Clinical Trials Scraper

Search ClinicalTrials.gov for studies by condition, intervention, sponsor, or keyword. Look up individual trials by NCT ID. No API key required. MCP-ready for AI agent integration.

What does it do?

Clinical Trials Scraper queries the ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 and returns structured data about clinical studies worldwide. It extracts trial metadata, eligibility criteria, interventions, outcomes, sponsors, and locations into clean, normalized JSON. Returns consistent output -- ready for analysis, pharma pipelines, or consumption by AI agents via MCP.

👥 Who Uses This

💊 Pharma and Biotech Pipeline Teams

You need to track what competitors are running — which conditions, which phases, which sponsors. ClinicalTrials.gov has 500,000+ studies. This actor lets you query by sponsor name, intervention, or therapeutic area and get structured output ready for pipeline dashboards without manual site navigation.

{
    "mode": "search_studies",
    "sponsor": "Pfizer",
    "phase": "PHASE3",
    "status": "RECRUITING",
    "maxResults": 200
}

Run on a schedule to catch new trial registrations. Cross-reference with FDA Drug Labels and FDA Adverse Events for a full compound dossier.

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🏥 Patient Recruitment and Clinical Operations Teams

You're identifying recruiting trials for specific conditions and locations to support patient referrals, site feasibility assessments, or registry building. The structured eligibility and location fields let you filter without reading each trial page.

{
    "mode": "search_by_condition",
    "condition": "non-small cell lung cancer",
    "status": "RECRUITING",
    "maxResults": 100
}

Filter by phase, studyType (interventional vs observational), and date range to narrow to relevant protocols. Pull nct_id lists for downstream processing with get_study mode to retrieve full eligibility text.

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🔬 Academic Researchers and Systematic Reviewers

You need a structured trial inventory for a systematic review or meta-analysis — not hand-copied PDFs, but normalized JSON with consistent field names across thousands of trials. Batch search across multiple condition terms, deduplicate by NCT ID, and export to CSV.

{
    "mode": "search_studies",
    "query": "GLP-1 receptor agonist type 2 diabetes cardiovascular",
    "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
    "maxResults": 500
}

Combine with PubMed Scraper to match trials to their published results. The nct_id links directly to the ClinicalTrials.gov record; PMID cross-references appear in the references field where available.

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📋 Regulatory Affairs and Compliance Teams

You need to monitor trial status changes — completions, terminations, protocol amendments — for your own programs or competitor benchmarking. Track when trials enter Phase 3, when they complete, or when they're terminated early (often a safety signal).

{
    "mode": "search_studies",
    "sponsor": "YourCompany",
    "status": "COMPLETED",
    "startDateFrom": "2023-01-01",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Use get_study mode with specific NCT IDs to pull the full record including primary and secondary outcomes, protocol amendments, and results references.

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🤖 AI/LLM Engineers and Agent Builders

You're building biomedical AI pipelines — RAG systems grounded in trial data, agents that can answer questions about active trials, or research assistants that cross-reference literature with ongoing studies.

MCP tool config:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "clinical-trials-scraper": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=labrat011/clinical-trials-scraper",
            "headers": {
                "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>"
            }
        }
    }
}

Combine with PubMed Scraper and FDA Drug Labels in the same MCP config to give your agent access to the full biomedical research stack — literature, trials, and drug labeling — as callable tools.

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Features

• 3 modes: search_studies, get_study, search_by_condition
• No API key required -- ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 is public
• No proxies needed -- direct API access to government infrastructure
• Rich filters -- condition, intervention, sponsor, phase, status, study type, date range
• Pagination -- automatically pages through large result sets
• Polite rate limiting -- default 0.2s between requests; retry with exponential backoff on failures
• State persistence -- survives Apify actor migrations mid-run
• Batch push -- outputs in batches of 25 for efficiency
• Free tier -- 25 results per run without a subscription
• MCP-ready -- stable JSON schema with schema_version, no missing keys

What data does it extract?

Studies

Field	Description
schema_version	Schema version (currently "1.0")
type	Always "study"
nct_id	ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (e.g., NCT05678901)
title	Official study title
acronym	Study acronym (if any)
overall_status	Current status (e.g., RECRUITING, COMPLETED)
start_date	Study start date
completion_date	Estimated or actual completion date
last_update_date	Last update posted date
brief_summary	Brief study description
conditions	Medical conditions studied
interventions	Drugs, devices, or procedures being tested
phases	Trial phases (e.g., PHASE1, PHASE2, PHASE3)
study_type	Study type (INTERVENTIONAL, OBSERVATIONAL)
enrollment	Number of participants
enrollment_type	Enrollment type (ACTUAL or ESTIMATED)
sponsor	Lead sponsor organization
collaborators	Collaborating organizations
sex	Eligible sex (ALL, MALE, FEMALE)
min_age	Minimum eligible age
max_age	Maximum eligible age
healthy_volunteers	Whether healthy volunteers accepted
primary_outcomes	Primary outcome measures
secondary_outcomes	Secondary outcome measures
locations	Study sites (facility, city, state, country)
study_url	Link to study on ClinicalTrials.gov

---

Input

Mode 1: Search Studies

Search for clinical trials by keyword, condition, intervention, or sponsor.

