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Drugs@FDA

Drugs@FDA (Approved Drug Products)

U.S. Food & Drug Administration (openFDA) · Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)

Research-only

Drugs@FDA is the openFDA catalog of FDA-approved drug products — application number, sponsor, brand and generic name, dosage form, route, and marketing status. Fonteum keys each row on application number and product number.

What Fonteum uses it for

How this source shows up on Fonteum.

Aggregate drug-product reference, keyed to the sponsor / manufacturer (name-normalized for a deferred Open Payments cross-link). Fonteum surfaces the approved-product identity and marketing status; the entity-graph link is held for ambiguous matches, never written.

What this source does NOT mean

An approval record describes a drug product and its sponsor — it is not a statement about any healthcare provider, not a clinical recommendation, and not a Fonteum endorsement of a product. A named sponsor is not an asserted provider-identity match.

What this dataset answers

Research and data questions this source supports.

  • Resolve an FDA application number to its sponsor, brand and generic name, dosage form, and marketing status.
  • Build a drug-product reference that distinguishes prescription, OTC, and discontinued products by marketing status.
  • Cross-reference a sponsor's approved-product portfolio against Part D spending and NDC directory entries.
  • Power a research surface on approved-product counts by sponsor or dosage form.

Dataset size: 51,713 approved drug products (2026-06-14 snapshot)

Fields used

Per-field display contract.

Fields listed below show their configured `display_allowed` flag from the §94 provenance schema. Fields marked write-locked are captured for audit and are not rendered on profile pages.

Research-only — never on profiles

6 fields
application_numberFDA application number
product_numberProduct number
sponsor_nameSponsor (by name)
brand_nameBrand name
generic_nameGeneric name
marketing_statusMarketing status
Limitations

What we can’t infer from this source.

  • Tier-1 — aggregate research context only; never rendered on individual provider profiles.
  • Product-keyed by application/product number; sponsor is name-keyed, with the entity-graph cross-link deferred.
  • Marketing status reflects the source at snapshot time (e.g. Prescription, Discontinued); it is not real-time.
  • openFDA omits empty fields; some historical applications carry sparse product detail.
Source metadata

Authority, license, publisher cadence.

Authority

U.S. Food & Drug Administration (openFDA)

Tier

Tier-1 · research-only (never on individual profiles)

Publisher / configured cadence

Declared or configured cadence: Weekly — openFDA republishes the Drugs@FDA partition. Not evidence of the latest loaded source date.

License

openFDA — CC0 public domain (U.S.-government works). Free to use; no API key required for bulk downloads. License ↗

Attribution requirement

Source: U.S. Food & Drug Administration (openFDA) — Drugs@FDA · Snapshot {YYYY-MM-DD}

ToS & usage notes

What the source allows.

openFDA data is CC0 public domain. No API key is required for bulk downloads; attribution to openFDA is the courtesy ask. Snapshot and attestation fields must be read from the specific artifact; no provenance fact currently links deterministically to a signature.

Sample provenance

What a single field looks like in the graph.

This worked example shows the provenance shape used when a surfaced field has populated source, last-checked, display-rule, and confidence metadata. Individual fields may omit unavailable values.

Field

Approved drug product (research-only)

Sample value

NDA 000000 · Example Brand (generic) · Tablet · Prescription

Provenance line

Source: openFDA Drugs@FDA · Snapshot 2026-06-14 · Methodology fda-drugs-at-fda/v1 · Display rule: product-keyed research reference

How to access

Official API, bulk download, and Fonteum endpoints.

Frequently asked

Common questions about Drugs@FDA.

What is Drugs@FDA?
Drugs@FDA is the openFDA catalog of FDA-approved drug products. Each row carries the FDA application number, product number, sponsor, brand and generic name, dosage form, route, and marketing status. Fonteum keys each row on application number and product number.
How do I download Drugs@FDA data?
The data is available from the openFDA Drugs@FDA API (api.fda.gov/drug/drugsfda.json) and as a bulk download from open.fda.gov. It is CC0 public domain — free to download and redistribute with attribution, with no API key required.
Does an approved product mean it is currently marketed?
Not necessarily. The marketing_status field distinguishes Prescription, Over-the-counter, and Discontinued products. An approval record is historical; the marketing status reflects the source at snapshot time and is not real-time.
Is this linked to prescribers or providers?
No. Drugs@FDA is product- and sponsor-keyed; the sponsor is recorded by name. There is no NPI in the source, and the Open Payments manufacturer cross-link is deferred — ambiguous matches are held, not written.
How fresh is Fonteum's copy?
openFDA republishes the Drugs@FDA partition on a roughly weekly cadence; Loaded dates must be read from the specific response; publisher cadence is not proof of a completed load. As of the 2026-06-14 snapshot, Fonteum holds 51,713 approved drug products.
Related

Related sources in the graph

See also
  • /sources → The generated source-catalog subset — documented datasets Fonteum cites.
  • /data-provenance → The provider graph — pipeline diagram, source-family clusters, field-level provenance examples, display rules.
  • /methodology → Documented sourcing, publisher cadence, observed freshness, and corrections policy.
  • /editorial-policy → Independence, sourcing, conflicts, corrections, retractions.

What’s on file, by the numbers

Platform snapshot · 2026-08-11

13.4Mproviders & companiesProviders, organizations, owners, and facilities on file
26.2Msource-linked factsSource-linked field facts in the dated platform snapshot
90sources with dataDistinct snapshot source IDs with at least one positive record count
73fresh sourcesDistinct source IDs whose latest positive-data snapshot falls within the preceding 45 days
111sources integratedActive registry rows; integration does not establish a load
13state Medicaid jurisdictionsDistinct states represented in the state-exclusions serving table

Integrated, with-data, and fresh-observation counts are separate. No platform-wide source-completeness count is published. Completeness is source-specific and must be evaluated against the named source's expected scope. State coverage is a separate jurisdiction measure.

Source authority is record-specific

Use the issuer named on the record.

Fonteum spans federal, state, and global public publishers. A source page or returned record identifies its issuer and dataset where that metadata is available. A platform registry count does not assign every page to one authority or establish loaded, fresh, or complete coverage.

Browse source records and their stated limitations →

Reproducible by design

Inspect the evidence each published figure actually supplies.

Source and date

Research pages expose the named public file and observation date where those fields are available. Source-file SHA-256 coverage is separate; facts do not currently link deterministically to signatures.

Available derivation

Studies with a retained release and committed derivation link the SQL or method used. Other studies state the evidence and reproduction limits they actually have.

Daily observations

Dated table row-count observations can detect local drift. They do not imply that an upstream publisher released or Fonteum ingested new data that day.

Named medical review

Reviewed by Jennifer Montecillo, MD, medical reviewer. Non-practicing medical reviewer.

Read the full provenance and attestation methodology →

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