ECHA Scraper

Scrape chemical substance records from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). Get CAS numbers, EC numbers, molecular formulas, hazard classifications, and registration details in structured form — no more clicking through ECHA's clunky interface one substance at a time.

What it does

The scraper crawls ECHA's substance information pages. It starts from either a search query (substance name or CAS number), a direct URL, or the registered substances index. For each substance it finds, it extracts identification numbers, classification data, and descriptions from the detail pages.

It handles pagination automatically, so a search returning hundreds of substances will be followed through all result pages.

Input

Field	Type	Description
searchQuery	String	Substance name or CAS number. Examples: "benzene", "71-43-2", "bisphenol A"
startUrls	Array	Direct ECHA page URLs. Example: https://echa.europa.eu/substance-information/-/substanceinfo/100.000.685
maxResults	Integer	Default: 100
proxyConfiguration	Object	Recommended for larger runs.

If you provide neither searchQuery nor startUrls, the scraper starts from the registered substances index at https://echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/registered-substances.

Output

{
    "name": "Benzene",
    "casNumber": "71-43-2",
    "ecNumber": "200-753-7",
    "molecularFormula": "C6H6",
    "registrationType": "Full",
    "hazardClassification": "Flam. Liq. 2, Carc. 1A, Muta. 1B, STOT RE 1, Asp. Tox. 1, ...",
    "substanceType": "Mono-constituent substance",
    "description": "Substance information page for Benzene",
    "url": "https://echa.europa.eu/substance-information/-/substanceinfo/100.000.685",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-03-16T08:00:00.000Z"
}

Fields: name, casNumber, ecNumber, molecularFormula, registrationType, hazardClassification, substanceType, description, url.

Who uses this

• REACH compliance teams tracking registered substances
• Chemical importers/distributors who need to check regulatory status before sourcing
• EHS (Environment, Health & Safety) departments building internal substance databases
• Researchers doing bulk lookups instead of manual ECHA searches

Limitations

• ECHA's HTML structure varies between substance pages — some fields may be empty for certain substances if the data isn't present or is structured differently.
• The site can be slow to respond. The scraper retries failed requests up to 3 times.
• Very large extractions (1000+ substances) should use a proxy to avoid rate limiting.