Grants.gov Opportunity Monitor API

Search active U.S. federal grant opportunities through the official public Grants.gov API, then emit only opportunities that are new or changed since the previous run. The Actor needs no Grants.gov account, API key, login, cookie, proxy, or browser automation.

• Run the Actor on Apify
• Official source: Grants.gov API Guide

Ready-made public examples:

• Daily small-business federal grant alerts
• Daily nonprofit federal grant alerts

This is a factual search and change feed. It does not decide whether an organization is eligible, recommend an application, estimate the chance of an award, or promise funding.

Input

{
  "keyword": "artificial intelligence",
  "statuses": ["posted", "forecasted"],
  "agencyCodes": [],
  "eligibilityCodes": [],
  "fundingCategoryCodes": [],
  "limit": 25,
  "monitorId": "ai-grants"
}

Use Grants.gov agency codes such as NSF or HHS-NIH11. Applicant eligibility codes are the two-digit values returned by Grants.gov; for example, 23 is the small-business code. Keep one stable monitorId for one exact set of filters. Changing the query under the same ID fails before a source request so unrelated searches cannot share a baseline.

Monitoring semantics

1. The first run stores the current results and emits each one as new.
2. Later runs emit a new row for an unseen opportunity and one changed row when a watched summary field changes.
3. Unchanged opportunities create no dataset row and no result event charge.
4. Opportunities that leave the top result window are not called removed or closed; absence from a limited search is not proof of a status change.
5. Reuse the same monitorId in an Apify Task scheduled daily or weekly.

The watched facts are opportunity number, title, agency, open and close dates, status, document type, and CFDA numbers. Every row links to the official Grants.gov detail page and includes the local observation time. Search titles and agency names are untrusted source text; the Actor does not send them to an AI model or execute their contents.

Copy-paste REST quickstart

Keep your Apify token in an environment variable and send it in a header:

curl -X POST \
  'https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/ai-coding-radar~grants-gov-opportunity-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?clean=1' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $APIFY_API_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"keyword":"artificial intelligence","statuses":["posted","forecasted"],"limit":25,"monitorId":"ai-grants"}'

The generated API client's empty {} input is also safe: it uses the same bounded artificial intelligence, posted plus forecasted, 25-result query shown in the Store schema. Set a unique monitorId for every real alert.

The Grants.gov search2 response includes service metadata that the Actor does not persist or expose. It does not call the detail or attachment endpoints, so it avoids downloading long descriptions, contact records, or application files that are not needed for a change alert.

No-code automation

Import the ready-made n8n daily monitoring workflow and follow the n8n and Make setup recipe. The example uses a stable monitorId (n8n-ai-grants) and limit: 10. At the current published event prices, even ten changed rows cost at most 10 * $0.015 + $0.00005 = $0.15005 before tax or account-level charges. The workflow does not run the Actor until you manually execute or activate it with your own Apify token. Connect its final node to a Slack, email, database, or private webhook that you control. Do not put tokens or delivery credentials in the exported JSON.

Pay-per-event setup

Suggested launch prices are explicit and only successful result events are charged:

Event	Meaning	Suggested price
apify-actor-start	One Actor start	$0.00005
grant-opportunity	One newly observed opportunity	$0.0075
grant-change	One previously observed opportunity whose summary changed	$0.015

Source failures, invalid input, unchanged results, and total search hit counts are not charged as opportunity or change events. Prices are configured in the Apify publication wizard; this repository does not claim revenue.

Source and boundaries

• Uses only POST https://api.grants.gov/v1/api/search2.
• Grants.gov documents search2 as unrestricted and requiring no authentication.
• Does not download attachments or full opportunity descriptions.
• Does not apply, send messages, rank applicants, infer eligibility, or provide financial, legal, or grant-writing advice.
• Preserves source status and dates instead of treating an unavailable source as an unchanged monitor.

Local checks

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v
python3 -m compileall -q grants_gov_opportunity_monitor
npx --yes apify-cli validate-schema
python3 -m grants_gov_opportunity_monitor.main --fixture tests/fixtures/search.json