💊 NADAC Drug Acquisition Cost Scraper

🚀 Export the National Average Drug Acquisition Cost benchmark in seconds. Weekly pharmacy acquisition prices for every NDC in the U.S. retail market. The same benchmark Medicaid uses for reimbursement.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-21 · 📊 13 fields per record · 💊 30,000+ NDCs · 🇺🇸 weekly U.S. pharmacy benchmark · 📅 history back to 2013

The NADAC Scraper turns the official Medicaid drug-pricing feed into clean rows. Each record carries the NDC, drug description, NADAC per unit, pricing unit, pharmacy type, brand vs generic classification, OTC flag, effective date, the corresponding generic NADAC, and the as-of file date. NADAC (National Average Drug Acquisition Cost) is produced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from retail-pharmacy invoice surveys and is the most widely cited public benchmark for U.S. drug acquisition prices.

Coverage spans the full NADAC reference file: brand and generic drugs, both prescription and OTC, across every dosage form on the U.S. market. Files are republished weekly with effective dates that go back to 2013, giving you a long historical series for trend analysis.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
PBM analysts, drug-pricing researchers, employer health plans, 340B program managers, formulary teams, payer actuaries, pharmacy chains, health-policy academics	Reimbursement benchmarking, MAC list construction, drug-pricing trend studies, brand-to-generic substitution analysis, 340B ceiling-price modelling

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📋 What the NADAC Scraper does

Eight filtering workflows in a single run:

• 💊 Search by drug name. Partial match on the NDC description (e.g. METFORMIN, IBUPROFEN).
• 🔖 Search by NDC. Resolve a specific 11-digit National Drug Code.
• 🏷️ Filter by classification. Brand (B) or generic (G) only.
• 💉 Filter by dosage form. Tablet, capsule, solution, injection, suspension, cream, ointment, gel, syrup, elixir, powder, patch, inhaler, spray, drops, lotion, suppository, foam.
• 🛒 Filter by OTC flag. Over-the-counter only, prescription only, or both.
• 📅 Filter by effective date range. Lower and upper bounds on the price effective date.
• 🔁 Sort newest or oldest first. Walk the history forwards or backwards.

Each record includes the NDC, drug description, NADAC per unit (USD), the pricing unit (each, mL, gm), pharmacy type indicator, OTC flag, explanation code, brand vs generic classification, the corresponding generic drug NADAC and its effective date for substitution analysis, the file as-of date, and a link to the canonical Medicaid dataset page.

💡 Why it matters: building a NADAC pipeline yourself means cleaning weekly CSV refreshes, joining brand-generic pairs by hand, and watching for CMS dataset version rotations. This Actor returns clean rows on every run, filtered server-side.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to build a brand-vs-generic price diff table in one run.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
drugName	string	"METFORMIN"	Partial match on NDC description.
ndc	string	""	Exact 11-digit NDC.
classification	string	""	B (brand), G (generic), or any.
dosageForm	string	""	One of 18 FDA dosage forms.
otc	string	""	Y, N, or any.
effectiveFrom	string	""	YYYY-MM-DD lower bound on effective date.
effectiveTo	string	""	YYYY-MM-DD upper bound on effective date.
sortOrder	string	"newest"	Sort by effective date ascending or descending.

Example: latest 100 metformin prices.

{
    "maxItems": 100,
    "drugName": "METFORMIN",
    "classification": "G",
    "sortOrder": "newest"
}

Example: brand vs generic compare for ibuprofen tablets in 2024.

{
    "maxItems": 500,
    "drugName": "IBUPROFEN",
    "dosageForm": "TABLET",
    "effectiveFrom": "2024-01-01",
    "effectiveTo": "2024-12-31"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: NADAC reflects acquisition cost surveys from U.S. retail pharmacies. It is not a list price, a 340B ceiling price, or a wholesale acquisition cost (WAC). Use it as the benchmark CMS uses for reimbursement, not as a final purchase price.

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📊 Output

Each NADAC record contains 13 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🆔 ndc	string	"00093101901"
💊 ndcDescription	string	"METFORMIN HCL TAB 500MG"
💵 nadacPerUnit	number | null	0.02341
📏 pricingUnit	string | null	"EA"
📅 effectiveDate	string	"2025-04-23"
🏪 pharmacyTypeIndicator	string | null	"C/I"
🛒 otc	string | null	"N"
🏷️ explanationCode	string | null	"3"
🅱️ classificationForRateSetting	string	"G"
💊 correspondingGenericDrugNadacPerUnit	number | null	0.02341
📅 correspondingGenericDrugEffectiveDate	string | null	"2025-04-23"
🗓️ asOfDate	string | null	"2025-05-01"
🔗 sourceUrl	string	"https://data.medicaid.gov/dataset/nadac-..."
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-20T12:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
💵	Authoritative benchmark. The same NADAC file CMS uses for Medicaid reimbursement, not a third-party estimate.
🔁	Weekly refresh. New effective-date snapshots every week, going back to 2013.
🅱️	Brand vs generic pair. Corresponding generic NADAC right on the brand row, ready for substitution analysis.
🔖	NDC join keys. 11-digit NDC on every row for joining with claims, formularies, and 340B lists.
📅	Historical series. Pull every effective date for one NDC and chart price drift over years.
⚡	Fast. Hundreds of rows per minute on paid plans.
🚫	No login. Public CMS dataset, no token required.

