FDA Scraper — Recalls, Adverse Events, Device Clearances & Manufacturer Leads (openFDA)

Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or any government body. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. "FDA" is referenced only to describe the public data source this Actor collects from.

Extract complete U.S. FDA regulatory data from the official openFDA API in one actor: drug, device & food recalls, adverse-event reports (FAERS, MAUDE, CAERS), 510(k) clearances & PMA approvals, device classification & UDI, drug labels, Drugs@FDA approvals & the NDC directory — plus ready-to-contact medical-device manufacturer leads (firm, contact name, phone, address) and built-in analytics.

Most FDA scrapers do one thing — drug recalls or device recalls or 510(k)s. This one covers all of openFDA with a single input, ships the richest normalized record in the category, adds a risk score to every recall and a lead score to every manufacturer, and supports a monitor mode for recall & safety alerts.

No login, no API key required, no browser — fast JSON extraction straight from the FDA's own API.

Why this FDA scraper?

Capability	Typical FDA scrapers	This actor
Drug and device and food recalls	one only	✅ all three
Adverse events: FAERS (drug) + MAUDE (device) + CAERS (food)	rarely	✅ all three
510(k), PMA, classification, UDI	one endpoint	✅ all device endpoints
Drug labels, Drugs@FDA approvals, NDC directory	rarely	✅
Recall risk level (Class I/II/III → Critical/Serious/Low)	❌	✅
Device-manufacturer leads (contact + phone + address + lead score)	❌	✅
Full openFDA harmonization block (RxCUI, UNII, pharm class, FEI…)	partial	✅
Analytics (top firms, recalls by state, top reactions)	❌	✅
Monitor mode — only new/changed records	❌	✅
API key required	sometimes	❌ keyless

Use cases

• Recall & safety monitoring — schedule daily/weekly runs with monitor mode to catch new Class I drug, device or food recalls the moment the FDA posts them; push to Slack, email or your CRM.
• Pharmacovigilance & post-market surveillance — pull FAERS/MAUDE/CAERS adverse-event reports for a drug, device or food product; aggregate top reactions and seriousness.
• Regulatory & competitive intelligence — track competitors' 510(k) clearances and PMA approvals, new drug approvals (Drugs@FDA), label changes and NDC listings.
• Product-liability & mass-tort legal research — find recalls, adverse events and clearances for a specific device or drug, with firms, dates and risk levels.
• Medical-device manufacturer lead generation — turn the FDA establishment registry into a B2B prospecting list: firm name, contact person, phone, full address, product codes and a 0–100 lead score.
• Market analytics — one-click counts: recalls by classification or state, top recalling firms, most-reported adverse reactions, devices by product code.

How to use

1. Sign up for Apify — the free plan is enough to try this actor.
2. Open the FDA Scraper, pick a What to scrape type (e.g. Drug recalls), add a keyword or filters, and click Start.
3. Watch results stream into the dataset table — switch the view (Recalls, Manufacturer leads, Device clearances, Adverse events, Drug products, Analytics) to see the right columns.
4. Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, or RSS — or pull results via the Apify API.

Input

{
    "searchType": "deviceRecalls",
    "keyword": "infusion pump",
    "classification": "Class I",
    "recallStatus": "Ongoing",
    "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
    "maxResults": 200,
    "monitorMode": true
}

Key fields:

• searchType — drugRecalls, deviceRecalls, foodRecalls, drugAdverseEvents (FAERS), deviceAdverseEvents (MAUDE), foodAdverseEvents (CAERS), device510k, devicePMA, deviceClassification, deviceEstablishments (manufacturer leads), deviceUDI, drugLabels, drugApprovals, drugNDC, or custom.
• keyword — free-text search across the most relevant fields (product / brand / generic / device name, recall reason, reaction).
• brandName / genericName / firmName — precise matches.
• classification / recallStatus — recall filters (Class I/II/III; Ongoing/Completed/Terminated).
• seriousOnly — adverse-event datasets: keep only serious reports (death, life-threatening, hospitalization).
• state / country / productCode — geo and device-product-code filters.
• dateFrom / dateTo — YYYY-MM-DD, mapped to the right date field per dataset.
• searchQuery — optional raw openFDA query AND-ed with the filters.
• searchUrls — paste full api.fda.gov URLs to run them as-is.
• outputMode — records (default) or analytics; with analytics set countField (e.g. classification, state, recalling_firm, patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt).
• monitorMode / monitorKey — only output new/changed records across runs.
• apiKey — optional free openFDA key for higher limits (the actor is keyless by default).

