Federal Register Scraper

Every rule, proposed rule, notice and executive order published in the US Federal Register — with comment deadlines, dockets and CFR parts — as clean JSON.

The Federal Register is the daily journal of the US government: every final rule, proposed rule, agency notice, executive order and proclamation is published there. This Actor scrapes the US Federal Register by keyword, agency, document type and publication date, or from any federalregister.gov search, agency or document URL. Each document comes back with its title, abstract, action, dates text, publication and effective dates, comment deadline, agencies, docket IDs, regulation identifier numbers (RINs), CFR parts affected, topics, significance under Executive Order 12866, the Federal Register citation and page range, and links to the federalregister.gov page, the official PDF, the public-inspection PDF and the regulations.gov comment page. Optionally add each document's full plain text, or read today's public-inspection list before documents are published. No API key, no login and no proxy. Built for regulatory affairs and compliance teams, government-relations and lobbying firms, law firms, policy researchers, journalists, and anyone feeding regulations into an AI or NLP pipeline.

⚡ Quick start

{
  "startUrls": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%5Bagencies%5D%5B%5D=environmental-protection-agency&conditions%5Btype%5D%5B%5D=PRORULE&order=newest"
    }
  ],
  "searchTerms": ["artificial intelligence"],
  "maxItems": 5
}

🧩 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
startUrls	array	no	—	federalregister.gov pages: a document search (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/search?conditions%5Bterm%5D=…), an agency page (https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies/food-and-drug-administration), a document page (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/08/2026-20612/…), or today's public-inspection list (https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/current).
searchTerms	array	no	—	Words or phrases to find in the full text of documents, one search per line. Quote a phrase for an exact match ("supply chain").
agencies	array	no	—	Only return documents from these agencies, by slug, name or short name, such as environmental-protection-agency, Food and Drug Administration or SEC.
documentTypes	array	no	—	Only return these types: RULE (final rules), PRORULE (proposed rules), NOTICE or PRESDOCU (presidential documents).
dateFrom	string	no	—	Only return documents published on or after this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
dateTo	string	no	—	Only return documents published on or before this date (YYYY-MM-DD).
significantOnly	boolean	no	false	Only return documents deemed significant under Executive Order 12866.
sortBy	string	no	"newest"	Order of search results: newest, oldest or relevance (best match for the search terms).
includeFullText	boolean	no	false	Add the complete plain text of every document to its row. Adds one request per document.
maxItems	integer	no	—	Maximum number of documents per URL or search term. The input form starts at 5; leave it empty for every matching document, up to 10,000 per search.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{ "useApifyProxy": false }	Proxy settings. The Federal Register needs no proxy.

Add Federal Register URLs, search phrases, or both. The agency, type, date and significance filters apply to all of them, except where a URL sets its own filter of the same kind. With filters but no URL or search term, the filters alone make one search. The easiest way to build a search is to run it on federalregister.gov with its filters and paste the address bar. On today's public-inspection list, the agency and type filters apply; dates and significance do not.

📤 Output

Each document is one dataset row, marked by stage: published for a document in the Federal Register, publicInspection for one filed and scheduled for publication but not yet published. A document reached through two pages of the same search is returned once.

Fields

Field	Type	Description
stage	string	published or publicInspection.
documentNumber	string	Federal Register document number, such as 2026-20612.
title	string	Document title.
type	string	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice or Presidential Document.
subtype	string	For presidential documents: Executive Order, Proclamation, Memorandum and so on.
abstract	string	The document's summary.
action	string	The action taken, such as Final rule. or Notice of public meeting.
dates	string	The dates section as written: effective date, comment deadline, meeting dates.
publicationDate	string	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD); for public inspection, the scheduled date.
effectiveOn	string	Date the rule takes effect.
commentsCloseOn	string	Last day to submit comments.
signingDate	string	Date a presidential document was signed.
filedAt	string	When a public-inspection document was filed. null for published documents.
agencies	array	Issuing agencies, each with name and slug.
docketIds	array	Agency docket numbers.
regulationIdNumbers	array	Regulation identifier numbers (RINs), which link the document to the Unified Agenda.
cfrReferences	array	Parts of the Code of Federal Regulations affected, such as 40 CFR 52.
topics	array	Subject terms from the CFR index.
significant	boolean	Whether the document is significant under Executive Order 12866. null when not stated.
president	string	President who issued a presidential document.
executiveOrderNumber	string	Executive order number.
presidentialDocumentNumber	string	Proclamation, memorandum or executive order number.
citation	string	Federal Register citation, such as 91 FR 64321.
volume	number	Federal Register volume.
startPage	number	First page in the printed Federal Register.
endPage	number	Last page in the printed Federal Register.
pageLength	number	Number of pages.
url	string	The document's page on federalregister.gov.
pdfUrl	string	The official PDF from the Government Publishing Office.
publicInspectionPdfUrl	string	The PDF filed for public inspection before publication.
regulationsDotGovUrl	string	The document on regulations.gov.
commentUrl	string	The regulations.gov page to submit a comment, while comments are open.
commentCount	number	Comments received on regulations.gov.
excerpt	string	For a search term, the passage that matched; otherwise the start of the abstract.
fullText	string	With includeFullText: the document's complete plain text. null when off.

💡 Use cases

• Regulatory monitoring — track every new rule and proposed rule from the agencies that regulate your industry, every morning.
• Comment-period tracking — list open proposed rules with their comment deadlines and regulations.gov links, so no deadline is missed.
• Executive actions — collect executive orders, proclamations and memoranda as they are signed and published.
• Policy research — follow a topic such as "artificial intelligence", "PFAS" or "tariffs" across every agency over time.
• Early warning — read documents on public inspection the day before they are published.
• AI and NLP pipelines — feed full rule texts into summarisation, impact analysis or regulatory-change detection.

❓ FAQ

• Do I need an API key or an account? No. The Federal Register is public, and the Actor needs no key, login or proxy.
• How far back does it go? Federal Register documents are searchable from 1994 onwards.
• Does a search return every match? The Federal Register returns up to 10,000 documents per search. Narrow a broad search with agencies, document types or a date window, or split it into several date windows.
• How do I find an agency's slug? Open the agency's page on federalregister.gov: the slug is the last part of its address, such as environmental-protection-agency. You can also type the agency's full name or short name (EPA, FDA). A short name several agencies share resolves to the top-level agency, and the log says so.
• What is public inspection? Documents are filed for public inspection, usually the day before publication. Add https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/current to read today's list early.
• Why is the full text missing on some rows? Full text is fetched only with includeFullText, and a document whose text cannot be downloaded keeps null rather than failing the run. Every row still links to the official PDF.
• Why did a run return fewer documents than expected? The filters may be narrower than you think, or an agency name was not recognised; the log names any agency it could not find. Open an issue if something looks off.

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🤝 Anyx Solutions

We build custom scrapers and data-extraction pipelines.

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🖼 Image credit

Image credit: federalregister.gov