openFDA Drug Adverse Events & Recalls Scraper

Extract FDA drug adverse event reports (FAERS) and drug recalls from the official openFDA API, covering millions of US safety records

📥 Input · 📤 Output · 💰 Pricing · ▶️ Examples

2 datasets events and recalls

United States coverage

JSON / CSV / Excel output formats

What you get

Each record is one adverse event report (FAERS) or one drug recall action from openFDA, flattened into clean columns.

Adverse Events fields:

• safetyReportId: unique FDA safety report identifier
• reportType: how the report reached the FDA (spontaneous, study, other)
• serious: whether the report was flagged serious
• seriousnessReasons: the serious outcomes recorded (death, hospitalization, life threatening and more)
• receiveDate: date the FDA first received the report
• receiptDate: most recent date information was received for the report
• primarySourceCountry: country of the reporter
• occurCountry: country where the event occurred
• qualification: reporter qualification code
• patientSex: patient sex
• patientAge: patient age with its unit
• reactions: list of reported patient reactions (MedDRA terms)
• reactionCount: number of reactions on the report
• drugs: list of drugs on the report, each with product name, role, dosage text, indication, active substances and action taken, plus openFDA identifiers when the drug is matched: manufacturer name, product NDC, application number (NDA or ANDA), RxCUI, UNII and pharmacologic class
• drugCount: number of drugs on the report
• companyNumber: reporting company case number
• observedAt: when this record was collected by the scraper

Recalls fields:

• recallNumber: FDA recall number
• status: recall status (ongoing, completed, terminated)
• classification: hazard class (Class I, II or III)
• productType: product type (Drugs)
• productDescription: full product description
• reasonForRecall: why the product was recalled
• recallingFirm: the firm conducting the recall
• firmStreet: the firm street address
• city, state, country, postalCode: firm location
• distributionPattern: where the product was distributed
• productQuantity: quantity in commerce
• codeInfo: lot numbers, expiry and other identifying codes
• voluntaryMandated: whether the recall was voluntary or mandated
• initialFirmNotification: how the firm first notified customers
• recallInitiationDate, centerClassificationDate, reportDate, terminationDate: recall timeline dates
• eventId: FDA recall event identifier
• brandNames, genericNames: associated brand and generic names when present
• observedAt: when this record was collected by the scraper

Who is it for

Use case	Who benefits
Drug safety and pharmacovigilance monitoring	Pharma safety and regulatory teams
Tracking recalls for a specific drug or firm	Compliance and quality teams
Building adverse event datasets for research	Academic and data science teams
Competitive and market safety intelligence	Market access and strategy analysts
Feeding safety signals into internal dashboards	Health data engineers

Frequently Asked Questions

What data does this scraper cover?
It covers two openFDA drug datasets for the United States: the FAERS adverse event reports (patient reactions, drugs and seriousness) and the drug enforcement database of recalls. You pick which one with the Dataset input.

How many records can I pull in one run?
openFDA paginates with a skip offset up to 25000 records per query, so a single search can return up to that many. For larger pulls, narrow the search keyword or the date range to split the work.

How does the search work?
Type a simple keyword and it is matched to the drug product name for events or the recall reason for recalls. You can also paste a raw openFDA expression that already names a field, such as patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt:"Nausea" or reason_for_recall:contamination.

Can I filter by date?
Yes. Set Date From and Date To in YYYY-MM-DD format. For events this filters the FDA receive date, and for recalls the report date.

What happens to missing fields?
Fields that openFDA does not provide for a given record are returned as null. The scraper never invents values, so an empty field means the source did not report it.

Example use cases

Ready-to-run example tasks, each preconfigured for a common scenario. Open one and press run, or use it as a template:

• openFDA Amoxicillin Drug Recalls Scraper: Scrape FDA enforcement recall records for amoxicillin. Pull recall reasons, classification, distribution, and status from the openFDA drug recalls database as J
• openFDA Atorvastatin Lipitor Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for atorvastatin (Lipitor). Collect patient reactions, muscle and liver events, and outcomes from openFDA as JSON.
• openFDA Ibuprofen Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for ibuprofen. Pull patient reactions, outcomes, and report dates from the openFDA drug events database as structured JSO
• openFDA Lisinopril Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for lisinopril. Pull patient reactions, outcomes, and report metadata from the openFDA drug events database as JSON.
• openFDA Metformin Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for metformin. Collect patient reactions, seriousness, and outcomes from the openFDA drug events database as clean JSON.
• openFDA Semaglutide Ozempic Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for Ozempic (semaglutide). Extract patient reactions, GI events, outcomes, and report dates from openFDA as JSON.
• openFDA Warfarin Adverse Events Scraper: Scrape FDA FAERS adverse event reports for warfarin. Extract patient reactions, bleeding events, outcomes, and report dates from the openFDA database as JSON.
• Track Aspirin Adverse Event Reports: Track Aspirin Adverse Event Reports
• Scrape FDA Drug Recalls: Scrape FDA Drug Recalls
• Monitor Opioid Adverse Events: Monitor Opioid Adverse Events

Export, API and AI agents (x402 + MCP)

Export the scraped data to JSON, CSV or Excel, pull it as a dataset through the Apify API, or wire it into your app with no code. This web scraper and data extractor also works for bulk data extraction and scheduled runs.

For AI agents: this Actor is available on x402, Apify's agentic payment standard built with Coinbase. An AI agent can discover, pay for and run it on its own with a funded wallet and a single HTTP request: no account, no subscription, no API key and no human in the loop. It also runs as an MCP tool inside Claude, Cursor and other AI clients out of the box. Learn more about x402 agentic payments on Apify.

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This actor is an independent tool and has no affiliation with the FDA or openFDA. It only accesses data that is publicly available through the open FDA API. Use it in accordance with the openFDA terms of service.