Output

One record per FDA entry, tagged with a type. Example — a device recall:

{
    "type": "recall",
    "dataset": "device",
    "endpoint": "enforcement",
    "recallNumber": "Z-1234-2025",
    "status": "Ongoing",
    "isOngoing": true,
    "classification": "Class I",
    "riskLevel": 3,
    "riskLabel": "Critical — reasonable probability of serious harm or death",
    "productDescription": "Volumetric Infusion Pump, model X100",
    "reasonForRecall": "Software error may cause under-infusion of medication.",
    "recallingFirm": "Acme Medical Devices, Inc.",
    "firmAddress": "1 Industrial Way, Boston, MA 02101, United States",
    "city": "Boston",
    "state": "MA",
    "country": "United States",
    "recallInitiationDate": "2025-02-10",
    "reportDate": "2025-03-01",
    "daysToClassify": 19,
    "openfda": { "device_name": "Infusion Pump", "medical_specialty_description": "General Hospital", "regulation_number": "880.5725", "device_class": "2" },
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-17T12:00:00.000Z"
}

A medical-device manufacturer lead (searchType: "deviceEstablishments"):

{
    "type": "establishment",
    "firmName": "GLOBUS MEDICAL, INC.",
    "contactName": "DANIEL S PAUL",
    "contactPhone": "x-610-9301800-1680",
    "address": "2560 General Armistead Ave, AUDUBON, PA, 19403, US",
    "city": "AUDUBON",
    "state": "PA",
    "country": "US",
    "establishmentTypes": ["Manufacture Medical Device"],
    "isImporter": false,
    "registrationNumber": "3004142400",
    "feiNumber": "3004142400",
    "productCount": 4,
    "deviceNames": ["Spinal Vertebral Body Replacement Device"],
    "leadScore": 84,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-17T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Fields are null only when the FDA record genuinely doesn't contain them — never because the scraper skipped them.

How much does it cost to scrape FDA?

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event pricing: you are charged only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The events it can charge are:

• Recall scraped - One drug, device or food recall (enforcement) record: classification & risk level, recalling firm + address, product, reason, quantity, distribution, status and key dates.
• Adverse event scraped - One adverse-event report from FAERS (drug), MAUDE (device) or CAERS (food): seriousness, reactions/outcomes, products/devices, patient demographics and reporting details.
• FDA record scraped - One drug or device data record: 510(k)/PMA clearance, device classification or UDI, drug label, Drugs@FDA approval or NDC directory entry — normalized with the openFDA harmonization block.
• Manufacturer lead scraped - One medical-device establishment lead: registered firm name, contact person & phone, full address, registration/FEI numbers, product codes/device names and a 0-100 lead score.
• Analytics row scraped - One aggregated analytics bucket (term + count) from an openFDA count query — e.g. recalls by classification, top recalling firms, most-reported adverse reactions.

The current price of each event is shown on the Pricing tab of this page. Set a maximum total charge on the run if you want a hard cap on spend, and use the input limits to control how much the Actor fetches.

Automate & schedule

Run this actor on autopilot and pull results into your own stack:

• Apify API — start runs, fetch datasets, and manage schedules over REST.
• apify-client for JavaScript and apify-client for Python — official SDKs.
• Schedules — run it hourly/daily/weekly with monitor mode to track new recalls, approvals or adverse events; perfect for safety alerts and lead pipelines.
• Webhooks — trigger downstream actions (CRM import, Slack alert, email sequence) the moment a run finishes.

