USASpending.gov Scraper

Extract federal spending data from USASpending.gov. Search contracts, grants, loans, and awards by keyword, agency, recipient, date range, and amount.

What does USASpending.gov Scraper do?

This actor extracts US federal spending data from the official USASpending.gov API, including:

• Federal contracts — defense contracts, IT services, consulting, research
• Grants — research grants, education funding, community development
• Loans — federal loan programs with amounts and subsidy costs
• IDVs — indefinite delivery vehicles and blanket purchase agreements
• Direct payments — subsidies, entitlements, and other direct federal payments

Why use USASpending.gov Scraper?

• Official government data — sourced directly from the USASpending.gov API, the official source for US federal spending
• No API key needed — the USASpending API is fully public with no registration required
• Powerful filters — search by keyword, agency, recipient, date range, amount, state
• All award types — contracts, grants, loans, IDVs, and direct payments
• Structured output — clean JSON with consistent field names for analysis
• Automatic pagination — handles multi-page results seamlessly

Use cases

• Government contract research — find contracts awarded to specific companies or in specific sectors
• Grant discovery — identify federal grant opportunities and historical awards
• Competitive intelligence — track competitors' government contracts and award amounts
• Policy analysis — analyze federal spending patterns by agency, state, or category
• Investigative journalism — research government spending for reporting
• Business development — identify agencies and programs with active procurement
• Academic research — collect federal spending data for economic and policy studies
• Market sizing — understand government spending in specific industries (AI, cybersecurity, healthcare)

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
keywords	array	—	Search keywords (e.g., artificial intelligence, cybersecurity)
awardType	string	contracts	Award type: contracts, grants, loans, idvs, direct_payments, all
startDate	string	—	Start date (YYYY-MM-DD format)
endDate	string	—	End date (YYYY-MM-DD format)
agency	string	—	Awarding agency name (e.g., Department of Defense, NASA)
recipient	string	—	Recipient/contractor name
minAmount	number	—	Minimum award amount (USD)
maxAmount	number	—	Maximum award amount (USD)
state	string	—	Recipient state (2-letter code: CA, TX, NY)
sortBy	string	Award Amount	Sort field
sortOrder	string	desc	Sort direction: desc or asc
maxResults	number	100	Maximum awards to return

Output example

{
    "awardId": "W56KGZ24C0011",
    "generatedId": "CONT_AWD_W56KGZ24C0011_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
    "recipientName": "ECS FEDERAL, LLC",
    "awardAmount": 118579059,
    "awardingAgency": "Department of Defense",
    "fundingAgency": "Department of Defense",
    "description": "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT EFFORT TO DESIGN AND DEVELOP PROTOTYPES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE...",
    "startDate": "2024-07-31",
    "endDate": "2026-07-30",
    "awardType": "DEFINITIVE CONTRACT",
    "naicsCode": "541715",
    "naicsDescription": "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PHYSICAL, ENGINEERING, AND LIFE SCIENCES",
    "recipientState": "VA",
    "recipientCity": "FAIRFAX",
    "placeOfPerformanceState": "VA",
    "placeOfPerformanceCity": "FAIRFAX",
    "url": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_W56KGZ24C0011_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-03-03T08:47:15.123Z"
}

Pricing

This actor uses a pay-per-event pricing model:

Event	Price
Run started	$0.001
Per award extracted	$0.001

Cost examples

Scenario	Awards	Cost
Quick search (10 awards)	10	$0.011
Sector analysis (50)	50	$0.051
Agency deep dive (200)	200	$0.201
Large dataset (500)	500	$0.501

Platform costs (compute, storage) are additional but minimal.

How to use USASpending.gov Scraper

Via Apify Console

1. Go to the USASpending.gov Scraper actor page on Apify Store
2. Enter search keywords (e.g., "artificial intelligence", "cybersecurity")
3. Select the award type and set date range
4. Click Start and download results from the Dataset tab

Via API (Node.js)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/usaspending-scraper').call({
    keywords: ['artificial intelligence'],
    awardType: 'contracts',
    startDate: '2024-01-01',
    endDate: '2025-12-31',
    maxResults: 50,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((award) => {
    console.log(`$${award.awardAmount.toLocaleString()} | ${award.recipientName} | ${award.awardingAgency}`);
});

Via API (Python)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient('YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN')

run = client.actor('YOUR_USERNAME/usaspending-scraper').call(run_input={
    'keywords': ['artificial intelligence'],
    'awardType': 'contracts',
    'startDate': '2024-01-01',
    'endDate': '2025-12-31',
    'maxResults': 50,
})

for award in client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).iterate_items():
    print(f"${award['awardAmount']:,.0f} | {award['recipientName']} | {award['awardingAgency']}")

Integrations

Connect USASpending.gov Scraper with your tools:

• Google Sheets — automatically populate spreadsheets with federal contract data
• Slack — get notified when new contracts match your criteria
• Zapier / Make — build automated government spending monitoring workflows
• PostgreSQL / BigQuery — store award data for long-term analysis and reporting
• Webhooks — push data to your application when extraction completes

Tips and best practices

• Use specific keywords — narrow searches produce better results. "artificial intelligence" is better than just "AI".
• Filter by date range — always set a date range to avoid pulling the entire database.
• Search one type at a time — searching by specific award type (contracts, grants) is faster than "all".
• Use agency filters — if you know the agency, add it to significantly reduce result volume.
• State filter — combine with keywords to find local contractors and recipients.
• Sort by amount — use descending amount sort to find the largest awards first.

Limitations

• Maximum ~10,000 records per query (split into multiple searches for larger datasets)
• API response times vary (2-10 seconds per page depending on query complexity)
• Award types cannot be mixed in a single API call — the actor handles this automatically for "all" type searches
• Some older awards may have incomplete data fields