FDA Warning Letters Scraper

FDA Warning Letters Scraper

Scrape FDA warning letters by company, date, or issuing office, up to a million per run. Each letter includes the full text, recipient, issue date, and product type. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

The FDA publishes warning letters to companies that violate regulations, but there is no bulk download or official API for the full archive. This Actor reads the public warning letters feed directly, letting you pull the latest letters or skip to older ones with a simple offset. You get the complete letter text and metadata in a structured dataset, ready for compliance tracking or risk analysis.

Who uses it	What they scrape FDA for
Compliance officers	Monitor which companies in their industry received a warning letter this month.
Pharma and device manufacturers	Track enforcement trends to understand what triggers a warning letter.
Regulatory consultants	Build a searchable database of past warning letters for client due diligence.
Journalists	Identify patterns in FDA enforcement actions across companies or product categories.

What it does

This Actor collects FDA warning letters from the official public listing and returns each one as a flat row with full text and metadata.

• 📄 Full letter text: the complete body of each warning letter is captured, not a summary.
• 📊 Structured metadata: recipient company, issue date, issuing office, and product type are extracted into separate columns.
• ⚡ Bulk collection: set a high maxItems to pull thousands of letters in a single run, with pagination handled automatically.
• ⏭️ Offset pagination: skip the newest N letters to resume a previous run or fetch older records.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with FDA data

🔍 Compliance monitoring.

A compliance officer runs the Actor weekly with maxItems=50 to catch new warning letters in their industry and flag them for the legal team.

📈 Enforcement trend analysis.

A regulatory analyst pulls the last 5,000 letters, groups them by issuing office and product type, and reports on which violations are rising.

🏭 Supplier risk assessment.

A manufacturer scrapes all warning letters for a list of potential suppliers to check for past FDA enforcement before signing a contract.

📰 Investigative reporting.

A journalist collects letters mentioning a specific drug class to build a timeline of regulatory actions for a long-form article.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key required	Access the public FDA warning letters feed without registration or authentication.
Full text included	Every letter's complete body is captured, not a snippet or link.
Fixed schema	All letters return the same fields, so your downstream processing never breaks.
Bulk exports	Download results as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML for use in any tool.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets FDA the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	FDA Warning Letters Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When FDA changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor by setting a maximum number of letters and an optional start offset to skip the most recent entries. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
 "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
 "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the FDA Warning Letters Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to FDA through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/fda-warning-letters-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting fewer results than my maxItems setting?

The FDA public listing may have fewer total letters available than your maxItems value. Try reducing maxItems or setting startOffset to 0 to confirm the total count.

The run is taking a long time. Is that normal?

Collecting thousands of letters with full text takes time because each letter page must be fetched. Increase the Actor's timeout in your run settings if needed, or reduce maxItems.

Some letters are missing the full text. Why?

A small number of older warning letters may be stored as PDFs on the FDA site rather than HTML. The Actor captures the text when it is available as HTML; PDF-only letters may return an empty body field.

I got an error about the start offset being too high.

The startOffset cannot exceed 5000. If you need letters beyond that range, run the Actor multiple times with different offsets and combine the datasets.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What data does each warning letter row contain?	Each row includes the recipient company name, issue date, issuing FDA office, product type, and the full text of the warning letter. The exact field list is shown in the sample output on the Actor's page.
How many warning letters can I scrape in one run?	You can set maxItems up to 1,000,000. The Actor will collect that many letters from the public listing, starting from the newest unless you set a start offset.
Can I filter by company name or date range?	The input schema supports a maximum count and a start offset. For filtering by company, date, or office, you can apply filters to the exported dataset after the run completes.
Does this Actor require an FDA API key?	No. It reads the same public warning letters feed that anyone can view in a browser, so no registration or API key is needed.
How do I get older warning letters, not the newest ones?	Set the startOffset field to skip the first N letters. For example, startOffset=100 skips the 100 newest letters and begins at the 101st.
What export formats are supported?	You can export your dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform after the run finishes.
Is the full text of the warning letter captured?	Yes, the complete body text of each warning letter is included in the output, not a summary or a link to the PDF.
Can I schedule this Actor to run automatically?	Yes, Apify supports scheduled runs. You can set this Actor to run daily or weekly to monitor for new FDA warning letters.
Does this Actor handle pagination automatically?	Yes, it follows the FDA website's pagination to collect the number of letters you specify, up to the maxItems limit.
What is the difference between this and the FDA's own search?	The FDA website search is manual and does not offer bulk export. This Actor automates collection and gives you structured data you can analyze in any tool.

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Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.