USAspending.gov Scraper: Awards, Recipients & Aggregates

Export federal spending data from the public USAspending.gov API: award search results, exact award details, subawards, recipient profiles, category totals, and geography aggregates.

📖 At a glance

Field	Details
Source	Official USAspending.gov public API
Authentication	No API key required
Coverage	U.S. federal awards, contracts, grants, recipients, subawards, agencies, NAICS/PSC classifications, and geography aggregates
Geography	State, county, congressional district, country, place of performance, and recipient location views
Best for	USAspending scraper, federal contracts API, grants data extraction, contractor market research, agency spend analysis, geographic funding dashboards
Pricing	$0.001 per saved row

🎯 Features

Feature	Description
Public API	Uses USAspending.gov API v2 directly; no API key is required.
Award search	Search by keywords, fiscal year/date range, agency, recipient text, NAICS, PSC, amount, and award type.
Award details	Fetch full award detail records by USAspending generated award ID.
Subawards	Pull subaward rows for a parent generated award ID.
Recipient profile	Fetch recipient profile records by USAspending recipient hash.
Category aggregates	Export 18 aggregation categories including recipient, NAICS, PSC, agency, county, district, state, country, CFDA, account, object class, program activity, and TAS.
Geography aggregates	Export state, county, district, or country totals with population and per-capita fields when returned by the API.

🚀 Quick Start

{
    "mode": "awards",
    "keywords": ["diabetes"],
    "fiscalYear": 2025,
    "awardTypes": ["A", "B", "C", "D"],
    "maxItems": 100
}

📋 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
mode	string	no	awards	awards, awardDetail, subawards, recipient, byCategory, or geography.
keywords	string[]	no	-	Free-text search terms.
fiscalYear	integer	no	-	Federal fiscal year date range.
dateFrom, dateTo	string	no	-	Explicit YYYY-MM-DD range. Use together.
dateSlice	string	no	none	Split large date ranges by month or quarter.
awardTypes	string[]	no	all groups for award search	USAspending award type codes. Mixed groups are split into valid API requests.
agency	string	no	-	Exact agency name.
agencyType	string	no	awarding	awarding or funding.
agencyTier	string	no	toptier	toptier or subtier.
naicsCodes	string[]	no	-	Required NAICS codes.
excludeNaicsCodes	string[]	no	-	NAICS codes to exclude.
pscCodes	string[]	no	-	PSC codes.
recipientSearch	string	no	-	Recipient text filter for award search.
minAmount, maxAmount	number	no	-	Award amount bounds.
awardId	string	awardDetail/subawards	-	USAspending generated award ID.
recipientId	string	recipient	-	USAspending recipient hash ending in -C or -P.
category	string	byCategory	recipient_duns	Aggregation category.
geoLayer	string	geography	state	state, county, district, or country.
scope	string	geography	place_of_performance	place_of_performance or recipient_location.
spendingLevel	string	no	transactions	Aggregation level for category/geography modes.
maxItems	integer	no	100	Maximum saved records.

📤 Output

Dataset rows are one of:

itemType	Description
award	Normalized award search row with recipient, agencies, amount, NAICS/PSC, performance location, dates, description, and URL.
awardDetail	Full raw award detail record plus key display fields.
subaward	Subaward row for a parent generated award ID.
recipient	Full raw recipient profile record plus key display fields.
category	Aggregate category row with key, name, amount, count, and metadata.
geography	Geographic aggregate row with key, name, amount, population, and per-capita fields.

Example Item

{
    "itemType": "award",
    "awardId": "HT940216C0001",
    "generatedId": "CONT_AWD_HT940216C0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
    "recipient": { "name": "HUMANA GOVERNMENT BUSINESS INC" },
    "amount": 51269205263.03,
    "awardingAgency": "Department of Defense",
    "url": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_HT940216C0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-"
}

🍳 Recipes

NAICS market scan

{
    "mode": "awards",
    "fiscalYear": 2025,
    "naicsCodes": ["524114"],
    "awardTypes": ["A", "B", "C", "D"],
    "maxItems": 500
}

Use this for contractor business development and competitor research in a specific NAICS market.

Congressional district funding

{
    "mode": "geography",
    "geoLayer": "district",
    "fiscalYear": 2025,
    "keywords": ["broadband"],
    "maxItems": 100
}

This produces BI-friendly district rows with spending totals and geographic keys.

Top recipients by category

{
    "mode": "byCategory",
    "category": "recipient_duns",
    "fiscalYear": 2025,
    "agency": "Department of Defense",
    "maxItems": 100
}

Use category output to discover recipient IDs and then fetch exact recipient profiles.

💳 Pricing

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing: $0.001 per saved row. A run fetching 1,000 rows costs approximately $1.00.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. USAspending.gov API v2 is public and does not require an API key.

Why are mixed award type codes split into multiple requests?

USAspending rejects a single award search containing codes from multiple award type groups. The Actor groups codes automatically and emits the matched awardTypeCodes on each row.

How do I fetch award details or subawards?

Run mode: "awards" first and use the returned generatedId as awardId for awardDetail or subawards.

⚠️ Legal & Compliance

USAspending.gov is an official public federal spending data source. This Actor uses the public API with conservative request spacing and stores the data returned by the API. Review USAspending.gov terms and your downstream compliance requirements before making legal, procurement, or investment decisions from exported data.

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🤖 Use with AI agents

This Actor is callable as a tool by any MCP-capable agent — Claude, Cursor, VS Code — or by your own code, with no wrapper and nothing extra to deploy.

Connect over MCP

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=autofacts/usaspending-scraper

In a client that reads an mcpServers configuration block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=autofacts/usaspending-scraper",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" }
    }
  }
}

The agent reads this Actor's parameters and their descriptions straight from the input schema, and the hosted server infers the result field types from the dataset schema — so a model knows what to send and what comes back before it ever calls anything.

Or call the API directly

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/autofacts~usaspending-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"mode": "awards", "keywords": ["diabetes"], "fiscalYear": 2025, "awardTypes": ["A", "B", "C", "D"], "maxItems": 100}'

The response body is the dataset records described above.

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All of them: apify.com/autofacts