# NIH RePORTER Scraper - Grants & Investigators (`dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators`) Actor

Scrape NIH RePORTER: US biomedical research grants as one row per principal investigator, not per project, with institution, address, UEI, award amount, fiscal year and funding window. Filter by keyword, fiscal year and amount for research sales and prospecting.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators.md
- **Developed by:** [Tom Awake](https://apify.com/dataio) (community)
- **Categories:** Lead generation, MCP servers
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

from $4.00 / 1,000 investigators

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.
Since this Actor supports Apify Store discounts, the price gets lower the higher subscription plan you have.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

### What does NIH RePORTER Scraper do?

US biomedical research funding as **one row per principal investigator** —
with institution, city, state, UEI, award amount and funding window.

**No login. No API key. No proxies.**

### One row per person, not per project

NIH RePORTER returns a project with its investigators buried in a nested
array. For anyone selling into research — lab equipment, reagents, CRO
services, software, recruitment — that is the wrong shape. A programme with
four principal investigators is **four people to contact**, at a named
institution, with a known budget.

Measured on FY2025 Alzheimer's research:

| | Value |
|---|---|
| Investigators per project | **2.73** |
| Contacts lost by exporting per project | **63 %** |
| Co-investigators as a share of contacts | **55 %** |
| Rows carrying institution UEI and city | **99–100 %** |

Turn on **Contact investigator only** and you get the single person NIH
corresponds with — a shorter, higher-authority list. Leave it off and you
reach the co-investigators too, who run much of the actual work.

### Output

| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| `investigatorName` | Benjamin Levine Ebert |
| `investigatorTitle`, `isContactPi` | PROFESSOR, true |
| `organization` | DANA-FARBER CANCER INST |
| `orgCity`, `orgState`, `orgZip`, `orgCountry` | Boston, MA |
| `orgUei`, `orgDuns` | federal identifiers, join to USAspending |
| `departmentType` | SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE |
| `awardAmountUsd` | 12713161 |
| `projectNumber`, `projectTitle` | 5P01AG052350-08 |
| `projectStartDate`, `projectEndDate` | funding window |
| `activityCode`, `awardType`, `fundingAgency` | P01, NIA |
| `researchTerms` | indexed topic terms, flattened |
| `projectUrl` | link to the RePORTER record |

`projectEndDate` is the one to sort by for outreach: a grant ending in nine
months is a renewal conversation, and a budget about to be re-spent.

`orgUei` is the same identifier USAspending uses, so this output joins
directly to federal contract data.

### Input

```json
{
  "searchText": "Alzheimer",
  "fiscalYears": [2025],
  "maxItems": 500
}
```

| Field | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `searchText` | `Alzheimer` | Titles, abstracts and indexed terms |
| `fiscalYears` | `[2025]` | NIH years run October to September |
| `maxItems` | `500` | Counts investigators, not projects |
| `contactPiOnly` | `false` | Only the corresponding investigator |
| `orgStates` | — | e.g. `["CA", "MA"]` |
| `organizations` | — | Exact names as NIH spells them |
| `piLastName` | — | One investigator |
| `minAwardUsd` | — | Filters small awards |

### Use cases

- **Life-science sales** — territory lists by topic and state, with the
  researcher, the institution and the budget.
- **CRO and service business development** — who is funded to run what, and
  until when.
- **Competitive and landscape analysis** — which institutions dominate a
  research area, and at what scale.
- **Recruitment** — named investigators and their titles by speciality.
- **Grant strategy** — what NIH actually funds in a field, with amounts.

### Limits, honestly

- **RePORTER stops paginating past 15,000 projects.** The Actor warns rather
  than looping; narrow the topic, year or state to reach deeper.
- `searchText` matches abstracts and indexed terms, so a broad word returns
  adjacent research. Check `projectTitle` and `researchTerms` on the rows.
- `awardAmountUsd` is the amount for that project record in that fiscal
  year, not the lifetime value of a multi-year programme — and it repeats
  on each investigator row of the same project. Deduplicate on
  `projectNumber` before summing.
- Institution names are not normalised at the source: Harvard appears both
  as `HARVARD UNIVERSITY` and `HARVARD UNIVERSITY D/B/A HARVARD…`.
- Names and titles are personal data published on a public federal
  registry. Using them for outreach in the EU or UK makes you the data
  controller.
- Requests are paced out of courtesy to a free public service.
- Not affiliated with the NIH.

### How much does it cost?

You pay per investigator returned: **$0.006 each**, that is $6.00 per 1,000. There is no start fee, and subscription plans pay less per investigator.

The example input below asks for up to 500 investigators, so it costs **$3.00 at most**.

If a run reaches the spending limit you set, the output stops at that limit and never goes past it. You are never charged for rows that were not delivered.

### Use NIH RePORTER Scraper as an API

Call it from your own code with the Apify client, here in Python:

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("DataIO/nih-reporter-funded-investigators").call(run_input={
    'searchText': 'Alzheimer',
    'fiscalYears': [2025],
    'maxItems': 500,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)
```

It also works from JavaScript, Make, Zapier, n8n, and from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

### Other actors you might like

- [FDA 510(k) Scraper](https://apify.com/DataIO/openfda-510k-device-clearances): Device Clearances Data
- [FDA Recalls Scraper](https://apify.com/DataIO/openfda-recalls-enforcement): openFDA Enforcement
- [NPI Registry Scraper](https://apify.com/DataIO/nppes-npi-provider-registry): US Healthcare Providers

### FAQ

#### Is it legal to use this data?

The actor reads public data from its official source, without logging in and without bypassing any access control. What you do with the data, for example contacting people listed in it, is your responsibility under the laws that apply to you, such as GDPR in Europe.

#### Can I run it on a schedule?

Yes. Create a schedule in Apify Console, daily or weekly for example, and each run delivers a fresh dataset, which you can send by email, webhook or integration.

#### Can AI agents use it?

Yes. It is available through the Apify MCP server, and every input field is described in its input schema, so an agent can call it directly.

# Actor input Schema

## `searchText` (type: `string`):

Searched across project titles, abstracts and indexed terms — for example "Alzheimer", "CAR-T", "single cell sequencing".

## `fiscalYears` (type: `array`):

One or more years, for example \[2025]. NIH fiscal years run October to September.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

One row per investigator, so a project with four principal investigators yields four rows.

## `contactPiOnly` (type: `boolean`):

Keeps only the contact principal investigator — the person NIH corresponds with. Turn it off to reach every co-investigator on a project.

## `orgStates` (type: `array`):

Two-letter US state codes, for example \["CA", "MA"].

## `organizations` (type: `array`):

Exact institution names as NIH spells them, for example \["HARVARD UNIVERSITY"].

## `piLastName` (type: `string`):

Surname of a principal investigator.

## `minAwardUsd` (type: `integer`):

Filters out small awards.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "searchText": "Alzheimer",
  "fiscalYears": [
    2025
  ],
  "maxItems": 500,
  "contactPiOnly": false
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Every row produced by the run, in JSON.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "searchText": "Alzheimer",
    "fiscalYears": [
        2025
    ],
    "maxItems": 500
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {
    "searchText": "Alzheimer",
    "fiscalYears": [2025],
    "maxItems": 500,
}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "searchText": "Alzheimer",
  "fiscalYears": [
    2025
  ],
  "maxItems": 500
}' |
apify call dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dataio/nih-reporter-funded-investigators"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/Rbng93fUFto2h1Xfb/builds/okegFeeAlz6tqyWt8/openapi.json