ClinicalTrials.gov Study Scraper

Fetch clinical trial studies directly from the official ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API. Filter by condition, intervention, phase, status, sponsor, and country. Perfect for pharma research, competitive intelligence, pipeline monitoring, and trial recruitment analysis.

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What does it do?

This Actor queries the official ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API and returns structured study data in a clean, uniform schema. No browser automation, no HTML parsing—pure HTTP JSON API calls for low cost and 100% reliability.

Key features:

• Search clinical trials by condition, intervention, phase, status, sponsor, country
• Filter by study type (Interventional, Observational)
• Paginate through thousands of results with a single run
• Cost control: set a hard limit with maxItems
• Rich output: NCT ID, title, phase, status, eligibility, locations, enrollment, dates, and more
• Schema-drift detection: automatically skips malformed records and logs warnings

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Who is this for?

Pharmaceutical & Biotech Companies

• Pipeline research: monitor competitor trial activity by phase and indication
• Recruitment sourcing: identify active studies matching your patient demographics
• Market intelligence: track drug pipeline trends, identify unmet needs

Clinical Research Organizations (CROs)

• Study inventory: maintain up-to-date registries of relevant trials
• Site selection: match investigations to recruitment locations
• Regulatory compliance: track study status changes

Medical Device & Healthcare

• Competitive monitoring: watch for trials of competing products
• Partnership identification: find co-development opportunities
• Investor diligence: validate clinical pipeline claims

Academics & Researchers

• Literature support: complement PubMed searches with live trial data
• Meta-analysis: bulk export studies for systematic reviews
• Recruitment assistance: identify trials for patient cohorts

Healthcare Investors & Advisors

• Asset evaluation: validate company pipeline depth and quality
• Market sizing: estimate addressable opportunity from trial volumes
• Risk monitoring: track late-stage trial progress

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Example Input

{
  "conditions": ["Breast Cancer", "Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer"],
  "interventions": ["Drug: pembrolizumab"],
  "phases": ["PHASE2", "PHASE3"],
  "statuses": ["RECRUITING", "ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING"],
  "countries": ["United States"],
  "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
  "maxItems": 1000,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true
  }
}

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Example
conditions	string[]	Filter by disease/condition	["Diabetes", "Hypertension"]
interventions	string[]	Filter by treatment type	["Drug: metformin"]
terms	string[]	Free-text search	["immunotherapy"]
sponsor	string	Filter by lead sponsor	"Pfizer Inc"
statuses	string[]	Filter by recruitment status	["RECRUITING"]
phases	string[]	Filter by trial phase	["PHASE2", "PHASE3"]
countries	string[]	Filter by location	["Netherlands", "Germany"]
studyType	string	INTERVENTIONAL or OBSERVATIONAL	"INTERVENTIONAL"
fields	string[]	Limit output fields (cost optimization)	["nctId", "title", "status"]
maxItems	number	Hard result limit	5000

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Example Output

Each result is a structured UniformStudy object:

{
  "nctId": "NCT05123456",
  "title": "Phase 3 Study of ABC-123 in Advanced Lung Cancer",
  "officialTitle": "A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Phase 3 Trial of ABC-123 Monotherapy in Patients with Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer",
  "status": "RECRUITING",
  "phase": ["PHASE3"],
  "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
  "conditions": ["Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer"],
  "interventions": ["Drug: ABC-123", "Drug: Placebo"],
  "sponsor": "BioPharma Corp",
  "sponsorClass": "INDUSTRY",
  "enrollmentCount": 500,
  "startDate": "2023-06-15",
  "completionDate": "2026-12-31",
  "locations": [
    {
      "facility": "University Medical Center Amsterdam",
      "city": "Amsterdam",
      "country": "Netherlands"
    }
  ],
  "eligibility": {
    "minAge": "18 Years",
    "maxAge": null,
    "sex": "ALL",
    "healthyVolunteers": false
  },
  "studyUrl": "https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05123456",
  "lastUpdate": "2024-12-15",
  "scrapedAt": "2025-06-05T14:30:00Z"
}

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Frequently Asked Questions

How often is ClinicalTrials.gov updated?

