Regulations.gov Scraper

Search federal regulations, proposed rules, and public comments from Regulations.gov. Monitor regulatory changes by agency, keyword, or docket. Works without API key.

What does Regulations.gov Scraper do?

Regulations.gov Scraper extracts federal regulatory data from the official Regulations.gov API. Three modes:

• Search — Find regulatory documents by keyword, agency, type, and date
• Docket — Get all documents in a specific regulatory docket
• Comments — Extract public comments on proposed rules and regulations

Who is it for

• Regulatory compliance teams — Monitor new rules affecting your industry, export findings to Google Sheets for weekly review cycles, set up alerts when relevant agencies publish proposed rules
• Policy researchers — Track regulatory trends across agencies and topics, compare rulemaking frequency over time, build datasets for academic or institutional analysis
• Government affairs and lobbying professionals — Follow active comment periods, identify which dockets are open for input, analyze public comment volume to gauge stakeholder engagement
• Legal professionals — Search regulations relevant to specific matters or clients, track docket timelines from proposed rule to final rule, export to document management workflows
• Investigative journalists — Investigate regulatory actions and policy changes across administrations, surface documents related to specific companies or industries, trace comment patterns on controversial rules

Use cases

• Regulatory compliance — Monitor new rules affecting your industry
• Policy research — Track regulatory trends by agency and topic
• Government affairs — Follow proposed rules during comment periods
• Legal research — Search for regulations relevant to specific legal matters
• Lobbying intelligence — Analyze public comments on proposed regulations
• Journalism — Investigate regulatory actions and policy changes

Sample output

Document data

Field	Example
title	Request for Information: AI in Clinical Care
documentType	Notice
agencyId	HHS
docketId	HHS-ONC-2026-0001
postedDate	2026-01-05
commentEndDate	2026-02-24
openForComment	false

Pricing

Event	FREE	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD	PLATINUM	DIAMOND
Start (per run)	$0.00575	$0.005	$0.0039	$0.003	$0.002	$0.0014
Document scraped	$0.00115	$0.001	$0.00078	$0.0006	$0.0004	$0.00028

Pricing scales with your Apify plan. BRONZE (free plan) users pay the base rate; higher plans receive volume discounts.

Free plan estimate: ~200 regulatory documents per month on the Apify Free plan.

How to search federal regulations

1. Go to the Regulations.gov Scraper page on Apify
2. Select mode (search, docket, or comments)
3. Enter keywords, agency, or docket ID
4. Set filters (document type, date range, open for comment)
5. Click Start and download results as JSON, CSV, or Excel

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	string	search, docket, or comments
searchTerms	string[]	Keywords to search
docketIds	string[]	Regulatory docket IDs
documentType	string	Notice, Proposed Rule, Rule, Supporting Material
agencyId	string	Agency filter (EPA, FDA, DOD, etc.)
postedAfter	string	Documents posted after date (YYYY-MM-DD)
postedBefore	string	Documents posted before date (YYYY-MM-DD)
openForComment	boolean	Only open-for-comment documents
sortBy	string	Sort order
apiKey	string	Optional API key for higher rate limits
maxResults	number	Max documents to return (default: 50)

Output fields

Document output

type, documentId, documentType, title, agencyId, docketId, postedDate, commentEndDate, openForComment, withinCommentPeriod, frDocNum, objectId, withdrawn, url, searchTerm, scrapedAt

Comment output

type, commentId, documentId, title, postedDate, agencyId, commentOnDocumentId, docketId, withdrawn, url, scrapedAt

Tips

• Agency IDs — Common agencies: EPA, FDA, DOD, HHS, DOE, NIST, FTC, SEC, USDA, DOT, DOL, DOJ, DHS.
• Docket IDs — Found on regulations.gov document pages. Format: AGENCY-SUBAGENCY-YEAR-NUMBER (e.g. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0001).
• Comment periods — Use openForComment: true to find regulations currently accepting public comments.
• API key — The actor works without a key using DEMO_KEY. For higher rate limits, get a free key at api.data.gov/signup.
• Monitoring — Schedule this actor to run daily with search terms relevant to your industry.

Integrations

• → Google Sheets — Build automated compliance monitoring dashboards; schedule the actor weekly and append new regulations to a shared spreadsheet for your team
• → Slack or webhook — Set up alerts when new proposed rules are published by agencies you track; trigger notifications when comment periods open or close
• → Zapier or Make — Route new regulations into project management tools (Notion, Airtable, Jira) to assign review tasks when relevant dockets are updated
• → Apify API / custom pipeline — Stream regulatory documents into your own database or LLM pipeline for summarization, classification, or compliance scoring

API usage

Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/regulations-gov-scraper').call({
    mode: 'search',
    searchTerms: ['artificial intelligence'],
    agencyId: 'NIST',
    maxResults: 50,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_TOKEN')
run = client.actor('automation-lab/regulations-gov-scraper').call(run_input={
    'mode': 'search',
    'searchTerms': ['climate change'],
    'documentType': 'Proposed Rule',
    'openForComment': True,
    'maxResults': 100,
})
items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~regulations-gov-scraper/runs" \
  -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"mode": "search", "searchTerms": ["cybersecurity"], "agencyId": "DHS", "maxResults": 50}'

Use with AI agents via MCP

Regulations.gov Scraper is available as a tool for AI assistants via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Setup for Claude Code

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/regulations-gov-scraper"

Setup for Claude Desktop, Cursor, or VS Code

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/regulations-gov-scraper"
        }
    }
}

Example prompts

• "Search for EPA regulations about air quality"
• "Find recent proposed rules from the FCC"

Learn more in the Apify MCP documentation.

Legality

Regulations.gov Scraper accesses publicly available data through the official Regulations.gov API. This is a U.S. government API designed for public access to federal rulemaking data. All regulatory documents and public comments are public record.

FAQ

Q: Do I need an API key? A: No. The actor works with a built-in demo key. For higher rate limits, get a free key at api.data.gov/signup.

Q: What types of documents are available? A: Notices, proposed rules, final rules, supporting materials, and public comments from 100+ federal agencies.

Q: Can I monitor specific regulations? A: Yes. Use docket mode with a docket ID to track all documents and updates in a specific rulemaking.

Q: How current is the data? A: Regulations.gov is updated continuously. Documents appear as agencies publish them in the Federal Register.

Q: I'm hitting rate limits — what can I do? A: The built-in DEMO_KEY has low rate limits. Get a free API key at api.data.gov/signup and pass it via the apiKey input parameter for much higher limits.

Q: Comments mode returns very few results — is something wrong? A: Comments are linked to specific documents. Make sure you provide a valid docketId or documentId. Not all documents accept public comments, and some comment periods may have closed with few submissions.

Q: How can I monitor a specific industry's regulations? A: Combine filters by agency and keywords relevant to your industry. For example, to monitor environmental compliance, search for documents from EPA with keywords like "air quality", "emissions", or "water pollution". Schedule the actor to run weekly and export results to a database or spreadsheet for trend analysis.

Q: What's the difference between documentType values? A: Notices are informational announcements. Proposed Rules are draft regulations open for public comment. Rules are finalized regulations. Supporting Materials are supplementary documents (studies, impact analyses, etc.). Search results may include multiple document types — use the documentType filter to narrow to specific categories.

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