How to Scrape FDA — Free No-Code Guide (2026)

#fda #webscraping #api #python

If you need to pull FDA data at scale and there's no clean official API, this guide shows how to export it to JSON, CSV or Excel in a couple of minutes — with no scraping code to maintain.

We'll use the FDA Data Scraper - openFDA Recalls & Events, a hosted scraper on the Apify platform. You only need a free Apify token — no FDA login, no proxies, no reverse-engineering.

What data you get

Each run returns structured records with fields like:

_dataset
recalling_firm
product_description
reason_for_recall
classification
status
report_date
recall_number
recall_initiation_date
voluntary_mandated
distribution_pattern
product_quantity
city
state

Results are paginated automatically — you can pull thousands of rows per run and export them as JSON, CSV, Excel, JSONL or XML.

Option 1 — No code (Apify Console)

Open the actor: https://apify.com/logiover/fda-data-scraper
Click Try for free.
Leave the input empty for a broad sample, or set the fields below.
Run it, then Export the dataset as CSV/JSON/Excel.

Option 2 — Node.js

npm install fda-data-scraper

const scrape = require("fda-data-scraper");

(async () => {
  const items = await scrape({}, { token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
  console.log(items.length, "results");
  console.log(items[0]);
})();

Option 3 — Python

pip install fda-data-scraper

from fda_data_scraper import scrape

items = scrape({}, token="YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
print(len(items), "results")
print(items[0])

Grab a free token at https://console.apify.com/account/integrations.

Input options

Field	Type	What it does
`dataset`	string	Dataset
`sort`	string	Sort Order
`searchQuery`	string	Search Query
`maxRecords`	integer	Max Records
`apiKey`	string	openFDA API Key (optional)
`proxyConfiguration`	object	Proxy configuration

Common use cases

Build a fresh FDA dataset for analysis or dashboards
Feed FDA records into your own app, CRM or spreadsheet
Monitor changes on a schedule and get alerts via webhooks
Enrich leads or research with up-to-date FDA data

Automation & export

Because it runs on Apify, you can schedule it, trigger it via webhook, and pipe results into Google Sheets, S3, Zapier, Make or n8n. Every run's dataset is downloadable as CSV, JSON, JSONL, Excel or XML.