PubMed Articles Search: Abstracts, MeSH, DOI (NCBI E-utilities)

Search PubMed with full query syntax or bulk-fetch PMIDs: title, abstract, journal, date, authors, sample affiliations, publication types, MeSH terms, keywords, DOI, PMC ID. 'Last N days' mode for alerts.

Why this actor

• Full abstracts + MeSH in one pass via official E-utilities.
• Pay only for results: $0.80 per 1,000 articles, no start fee, failed lookups are free.
• Robust: automatic retries with exponential backoff, respects Retry-After, per-item error rows instead of crashed runs.
• Clean, flat JSON/CSV/Excel output ready for Google Sheets, Make, Zapier, n8n, Clay, or the Apify API.

Use cases

• Medical literature monitoring for pharma/medtech
• Systematic review screening datasets
• KOL research (by topic)
• Health content research

Input

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Full PubMed syntax, e.g. 'semaglutide[tiab] AND randomized controlled trial[pt]'.
pmids	array	Bulk lookup by PubMed ID.
sinceDays	integer	Literature alerts.
sort	string	Ordering.
maxResults	integer	Cap.
apiKey	string	Free key: 10 req/s instead of 3.
maxItems	integer	0 = no limit. Caps cost.

Example input:

{
  "query": "semaglutide weight loss",
  "maxResults": 15
}

Output

Each dataset item looks like this (real sample from a test run, long fields trimmed):

{
  "pmid": "42871568",
  "url": "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42871568/",
  "title": "The pharmacotherapy for pediatric obesity: insights and challenges from adult weight-loss medications.",
  "abstract": "Obesity significantly increases the risk of developing other chronic diseases and shortens the life expectancy by 5 to 8 years. Childhood obesity is particularly prominent as 80% of teenagers with obesity have shown it to persist into adult\u2026",
  "journal": "Journal of diabetes and metabolic disorders",
  "journalAbbrev": "J Diabetes Metab Disord",
  "publicationDate": "2026-Dec",
  "authors": [
    "Zhiyu Chen",
    "Ying Zhou",
    "Gang Li",
    "\u2026"
  ],
  "affiliationsSample": [
    "Department of Pharmacy, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region People's Hospital, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot, 010017 China.",
    "Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, 56000 Malaysia.",
    "Department of Pharmacy, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, 100034 China."
  ],
  "publicationTypes": [
    "Journal Article",
    "Review"
  ],
  "meshTerms": null,
  "keywords": [
    "Childhood obesity",
    "GLP-1 agonist",
    "Good health and wellbeing",
    "\u2026"
  ],
  "doi": "10.1007/s40200-026-02110-3",
  "pmcId": "PMC13658666",
  "language": "eng",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-14T16:30:10+00:00"
}

Rows that could not be processed contain an error field and are not charged.

Pricing

Pay-per-event: $0.0008 per article (= $0.80 / 1,000). Use Max results to cap spend. Apify's free plan credit covers thousands of results per month.

Integrations & API

Run on a schedule in Apify Console, call via the Apify API / Python & JS clients, or connect to Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack and webhooks. Works as a tool for AI agents via Apify MCP.

FAQ

Is this an official tool? No. It is an independent actor and is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the data source or any trademark owner named here.

Is it legal? The actor only reads publicly available data from public endpoints, without logins, and does not bypass paywalls or access controls. You are responsible for using the data in line with applicable laws (e.g. GDPR) and the source sites' terms.

Something broke? Open an issue in the Issues tab; we typically respond within 24 hours and ship fixes fast.