PubMed Articles Scraper: Abstracts, Authors and MeSH Terms

$1 per 1,000 articles. Platform usage included. No rental, no minimum.

Open it in Apify Console

New to Apify? [Create a free account](https://www.apify.com?fpr=ymnoit) (referral link). Runs from a free plan account return the first 10 results; any paid plan returns everything you ask for, up to your limit.

What it costs

Articles	Price
1,000	$1.00
10,000	$10.00
100,000	$100.00

Plus $0.001 per run. One flat price, platform usage included, so there is no separate compute or proxy bill. A weekly pull of 500 new articles on one topic costs about $0.50 per run, or about $2 a month.

Why use it

• Complete records. PMID, title, abstract, every author with affiliations, journal, dates, DOI, PMC id, publication types, MeSH terms, keywords, chemicals and grants.
• Past the 9,999 limit. PubMed search returns at most the first 9,999 matches. When you ask for more, the actor reads the search in publication date windows, newest first. A test run returned 10,100 articles for a search with 10,935 matches.
• PubMed search syntax. Field tags and operators work as on the website, for example crispr[Title/Abstract] AND review[pt].
• Lists of PMIDs. Paste PMIDs and get one record each, next to or instead of searches.
• Polite to NCBI. The actor keeps under 3 requests a second and backs off when NCBI says slow down. No API key is needed.

Quick start

1. Open the actor, type a search such as CRISPR gene therapy, press Start.
2. Or paste this input:

{ "queries": ["CRISPR gene therapy"], "dateFrom": "2025-01-01", "onlyWithAbstract": true, "maxItems": 200 }

3. Download the results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read them through the API.

Use it from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/one_dollar_store~pubmed-articles-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries": ["CRISPR gene therapy"], "maxItems": 100}'

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("one_dollar_store/pubmed-articles-scraper").call(
    run_input={"queries": ["CRISPR gene therapy"], "maxItems": 100}
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["pmid"], item["publicationDate"], item["title"])

Use it from an AI assistant

Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other assistants can call this actor through Apify's MCP server. Add it with this server address:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=one_dollar_store/pubmed-articles-scraper

Then ask, for example: "Get the 50 newest PubMed articles about CAR T cell therapy with their abstracts."

Switching from another PubMed actor

Most PubMed actors take a search query and a result limit. Here they are queries (a list, so one run can cover many searches) and maxItems. The core output fields are pmid, title, abstract, authors, journal, publicationDate, doi and meshTerms.

Input

Field	Type	Default	What it does
queries	list of text	none	PubMed searches, one per line. Plain words or PubMed syntax with field tags and AND, OR, NOT.
pmids	list of text	none	PubMed IDs to look up directly.
dateFrom, dateTo	text	none	Publication date range as 2024-01-31, 2024-01 or 2024.
sort	text	date_added	date_added (newest in PubMed first), relevance or pub_date.
onlyWithAbstract	true or false	false	Skip records without an abstract.
maxItemsPerQuery	number	0	Optional cap per search, so one big search cannot use the whole run. 0 means none.
ncbiApiKey	text	none	Optional. A free NCBI key lifts the rate limit from 3 to 10 requests a second.
maxItems	number	100	Total articles for the run. Minimum 10.

Give at least one search or PMID. Example:

{
  "queries": ["\"base editing\"[Title/Abstract]", "prime editing[Title/Abstract]"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "onlyWithAbstract": true,
  "maxItemsPerQuery": 500,
  "maxItems": 1000
}

Output fields

Field	Meaning
pmid, url	PubMed ID and the PubMed page.
title, abstract	Title and abstract. Structured abstracts keep their section labels, such as BACKGROUND:.
authors, authorCount, firstAuthor, lastAuthor	Author names as full names.
affiliations, orcids	Unique author affiliations and ORCID ids as printed in the record (up to 40 each).
journal, journalAbbreviation, issn, volume, issue, pages	Where it was published.
publicationDate, electronicDate, addedToPubmed	Dates as 2024-03-15, 2024-03 or 2024, depending on what the journal gave.
doi, pmcid	DOI and PubMed Central id, when there is one.
publicationTypes, languages	For example Journal Article, Review, eng.
meshTerms, meshMajorTerms	MeSH headings, and the ones marked as a major topic.
keywords, chemicals, grants	Author keywords, substances, and grant ids with agency.
recordType, searchQuery	article or book, and which search found it.

Fields a record does not have are left out.

