openFDA Adverse Events Scraper (FAERS)

What this Actor scrapes

The FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) is the world's largest public feed of drug-safety signals, but the raw record is a deeply nested JSON blob that buries seriousness flags and patient data three levels down. This Actor pages api.fda.gov/drug/event.json on your search, flattens every report into one row per reaction, each carrying the report's full drug list, and hands pharmacovigilance and competitive-intel teams a table they can pivot on directly. openFDA's own guidance applies here: this is unvalidated, self-reported data, and it should never drive medical care decisions.

What we handle for you

• flattens each FAERS report into one row per reaction — each row carries the report's full drug list — instead of a deeply nested blob
• retries transient 429/5xx responses with backoff so a rate-limit blip does not kill the run
• stops cleanly at your maxResults row cap instead of over-fetching openFDA's full result set
• validates every row through a typed Pydantic model before it reaches your dataset

Use cases

• Track adverse-event volume for a specific drug ahead of a competitive or regulatory review.
• Feed a pharmacovigilance signal-detection pipeline with flattened seriousness and outcome fields.
• Benchmark reported reaction severity across a drug class over a date range.
• Backfill a research dataset without hand-flattening FAERS' nested JSON.

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": "patient.drug.medicinalproduct:\"ozempic\"",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "pageSize": 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.

safety_report_idreceive_datereporter_countryseriousseriousness_deathseriousness_hospitalizationseriousness_life_threateningseriousness_disablingpatient_agepatient_sexdrug_namesreaction_termreaction_outcome

{
  "safety_report_id": "10188271",
  "receive_date": "2014-05-22",
  "reporter_country": "US",
  "serious": true,
  "seriousness_death": false,
  "seriousness_hospitalization": true,
  "seriousness_life_threatening": false,
  "seriousness_disabling": true,
  "patient_age": 81.0,
  "patient_sex": "female",
  "drug_names": "LANTUS SOLOSTAR",
  "reaction_term": "Stenosis",
  "reaction_outcome": "unknown"
}

Pricing

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

Limitations

• openFDA's own disclaimer applies in full: this is unvalidated, self-reported adverse-event data and must never be used to make medical care decisions.
• patient_age passes through openFDA's raw numeric value without normalizing the reporting unit (years vs. months vs. weeks).
• openFDA's keyless tier rate-limits aggressively (public guidance: ~240 requests/minute); a very large maxResults on a broad query may take longer to complete.