ChEMBL

ChEMBL is a manually curated database of bioactive molecules with drug-like properties, maintained by the EMBL-EBI. It provides a REST API for accessing bioactive molecules, drug targets, bioactivity data, approved drugs, clinical trial compounds, and cheminformatics utilities to support drug discovery research.
2 APIs 0 Features
Drug DiscoveryBioactivityMoleculesCheminformaticsLife SciencesBioinformaticsPharmacologyEMBL-EBI
APIs

ChEMBL Data API

REST API providing access to ChEMBL database content including bioactive molecules, drug targets, bioactivity measurements, approved drugs, assay data, and clinical trial compou...
ChEMBL Cheminformatics Utilities API

Cheminformatics utility services (ChEMBL Beaker) providing chemical structure standardization, physico-chemical property calculation, format conversion, and structural analysis ...
Resources

Sources

name: ChEMBL
description: ChEMBL is a manually curated database of bioactive molecules with drug-like properties, maintained by the EMBL-EBI. It provides a REST API for accessing bioactive molecules, drug targets, bioactivity data, approved drugs, clinical trial compounds, and cheminformatics utilities to support drug discovery research.
image: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/static/chembl/img/chembl_logo.png
url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - name: ChEMBL Data API
    description: REST API providing access to ChEMBL database content including bioactive molecules, drug targets, bioactivity measurements, approved drugs, assay data, and clinical trial compound information.
    image: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/static/chembl/img/chembl_logo.png
    humanURL: https://chembl.gitbook.io/chembl-interface-documentation/web-services/chembl-data-web-services
    baseURL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/
    version: ChEMBL_37
    tags:
      - Drug Discovery
      - Bioactivity
      - Molecules
      - Cheminformatics
      - Life Sciences
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://chembl.gitbook.io/chembl-interface-documentation/web-services/chembl-data-web-services
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/docs
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: openapi/openapi.json
      - type: TermsOfService
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/terms-of-use/
    contact:
      - FN: ChEMBL Team
        email: [email protected]
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/
    resources:
      - name: Activity
        description: Activity values recorded in an assay
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/activity
      - name: Assay
        description: Experimental protocol and result details from source documents and datasets
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/assay
      - name: ATC Classification
        description: WHO Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification system for drugs
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/atc_class
      - name: Binding Site
        description: Target binding site definitions used in assays
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/binding_site
      - name: Biotherapeutic
        description: Biotherapeutic molecules including HELM notation and sequence data
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/biotherapeutic
      - name: Cell Line
        description: Cell line information used in assays
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/cell_line
      - name: ChEMBL ID Lookup
        description: Identify entity type for a given ChEMBL ID
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/chembl_id_lookup
      - name: Compound Record
        description: Occurrence of a compound in a specific document
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/compound_record
      - name: Compound Structural Alert
        description: Structural anomalies and alerts identified in compounds
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/compound_structural_alert
      - name: Document
        description: Source documents and datasets from which assay data is derived
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/document
      - name: Document Similarity
        description: Documents similar to a given source document
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/document_similarity
      - name: Document Term
        description: Keywords extracted from a document using the TextRank algorithm
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/document_term
      - name: Drug
        description: Approved drugs information including applicants, patent numbers, and research codes
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/drug
      - name: Drug Indication
        description: Drug-disease associations with clinical trial and regulatory references
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/drug_indication
      - name: Drug Warning
        description: Safety information for withdrawn or black-box warned drugs
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/drug_warning
      - name: GO Slim
        description: Gene ontology slim classifications for targets
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/go_slim
      - name: Image
        description: SVG molecular structure image representations
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/image
      - name: Mechanism
        description: Mechanism of action information for approved drugs
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/mechanism
      - name: Metabolism
        description: Metabolic pathways with substrate, product, and enzyme references
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/metabolism
      - name: Molecule
        description: Molecule information including properties, structural representations, and synonyms
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/molecule
      - name: Molecule Form
        description: Parent-salt relationships for molecules
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/molecule_form
      - name: Organism
        description: Organism classification information
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/organism
      - name: Protein Classification
        description: Target protein family classification hierarchy
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/protein_class
      - name: Similarity
        description: Molecule similarity searching using Tanimoto coefficient
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/similarity
      - name: Source
        description: Source information for documents and datasets
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/source
      - name: Status
        description: API operational status and ChEMBL database version information
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/status
      - name: Substructure
        description: Molecular substructure searching
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/substructure
      - name: Target
        description: Targets (protein and non-protein) defined in assays
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/target
      - name: Target Component
        description: Target sequence information and component details
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/target_component
      - name: Target Relation
        description: Inter-target relationships
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/target_relation
      - name: Tissue
        description: Tissue classification information
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/tissue
      - name: X-Ref
        description: Cross-references to external chemical and biological databases
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/xref_source
  - name: ChEMBL Cheminformatics Utilities API
    description: Cheminformatics utility services (ChEMBL Beaker) providing chemical structure standardization, physico-chemical property calculation, format conversion, and structural analysis tools powered by RDKit and the ChEMBL Structure Pipeline.
    image: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/static/chembl/img/chembl_logo.png
    humanURL: https://chembl.gitbook.io/chembl-interface-documentation/web-services/cheminformatic-utils-web-services
    baseURL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/
    version: ChEMBL_37
    tags:
      - Cheminformatics
      - Structure Standardization
      - Drug Discovery
      - Life Sciences
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://chembl.gitbook.io/chembl-interface-documentation/web-services/cheminformatic-utils-web-services
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/docs
      - type: TermsOfService
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/terms-of-use/
    contact:
      - FN: ChEMBL Team
        email: [email protected]
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/
    resources:
      - name: Standardize
        description: Apply ChEMBL Structure Pipeline standardization to molecules
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/standardize
      - name: Check
        description: Check a molecule for issues using ChEMBL Structure Pipeline
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/check
      - name: Exclude
        description: Identify structures that would be excluded from ChEMBL
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/exclude
      - name: Get Parent
        description: Remove salts and solvates using ChEMBL Structure Pipeline
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/getParent
      - name: Descriptors
        description: Calculate all RDKit physico-chemical descriptors for a molecule
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/descriptors
      - name: ChEMBL Descriptors
        description: Calculate ChEMBL-specific physico-chemical descriptors
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/chemblDescriptors
      - name: Status
        description: Operational status and version of the cheminformatics utilities service
        url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/utils/status
common:
  - type: Authentication
    value: None - public API, no key required
  - type: Formats
    value: JSON, XML, YAML, SDF (compounds), SVG (images)
  - type: Pagination
    value: Offset-based pagination with configurable limit (default 20 records per page)
  - type: Filtering
    value: URL-friendly query language with operators including exact, contains, startswith, endswith, regex, gt/gte, lt/lte, range, in, isnull, and full-text search
  - type: License
    url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
    value: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
  - type: TermsOfService
    url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/terms-of-use/
  - type: PythonClient
    url: https://github.com/chembl/chembl_webresource_client
    value: Official Python client available via pip install chembl_webresource_client
  - type: Status
    url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/status/
maintainers:
  - FN: ChEMBL Team
    email: [email protected]
    url: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/
tags:
  - Drug Discovery
  - Bioactivity
  - Molecules
  - Cheminformatics
  - Life Sciences
  - Bioinformatics
  - Pharmacology
  - EMBL-EBI