OpenFDA Drug US Scraper

OpenFDA Drug US Scraper extracts structured US drug product data from the official public openFDA drug APIs. Use it for NDC lookup, regulatory product research, label review, approval-data enrichment, market analysis, and lightweight health checks.

This actor is not affiliated with the FDA or openFDA. It uses public data from api.fda.gov and does not require proxies.

Supported operations

• probe: checks openFDA availability with a small NDC request.
• categories: lists high-volume browse categories for product type, route, dosage form, and marketing category.
• filters: returns filter metadata and lookup-key guidance.
• search: searches the openFDA NDC dataset by query or exact filters.
• category: browses NDC products by category_id in group:value format.
• item: returns an enriched product profile from NDC data with optional label and Drugs@FDA approval data.

Input guide

operation is required. For search, provide query or at least one exact filter such as brand, generic_name, manufacturer, dosage_form, route, product_type, marketing_category, or application_number.

For item, provide one of product_ndc, set_id, application_number, or item_id. include_label and include_approval default to true.

limit defaults to 25 and is capped at 100. page is 1-based.

Example inputs

Probe:

{
  "operation": "probe"
}

Search:

{
  "operation": "search",
  "query": "aspirin",
  "limit": 5
}

Search with exact filter:

{
  "operation": "search",
  "route": "ORAL",
  "dosage_form": "TABLET",
  "limit": 5
}

Category browse:

{
  "operation": "category",
  "category_id": "route:ORAL",
  "limit": 5
}

Item detail:

{
  "operation": "item",
  "product_ndc": "21130-481"
}

Output

For monetization and result counting, each useful result is written as its own Apify dataset item. Search limit 5 writes 5 dataset items, and item lookup writes 1 dataset item when the product is found.

Run status, totals, no-result summaries, and error summaries are written to the default key-value store under OUTPUT. Probe, no-result searches, invalid item lookups, and invalid inputs do not create fake dataset result rows.

Search and category results can include:

• status, source, operation, mode, record_type
• id, item_id, product_ndc, set_id
• name, brand, generic_name, manufacturer
• product_type, dosage_form, route, marketing_category
• application_number
• active_ingredients
• package_count
• source_dataset, source_urls

Item results extend listing fields with:

• description, short_description
• ingredients, inactive_ingredients
• usage_instructions, warnings, benefits
• packaging
• sections
• label_available, approval_available
• openfda
• approval
• source_datasets, source_urls

No-result searches write zero dataset items and return status: "success" with dataset_item_count: 0 in OUTPUT. Invalid item lookups write zero dataset items and return status: "not_found" with a structured error object in OUTPUT.

Limitations

• Data freshness, coverage, and field availability are controlled by openFDA.
• Some NDC records do not have matching label or Drugs@FDA approval records.
• The openFDA public API may rate-limit heavy usage.
• This actor does not provide medical advice and should not be used as a substitute for official labeling review by qualified professionals.

Proxy behavior

No proxy is required. The actor performs direct HTTPS requests to public openFDA endpoints.