Look up bioactivity data for a compound or target via ChEMBL web services
domain: www.ebi.ac.uk · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Identify the ChEMBL ID of interest (compound/molecule, target, or assay) or search by name/synonym first via the appropriate resource endpoint
GET https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/activity?<filter params> to query bioactivity data points, using Django-QuerySet-style filters (e.g. molecule_chembl_id, target_chembl_id, standard_type)
Add format=json (or use the Accept header) to receive JSON instead of the default XML
Use limit/offset query parameters to page through large activity result sets
Cross-reference returned target_chembl_id/molecule_chembl_id values against the /target and /molecule endpoints for additional context
Consult the interactive Swagger-style docs at ebi.ac.uk/chembl/api/data/docs for the current filter field list before constructing complex queries
Known gotchas
Default response format is XML, not JSON — explicitly request format=json or set an Accept header to avoid parsing XML unexpectedly
Bioactivity data varies widely in units and assay type (standard_type/standard_units) across records; do not assume all activity values are directly comparable without filtering by standard_type
Very broad filters (e.g. all activities for a promiscuous target) can return extremely large result sets — always paginate with limit/offset
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