🚢 USCG PSIX Vessel Registry Scraper

Look up any vessel in the official U.S. Coast Guard registry and get its record as a flat row. Search by name and the Actor returns every matching vessel with its official number, hull identification number, call sign, flag, service type, status and build year. No API key, no registration, no login.

The Coast Guard publishes the Port State Information Exchange, known as PSIX, at cgmix.uscg.mil. It is the authoritative record of vessels documented in the United States. The site answers one name at a time through a search form, there is no bulk download, and nothing on the page can be exported. This Actor drives that search for you and writes every matching vessel into a dataset you can open in a spreadsheet.

Who uses it	What they use the registry for
🛥 Buyers of marine businesses	Confirming the boats on a seller's asset list are documented, active and the age the seller claims
📋 Marine lenders and insurers	Verifying official number, hull identification number and flag before writing a policy or a loan
⚓ Fleet and compliance teams	Keeping an internal vessel list matched to the Coast Guard's own record
📰 Researchers and journalists	Building a dataset of documented vessels by name pattern, service type or build year

📋 What it does

💡 Why it matters: in a deal that includes vessels, the registry is the cheapest way to check that what is written on the asset schedule is real. One search per name, in bulk, exported.

• 🔎 Searches PSIX by vessel name. Partial names work. Searching liberty returns LIBERTY CALL, A S LIBERTY and every other match.
• 🆔 Returns the identifiers that matter. Official number, hull identification number and call sign, which are what a title search, a lien check or an insurance file will ask for.
• 🏴 Flag, service and status. Whether the vessel is active, what it is registered to do, and which country flags it.
• 📅 Build year, as the Coast Guard records it rather than as the seller remembers it.
• 📦 One row per vessel, the same fields every run, so results from several searches append into a single clean dataset.
• 💾 Exports to CSV, Excel, JSON or XML, from the run page or the API.

📊 Output

Every vessel is one flat row. N/A means the Coast Guard publishes no value for that field, and null means the field did not appear for that record.

Field	Type	Description
🚢 vesselName	string	Vessel name exactly as the Coast Guard records it
✅ serviceStatus	string	Registry status, for example Active
🆔 vin	string	The vessel's official Coast Guard number
🔤 callSign	string	Radio call sign, where one is assigned
🏷 hin	string	Hull identification number, the vessel equivalent of a VIN
⚙️ service	string	Registered service, for example Recreational
🏴 flag	string	Flag state, for example UNITED STATES
📅 buildYear	string	Year of build as recorded
🔗 sourceUrl	string	The PSIX search page the row came from
🕒 scrapedAt	string	ISO timestamp of collection
⚠️ error	string	null on a normal row
🔧 detailButton	string	Internal control id for the row's detail page. Kept for traceability, of no use in analysis

Example rows

{
  "vesselName": "LIBERTY CALL",
  "serviceStatus": "Active",
  "vin": "1141956",
  "callSign": "N/A",
  "hin": "HG000191L203",
  "service": "Recreational",
  "flag": "UNITED STATES",
  "buildYear": "2003",
  "sourceUrl": "https://cgmix.uscg.mil/PSIX/PSIXSearch.aspx",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T17:33:05.065Z",
  "error": null
}

{
  "vesselName": "A S LIBERTY",
  "serviceStatus": "Active",
  "vin": "CG1195029",
  "callSign": "N/A",
  "hin": null,
  "service": null,
  "flag": "UNKNOWN",
  "buildYear": "N/A",
  "sourceUrl": "https://cgmix.uscg.mil/PSIX/PSIXSearch.aspx",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-09-14T17:33:05.228Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

	What you get
The official record	Data comes from the Coast Guard's own database, not from a broker listing or a tracking site.
No credentials	The PSIX search is public. No API key, no account, no rate-limit negotiation.
Bulk instead of one at a time	The site answers one name per search. Here you set a limit and walk away.
The same fields every run	Append a hundred searches into one dataset without cleaning columns.
You pay per row	No subscription. A search that returns nothing costs nothing.

🚀 How to use it

1. Create a free Apify account. New accounts start with $5 of credit.
2. Open the Actor and select Try for free.
3. Type a vessel name, or part of one, into vesselName.
4. Set maxItems to cap the run.
5. Select Start, then export from the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON or XML.

A first run:

{
  "vesselName": "liberty",
  "maxItems": 10
}

A larger pull:

{
  "vesselName": "liberty",
  "maxItems": 200
}

⚙️ Input

Field	Required	Description
vesselName	No	Vessel name or part of one. PSIX matches on substrings
maxItems	No	Maximum rows to collect in a run, from 1 to 1,000,000

💰 Pricing

Pay per result. No subscription, and no Apify platform usage on top.

Apify plan	Free	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Platinum	Diamond
Per vessel row	$0.021	$0.0203	$0.0197	$0.019	$0.019	$0.019

Rows collected	Cost on the Free plan
100	$2.10
1,000	$21.00
10,000	$210.00

Free plan runs return up to 10 rows as a preview. Any paid Apify plan lifts that to 1,000,000 per run.

🔌 Integrate with any app

The dataset is available through the Apify API as soon as the run finishes. Use run-sync-get-dataset-items for a one-shot call, webhooks to trigger what happens next, or the Make, Zapier, Airbyte and LangChain integrations listed on the Actor page.

🤖 Use with an AI agent

Give an agent live access to the registry over the Model Context Protocol:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=acquistion-automation/uscg-psix-vessel-incidents-scraper"

Then ask it in plain language to look a vessel up and read the result back.

❓ Frequently asked questions

Does this return accidents, casualties or inspection reports? No. It returns the registry record for each vessel: identifiers, flag, service, status and build year. Inspection and casualty history lives on the PSIX detail page, which this Actor does not open.

Why did I get several vessels for one name? PSIX matches substrings. A search for liberty returns every documented vessel whose name contains it. Filter the dataset afterwards, or search a more specific name.

Why is a field N/A or empty? The Coast Guard does not publish every field for every vessel. N/A is what the page itself shows. null means the field was absent from that record.

Which vessels are in PSIX? Vessels documented in the United States, and foreign vessels that have called at U.S. ports. A pleasure boat registered only with a state will usually not appear.

Do I need a proxy? No. Requests and retries are handled inside the Actor and included in the price.

What can I export? CSV, Excel, JSON and XML from the run page, or JSON straight from the API.

🔗 More from Acquisition Automation Co.

• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper
• PublicSurplus Scraper
• IRS Exempt Organizations Scraper
• Clutch Agencies Scraper
• BizBuySell Scraper

About Acquisition Automation Co.

We build automation for people buying businesses. The repetitive part of an acquisition search, checking listings, pulling public records, tracking owners and assets, is work a machine should do, so the buyer's time goes into judging deals instead of collecting them.

We add new Actors regularly. If there is a source you need and do not see here, tell us.

🆘 Support

Open an issue in the Issues tab of this Actor with your run ID, the input you used, and what you expected to get back.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the United States Coast Guard or any government agency. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using that data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable law.