📊 NADAC is the most widely cited public benchmark for U.S. drug acquisition prices and the cornerstone of most state Medicaid reimbursement methodologies.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ NADAC Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Every U.S. NDC	Weekly per run	name, NDC, class, form, OTC, date	⚡ 2 min
Commercial drug pricing services	$10k+/year	Multi-benchmark	Daily	Many	🕒 Days
Direct CMS file downloads	Free	Full file	Weekly CSV	Build it yourself	🐢 Hours
Manual lookup on data.medicaid.gov	Free	Full file	Weekly	Limited UI	🐢 Tedious

Pick this Actor when you want clean, filtered NADAC rows on demand without standing up a CMS data pipeline.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the NADAC Drug Acquisition Cost Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a drug name, NDC, classification, or date range and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your NADAC rows.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to a downloaded NADAC dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

💼 PBM & Payer Analytics MAC (Maximum Allowable Cost) list construction Reimbursement-rate benchmarking by state Variance analysis: paid amount vs NADAC Generic substitution policy modelling	🏥 Employer & Self-Insured Plans Plan-design simulations with real acquisition costs High-cost-claimant explainers tied to NDC Therapeutic-class spend dashboards Specialty drug forecasting
🏪 340B & Specialty Pharmacy Ceiling-price comparisons with NADAC delta Inventory pricing checks against the public benchmark Audit-prep data pulls by NDC and date Class-of-trade variance studies	📰 Policy & Research Brand-to-generic price-drop event studies Inflation tracking by therapeutic area Comparative pricing across years Reproducible research datasets for academic papers

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🔌 Automating NADAC Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. A weekly schedule lines up with the CMS publishing cadence and keeps your pricing tables current.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

NADAC data also powers research, journalism, advocacy, and personal projects.

🎓 Research and academia Pharmacy-pricing studies for health-economics journals Drug-substitution analyses for public-health programs Teaching datasets for pharmacy school courses Reproducible health-policy research	🎨 Personal and creative Patient-facing price transparency tools Personal-finance plugins for prescription costs Educational dashboards for nursing students Blog posts and explainer videos on drug pricing
🤝 Non-profit and civic Patient-assistance program eligibility checks Community-pharmacy benchmarking Investigative journalism on price spikes Free-clinic budget planning	🧪 Experimentation Train pricing-anomaly detectors on real data Benchmark drug-cost forecasting models Prototype agent pipelines that quote NADAC on demand Test pharmacy-claim audit logic with live prices

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

You pass a drug name, NDC, classification, dosage form, OTC flag, or date range. The Actor queries the CMS NADAC dataset, applies your filters server-side, sorts the results, and emits one clean row per record.

📏 What does NADAC measure?

NADAC is the National Average Drug Acquisition Cost. It is the survey-derived average price U.S. retail pharmacies pay to acquire a given NDC. It is not a list price, not a WAC, and not a 340B ceiling.

🔁 How often is the data refreshed?

CMS republishes the NADAC file weekly. Each run of this Actor returns the current published rows. Use date filters to pull historical snapshots.

📅 How far back does the history go?

Effective-date history extends back to 2013, giving you over a decade of weekly snapshots per NDC.

🅱️ Does it cover brand and generic drugs?

Yes. The classification field distinguishes brand (B) from generic (G), and the corresponding-generic-NADAC columns on brand rows make substitution analysis a one-step join.

🛒 What about OTC drugs?

Yes. The OTC flag covers over-the-counter products alongside prescription drugs. Filter to Y for OTC-only or N for prescription-only.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

NADAC is CMS-published open data and may be redistributed. Review the source terms of use for your specific application.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. A weekly Apify schedule lines up with the CMS publishing cadence and keeps your pricing tables current.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free Apify plan covers testing and small runs. Paid plans unlock larger datasets, scheduling, and concurrency.

🔁 What happens if a run fails?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. Partial datasets are preserved so you can adjust the input and re-run.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

NADAC Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe pricing data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh NADAC rows into your pricing engine, or alert your team in Slack when prices move beyond a threshold.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more healthcare and policy scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, data.medicaid.gov, or any drug manufacturer. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open pricing data is collected.