USAspending Federal Awards Scraper

Extract US federal contracts, grants, loans and IDVs from USAspending.gov — the official open-data source for all federal spending. Filter by agency, NAICS code, PSC code, state, keyword, recipient and award size, then export clean, structured records to JSON, CSV or Excel.

What does USAspending Federal Awards Scraper do?

This Actor pulls award-level federal spending records straight from the official USAspending API and turns them into a flat, analysis-ready dataset. Every record includes the recipient name and UEI, award amount, awarding and funding agency, NAICS and PSC classification, period of performance, place of performance, and a direct link back to the source award page.

Because it reads an official government API, there is no scraping of protected pages, no proxies, no CAPTCHAs and no anti-bot fragility. Runs are fast, cheap and reliable.

On the Apify platform you also get scheduled runs, a REST API, webhooks, and integrations with Google Sheets, Airtable, Slack, Make and Zapier — so you can turn this into a recurring federal-contract feed without writing any glue code.

Why use this Actor?

• Government contracting lead generation — find every prime contractor winning work in your NAICS code and target them for subcontracting or teaming.
• Competitive intelligence — track exactly what your competitors are winning, from which agencies, and for how much.
• Market sizing — quantify total federal spend in a category, agency or state before you invest in a capture effort.
• Recruiting and staffing — identify companies that just won large awards and are about to hire.
• Grant research — surface federal grant and assistance awards by CFDA program and recipient.
• Finance and research — track federal revenue exposure for public companies and their suppliers.

Doing this by hand on the USAspending website means paging through results and exporting one slice at a time. This Actor gives you the whole filtered set in one run, on a schedule, through an API.

How to use USAspending Federal Awards Scraper

1. Click Try for free.
2. Pick your award categories — Contracts and IDVs are the standard choice for contracting lead-gen.
3. Set a start and end date for the award action period.
4. Add filters that narrow the set: agency, NAICS, PSC, state, keywords or a minimum award amount.
5. Set Maximum results so you control exactly how much you pull.
6. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
7. Download the results as JSON, CSV, Excel, HTML or XML, or pull them from the API.

Input

All fields are optional except award categories. A typical lead-generation input looks like this:

{
  "awardCategories": ["contracts", "idvs"],
  "startDate": "2026-01-01",
  "endDate": "2026-08-01",
  "awardingAgency": "Department of Defense",
  "naicsCodes": ["541512"],
  "placeOfPerformanceStates": ["VA", "MD"],
  "minAwardAmount": 500000,
  "sortBy": "award_amount",
  "sortOrder": "desc",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Field	Type	Description
awardCategories	array	contracts, idvs, grants, direct_payments, loans, other
startDate / endDate	string	Award action period, YYYY-MM-DD. Defaults to the last 90 days
keywords	array	Free-text search across descriptions and recipient names
awardingAgency	string	Top-tier awarding agency, e.g. Department of Defense
fundingAgency	string	Top-tier funding agency
recipientSearch	array	Match recipients by name, e.g. Leidos
naicsCodes	array	Industry codes, e.g. 541512
pscCodes	array	Product & Service Codes, e.g. R425
placeOfPerformanceStates	array	Two-letter state codes, e.g. VA
minAwardAmount / maxAwardAmount	integer	Award value bounds in USD
sortBy / sortOrder	string	Sort by award amount, last modified or start date
maxResults	integer	Hard cap on records returned

Output

Each dataset item is one federal award:

{
  "awardId": "W9126G24C0004",
  "awardCategory": "contracts",
  "uniqueAwardKey": "CONT_AWD_W9126G24C0004_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
  "recipientName": "CLARK CONSTRUCTION GROUP LLC",
  "recipientUei": "KDT2YLB34NT6",
  "awardAmount": 620581383,
  "totalOutlays": 242708.65,
  "description": "DESIGN-BUILD CONSTRUCTION OF THE VETERANS AFFAIRS HEALTH CARE CENTER, EL PASO, TX",
  "awardingAgency": "Department of Defense",
  "awardingSubAgency": "Department of the Army",
  "naicsCode": "236220",
  "naicsDescription": "COMMERCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL BUILDING CONSTRUCTION",
  "pscCode": "Y1DA",
  "pscDescription": "CONSTRUCTION OF HOSPITALS AND INFIRMARIES",
  "startDate": "2023-12-19",
  "endDate": "2028-02-29",
  "placeOfPerformanceState": "TX",
  "usaspendingUrl": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_W9126G24C0004_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-"
}

You can download the dataset in various formats such as JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

Data fields

Field	Description
awardId	Federal award identifier (PIID, FAIN or URI)
uniqueAwardKey	Stable unique key — use this to deduplicate across runs
recipientName, recipientUei, recipientId	Recipient identity
awardAmount, totalOutlays, subsidyCost	Award value and money actually disbursed
description	Free-text description of the work
awardingAgency, awardingSubAgency	Who issued the award (plus codes)
fundingAgency, fundingSubAgency	Who paid for it (plus codes)
naicsCode, naicsDescription	Industry classification
pscCode, pscDescription	Product & Service Code
cfdaNumber, cfdaTitle	Assistance-listing program, for grants and loans
startDate, endDate, baseObligationDate, lastModifiedDate	Key dates
placeOfPerformanceState, placeOfPerformanceCountry	Where the work happens
defCodes	Disaster/emergency funding codes
usaspendingUrl	Direct link to the award on USAspending.gov

How much does it cost to scrape USAspending data?

This Actor is priced per award record returned. You are charged only for records that actually land in your dataset, and the Maximum results field is a hard ceiling — so your cost per run is predictable and capped before you start.

Because this Actor uses an official JSON API rather than a headless browser, it needs no proxies and very little memory, which keeps the underlying platform cost low.

Tips

• Narrow filters run much faster. Broad, unfiltered queries make USAspending do a lot of work server-side and a single page can take ~30 seconds. Adding an agency, NAICS code or minimum award amount speeds runs up dramatically.
• Use uniqueAwardKey to deduplicate when you run on a schedule — awards get modified over time and will reappear.
• Filter by lastModifiedDate (sort by Last modified date) to build an incremental feed that catches new and updated awards.
• Contracts and IDVs are different things. A contract is a specific award; an IDV is a vehicle that orders get placed against. Include both for a complete picture of an agency's buying.
• Award amount vs outlays. awardAmount is what was obligated; totalOutlays is what has actually been paid out so far.

FAQ

Is scraping USAspending data legal? Yes. USAspending.gov is an official US government open-data source published under the DATA Act, and this Actor uses its public, documented API. The data is public domain. That said, this is general information rather than legal advice — if you plan to redistribute the data commercially, check your own obligations.

How fresh is the data? USAspending typically publishes contract actions within a few days of the action date. Grant and assistance data can lag longer. This Actor always reads live data at run time.

Why did I get fewer results than my maximum? Your filters matched fewer awards than the cap. That's normal — the cap is a ceiling, not a target.

Can I get subaward data? Not in this version. This Actor returns prime awards. If you need subawards, open an issue and let me know.

Can I get more fields? The Actor returns the full standard field set for each award category. If you need something specific from the USAspending API that isn't here, open an issue.

Support

Found a bug or need a field that isn't here? Open an issue on the Issues tab and I'll take a look. Custom federal-data pipelines and bespoke scraping work are also available on request.