ClinicalTrials.gov Scraper

Scrape the US government clinical-trial registry — 500,000+ studies spanning interventional trials, observational studies, and expanded-access programs across 220+ countries. Search by free-text, condition, intervention, location, or sponsor; look up by NCT ID; filter by recruitment status, phase, study type, demographic eligibility, and date ranges. HTTP-only via the public ClinicalTrials.gov REST API v2 — no authentication, no cookies, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Six modes: search, byNctIds, byCondition, byIntervention, byLocation, bySponsor
• Server-side filters: status, phase, study type, country (passed directly to the API)
• Client-side filters: sex, age groups, start / completion date ranges, has-results, keyword substring
• Cursor pagination: scales to thousands of records per run
• Polite-pool: identifies itself via User-Agent header with contact email
• Empty fields are omitted — no null, "", [], or {} in the output

Output per study (sample)

{
  "nctId": "NCT04280705",
  "briefTitle": "Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT)",
  "officialTitle": "A Multicenter, Adaptive, Randomized Blinded Controlled Trial...",
  "organization": "National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)",
  "overallStatus": "COMPLETED",
  "startDate": "2020-02-21",
  "completionDate": "2020-05-21",
  "leadSponsor": "National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)",
  "conditions": ["COVID-19"],
  "keywords": ["Adaptive", "COVID-19", "Efficacy", "Multicenter"],
  "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
  "phases": ["PHASE3"],
  "enrollmentCount": 1062,
  "allocation": "RANDOMIZED",
  "interventionModel": "PARALLEL",
  "primaryPurpose": "TREATMENT",
  "interventionNames": ["Placebo", "Remdesivir"],
  "interventionTypes": ["OTHER", "DRUG"],
  "locationCountries": ["United States", "Japan", "Korea, Republic of", "..."],
  "locationCount": 73,
  "hasResults": true,
  "studyUrl": "https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04280705",
  "recordType": "clinicalTrial",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-05-21T11:53:00+00:00"
}

Available fields

• Identification: nctId, briefTitle, officialTitle, acronym, organization, organizationClass, orgStudyId
• Status & dates: overallStatus, startDate, startDateType, primaryCompletionDate, completionDate, studyFirstSubmitDate, studyFirstPostDate, lastUpdateSubmitDate, lastUpdatePostDate, resultsFirstPostDate, statusVerifiedDate, hasExpandedAccess
• Sponsors: leadSponsor, leadSponsorClass, collaborators[], responsiblePartyType, responsiblePartyInvestigator
• Oversight: isFdaRegulatedDrug, isFdaRegulatedDevice, hasDataMonitoringCommittee
• Description: briefSummary, detailedDescription
• Conditions: conditions[], keywords[]
• Design: studyType, phases[], enrollmentCount, enrollmentType, allocation, interventionModel, primaryPurpose, masking
• Arms / interventions: armGroups[], interventions[], interventionNames[], interventionTypes[]
• Eligibility: eligibilityCriteria, sex, minimumAge, maximumAge, standardAges[], healthyVolunteers
• Outcomes: primaryOutcomes[], secondaryOutcomes[]
• Locations: locations[], locationCities[], locationCountries[], locationCount, overallOfficials[]
• Results: hasResults
• Derived: studyUrl, recordType, scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	One of search, byNctIds, byCondition, byIntervention, byLocation, bySponsor
searchQuery	string	cancer immunotherapy	Free-text query (mode=search; also fallback for other modes)
conditionQuery	string	–	Disease / condition (mode=byCondition)
interventionQuery	string	–	Drug / device / therapy (mode=byIntervention)
locationQuery	string	–	Geographic text (mode=byLocation)
sponsorQuery	string	–	Lead sponsor name (mode=bySponsor)
nctIds	array	–	List of NCT IDs (mode=byNctIds)
status	enum	–	Overall recruitment status (Recruiting, Completed, etc.)
studyType	enum	–	Interventional / Observational / Expanded Access
phases	array enum	–	One or more of Early Phase 1 / Phase 1 / Phase 2 / Phase 3 / Phase 4 / NA
sex	enum	–	Eligible sex (All / Male / Female)
ageGroups	array enum	–	One or more of Child / Adult / Older Adult
country	enum	–	Country with a trial location
startDateFrom / startDateTo	string	–	ISO date bounds for study start
completionDateFrom / completionDateTo	string	–	ISO date bounds for completion
hasResults	bool	false	Only studies with results posted
containsKeyword	string	–	Case-insensitive substring filter
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap (1–5000)

