Clinical Trials Scraper: ClinicalTrials.gov data API and export

Export clinical trials from ClinicalTrials.gov, the US National Library of Medicine registry of 500,000+ studies from 200+ countries. You get clean, flat rows ready for Excel, Google Sheets, BI tools or your database. Search by condition, drug or intervention, sponsor, location, recruitment status, phase, study type, start date and last-update date, or look up studies by NCT ID.

Use it as a no-code clinical trials API. It runs on the official ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, so you need no API key, no proxies and no browser, and it returns $1 per 1,000 trials.

What does the Clinical Trials Scraper do?

It turns a ClinicalTrials.gov search into a dataset with one row per study. Each row includes:

• NCT ID, study link, brief title and official title
• overall status, phases and study type
• conditions, and interventions (name and type)
• lead sponsor, sponsor class (INDUSTRY, NIH, OTHER...) and collaborators
• enrollment (count, and whether it is estimated or actual)
• start, primary completion, completion, first-posted and last-update dates
• number of sites and the list of countries
• primary outcome measures, the brief summary, and whether results have been posted

Who is it for?

• Pharma and biotech competitive intelligence. Track every trial a competitor sponsors and see which indications and phases they are moving into. Catch trials that start, complete or are terminated.
• Investors and equity analysts. Map the pipeline for a drug class (GLP-1, ADCs, CAR-T...). Count Phase 3 readouts by expected primary completion date. Compare sponsors by enrollment and geography.
• CROs, site networks and patient recruitment vendors. Find recruiting trials by condition and country, see how many sites each one runs and where, and build prospect lists of industry sponsors.
• Researchers, librarians and data journalists. Build datasets for trial landscape reviews, meta-research and results-reporting audits (hasResults).
• Monitoring and alerts. Schedule a daily run with lastUpdateFrom set to yesterday to get only the studies that changed.

Why use this ClinicalTrials.gov scraper?

• Low price. $1 per 1,000 studies. You pay only for rows saved, and you can set a maximum charge per run.
• Official API, not HTML scraping. It runs on ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, so it doesn't break when the website layout changes and nothing gets blocked. It fetches up to 1,000 studies per request.
• Incremental monitoring built in. The lastUpdateFrom / lastUpdateTo and startDateFrom / startDateTo filters let you pull only what is new or changed.
• Multi-value filters. Enter several conditions, drugs, sponsors or countries in one run. Values in one field are OR-ed, and different fields are AND-ed.
• Analysis-ready rows. Fields are flat, countries is de-duplicated, locationsCount is pre-computed, and the Overview table view opens straight in the Console.
• No personal data. Investigator and contact names, emails and phone numbers are deliberately left out. Only organization and facility-level data is returned.
• Fast and light. It requests only the modules it outputs and skips the heavy results section. A 20-study run finishes in a few seconds.

How to scrape clinical trial data

1. Click Try for free (or Start) on this page.
2. Fill in one or more filters, such as conditions: obesity and overallStatus: RECRUITING.
3. Set Max studies to cap the number of rows, and with it your cost.
4. Click Start and wait a few seconds.
5. Download the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, XML or HTML, or read them via the API.

Input example

Recruiting or not-yet-recruiting Phase 3 obesity trials of semaglutide or tirzepatide that started in 2024 or later:

{
  "conditions": ["obesity"],
  "interventions": ["semaglutide", "tirzepatide"],
  "overallStatus": ["RECRUITING", "NOT_YET_RECRUITING"],
  "phases": ["PHASE3"],
  "startDateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "maxItems": 500
}

Field	What it does	Example
conditions	Disease or condition	obesity, breast cancer
searchTerms	Free text across all fields (supports ClinicalTrials.gov search syntax)	GLP-1, "cell therapy"
interventions	Drug, biologic, device or procedure	semaglutide, pembrolizumab
sponsors	Lead sponsor or collaborator	Novo Nordisk, Pfizer
locations	Country, state, city or facility	Germany, Boston
overallStatus	Recruitment status	RECRUITING, COMPLETED, TERMINATED
phases	Trial phase	EARLY_PHASE1, PHASE1 ... PHASE4, NA
studyType	Study type	INTERVENTIONAL, OBSERVATIONAL, EXPANDED_ACCESS
startDateFrom / startDateTo	Study start date range	2024, 2024-06, 2024-06-30
lastUpdateFrom / lastUpdateTo	Last update range, for incremental runs	2026-10-01
nctIds	Direct lookup by NCT number or study URL	NCT04368728
maxItems	Maximum studies to save (default 20)	1000

With an empty input, the Actor returns the 20 most relevant studies across the whole registry.