Sample results

Real rows from a test run on 9 October 2026, with author lists and abstracts shortened.

[
  {"pmid": "42838939", "recordType": "article", "title": "Telomere variant sequences encode the genetic blueprint for allele-specific telomere length.",
   "authors": ["Xiaoran Chai", "LaiFong Poon", "Hengrui Liu", "..."], "authorCount": 17, "journal": "Nature communications",
   "publicationDate": "2026-09-07", "doi": "10.1038/s41467-026-77310-9", "pmcid": "PMC13642928", "publicationTypes": ["Journal Article"],
   "meshTerms": ["Humans", "Telomere", "Alleles", "Telomere Homeostasis"],
   "abstract": "The ends of human chromosomes are capped by specialized nucleoprotein structures, termed telomeres, which are essential for genome stability. ...",
   "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42838939/", "searchQuery": "CRISPR gene therapy"},
  {"pmid": "42837422", "recordType": "article", "title": "The Genomic Equity Accessibility Framework (GEAF): A dimensionally consistent framework for modeling affordability and equity in genomic and regenerative therapies.",
   "authors": ["Peter Oloche David"], "authorCount": 1, "journal": "PloS one", "publicationDate": "2026",
   "doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0359782", "pmcid": "PMC13641711", "publicationTypes": ["Journal Article"],
   "meshTerms": ["Humans", "Genomics", "Regenerative Medicine", "Gene Editing"],
   "abstract": "BACKGROUND: Advances in CRISPR-based gene editing and stem cell-derived embryo models have created substantial biomedical opportunity ...",
   "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42837422/", "searchQuery": "CRISPR gene therapy"}
]

Limits

• 9,999 records per search window. PubMed will not return more than the first 9,999 matches of one search. Bigger requests are split by publication date. If a single day holds more than 9,999 matches (some journals date issues January 1), only the first 9,999 of that day are returned and the log says so.
• Pace. NCBI allows 3 requests a second without a key. A test run delivered 10,100 articles in about 32 minutes, roughly 5 a second. The default run timeout is one hour, so very large pulls need a longer timeout or an NCBI key.
• Shared addresses. NCBI counts requests per address, and Apify addresses are shared. If NCBI answers "slow down", the actor waits and tries again, up to seven times. A free NCBI key in ncbiApiKey avoids this.
• Abstracts, not full text. Some records have no abstract (46 of the first 50 results in one test did), and the actor does not read full articles or reference lists.
• MeSH comes later. New records get MeSH terms after NLM indexes them. In one test of the 50 newest results, 18 had MeSH terms.
• Dates. publicationDate is what the journal gave, which can be only a year or a year and month.
• Books. A few PubMed records are Bookshelf entries. They come back with recordType set to book and fewer fields.

FAQ

How much does it cost to scrape 10,000 PubMed articles? $10, plus $0.001 for each run.

Do I pay for compute or proxy on top? No. Platform usage is included in the $1 per 1,000 price. NCBI is read directly, so no proxy is used.

Where does the data come from? From the official NCBI E-utilities (esearch to find articles, efetch to read them). No login is used, and the actor identifies itself to NCBI in the requests as the E-utilities rules ask.

How do I get more than 10,000 results for one topic? Set maxItems above 10,000. The actor then reads the search in date windows, newest first. You can also set dateFrom and dateTo yourself and run one range at a time.

How do I monitor a topic every week? Schedule a run with dateFrom set to a week ago, and use pmid to drop articles you already have.

Is it legal? The actor reads public data only, with no login. Titles, authors and abstracts are bibliographic facts that PubMed shows to everyone, but abstracts can carry the publisher's copyright. Follow NCBI's data use policy, the publishers' terms and the law where you live, and do not republish text you do not have rights to.

Is this an official PubMed or NCBI product? No. It is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NCBI, the National Library of Medicine or the US government.

Do I need an Apify account? Yes. Actors run from an Apify account, and a free account is enough to start: it includes $5 of platform usage every month. You can sign up here. This is a referral link and it costs you nothing.

Is there a limit on the free plan? Yes. A run started from a free plan account delivers the first 10 results, then ends with a message and a link to the plans. Any paid plan returns everything you ask for, up to your own limit. The price per result is the same on every plan.

More from The One Dollar Store

Every actor here costs $1 per 1,000 results, platform usage included. See the whole store: https://apify.com/one_dollar_store

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Google and search

• Google News Scraper: News articles by keyword, topic or country.

Changelog

• October 2026: first release.