "updated in the last N days".
• Change mode (changesSinceLastRun): schedule it daily or weekly and get only new trials and changed trials, each with a field-by-field changes diff and a plain-English changeSummary.
• One flat row per trial: phases, conditions, interventions, lead sponsor and class, collaborators, enrollment, start / primary completion / completion dates, results flag, site counts, countries, U.S. states, eligibility basics, and the official study link.
• Privacy by design: investigator and site contact names, emails and phone numbers are never collected.

No login, no API key, no cookies and no proxies: only documented public government APIs, called politely with an identifying User-Agent.

Why this one

	Clinical Trial & Cure Tracker	Typical ClinicalTrials.gov scraper on the Store
Change tracking	Status, phase, enrollment, completion dates, results posted, recruiting sites, why-stopped, with a diff per trial	Full dump every run; you diff it yourself
Watchlists	NCT ID lists plus named watchlists (stateKey) with separate history	Rarely
Publications	Add-on: PubMed papers citing the trial (title, journal, date, DOI)	None
FDA status	Add-on: Drugs@FDA approval status, application numbers, first approval date per studied drug	None
Sponsor intel	Filter by lead-sponsor type (industry / NIH / federal) and sponsor names	Basic keyword only
Privacy	No contact PII	Often exports investigator emails and phones
Empty input	Exits cleanly with no charge	Fails or bills a full scrape

Pricing (pay per event, you only pay for rows you receive)

Event	Price	When
Trial row	$0.002 ($2 per 1,000)	Each trial returned
Change alert row	$0.004	Only in change mode, only for a trial that actually changed (replaces the trial-row charge)
PubMed publications add-on	+$0.002 per trial	Only if addPublications is on (off by default)
FDA status add-on	+$0.002 per trial	Only if addFdaStatus is on (off by default)
Actor start	$0.00005	Apify's standard start event

How that compares: plain ClinicalTrials.gov scrapers on the Store charge roughly $2–$10 per 1,000 rows (several add a $0.02–$0.10 start fee). Our base row sits at the low end of that range. A change alert costs a bit more because it does work you'd otherwise do yourself (keeping history and diffing every field), and in change mode unchanged trials cost nothing, so a weekly watch of 500 trials where 20 changed costs about $0.08, not the price of a 500-row re-scrape. Add-ons are opt-in, so you never pay for enrichment you didn't ask for. Set Max charge per run in Apify to cap any run.

Input examples

Recruiting Phase 2/3 glioblastoma trials with papers and FDA status:

{ "conditions": ["glioblastoma"], "statuses": ["RECRUITING"], "phases": ["PHASE2", "PHASE3"], "addPublications": true, "addFdaStatus": true, "maxItems": 50 }

Weekly competitor pipeline watch (schedule this):

{ "sponsors": ["Novo Nordisk", "Eli Lilly"], "conditions": ["obesity"], "sponsorClass": "INDUSTRY", "mode": "changesSinceLastRun", "stateKey": "obesity-competitors", "maxItems": 500 }

Track specific trials:

{ "nctIds": ["NCT03970447", "NCT04280705"], "mode": "changesSinceLastRun", "stateKey": "my-watchlist" }

Output (one row)

rowType (trial or change-alert), nctId, title, officialTitle, acronym, overallStatus, whyStopped, studyType, phases, conditions, keywords, interventions[], leadSponsor, sponsorClass, collaborators, enrollment, startDate, primaryCompletionDate, completionDate, firstPosted, lastUpdatePosted, resultsFirstPosted, hasResults, eligibility, locationCount, recruitingSiteCount, countries, usStates, referencePmids, isNew, isChanged, changes[], changeSummary[], url, plus publications[] / publicationCount and fdaStatus[] when the add-ons are on. A SUMMARY record in the run's key-value store shows totals, requests and any warnings.

Tips

• The first change-mode run for a watchlist is a baseline: every trial is new. Changes appear from the second run.
• Results are sorted by most recently updated first, so a small maxItems gives you the freshest activity.
• The FDA add-on matches intervention names against Drugs@FDA generic and brand names; investigational codes (e.g. "ABC-123") normally return no match, which itself tells you the drug isn't approved under that name.

Data sources and legal notes

• ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 (U.S. National Library of Medicine): public, documented, no key. Spaced at about 1 request per second.
• NCBI E-utilities (PubMed): documented public API; we send tool and email as NCBI asks and stay under 3 requests per second.
• openFDA Drugs@FDA: public, documented, no key; we stay well inside openFDA's keyless limits.
• Data from U.S. government sources is public domain; PubMed metadata is used as bibliographic citation only (no full text). This Actor isn't affiliated with or endorsed by NLM, NIH or FDA.

Disclaimer: not medical advice

This Actor reorganizes public registry and regulatory data. It is not medical, legal or investment advice, and it does not recommend any trial, treatment or security. Registry entries are submitted by sponsors and can be incomplete, outdated or wrong; openFDA itself warns that its data is unvalidated. Patients should talk to their doctor and the study team before acting on any trial listing. Always confirm details on the linked official record.

Support

Found a problem or want a field added? Open an issue on this Actor's Issues tab; we fix things fast. More Clearfeed Labs data feeds: clearfeedlabs.com.