Federal Register Scraper - Comment Deadlines

What does Federal Register Scraper do?

US regulations with the days remaining until the comment period closes or the rule takes effect — sorted by urgency.

No login. No API key. No proxies.

The countdown the source never prints

The Federal Register publishes two dates that bind a company: when the comment period on a proposed rule closes, and when a final rule takes effect. It never publishes the number of days left.

That is the only number a regulatory affairs team actually works from. Which proposals affecting us are still open, and how long have we got?

This Actor does the subtraction on every row, flags what is still open, and sorts so the tightest deadline is first. A real run, 13 September 2026:

Document	Agency	Days left
Request for Information; Clinical Laboratory Improvement	HHS	1
Medicare and Medicaid Programs; CY 2027 Payment Policies	HHS	1
Accreditation, Innovation and Modernization	Education	8

Three comment periods closing within eight days, two of them tomorrow — visible in one column instead of thirty PDF pages.

Output

Field	Example
title, type, action	Proposed Rule; request for comments
agencies	Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration
commentsCloseOn	2026-09-14
daysUntilCommentClose	1
effectiveOn, daysUntilEffective	2026-11-01, 49
commentPeriodOpen, alreadyEffective	true / false
significant	flagged under Executive Order 12866
cfrReferences	21 CFR 101
docketIds, regulationIdNumbers	FDA-2026-N-1234, RIN 0910-AI43
documentNumber, citation, startPage, pageLength
abstract, topics
htmlUrl, pdfUrl	the document itself

A negative daysUntilEffective means the rule is already in force. A null means no date was set — not that there is no deadline, so check the document.

Input

{
  "documentType": "proposed-rules",
  "openForCommentOnly": true,
  "searchTerm": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxItems": 300
}

Field	Default	Notes
documentType	proposed-rules	Proposed, final, notices, presidential
openForCommentOnly	true	Only what you can still influence
searchTerm	— (every document)	Full text, e.g. artificial intelligence
maxItems	300	Sorted by nearest deadline
agencies	—	Slugs, e.g. food-and-drug-administration
cfrTitle	—	21 food and drugs, 40 environment, 47 telecoms
publishedAfter	—	YYYY-MM-DD
significantOnly	false	Economically significant rules

Proposed rules are the ones you can change. Final rules are the ones you must comply with. Pick the type that matches the job.

Use cases

• Regulatory affairs — every open consultation touching your CFR title, ranked by how soon it closes.
• Public affairs and lobbying — where comment windows are still open, and how much time is left to file.
• Compliance planning — final rules and their effective dates, so deadlines reach the calendar before they reach you.
• Competitive and policy monitoring — what a given agency is proposing, continuously.
• Legal research — docket numbers, RINs and CFR references for follow-up on Regulations.gov.

Running this as a scheduled watch

Comment periods are short and they do not reopen. This is the Actor where a weekly schedule matters most: missing the window means losing the right to respond at all.

{
  "documentType": "proposed-rules",
  "openForCommentOnly": true,
  "publishedWithinDays": 7,
  "maxItems": 200
}

Why not a fixed publishedAfter date? A schedule replays the same input every time, so a fixed date returns — and re-charges — the same documents at every run. publishedWithinDays moves the window on its own.

---

Limits, honestly

• Deadlines come from the source. Agencies extend and reopen comment periods; a date read today can move tomorrow. Re-run before relying on it.
• daysUntilCommentClose is calculated against the run date, so a stored export ages. The dates themselves do not.
• Not every document carries a comment or effective date — notices often carry neither. Those sort last rather than being dropped.
• The API stops paginating deep result sets. Narrow by agency, CFR title or date rather than sweeping everything.
• Agency filters use the Federal Register's own slugs, which are not always the agency's common name.
• Requests are paced out of courtesy to a free public service.
• Not affiliated with the Office of the Federal Register.

How much does it cost?

You pay per regulatory document returned: $0.003 each, that is $3.00 per 1,000. There is no start fee, and subscription plans pay less per regulatory document.

The example input below asks for up to 300 regulatory documents, so it costs $0.90 at most.

If a run reaches the spending limit you set, the output stops at that limit and never goes past it. You are never charged for rows that were not delivered.

Use Federal Register Scraper as an API

Call it from your own code with the Apify client, here in Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("DataIO/federal-register-comment-deadlines").call(run_input={
    'documentType': 'proposed-rules',
    'openForCommentOnly': True,
    'searchTerm': 'artificial intelligence',
    'maxItems': 300,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

It also works from JavaScript, Make, Zapier, n8n, and from AI agents through the Apify MCP server.

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FAQ

Is it legal to use this data?

The actor reads public data from its official source, without logging in and without bypassing any access control. What you do with the data, for example contacting people listed in it, is your responsibility under the laws that apply to you, such as GDPR in Europe.

Can I run it on a schedule?

Yes. See Running this as a scheduled watch above: use the rolling-window setting so each run returns only what is new.

Can AI agents use it?

Yes. It is available through the Apify MCP server, and every input field is described in its input schema, so an agent can call it directly.