EU CORDIS API — Horizon Europe & H2020 Scraper

What this Actor scrapes

One ResultRow per project. Every row carries the same 20 columns regardless of which input mode you used. Data is published by the European Commission under CC-BY 4.0 (EU Open Data policy).

What we handle for you

• Four input modes in one Actor — projectIds, searchQuery, programmeFilter, countryFilter. Pydantic XOR validator enforces exactly one mode before any network call.
• Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 both supported via the framework switch (HORIZON, H2020, or ANY).
• Coordinator-country filter implemented as a server-side scan with in-process post-filtering — CORDIS's search API does not expose coordinator country as a query field, so the Actor scans pages and emits only matching rows.
• Single-hit anomaly handled — CORDIS returns hits.hit as a dict (not a list) when only one project matches; the parser's _ensure_list() normalises every nested array so the same code path handles both shapes.
• Programme primary selection respects @attributes.uniqueProgrammePart=true — multi-programme projects expose the correct top-level programme code, not the first nested one.
• Optional full-abstract mode — includeFullAbstract=true deep-fetches the project detail HTML page via parsel and replaces the truncated search-API objective with the full text; charged as result-row-detailed ($0.005) instead of result-row ($0.003).
• Pydantic v2 input + output models — ResultRow.status is validated against the live enum (SIGNED, CLOSED, TERMINATED); country_filter normalised to upper-case at validation.
• Browser fingerprint rotation — curl-cffi replays real-browser TLS handshakes (Chrome 131 impersonation) so the target sees a genuine browser client, not Python. Profiles rotate across requests on any target that fingerprints clients.
• Residential proxy rotation — Apify Proxy routes requests through fresh exit IPs on every block. A 4xx or 5xx response invalidates the current session; we request a new session_id and retry automatically.
• Exponential backoff with Retry-After honoured — 429 and 503 responses trigger retries with 2 s base, doubling up to 30 s, max 5 attempts. We never hammer the endpoint; partial successes surface with a clear status message rather than silently returning an empty dataset.
• Rate-limit pacing — page scanning for country-filter mode is paced so bursts don't trigger throttling mid-run.
• Clean typed rows — Pydantic-validated output, ISO-8601 timestamps, stable IDs. No raw dicts, no silent nulls.
• Pay only for results that land — PPE pricing means no charge for rows that never emit. Only the small actor-start warm-up fee applies if a run returns zero rows.

Use cases

• Grant writer competitive intelligence — pull all HORIZON.2.5 (Climate, Energy and Mobility) projects from the last 12 months to map who is winning which calls in your topic area.
• Research-institution portfolio reporting — filter by countryFilter=DE (or your country) to enumerate every Horizon Europe project coordinated nationally, with funding totals.
• Science-policy analysis — bulk-export H2020 vs HORIZON funding distributions across funding schemes (RIA / IA / CSA / ERC) for a programme retrospective.
• EU innovation consulting — feed a list of projectIds (e.g. from a client's reference list) and return clean structured records for proposal due diligence.
• University tech-transfer offices — track CLOSED projects in their field where commercial follow-on opportunities (IP licensing, spinout candidates) may have emerged.
• Journalists & think-tanks — measure the country, programme, and consortium composition across an entire framework programme using the horizon europe project data returned per row.
• B2B SaaS prospecting — use coordinator_organization + coordinator_country to build a list of EU research-project leaders as a prospecting signal for tools that sell into that audience.

Input

Paste this into the Apify Console, or send it as the run input over the API. Proxy settings are on by default; you rarely need to touch them.

{
  "searchQuery": "quantum computing",
  "framework": "HORIZON",
  "maxProjects": 100,
  "includeFullAbstract": false,
  "useProxy": false
}

Output

One row per result, schema-validated before it is written. Export JSON, CSV, Excel or XML from the run, or read it over the API.

project_idproject_acronymproject_titleproject_urlprogrammeprogramme_display_namecall_idfunding_schemestart_dateend_datetotal_cost_eureu_contribution_eurstatuscoordinator_organizationcoordinator_countryparticipating_organizations

{
  "project_id": "101069357",
  "project_acronym": "Photo2Fuel",
  "project_title": "Artificial PHOTOsynthesis to produce FUELs and chemicals",
  "project_url": "https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101069357/en",
  "programme": "HORIZON.2.5",
  "programme_display_name": "Climate, Energy and Mobility",
  "call_id": "HORIZON-CL5-2021-D2-01",
  "funding_scheme": "HORIZON-RIA",
  "start_date": "2022-09-01",
  "end_date": "2025-08-31",
  "total_cost_eur": 2493171.25,
  "eu_contribution_eur": 2493171.0,
  "status": "SIGNED",
  "coordinator_organization": "IDENER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT AIE",
  "coordinator_country": "ES",
  "participating_organizations": [
    "FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION",
    "UPPSALA UNIVERSITET"
  ],
  "participating_countries": [
    "DE",
    "ES",
    "SE"
  ],
  "objective_summary": "The Photo2Fuel project will develop a breakthrough technology that converts CO2 into useful fuels and chemicals...",
  "keywords": [
    "solar energy",
    "bacteria",
    "archaea",
    "solar fuels",
    "CO2 reduction"
  ],
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-16T12:00:00.000000+00:00"
}

Pricing

You pay only for results that land. Cap any run with maxTotalChargeUsd. See pricing & billing for worked examples.

Limitations

• HORIZON and H2020 only. FP7 and earlier framework programmes are not indexed in the current CORDIS search index; this Actor returns zero rows for FP6-and-earlier queries.
• No deliverables, publications, or result documents. Available on the project detail page but not in the search API; out of scope for this Actor.
• No organisation-level enrichment. Legal address, VAT ID, org type category — out of scope; use a dedicated organisation enrichment Actor.
• Country filter is post-filter, not server-side. CORDIS's search API does not expose coordinator country as a query field. Country-filter mode scans pages and keeps only rows where coordinator_country matches. To collect maxProjects=500 German projects, the Actor may scan 1,500+ projects total. The emitted row count is always ≤ maxProjects.
• Status filter is not a user input. The search API's status field path does not reliably filter server-side — status is emitted on every output row so you can filter the dataset client-side after the run.
• Page size is fixed at 50. CORDIS's num=100 parameter returns only 10 results (verified 2026-05-16) — the Actor uses num=50 everywhere as the effective practical maximum.
• 7-day default storage retention on the Apify FREE tier. Export your dataset immediately after the run or upgrade for longer retention.
• CORDIS data is CC-BY 4.0. Attribution to the European Commission's CORDIS service is required when republishing.