FDA Recalls Scraper — Drug, Food & Device Enforcement

What this Actor scrapes

openFDA publishes every drug, food and device enforcement report, and it is the fastest way to see which firms are recalling what and why. The raw API paginates in a way that quietly caps you at 26 000 records and mixes three endpoints with different shapes. This Actor normalises all three into one row format and pages them properly, so a compliance watchlist becomes a spreadsheet instead of a scripting project.

What we handle for you

• 🛡️ Browser fingerprint rotation — the target sees a real browser TLS handshake, not a script.
• 🌐 Proxy rotation — fresh exit on every block through Apify Proxy.
• 🔁 Retries with backoff — 408 / 429 / 5xx retried up to five times, Retry-After honoured.
• 🧊 Clean, typed rows — schema-validated output with ISO-8601 timestamps.
• 💰 Pay per result — no data, no result charge.

Use cases

• Watch a competitor's recall history for quality-system signals before a supplier decision.
• Build a compliance dashboard of Class I recalls in your product category.
• Feed a supplier-risk model with recall frequency by firm and hazard class.
• Track whether an ongoing recall affecting your supply chain has been terminated.

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.

{
  "endpoint": "drug",
  "searchQuery": "classification:\"Class I\"",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": 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.

recall_numberevent_idendpointstatusclassificationrecalling_firmcitystatecountryproduct_typeproduct_descriptionproduct_quantityreason_for_recalldistribution_patternvoluntary_mandatedrecall_initiation_date

{}

Pricing

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

Limitations

• openFDA caps pagination at 26 000 records per query — narrow the search or the date floor to go deeper.
• Date fields are passed through in FDA's YYYYMMDD string form rather than being reformatted.