{
    "mode": "search_studies",
    "query": "lung cancer",
    "phase": ["PHASE3"],
    "status": ["RECRUITING"],
    "maxResults": 100
}

Search by intervention and sponsor:

{
    "mode": "search_studies",
    "intervention": "pembrolizumab",
    "sponsor": "Merck",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Mode 2: Get Study

Look up a specific study by NCT ID.

{
    "mode": "get_study",
    "nctId": "NCT04280705"
}

Mode 3: Search by Condition

Condition-focused search for clinical trials.

{
    "mode": "search_by_condition",
    "condition": "type 2 diabetes",
    "studyType": "INTERVENTIONAL",
    "phase": ["PHASE2", "PHASE3"],
    "maxResults": 200
}

Input Reference

Common fields:

Parameter	Default	Description
mode	search_studies	search_studies, get_study, or search_by_condition
query		General search term across all fields
nctId		NCT ID for get_study mode
condition		Disease or condition name
intervention		Drug, device, or procedure
sponsor		Sponsor organization
maxResults	100	Max results (1-1000; free tier capped at 25)
requestIntervalSecs	0.2	Seconds between requests
timeoutSecs	30	HTTP timeout
maxRetries	5	Retries on failure

Filter fields:

Parameter	Default	Description
status		Study status filter (e.g., RECRUITING, COMPLETED)
phase		Trial phase (e.g., PHASE1, PHASE2, PHASE3)
studyType		Study type (INTERVENTIONAL, OBSERVATIONAL)
dateFrom		Studies starting on or after (YYYY-MM-DD)
dateTo		Studies starting on or before (YYYY-MM-DD)

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Output

Results are saved to the default dataset. Download them in JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML from the Output tab.

Example output

{
    "schema_version": "1.0",
    "type": "study",
    "nct_id": "NCT04280705",
    "title": "A Study of Nivolumab Plus Ipilimumab in Participants With Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer",
    "acronym": "",
    "overall_status": "COMPLETED",
    "start_date": "2020-03-15",
    "completion_date": "2024-06-30",
    "last_update_date": "2024-08-15",
    "brief_summary": "This study evaluated the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab...",
    "conditions": ["Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer", "NSCLC"],
    "interventions": ["DRUG: Nivolumab", "DRUG: Ipilimumab"],
    "phases": ["PHASE3"],
    "study_type": "INTERVENTIONAL",
    "enrollment": 1200,
    "enrollment_type": "ACTUAL",
    "sponsor": "Bristol-Myers Squibb",
    "collaborators": [],
    "sex": "ALL",
    "min_age": "18 Years",
    "max_age": "",
    "healthy_volunteers": "No",
    "primary_outcomes": ["Overall Survival (OS)"],
    "secondary_outcomes": ["Progression-Free Survival (PFS)", "Objective Response Rate (ORR)"],
    "locations": ["Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, United States"],
    "study_url": "https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04280705"
}

---

Cost

This actor uses pay-per-event (PPE) pricing. You pay only for the results you get.

• $0.50 per 1,000 results ($0.0005 per result)
• No proxy costs -- public government APIs
• No API key costs -- ClinicalTrials.gov is free and public
• Free tier: 25 results per run (no subscription required)

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Technical details

• ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 (clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies) for study search and retrieval
• No authentication required -- public government data
• Automatic pagination via nextPageToken
• Rate limited to 1 request per 0.2 seconds (configurable)
• Automatic retry with exponential backoff and jitter on failures
• Results pushed in batches of 25 for efficiency
• Actor state persisted across migrations
• No proxies, no browser, no cookies -- direct API access

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MCP Integration

This actor works as an MCP tool through Apify's hosted MCP server. No custom server needed.

• Endpoint: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=labrat011/clinical-trials-scraper
• Auth: Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>
• Transport: Streamable HTTP
• Works with: Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Warp, Gemini CLI

Example MCP config (Claude Desktop / Cursor):

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "clinical-trials-scraper": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=labrat011/clinical-trials-scraper",
            "headers": {
                "Authorization": "Bearer <APIFY_TOKEN>"
            }
        }
    }
}

AI agents can use this actor to search clinical trials, look up study details, track drug development pipelines, and monitor trial status changes -- all as a callable MCP tool.

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FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 is public with no authentication required.

What status values can I filter by?

RECRUITING, NOT_YET_RECRUITING, ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING, COMPLETED, ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION, SUSPENDED, TERMINATED, WITHDRAWN.

What phase values can I filter by?

EARLY_PHASE1, PHASE1, PHASE2, PHASE3, PHASE4, NA.

How many studies are in ClinicalTrials.gov?

Over 500,000 studies from 200+ countries.

Can I combine filters?

Yes. All filters are AND-combined. For example, search for Phase 3 recruiting trials for lung cancer with a specific sponsor.

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🔗 Related Actors

Actor	What it does	Pairs well when...
PubMed Scraper	35M+ biomedical abstracts from NCBI	Match trials to published results by NCT ID or condition
FDA Drug Labels Scraper	FDA-approved drug labeling data	Look up the label for a trial's intervention drug
FDA Adverse Events Scraper	FAERS post-market safety reports	Cross-reference trial drug with real-world adverse event signals
FDA Orange Book Scraper	Patent, exclusivity, and generic equivalence data	Check approval and patent status of trial interventions
NPI Provider Contact Finder	Healthcare provider directory	Find principal investigators or recruiting site contacts

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Feedback

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab in Apify Console.