openFDA
openFDA is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's public data platform, providing Elasticsearch-backed REST APIs serving FDA-administered data on drugs, medical devices, foods, animal and veterinary products, and tobacco. Twenty-two endpoints under a single api.fda.gov base URL expose adverse event reports (FAERS, MAUDE, CAERS), recall enforcement reports, Structured Product Labeling, the National Drug Code Directory, Drugs@FDA approvals, drug shortages, device classification, 510(k) and PMA submissions, Unique Device Identifier records, registration and listing, NSDE drug data, FDA substance harmonization, and historical FDA documents. All endpoints share a Lucene-style search, sort, count, limit, and skip parameter surface, are released under CC0 Public Domain, and operate under a free api.data.gov key that lifts daily quotas to 120,000 requests.
Real signal across most facets with visible, nameable gaps — the contract exists but is thin, or the portal is good while governance and commercial terms are absent.
API Evangelist profiles openFDA the way a machine reads it — 45 machine-readable artifacts across 6 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — openFDA scores 55.0/100 (developing), with a separate agent-readiness read of 63/100 (agent native). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile openFDA
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for openFDA. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 6
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
openFDA Animal & Veterinary API
Adverse events involving animal and veterinary products.
openFDA Device API
Device-related endpoints (adverse events, classifications, recalls, 510(k), PMA, UDI).
openFDA Drug API
Drug-related endpoints (adverse events, labeling, recalls, NDC).
openFDA Food API
Food-related endpoints (enforcement reports, adverse events).
openFDA Other API
Cross-cutting datasets (NSDE, substance, harmonized).
openFDA Tobacco API
Tobacco product problem reports.
Open Collections 1
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
openFDA API
OPEN COLLECTIONRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Openfda Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFeatures 12
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
Scroll within the panel for all 12 ·
Semantic Vocabularies 1
JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Openfda Context
JSON-LDSpectral Rules 2
Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.
openFDA API Rules
SPECTRALopenFDA API Rules
SPECTRALJSON Schema 1
Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
openFDA Search Response
JSON SCHEMAExamples 1
Real request and response payloads are what turn a spec from abstract into obvious — and they're one of the twelve things an agent needs to call an API correctly on the first try.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Openfda Drug Event Example
EXAMPLESecurity Posture 2
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Use Cases 7
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Adverse Event Surveillance
Mine FAERS, MAUDE, CAERS, and animal/veterinary adverse event reports for safety signals across drugs, devices, foods, and animal products.
Recall Monitoring
Subscribe to drug, device, and food recall enforcement reports and surface them in clinical, retail, or supply-chain dashboards.
Drug Labeling Apps
Embed authoritative indications, dosage, warnings, and ingredient sections from Structured Product Labeling into consumer or clinical applications.
Regulatory Intelligence
Track 510(k) clearances, PMA approvals, and Drugs@FDA submissions to monitor competitor and pipeline activity.
Identifier Resolution
Look up NDC, UDI, UNII, and SPL Set IDs across product domains to power claims, EHR, and supply-chain integrations.
Public-Health Research
Academic and journalistic investigation of adverse outcomes, recall patterns, and regulatory enforcement using CC0 public data.
Supply-Chain Risk
Cross-reference drug shortage status, recall actions, and registration listings to detect upstream supply disruptions.
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Integrations 6
Pre-built integrations with other platforms tell you where this provider already fits in a stack.
Pre-built integrations with other platforms and tools.
api.data.gov
Federal API gateway that issues and enforces the openFDA API key, applying rate limits and quotas.
data.gov
openFDA datasets are cataloged in the federal open-data portal as DCAT-compliant resources.
NIH RxNorm
NDC and Drugs@FDA records are commonly joined with NIH RxNorm to align brand, generic, and ingredient terminology.
NLM DailyMed
SPL drug labeling in openFDA mirrors NLM DailyMed, the authoritative SPL repository.
GUDID (Global UDI Database)
openFDA device UDI records derive from FDA's Global Unique Device Identification Database.
FAERS Public Dashboard
openFDA drug adverse event endpoint surfaces the same FAERS data exposed in FDA's public dashboard.
Solutions 4
Packaged solutions the provider offers on top of the raw API surface.
Packaged solutions this provider offers.
Pharmacovigilance
Continuously ingest drug, device, and food adverse events for safety signal detection.
Recall and Withdrawal Alerting
Power weekly recall enforcement notification workflows across drug, device, and food domains.
Regulatory Filings Intelligence
Aggregate 510(k), PMA, and Drugs@FDA submissions for competitive analysis and pipeline tracking.
Clinical Decision Support References
Surface FDA labeling content as a reference layer (explicitly not for clinical decision-making per openFDA terms).
Resources
Every other property we hold for openFDA — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 7
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Scroll within the panel for all 7 ·
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 5
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Build 4
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 3
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 5
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 3
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/openfda · machine-readable index on apis.io