💊 OpenPayments Scraper

🚀 Collect pharmaceutical payment data from CMS OpenPayments in minutes. Search by provider, company, or payment type. Export payment amounts, dates, drug/device names, and payer info. No coding, no CMS account required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-23 · 📊 25+ fields per payment · 🔍 Multi-filter search · 💰 Payment amounts · 🚫 No auth required

The OpenPayments Scraper collects pharmaceutical and medical device payment data from CMS's Open Payments database, returning 25+ fields per record: physician name, payment amount, payer company, payment type (general, research, ownership), drug/device name, payment date, and teaching hospital info. Filter by provider, company, country, and search type.

CMS Open Payments tracks billions in industry payments to physicians and hospitals. This Actor exports structured payment data for compliance, research, and transparency workflows.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Compliance officers, pharmaceutical reps, healthcare researchers, journalists, patient advocacy groups	Sunshine Act compliance, conflict-of-interest research, pharmaceutical spending analysis, transparency reporting

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📋 What the OpenPayments Scraper does

Multi-filter payment search:

• 🔗 URL mode. Paste any OpenPayments search URL.
• 🔍 Search type. Individual providers or companies.
• 👨‍⚕️ Provider search. Find payments to specific physicians.
• 🏢 Company search. Find payments from specific pharmaceutical/device companies.
• 🌍 Country filter. Filter by provider country.

Each payment record includes physician name, NPI, payment amount, payer company, payment type, drug/device name, nature of payment, payment date, and teaching hospital info.

💡 Why it matters: searching the CMS OpenPayments database manually means clicking through paginated results. This Actor exports structured payment data at scale for compliance audits, conflict-of-interest research, or pharmaceutical spending analysis.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
startUrl	string	""	Direct OpenPayments URL.
searchType	string	""	Individual provider or company.
maxItems	integer	10	Max records. Paid: up to 1,000,000.
individualProviderCountry	string	""	Provider country filter.

Example: payments to a specific physician.

{
    "searchType": "individual",
    "startUrl": "https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/search/physicians/by-name-and-location?physician_first_name=John&physician_last_name=Smith",
    "maxItems": 50
}

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
👨‍⚕️ physicianName	string	"John Smith, MD"
🆔 npi	string	"1234567890"
💰 paymentAmount	number	5000
🏢 payerCompany	string	"Pfizer Inc"
🏷️ paymentType	string	"General"
💊 drugOrDevice	string	"Lipitor"
📝 natureOfPayment	string	"Consulting Fee"
📅 paymentDate	string	"2025-06-15"
🏥 teachingHospital	string | null	null
🔗 url	string	"https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/..."
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-04-16T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
💊	Official CMS data. Sunshine Act payment records.
🔍	Provider and company search. Both directions of the payment relationship.
💰	Full payment details. Amount, type, nature, drug/device per record.
🏥	Teaching hospital data. Hospital payments when applicable.
⚡	Scalable. Single lookups to full company payment sweeps.
🚫	No authentication. Public transparency data.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ OpenPayments Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Full database	Live per run	provider, company, type, country	⚡ 2 min
CMS OpenPayments website	Free	One at a time	Manual	Basic UI	🕒 Hours
CMS bulk download	Free	Full	Annual	None	⏳ Hours of parsing
Paid healthcare data	$500-5,000/month	Multi-source	Varies	Many	🐢 Weeks

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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 OpenPayments Scraper page.
3. 🎯 Set input. Paste a search URL or configure filters.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start.
5. 📥 Download. Grab results in the Dataset tab.

⏱️ Total time: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

⚖️ Compliance & Transparency Audit physician-industry relationships Monitor Sunshine Act compliance Track conflict-of-interest disclosures Build compliance reporting databases	📊 Research & Analytics Analyze pharmaceutical spending patterns Study payment distribution by specialty Track industry spending trends over time Build research datasets for publication
💊 Pharmaceutical Teams Monitor competitor spending patterns Track speaker program activity Analyze research payment distribution Benchmark industry payment norms	📰 Journalism & Advocacy Investigate physician-industry payments Track high-value payment recipients Build transparency reporting tools Monitor teaching hospital payments

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Empirical datasets for papers, thesis work, and coursework Longitudinal studies tracking changes across snapshots Reproducible research with cited, versioned data pulls Classroom exercises on data analysis and ethical scraping	🎨 Personal and creative Side projects, portfolio demos, and indie app launches Data visualizations, dashboards, and infographics Content research for bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters Hobbyist collections and personal trackers
🤝 Non-profit and civic Transparency reporting and accountability projects Advocacy campaigns backed by public-interest data Community-run databases for local issues Investigative journalism on public records	🧪 Experimentation Prototype AI and machine-learning pipelines with real data Validate product-market hypotheses before engineering spend Train small domain-specific models on niche corpora Test dashboard concepts with live input

🤖 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

💰 How much does it cost?

Apify gives you $5 in free monthly credits on the Apify Free plan, enough to test OpenPayments Scraper and pull a real sample dataset. For ongoing usage:

• Starter plan ($49/month) — Recommended for individuals running OpenPayments Scraper regularly. Includes higher concurrency and larger datasets.
• Scale plan ($499/month) — Recommended for teams running OpenPayments Scraper at production scale.

Pay-Per-Event pricing means you only pay for what you actually use. Failed runs are never charged. See the Pricing tab on this Actor's page for exact event prices.

💡 Tips for using OpenPayments Scraper

• Start with a small maxItems (3-10) to validate output format before running larger jobs.
• Use Apify Schedules to run OpenPayments Scraper on a recurring basis and keep your dataset fresh.
• Export via Integrations: Apify connects to Google Sheets, Airbyte, Make, Zapier, and direct webhooks — pipe your data anywhere.
• Monitor with webhooks: trigger downstream workflows the moment a run finishes.
• Re-run failed items: if any individual records error out, re-run with their inputs only. Failed events are not charged.

⚖️ Is it legal to use OpenPayments Scraper?

Yes. OpenPayments Scraper only collects publicly available data. Web scraping public data has been confirmed as legal by US courts (see hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn) and is widely used for research, market analysis, and business intelligence.

However, you are responsible for:

• Respecting the source website's Terms of Service.
• Complying with GDPR, CCPA, and other applicable data-protection laws when personal data is involved.
• Not republishing copyrighted content without permission.

If you have specific compliance concerns, consult your legal team. See the Apify legal docs for more.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🔌 Automating OpenPayments Scraper

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

🔌 Integrate with any app

• Make - Automate workflows
• Zapier - Connect 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get notifications
• Airbyte - Data pipelines
• GitHub - Trigger from commits
• Google Drive - Export to Sheets

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🔗 Recommended Actors

• 🏥 NPI/NPPES Scraper - Provider registry
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• 🩺 RateMDs Scraper - Doctor ratings
• 🏦 FDIC Bank Scraper - Bank data
• 📊 FRED Scraper - Economic data

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more healthcare and regulatory 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 CMS or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available Sunshine Act data is collected.