Compare
healthcare.dev vs NLM Clinical Tables
Clinical Table Search Service is NLM's free API for searching ICD-10-CM, HCPCS, RxTerms, NPI and other tables, designed to power autocomplete fields in forms.
Side by side
| NLM Clinical Tables | healthcare.dev | |
|---|---|---|
| One schema across sources | Each table has its own fields | Yes: codes, drugs and providers share one response shape and meta block |
| As-of versioning | Current tables | Yes: ?as_of=YYYY-MM-DD on every lookup returns the record as it was |
| Citations on every response | Source named per table | Yes: source, source URL, file checksum, version and license terms |
| Change feed | No | Yes: added, changed and retired records per release (Builder and up) |
| MCP server | No | Yes: remote MCP with one-click sign-in for Claude, Cursor and VS Code |
NLM Clinical Tables is run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Details as we understand them on the date of this page; see their documentation for current features and limits.
Which to use
Use NLM Clinical Tables for
- Autocomplete in a web form, with a free API and no account.
- Tables healthcare.dev doesn't serve.
Use healthcare.dev for
- Full records with lifecycle: effective dates, status, replaced_by for retired codes.
- Code hierarchies, batch lookups and as-of dates for coding agents.
- Citations, versions and a change feed you can build compliance on.