PubMed Scraper - Biomedical Articles & Metadata

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

Search PubMed and get clean, structured rows for every biomedical article: title, journal, authors, publication date, DOI, volume/issue/pages, ISSN and publication types. Search by keyword (or PubMed field tags), or fetch exact articles by PMID. Built on the official NCBI E-utilities API - no key, no browser.

What you get per article

Field	Meaning
title / journal / journalAbbrev	Article title and journal (full + abbreviated)
authors / lastAuthor	Author list and the senior (last) author
pubDate / epubDate	Print and electronic publication dates
doi / pmcId / pmid	DOI, PubMed Central ID, PubMed ID
volume / issue / pages / issn	Citation details
pubTypes / pubmedUrl / doiUrl	Publication types and direct links

Input

{ "searchQueries": ["cancer immunotherapy"], "maxItemsPerQuery": 100, "sortBy": "date" }

• Search queries - one per line. Plain terms work, and so do PubMed field tags: cancer[Title], Smith J[Author], 2024[pdat], clinical trial[pt].
• PMIDs - or fetch specific articles by PubMed ID.
• Import from a file - paste a whole list, or link a public .txt/.csv, a Google Sheet/Drive link, or an Apify key-value-store record.
• Sort by relevance, publication date, or first author. Max articles per query / total bound the run.
• Output fields - tick only the columns you want.

Leave everything empty and the run returns a small free sample so you can see the shape first.

Reliability

Reads the official NCBI E-utilities API - public JSON, no key, no proxy, no anti-bot. The actor paces requests to stay within NCBI's 3-requests-per-second guidance. A run that returns nothing bills $0.

Honest limits

• Citation metadata, not full text. You get the article's bibliographic record (title, journal, authors, DOI, IDs); the full text lives at the publisher or PubMed Central via the links.
• pmcId is present only for articles indexed in PubMed Central; doi and epubDate follow what the record publishes. These vary by article, not by extraction.

Pricing

$0.002 per article on the FREE tier (tiered pricing lowers it with volume). Only articles actually saved are billed; an empty run costs nothing.

Output views

• Articles - title, journal, authors, date, DOI, PMID and the PubMed link.

Use with AI assistants (MCP)

Available through the Apify MCP server - an agent can pull the latest literature on a condition or drug (with DOIs) for a review or evidence-synthesis pipeline.

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.

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 or weekly and keep your dataset current.
• 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/pubmed-scraper').call({
    "searchQueries": [
        "crispr"
    ],
    "maxItemsPerQuery": 25
});

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

Integrate with any app

Connect the dataset to thousands of apps - no code required:

• Make - multi-step automation scenarios.
• Zapier - push new records straight into your CRM or spreadsheet.
• Slack - get notified when a scheduled run finds something new.
• Google Drive / Sheets - auto-export every run to a spreadsheet.
• Airbyte - pipe results into your data warehouse.
• GitHub - trigger runs from commits or releases.

FAQ

How is this Actor billed? Pay-per-event: you pay only for the results it delivers, with no monthly rental and no start fee. The per-event price is shown on the Pricing tab.

Can I schedule it and get results automatically? Yes - create a Schedule and add a webhook or an integration (Google Sheets, Slack, Make, Zapier) to push each run's dataset wherever you need it.

Which export formats are available? Every run's dataset can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel (XLSX), XML, HTML or RSS from the Apify Console or the API.

Can I run it from code or an AI agent? Yes - through the Apify API and client libraries, or from Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants via the Apify MCP server.

Is it legal to scrape PubMed? This Actor collects publicly available data only. You are responsible for using the output in compliance with applicable laws (including data-protection law where personal data is involved) and the source's terms. See the Disclaimer below.

Disclaimer

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

"PubMed" 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. National Library of Medicine (NLM) 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.