Regulation Change Monitor: Never Miss a Comment Deadline

Watch the US Federal Register for rules, proposed rules and notices on any subject. You get the agency, what the document does, the CFR parts it touches, when the comment period closes and how many days are left — with new documents and moved deadlines flagged on every run after the first.

Built for teams who have to file a comment, brief an executive, or change a process before a rule bites.

How it works

flowchart LR
    A["Subjects or agencies"] --> B["Federal Register API"]
    B --> C["Rules, proposed rules,<br/>notices"]
    C --> D["Comment deadline<br/>+ days left"]
    D --> E{"Since last run?"}
    E -->|not seen| F["new-document"]
    E -->|deadline moved| G["comment-deadline-changed"]
    F --> H[("Regulatory feed")]
    G --> H

No scraping and no API key. This reads the Federal Register's own public API, so it does not break when the site is restyled and it needs no proxy or browser.

Built for

• Compliance and regulatory affairs tracking what is coming
• Public affairs and government relations who need to file before the window shuts
• Trade associations briefing members on proposed rules
• In-house legal watching the CFR parts that govern their products
• Consultancies selling regulatory intelligence to clients

Input

{
  "terms": ["data privacy", "biometric"],
  "documentTypes": ["PRORULE"],
  "commentsOpenOnly": true,
  "onlyChanged": true
}

Setting	What it does
terms	Subjects to watch — multi-word entries stay a phrase
agencySlugs	Limit to agencies, e.g. food-and-drug-administration
documentTypes	PRORULE is where you can still change the outcome
lastDays	How far back to search
commentsOpenOnly	Only what you can still comment on
significantOnly	Only documents flagged a significant regulatory action
onlyChanged	Return nothing on a quiet run
timeBudgetSecs	How long a run may spend paging before returning what it has

Output

{
  "documentNumber": "2026-19290",
  "title": "Privacy Act Regulations",
  "type": "Proposed Rule",
  "agency": "Commodity Futures Trading Commission",
  "action": "Reopening of comment period.",
  "abstract": "The Commission is reopening the comment period for this NPRM for an additional ten days.",
  "publicationDate": "2026-09-21",
  "commentsCloseOn": "2026-10-01",
  "daysToComment": 10,
  "commentPeriodOpen": true,
  "effectiveOn": "2026-05-06",
  "cfrReferences": ["17 CFR 146"],
  "regulationIdNumbers": ["3038-AF26"],
  "citation": "91 FR 59711",
  "url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/21/2026-19290/privacy-act-regulations",
  "changeType": "comment-deadline-changed",
  "previousCommentsCloseOn": "2026-06-05",
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-21T19:01:18.204Z"
}

daysToComment is the field to alert on. It is the whole point: a proposed rule you find with 40 days left is an opportunity, and the same rule found with 2 days left is a fire drill.

Comment deadlines move. Agencies extend and reopen comment periods all the time — the example above is exactly that. A monitor that only reported documents it had never seen before would tell you nothing when the deadline you had diarised quietly shifted. That comes back as comment-deadline-changed with the old date.

cfrReferences is what to match against your own compliance register: 21 CFR 101 means your food labelling obligations just moved.

Turn it into a filing alert

{
  "agencySlugs": ["environmental-protection-agency"],
  "terms": ["emissions"],
  "documentTypes": ["PRORULE"],
  "commentsOpenOnly": true,
  "onlyChanged": true
}

Schedule it daily. The first run records what is already open without alerting; every run after returns only new documents and shifted deadlines.

Run it as an API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/arched_friend~regulation-change-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "terms": ["artificial intelligence"],
    "documentTypes": ["PRORULE"],
    "commentsOpenOnly": true
  }'

Pricing

You pay $0.002 for each document returned. A run that finds nothing new costs nothing.

Watching a subject daily	Monthly cost
Reading the Federal Register by hand	it publishes hundreds of pages a day
Regulatory intelligence platforms	$5,000 to $50,000 per year
This Actor	around $1.20 per month at 20 new documents a day

Common questions

Why is significant usually null? Because the Federal Register only carries the flag on some documents. It stays null rather than defaulting to false, since "not flagged" and "not significant" are different claims. significantOnly therefore keeps only what was explicitly flagged, and is a deliberately narrow filter.

Why do some documents have no comment deadline? Final rules and many notices have no comment period. Those come back with commentPeriodOpen: null rather than false — there is no window, as opposed to a window that has closed.

How far back can it search? The Federal Register API covers 1994 onward, but a result set is capped at 10,000 documents across 50 pages. Narrow by agency or type for a historical pull.

Does this cover state regulations? No. The Federal Register is US federal only.

Do I need an API key? No. The Federal Register API is open and keyless.

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