Output sample

{
  "nctId": "NCT07777575",
  "url": "https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07777575",
  "briefTitle": "Resistance Training to Prevent Muscle Loss During Treatment With Tirzepatide",
  "officialTitle": "A Phase IV, Randomized Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Effects of Resistance Training Ver...",
  "overallStatus": "RECRUITING",
  "phases": ["PHASE4"],
  "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
  "conditions": ["Obesity (BMI>30)"],
  "interventions": [
    { "name": "Dual GIP/GLP-1 Receptor Agonist Tirzepatide", "type": "DRUG" },
    { "name": "Resistance Training", "type": "BEHAVIORAL" }
  ],
  "leadSponsor": "Technical University of Munich",
  "leadSponsorClass": "OTHER",
  "collaborators": ["EGYM SE"],
  "enrollmentCount": 150,
  "enrollmentType": "ESTIMATED",
  "startDate": "2026-09-07",
  "primaryCompletionDate": "2027-05-31",
  "completionDate": "2027-05-31",
  "firstPostDate": "2026-08-20",
  "lastUpdateDate": "2026-09-17",
  "locationsCount": 1,
  "countries": ["Germany"],
  "primaryOutcomes": ["Change in contractile thigh muscle volume (mL), as assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)"],
  "briefSummary": "Incretin-based pharmacotherapies induce significant weight loss and represent a paradigm shift in obesity treatment. How...",
  "hasResults": false,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-19T08:23:06.554Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
nctId	string	ClinicalTrials.gov identifier
url	string	Link to the study page
briefTitle, officialTitle	string	Study titles
overallStatus	string	Recruitment status (RECRUITING, COMPLETED, ...)
phases	array	Trial phases (PHASE1 ... PHASE4, NA)
studyType	string	INTERVENTIONAL, OBSERVATIONAL or EXPANDED_ACCESS
conditions	array	Conditions studied
interventions	array	{ name, type } for each drug, device, procedure...
leadSponsor, leadSponsorClass	string	Lead sponsor and its class (INDUSTRY, NIH, FED, OTHER...)
collaborators	array	Collaborator organizations
enrollmentCount, enrollmentType	number, string	Planned (ESTIMATED) or real (ACTUAL) enrollment
startDate, primaryCompletionDate, completionDate	string	Key study dates (some are month-only, e.g. 2025-01)
firstPostDate, lastUpdateDate	string	Registry posting dates
locationsCount, countries	number, array	Number of sites and the de-duplicated country list
primaryOutcomes	array	Primary outcome measures
briefSummary	string	Plain-language summary
hasResults	boolean	Whether results have been posted
scrapedAt	string	When the row was collected (ISO 8601)

How much does it cost to scrape ClinicalTrials.gov?

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• $0.001 per study saved ($1 per 1,000 studies)
• $0.00005 per run start (per GB of memory, a fraction of a cent)

Worked example: exporting all ~1,500 recruiting obesity trials costs about 1,500 × $0.001 = $1.50, plus well under a cent for the run start. The default 20-study run costs about $0.02, so the $5 of monthly free credit on the Apify Free plan covers thousands of studies.

Set Max studies or a maximum charge per run, and the Actor stops as soon as it reaches the limit.

Integrations and API

Call the Actor from your own code with the official apify-client, or connect it to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, webhooks and more from the Integrations tab.

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("deanko/clinicaltrials-scraper").call(run_input={
    "conditions": ["breast cancer"],
    "overallStatus": ["RECRUITING"],
    "phases": ["PHASE3"],
    "maxItems": 200,
})
for study in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(study["nctId"], study["leadSponsor"], study["enrollmentCount"])

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('deanko/clinicaltrials-scraper').call({
    sponsors: ['Novo Nordisk'],
    lastUpdateFrom: '2026-10-01',
    maxItems: 500,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items.length, 'studies updated since Oct 1');

You can also run it with one HTTP request through the run-sync-get-dataset-items endpoint and get the rows back in the response.

FAQ

Where does the data come from? It comes from the official, public ClinicalTrials.gov API v2, run by the US National Library of Medicine (NIH). The data is the same as on the website.

Do I need a ClinicalTrials.gov API key? No. The API is free and open, and the Actor handles paging, retries and output formatting.

Are there rate limits? ClinicalTrials.gov asks clients to keep request rates moderate (roughly 50 requests per minute per IP). The Actor fetches pages one at a time, up to 1,000 studies per page, with a short pause between them. Even a 10,000-study export needs only about 10 requests, so you won't hit the limit.

How do I get only new or updated trials every day? Schedule the Actor (Console → Schedules) with lastUpdateFrom set to the previous day, and add a webhook or Slack/Sheets integration to receive the changes.

How do multiple values work? Values in one field are combined with OR (semaglutide OR tirzepatide). Different fields are combined with AND (condition AND status AND phase).

Can I look up one specific trial? Yes. Put its NCT number or study URL in nctIds and clear the other filters.

Why are some dates only a month? That is how the sponsor registered them, and the Actor keeps them as is (e.g. 2025-01).

Limitations

• Eligibility criteria (age, sex, healthy volunteers), arms, secondary outcomes and the posted results data are not included in the output. Only the hasResults flag is.
• Investigator and contact details are deliberately excluded.
• Only ClinicalTrials.gov is covered, not EU CTR, ISRCTN, WHO ICTRP or other registries.
• Results come in ClinicalTrials.gov relevance order, with no custom sort option.
• Data is only as fresh and complete as the registry itself. Sponsors update their records on their own schedule.

Legal and privacy

The data comes from the public ClinicalTrials.gov registry. This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US National Library of Medicine or NIH. You are responsible for using the data in line with the ClinicalTrials.gov terms and the laws that apply to you.

Support and feedback

Missing a field or filter you need, or found a bug? Open an issue in the Issues tab on this page. If the Actor saves you time, a short review helps other people find it.