Example: actively recruiting Phase 3 cancer trials in the US

{
  "mode": "byCondition",
  "conditionQuery": "breast cancer",
  "status": "RECRUITING",
  "phases": ["PHASE3"],
  "country": "United States",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: lookup by NCT IDs

{
  "mode": "byNctIds",
  "nctIds": ["NCT04280705", "NCT03695107", "NCT04611802"]
}

Example: every metformin trial since 2020 with results posted

{
  "mode": "byIntervention",
  "interventionQuery": "metformin",
  "startDateFrom": "2020",
  "hasResults": true,
  "maxItems": 500
}

Use cases

• Pharmaceutical intelligence — track competitive trials by drug or sponsor
• Clinical research — discover trials matching a specific patient profile
• Health-tech startups — surface relevant trials by condition or geography
• Academic research — bulk-export the trial landscape for a disease
• Regulatory analysts — monitor FDA-regulated trials by status and phase
• Patient advocacy groups — find recruiting studies for rare diseases
• Biostatistics — feed structured trial metadata into meta-analysis pipelines

FAQ

What is ClinicalTrials.gov? The world's largest publicly accessible registry of clinical trials, run by the US National Library of Medicine (NIH). It contains over half a million studies from 220+ countries, with information sourced from trial sponsors and investigators. See clinicaltrials.gov.

Do I need an account or API key? No. The v2 REST API is fully public and free.

How fresh is the data? Trial sponsors submit updates continuously; ClinicalTrials.gov re-indexes the API in near-real-time. Most records are updated within hours of sponsor submission.

What's an NCT ID? A unique 11-character identifier (e.g., NCT04280705) assigned to every registered trial. Each NCT ID maps to one study record.

What's the difference between studyType values? INTERVENTIONAL = traditional clinical trial with an assigned treatment; OBSERVATIONAL = researchers observe but don't assign treatment; EXPANDED_ACCESS = compassionate-use programs outside of a clinical trial.

What do the phase labels mean? EARLY_PHASE1 and PHASE1 = first-in-human safety; PHASE2 = efficacy + dosing; PHASE3 = large-scale comparison vs. standard of care; PHASE4 = post-marketing surveillance. NA = not applicable (e.g., observational studies, device trials).

Why are some date fields like 2024-04 (no day) instead of 2024-04-15? Some sponsors register their trials with month-precision dates. The actor preserves whatever precision the upstream record has.

What's the difference between startDate and studyFirstPostDate? startDate is when participant enrollment begins; studyFirstPostDate is when the trial was first registered on ClinicalTrials.gov.

How are locations structured? Each trial may run at multiple sites. The actor emits a flat locations[] array (with facility, city, state, zip, country, lat/lon) plus derived locationCountries[], locationCities[], and locationCount for quick filtering and aggregation.

Can I filter by multiple phases at once? Yes — phases is an array. Selecting ["PHASE2", "PHASE3"] returns trials in either phase (server-side OR).

What if a study has no results posted yet? The hasResults field will be absent or false. Use hasResults: true in input to keep only studies with posted results.

Are NCT-ID lookups deduplicated? Yes — duplicate IDs in the input list are silently merged.

Does this actor respect ClinicalTrials.gov's terms? Yes. The actor sends a polite User-Agent header with a contact email, includes small inter-request delays, and uses the official public REST API. No bulk data dumps are produced — only the data the user explicitly queries.