🌍 World Bank Indicators Scraper: GDP, Inflation, Trade & More

Overview

World Bank Indicators Scraper pulls development indicators from the official World Bank API as clean, structured JSON: GDP, GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment, exports and imports, population, foreign direct investment, plus more than 1,400 other series. Pick any country (or all), any year range, and any indicator code; each data point comes back with country name, ISO3 code, indicator ID and name, year, and value. Built for economists, finance analysts, market researchers, and macro data pipelines.

The World Bank publishes the World Development Indicators as the standard reference for cross-country macro data. Its API is open but returns a [metadata, data] envelope with paged results and null-padded years. This actor handles the paging, null-filtering, and multi-indicator fan-out so you get one clean record per data point.

✅ No API key | ✅ Official World Bank API | ✅ 1,400+ indicators | ✅ First 10 data points free | ✅ MCP-ready for AI agents

Features

Any of 1,400+ World Development Indicators, including GDP, inflation, unemployment, trade, population, and FDI. Any country, any year range: pass a single country, a list of ISO codes, or all for the full universe. Multi-indicator fan-out: request several indicators at once and the actor pulls each across your country list and year window. Flat output: country name, ISO3, indicator ID, indicator name, year, and value on every record. Fully open source, so there is no key, no login, and no rate-limit paperwork.

How it works

The actor calls the World Bank Indicators API (api.worldbank.org/v2) for every combination of country and indicator, paginating through results and stripping null-padded years before yielding records. Data points are pushed in the order the API returns them, with the underlying indicator metadata (long name, unit) joined onto each row.

Empty, failed, or invalid pulls (e.g. an indicator that has no reported values for a given country and window, or a bad World Bank API response) are recognized before charging. Blocked, empty, or failed runs are never charged, you only pay for a data point actually delivered.

Common indicator codes

Indicator	Code
GDP (current US$)	NY.GDP.MKTP.CD
GDP per capita (current US$)	NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
GDP growth (annual %)	NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG
Inflation, consumer prices (annual %)	FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG
Unemployment (% of labor force)	SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS
Exports of goods & services (current US$)	NE.EXP.GNFS.CD
Imports of goods & services (current US$)	NE.IMP.GNFS.CD
Population, total	SP.POP.TOTL
Foreign direct investment, net inflows	BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD

Browse the full catalogue at data.worldbank.org.

🧾 Input configuration

{
  "countries": ["IN", "US", "CN", "BR"],
  "indicators": ["NY.GDP.MKTP.CD", "FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG"],
  "yearFrom": 2010,
  "yearTo": 2023,
  "maxResults": 2000
}

📤 Output format

{
  "country": "India",
  "country_iso3": "IND",
  "country_id": "IN",
  "indicator_id": "NY.GDP.MKTP.CD",
  "indicator": "GDP (current US$)",
  "year": "2022",
  "value": 3249938492013.47,
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-15T04:16:51.485Z"
}

This is a real record captured from a live run of the actor (India, GDP current US$, 2022).

Every data point contains these fields:

Field	Description
🌐 country	Country or region long name
🏳️ country_iso3	ISO 3166 alpha-3 country code
🆔 country_id	ISO 3166 alpha-2 country code
🆔 indicator_id	World Bank indicator code (e.g. NY.GDP.MKTP.CD)
📖 indicator	Human-readable indicator name
📅 year	Reporting year
💵 value	Numeric value in the indicator's native unit
🕒 scraped_at	ISO timestamp of capture

💼 Common use cases

Economics and macro research Pull GDP, inflation, and unemployment across a peer set of countries and a decade of years in one run. Feed the flat record set straight into pandas, R, or a BI dashboard.

Finance and market research Build country-risk models with debt, current-account, and trade indicators as inputs. Track FDI net inflows over time for market-entry sizing.

Development and policy work Compare development indicators (education, health, poverty) across low- and middle-income countries. Support grant applications and impact reports with authoritative numbers.

AI grounding and RAG Ingest a country-and-year matrix of indicators as grounded context for an economics assistant. Combine with news scrapers to explain data movements with the reporting behind them.

🚀 Getting started

1. Open the actor and enter Countries as ISO codes (e.g. IN, US, CN), or all for every country.
2. Add Indicator codes (e.g. NY.GDP.MKTP.CD, FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG); pick from the table above or browse data.worldbank.org.
3. Set Year from and Year to (default 2015 to 2023).
4. Set Max data points (default 1,000) to cap the run.
5. Click Save & Start, then download as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull via API or MCP.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The World Bank Indicators API is fully open. No account, no key, no signup.

How many indicators are available? Over 1,400 in the World Development Indicators alone. The API also exposes topic-specific datasets that use the same code convention.

How far back does the data go? Most indicators are available from 1960. Set yearFrom to any year from 1960 onward. Older years may have gaps for developing economies.

Can I request many countries and indicators at once? Yes. Pass lists of each and the actor fetches every combination across your year range.

How am I charged? Pay per data point at $0.001 per point ($1 per 1,000). The first 10 data points are free for life on every Apify account.

Use in Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/worldbank-indicators

Or call it programmatically with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

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

const run = await client.actor('themineworks/worldbank-indicators').call({
  countries: ['IN', 'US', 'CN'],
  indicators: ['NY.GDP.MKTP.CD'],
  yearFrom: 2015,
  yearTo: 2023,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

🛠️ Complete your macro data pipeline

Indicators are the base layer. Add trade, prices, and cross-reference data:

• Socrata Open Data Scraper: any US federal, state, or city Socrata portal (CDC, HHS, CMS, NYC, more).
• Google News Scraper: news coverage that contextualizes movements in the numbers.
• GLEIF LEI Lookup: resolve counterparty and issuer identities when you cross to firm-level analysis.

Typical flow: pull macro indicators for a country set, add news coverage for narrative context, and layer in firm-level data via GLEIF or SEC EDGAR.

Found a bug or have a feature request? Open an issue on the actor's Apify Console page or reach out through the Apify profile.