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'MY_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('scrapesage/fda-scraper').call({
    searchType: 'drugRecalls',
    classification: 'Class I',
    recallStatus: 'Ongoing',
    monitorMode: true,
    maxResults: 500,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Got ${items.length} FDA records`);

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to 5,000+ apps — no code required:

• Make — multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier — push new recalls or manufacturer leads straight into your CRM.
• Slack — get notified when a monitored search finds a new Class I recall.
• Google Drive / Sheets — auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte — pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub — trigger runs from commits or releases.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

The output is clean, LLM-ready JSON. Call this actor from Claude, ChatGPT, or any agent framework through the Apify MCP server — ask your assistant to "find ongoing Class I device recalls for infusion pumps this year" and let it run this scraper for you.

Agent-ready: autonomous payments (x402 & Skyfire)

This actor is agent-ready — AI agents can discover it, run it, and pay for it autonomously, with no Apify account and no human in the loop. It uses pay-per-event pricing and limited permissions, so it qualifies for Apify's agentic-payment standards:

• x402 — an open, HTTP-native payment protocol. Agents pay per run in USDC on the Base network directly through the Apify MCP server — no account, no API key.
• Skyfire — agent-to-service payments for fully autonomous AI-agent workflows.

Building an AI agent, MCP tool, or autonomous data pipeline? This scraper is ready to plug in and pay as it goes.

More scrapers from scrapesage

Build a complete healthcare, regulatory & lead-gen stack:

• Healthgrades Scraper — doctors, specialties, reviews & provider leads.
• WebMD Scraper — physicians, insurance accepted & provider leads.
• FindLaw Scraper — attorney & law-firm leads (mass-tort / product-liability prospecting).
• Insurance Agent Scraper — multi-carrier insurance agent leads.
• SAM.gov Scraper — U.S. federal entities, contracts & opportunities.

Tips

• Deep result sets: openFDA caps pagination at ~25,000 records per query. To exhaust a large dataset, narrow with dateFrom/dateTo windows or a keyword and run in batches.
• Recurring monitoring: combine Schedules with monitorMode so each run outputs only the new/changed records — ideal for daily recall alerts.
• Analytics first: run outputMode: "analytics" with countField to see the shape of the data (top firms, states, reactions) before pulling full records.
• Higher limits: the actor is keyless and rotates proxy sessions to spread the per-IP limit; for very large jobs add a free apiKey.

FAQ

Do I need an FDA or openFDA API key? No. The actor works keyless. Add an optional free key only for very high-volume jobs.

What datasets are covered? Drug (enforcement/recalls, FAERS events, labels, Drugs@FDA approvals, NDC), Device (enforcement/recalls, MAUDE events, 510(k), PMA, classification, registration & listing, UDI), and Food (enforcement/recalls, CAERS events). The custom type exposes any other openFDA endpoint.

How fresh is the data? It's the FDA's own openFDA API — as current as the FDA publishes (recall and event datasets typically update weekly).

Can I export to Google Sheets, CSV, or Excel? Yes — one click in the dataset view, or automatically every run via the Google Drive integration.

How do I monitor new recalls automatically? Turn on monitorMode, create a Schedule, and optionally add a webhook or Zapier zap.

Where do manufacturer contact details come from? From the FDA's public device registration & listing database (official correspondent + firm address). This is public regulatory data.

Is this data official? Yes — it comes directly from the FDA's openFDA API. Note the FDA's disclaimer: openFDA data is not for making medical decisions and should not be assumed to be error-free.

Disclaimer

This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or any government body. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

"FDA" is referenced only in a descriptive, nominative sense - to identify the public data source this Actor collects from. This Actor is not an official product or service of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is not authorised or certified by it. It collects only publicly available records; you are responsible for ensuring your use of that data complies with applicable laws, regulations and the source's own terms of use or reuse conditions.

Need help?

Open an issue on the actor's Issues tab, or visit the Apify help center. Feature requests are welcome — this actor is actively maintained.