Federal Register Regulatory Notices Scraper

Extract rules, proposed rules, notices, presidential documents, agency metadata, comment deadlines, PDF links, and structured regulatory summaries from the public FederalRegister.gov API.

This actor is built for compliance teams, policy analysts, legal teams, lobbyists, government affairs teams, civic-tech builders, and data teams that need repeatable Federal Register monitoring without writing custom API pagination code.

What does Federal Register Regulatory Notices Scraper do?

It searches FederalRegister.gov documents and saves clean dataset rows.

It supports keyword search.

It supports agency filters.

It supports document type filters.

It supports publication date filters.

It supports comment deadline filters.

It returns official Federal Register HTML URLs.

It returns PDF URLs when available.

It returns public inspection PDF URLs when available.

It returns abstracts and search snippets.

It returns agencies as both names and structured metadata.

It can include the raw FederalRegister.gov API object for audit workflows.

Who is it for?

Compliance teams can monitor new rules and notices that affect regulated operations.

Legal teams can track proposed rules and comment windows.

Government affairs teams can follow agency actions by topic.

Policy analysts can build datasets for regulation trend analysis.

Consultants can schedule searches for client-specific regulatory topics.

Researchers can export Federal Register metadata to spreadsheets, BI tools, or databases.

Developers can use the actor as a hosted Federal Register extractor with an API, schedules, webhooks, and MCP access.

Why use this actor?

FederalRegister.gov already exposes a strong API, but production workflows still need pagination, normalization, schemas, scheduling, exports, and integration endpoints.

This actor wraps the public API in an Apify actor that is easy to run manually, schedule daily, call from code, connect to Make/Zapier, or query from Claude through MCP.

It is HTTP/API based, so it does not use a browser and does not require proxies for normal runs.

What data can you extract?

Field	Description
title	Federal Register document title
documentType	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, or Presidential Document
abstract	Official abstract when provided
publicationDate	Publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format
agencyNames	Display-friendly agency names
agencies	Structured agency metadata with slug, id, raw name, and URL
documentNumber	Federal Register document number
citation	Citation when returned by the API
htmlUrl	Official FederalRegister.gov document page
pdfUrl	GovInfo PDF URL when available
publicInspectionPdfUrl	Public inspection PDF URL when available
commentUrl	Comment submission URL when available
commentsCloseOn	Comment deadline when available
excerpts	Search snippets with matched terms
sourceUrl	Federal Register API URL used for the page
raw	Optional original API object
scrapedAt	Timestamp of extraction

How much does it cost to scrape Federal Register regulatory notices?

The actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

There is a small run start fee.

There is a per-document charge for each dataset item saved.

Use maxItems to control run size.

A small daily monitoring job for one agency and one topic can stay inexpensive.

Larger historical backfills cost more because they save more Federal Register documents.

Input options

Search term

Use term for a keyword or phrase such as cybersecurity, climate, bank capital, or medical device.

Agencies

Use FederalRegister.gov agency slugs or IDs.

Examples:

• environmental-protection-agency
• homeland-security-department
• securities-and-exchange-commission
• food-and-drug-administration

Document types

Choose any combination of:

• RULE — final rules
• PRORULE — proposed rules
• NOTICE — notices
• PRESDOCU — presidential documents

Publication dates

Use publicationDateFrom and publicationDateTo in YYYY-MM-DD format.

Comment deadlines

Use commentDateFrom and commentDateTo to focus on open or upcoming comment windows.

Sort order

Use relevance, newest, or oldest.

Maximum documents

Use maxItems to limit the number of saved records.

Raw metadata

Set includeRaw to true when you need the full FederalRegister.gov API object for audits or custom downstream processing.

Example input

{
  "term": "cybersecurity",
  "agencies": ["homeland-security-department"],
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE", "NOTICE"],
  "publicationDateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "sortBy": "newest",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "includeRaw": false
}

Example output

{
  "title": "Cybersecurity in the Marine Transportation System",
  "documentType": "Rule",
  "abstract": "The Coast Guard is updating its maritime security regulations...",
  "publicationDate": "2025-01-17",
  "agencyNames": ["Homeland Security Department", "Coast Guard"],
  "documentNumber": "2025-00708",
  "htmlUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/...",
  "pdfUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...pdf",
  "commentsCloseOn": null,
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-30T00:00:00.000Z"
}

How to run

1. Open the actor on Apify.

2. Enter a search term.

3. Optionally add agencies, document types, and date filters.

4. Set maxItems.

5. Run the actor.

6. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or HTML.

Scheduling ideas

Run daily for cybersecurity and DHS.

Run weekly for EPA proposed rules.

Run monthly for SEC notices.

Run ahead of compliance review meetings.

Run with comment deadline filters to monitor open consultation windows.

Integration workflows

Send new records to Slack when a relevant proposed rule appears.

Append daily results to Google Sheets.

Store historical Federal Register data in BigQuery or Snowflake.

Trigger a webhook when a comment deadline is approaching.

Feed new regulatory notices into an internal compliance dashboard.

API usage with Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper').call({
  term: 'cybersecurity',
  agencies: ['homeland-security-department'],
  documentTypes: ['RULE', 'PRORULE', 'NOTICE'],
  maxItems: 100,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

API usage with Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('APIFY_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper').call(run_input={
    'term': 'cybersecurity',
    'agencies': ['homeland-security-department'],
    'documentTypes': ['RULE', 'PRORULE', 'NOTICE'],
    'maxItems': 100,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

API usage with cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"term":"cybersecurity","maxItems":100}'

MCP access

Use the Apify MCP server to run this actor from Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or another MCP client.

MCP URL:

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper

Claude Code setup:

$claude mcp add apify https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper

Claude Desktop JSON config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify-federal-register": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=automation-lab/federal-register-regulatory-notices-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts:

• "Run the Federal Register scraper for EPA climate proposed rules from 2025."
• "Find DHS cybersecurity notices with comment deadlines."
• "Export the latest SEC notices about disclosure rules."

Tips for better results

Use official agency slugs from FederalRegister.gov.

Keep maxItems small for monitoring runs.

Increase maxItems for historical backfills.

Use date filters to avoid mixing old and new documents.

Use includeRaw only when you need extra metadata.

Use schedules for recurring compliance monitoring.

FAQ

Can I monitor one agency only?

Yes. Add FederalRegister.gov agency slugs or IDs in the agencies input.

Can I schedule daily regulatory alerts?

Yes. Use Apify schedules and webhooks to run the same search daily and send new results downstream.

Troubleshooting

Why did I get zero results?

Your term, agency, type, or date filters may be too narrow. Remove one filter and try again.

Why are comment fields missing?

Not every Federal Register document has a comment URL or comment deadline.

Why are excerpts formatted with HTML?

FederalRegister.gov returns search snippets with matched terms wrapped in HTML. This helps downstream tools highlight matches.

Legality and source terms

This actor uses public FederalRegister.gov endpoints.

It does not bypass login, paywalls, or access controls.

You are responsible for using exported data in compliance with applicable laws and your organization's policies.

Related scrapers

Try other automation-lab actors for government, compliance, and public-record monitoring workflows:

• https://apify.com/automation-lab/website-contact-finder
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/google-news-scraper
• https://apify.com/automation-lab/rss-feed-scraper

Changelog

Initial version: API-backed Federal Register document search with keyword, agency, type, date, comment-deadline, and raw metadata options.

Support

If a Federal Register API change breaks extraction, open an issue on the actor page and include your input, run ID, and expected result.