🔬 NIH Reporter Grants Scraper — Federal Research Funding Intel

Pull every NIH / CDC / AHRQ federal research grant — direct from the official Reporter API. No API key, no paywall, no front-end scraping.

The NIH operates the largest biomedical research funding database in the world: ~76K active projects, $40+ billion in annual awards across 27 institutes (NCI, NIAID, NHLBI, NIMH, etc.). This Actor wraps api.reporter.nih.gov/v2/projects/search and ships clean rows for university research-administration teams, biotech BD, grant-writing consultants, science journalism, and competitive-intel desks.

What you get (per grant)

• project_num, core_project_num, appl_id — unique IDs
• project_title, abstract (full text), phr_text (public health relevance)
• principal_investigators[] — first/last name, full name, contact-PI flag, profile_id
• contact_pi_name — formatted "LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME"
• program_officers[] — NIH staff overseeing the grant
• organization_name + _city / _state / _country / _zip / _uei
• organization_type — e.g. "Schools of Medicine", "Schools of Public Health"
• award_amount_usd, direct_cost_usd, indirect_cost_usd
• fiscal_year, project_start_date, project_end_date, award_notice_date
• funding_mechanism — text label (e.g. "Research Project Grants")
• activity_code — R01, U01, R21, P01, F31, K08, etc.
• agency_code, ic_abbreviation, ic_name — which institute funded it
• study_section — peer-review group that scored it
• opportunity_number — the originating FOA / NOFO
• cong_dist — congressional district (LA-02, CA-09, etc.)
• spending_categories, spending_categories_desc — RCDC categorization
• is_active, is_new_award, covid_response, arra_funded
• geo_lat / geo_lon, project_detail_url

Six high-leverage use cases

1. Pharma BD: who's working on my mechanism? — set organizationName: "Mass General Brigham" and pull every active oncology immunotherapy grant, then build outreach from named PIs.
2. University competitive intel — research-administration sets agencies: ["NIH"] and groups by organizationName to compare YoY award totals against peer institutions.
3. Grant-writing consultant lead-gen — given a list of newly-funded R21s (activity_code: "R21"), reach out to PIs about transition-to-R01 services.
4. Science journalism — set piLastName: "Fauci" (or any newsmaker scientist) and pull every grant they're on.
5. Biotech investor screening — filter to minAwardAmount: 5000000 to surface mega-grants and the labs running them.
6. Public-health policy research — pull all CDC and AHRQ grants in spending_categories_desc: "Health Disparities" for econometric analysis.

JSON quick start

{
  "fiscalYears": [2025],
  "agencies": ["NIH"],
  "organizationName": "Stanford",
  "maxProjects": 25
}

POST to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~nih-reporter-grants-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN.

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/nih-reporter-grants-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "fiscalYears": [2025],
        "agencies": ["NIH"],
        "organizationName": "Stanford",
        "maxProjects": 25,
    }
)
total = sum(item["award_amount_usd"] or 0 for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
print(f"Stanford NIH FY2025 awards (sample): ${total:,.0f}")

cURL one-liner

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~nih-reporter-grants-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"fiscalYears":[2025],"agencies":["NIH"],"organizationName":"Stanford","maxProjects":25}'

Pipe the output anywhere

• Zapier — daily watcher → new R01 awards in your therapeutic area → Slack
• Make.com — Apify trigger → CRM enrichment with named PIs → Mailchimp
• n8n — Apify run → Postgres warehouse → BI dashboard for VP Research
• Vector DB — embed abstract text for semantic search across all NIH-funded science

Pricing — pay only for what you get

Event	Cost
Actor start	$0.00005 (one-time per run, scaled by GB-RAM)
Each grant	$0.05

Pull all FY2025 active R01s at one institution (~200 grants) for ~$10. The full annual NIH portfolio (~80K active projects) is ~$4,000. Compare to Dimensions ($25K+/yr), Lens.org ($10K+/yr), or Pivot-RP ($15K+/yr) — and you own the raw data forever.

Cost calculator: grants × $0.05 + $0.00005 × memoryGB. No subscription, no minimum.

FAQ

Q. Is this real-time? A. The Reporter database refreshes weekly. Newly issued awards appear within 7–14 days of the award notice.

Q. Are subprojects included? A. Yes — multi-component awards (P01, U54, etc.) include subproject rows where subproject_id is non-null in the source. The shaped record uses appl_id for uniqueness.

Q. What about non-NIH HHS grants (HRSA, FDA)? A. NIH Reporter covers NIH + CDC + AHRQ + a few other HHS agencies. For broader federal grant coverage including HRSA, FDA, NSF use USAspending Federal Awards Scraper.

Q. How accurate is the abstract field? A. Abstracts come straight from the funded proposal's Section A. They're updated as the grant evolves through renewals.

Q. Can I get historical grants? A. Yes. Reporter has data going back to FY1985. Pass any fiscalYears array, e.g. [2015, 2016, 2017].

Q. Do you handle the JSON RPC quirks? A. The Reporter API has nested criteria shape and uses POST not GET. We handle pagination, retries, and field shaping; you just supply human-friendly inputs.

Related actors from the same author

• USAspending Federal Awards Scraper — broader fed contracts/grants, $0.08/award.
• SEC EDGAR Search — public-company filings (companion finance dataset).
• Government Contracts Search — SAM.gov contract opportunities.

Try the full nexgendata fleet

Browse 170+ scrapers — SEC EDGAR, government contracts, ATS jobs, FEC, court records, real estate, MCP servers and more. Get $5 free Apify credit when you sign up via that link.

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Built and maintained by the nexgendata team. Bug reports & feature requests welcome via Apify Console messaging.