The source data updates daily. Run this Actor as frequently as needed to stay current.

Can I search without filters?

Yes! Leave all filter arrays empty to retrieve all studies. Warning: ClinicalTrials.gov contains ~500,000+ studies. Use maxItems to avoid unexpectedly high costs.

What does "Phase" mean?

• Phase 0: Exploratory studies (rare)
• Phase 1: Safety & dosage (20–100 volunteers)
• Phase 2: Efficacy & side effects (100–300 volunteers)
• Phase 3: Efficacy & monitoring (1,000–3,000 volunteers)
• Phase 4: Post-market surveillance
• NA: Not applicable (observational, devices, etc.)

What are typical study statuses?

• RECRUITING: Actively seeking participants
• ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING: Enrollment closed; study ongoing
• COMPLETED: Ended; results may be available
• SUSPENDED / TERMINATED: No longer active
• NOT_YET_RECRUITING: Will begin recruiting soon

How do I minimize costs?

1. Use maxItems to cap results
2. Use fields to select only columns you need
3. Filter early — narrow by condition, phase, or status to reduce data transferred
4. Reduce pageSize if building a pipeline (default 1000 per request)

What if a study is missing fields?

Null values are preserved. For example, some studies don't have enrollment counts, estimated completion dates, or specific locations. Your code should handle nulls gracefully.

Can I detect schema changes?

Yes. The Actor logs SCHEMA_CHANGED warnings and skips malformed records without failing. Check the run logs for warnings.

What's the accuracy of location data?

Locations come directly from ClinicalTrials.gov. Some studies have incomplete facility names or country data—filter and validate as needed.

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How It Works

1. Input parsing: validates your filters (conditions, phases, statuses, etc.)
2. API query: constructs v2 query parameters using the official filters
3. Pagination: fetches up to 1,000 results per request; continues until maxItems or all results
4. Normalization: maps raw protocolSection nesting to clean UniformStudy schema
5. Output: pushes results to dataset; charges per returned record (pay-per-result)
6. Summary: logs total count, returned items, and page count to run metadata

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API Pricing & Cost Control

This Actor charges on a pay-per-result basis. Each returned study = 1 charge.

To minimize costs:

• Start with maxItems: 100 to test your filters
• Use fields to reduce payload size (optional cost savings)
• Filter by phase/status/condition to narrow the search space
• Run during off-peak hours if your plan allows rate-based scheduling

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Technical Details

• Runtime: Node.js 20 + TypeScript
• HTTP client: got-scraping with automatic retries, exponential backoff, and Retry-After header respect
• Tests: 54 unit + integration tests (Vitest); 100% fixture-based
• API source: Official ClinicalTrials.gov v2 Data API
• No auth required: public API endpoint

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Troubleshooting

"No results found"

• Verify your filters are spelled correctly (conditions are case-sensitive)
• Try removing one filter at a time to identify the culprit
• Check the actor logs for any API error messages

"Unexpected number of results"

• Phase filtering is strict (e.g., NA-phase studies cannot be filtered by phase)
• Status filters use specific enum values (see input schema)
• Some conditions may have many aliases; try synonyms

"Slow pagination"

• Large result sets (>10k) require multiple API requests. This is normal.
• Use maxItems to set a ceiling
• Consider filtering by status (e.g., RECRUITING only)

"Null values in output"

• This is expected. ClinicalTrials.gov is incomplete for some fields.
• Use fields to select only columns your pipeline requires

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Keywords

clinical trials, ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT, pharma data, drug trials, clinical research, biotech, trial monitoring, patient recruitment, regulatory, competitive intelligence, market research, medical devices, healthcare data, clinical pipeline

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Data Source

All data comes directly from the official ClinicalTrials.gov v2 Data API:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/data-api/api

Data is in the public domain (U.S. National Library of Medicine).

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Questions? Contact the maintainer or check the ClinicalTrials.gov FAQ.

Last updated: June 2026
Actor version: 0.0.1