# National Drug Code (NDC) Lookup: A Guide to Resolving Drug Identifiers
2026-10-01

How to resolve National Drug Code (NDC) identifiers against FDA data to enrich drug records and power pharma workflows.


## What an NDC is: The National Drug Code is a unique 10–11 digit identifier assigned to each drug product, in the form labeler-product-package (e.g. 49884-007-02). It is the address of a drug in FDA data: resolve it to the brand, generic, route, and package.
## Resolving against openFDA: The drugs@FDA endpoint can match on brand name and return package NDC values in the `openfda.package_ndc` field. For example, an aspirin query returns package NDCs such as `49884-007-02` along with the generic name. That resolution is what turns a bare identifier into a structured record.
## Why it matters for compliance and research: If an enforcement report names a product, resolving its NDC lets you match it against your own inventory or watchlist programmatically. Clean NDC resolution removes guesswork: agents can dedupe, enrich, and alert on the exact product, not a fuzzy text match.

## FAQ
- **What format is an NDC?** Typically 5-4-2 or 4-4-2 digit groups, e.g. 49884-007-02.
- **Can you look up a drug without an NDC?** Yes — brand/generic name search on drugs@FDA returns structured profiles including package NDCs.

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