Federal Register Monitor — US Rules, NPRM & Regulatory Alerts API (by Agency & Keyword)

Monitor the US Federal Register for new regulatory activity without building your own API integration. This Actor queries the official Federal Register API (federalregister.gov/api/v1 — free, no API key) for final rules, proposed rules (NPRMs), regulatory notices, and presidential documents, filters by agency, keyword, and document type, and returns flat JSON records ready for compliance dashboards, legal research tools, and AI agents.

Turn on alert mode and run it on an Apify Schedule to get a daily feed of only the regulatory documents you haven't seen yet — Federal Register monitoring without a SaaS subscription.

What it does

• Searches the official Federal Register API for rules, proposed rules (NPRMs), notices, and presidential documents.
• Filters by full-text keyword, federal agency slug, document type, and publication window.
• Normalizes each document into one flat, stable JSON record (13 fields) — ready for any pipeline.
• In alert mode, remembers what it has already output per filter combination and emits only new documents on each run — the core of a daily regulatory alert.
• Works as an MCP tool for Claude, Cursor, and other AI agents.

Why monitor the Federal Register via API?

The Federal Register publishes over 80,000 documents per year — rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents from hundreds of federal agencies. Compliance teams, lobbyists, legal departments, and AI agents need to track new activity in specific agencies or topic areas as it happens. Incumbent regulatory-monitoring platforms (GovSignal, Quorum, FiscalNote) charge $49–$600+/month.

This Actor gives you the same raw data feed for a fraction of the cost, via the same official API, normalized to a flat JSON schema you can drop into any pipeline — and you pay only for the documents you actually receive.

How it works

1. You provide filters: any combination of keywords, agencies, and documentTypes, plus a publishedSince window.
2. The Actor compiles them into a correct Federal Register API query (articles.json), handling pagination and rate limits for you.
3. Each returned document is flattened from the API's nested structure into one tidy record with stable field names. Missing fields are null — never guessed.
4. If alertMode is on, it loads the document numbers it has already output for this exact filter combination and skips them, so only new documents are written.
5. New documents are pushed to your dataset (one record each). Hook up an integration — email, Slack, webhook, Make/Zapier — to deliver them wherever your workflow lives.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keywords	string	none	Full-text search matched against title and abstract
agencies	array	none	Agency URL slugs from federalregister.gov (see FAQ)
documentTypes	array	none	rule, proposed_rule, notice, presidential_document — empty = all types
publishedSince	string	7d	Lookback window (7d, 30d, 90d) or absolute date (2026-01-01)
maxRecords	integer	100	Max records to output per run (1–5000)
alertMode	boolean	false	Output only documents not seen in previous runs with the same filters

At least one of keywords, agencies, or documentTypes is required.

Input example:

{
    "keywords": "artificial intelligence",
    "agencies": ["federal-trade-commission", "federal-communications-commission"],
    "documentTypes": ["rule", "proposed_rule"],
    "publishedSince": "30d",
    "maxRecords": 100,
    "alertMode": false
}

Output fields

Each document becomes one dataset item with these fields (all flattened from the official API):

Field	Type	Description
documentNumber	string	Federal Register document number (e.g. 2026-08241) — the stable ID
title	string	Document title
type	string	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, or Presidential Document
agencies	array	Human-readable agency names that issued the document
abstract	string | null	Summary, truncated to 500 chars; full text at htmlUrl
action	string | null	The action line (e.g. "Final rule.", "Request for comment.")
publicationDate	string	Date published in the Federal Register (YYYY-MM-DD)
effectiveDate	string | null	Date a rule takes effect; null for notices / undated proposed rules
citation	string | null	Federal Register citation (e.g. 91 FR 41250)
docketIds	array	Docket numbers for cross-referencing agency dockets / Regulations.gov
pageLength	integer | null	Number of pages in the Federal Register
htmlUrl	string	Link to the full document on federalregister.gov
pdfUrl	string	Link to the official PDF on govinfo.gov

Output example (a real record shape returned by the API):

{
    "documentNumber": "2026-08241",
    "title": "Artificial Intelligence in Financial Services — Request for Information",
    "type": "Notice",
    "agencies": ["Federal Reserve System", "Office of the Comptroller of the Currency"],
    "abstract": "The agencies are seeking public comment on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning models in financial services, including risk management...",
    "action": "Request for information and comment.",
    "publicationDate": "2026-06-10",
    "effectiveDate": null,
    "citation": "91 FR 41250",
    "docketIds": ["Docket No. OP-1821"],
    "pageLength": 8,
    "htmlUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/06/10/2026-08241/...",
    "pdfUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-06-10/pdf/2026-08241.pdf"
}

Use cases

• Compliance & regulatory-affairs teams — schedule a daily alert on the agencies that govern your industry (e.g. EPA, FDA, OSHA) and never miss a new rule or proposed rule that affects you.
• Legal & policy researchers — pull every rule and NPRM from an agency over a date window into a flat dataset for analysis, no manual searching of federalregister.gov.
• Lobbyists & government-affairs professionals — track NPRMs in your issue area while comment periods are still open, so clients can weigh in before rules are finalized.
• GovTech / RegTech builders — use it as a clean data source behind a regulatory-intelligence product instead of maintaining your own Federal Register scraper.
• AI agents (via MCP) — let an agent fetch and summarize new federal regulatory documents on demand as part of a research or monitoring workflow.

Regulatory alerts: alert mode + Apify Schedules

1. Set your filters (e.g. agencies: ["environmental-protection-agency"], documentTypes: ["rule", "proposed_rule"]) and alertMode: true.
2. Create an Apify Schedule that runs the Actor daily.
3. Each run outputs only documents that previous runs with the same filters haven't output yet — every run's dataset is purely "what's new since last time".
4. Add an integration (email, Slack, webhook, Make/Zapier) on the Actor run to deliver the new regulatory documents wherever your compliance workflow lives.

How dedupe works: seen document numbers are stored in a named key-value store (fed-reg-seen-<hash>), one per filter combination. The hash covers keywords, agencies, and documentTypes, so changing publishedSince or maxRecords won't reset your alert history, while changing the actual filters starts a fresh history. Document numbers are remembered for 400 days.

Pricing — $1 per 1,000 documents

This Actor uses Apify's pay-per-event model with one simple event:

Event	Price	When it's charged
federal-register-document	$0.001	Once per document record written to the dataset

That's $1 per 1,000 documents. You are never charged for a document that wasn't written to the dataset: a run that delivers nothing charges nothing, and in alert mode already-seen documents are skipped for free — you pay only for records you actually receive.

Use from Claude, Cursor & other AI agents (MCP)

This Actor works as a tool over the Model Context Protocol. Add Apify's MCP server to your client and your agent can monitor federal regulatory activity on demand:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/sse?actors=bikram07/federal-register-monitor",
            "headers": {
                "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
            }
        }
    }
}

Then ask your agent things like: "What new EPA rules or proposed rules have been published in the last 30 days? Summarize the top five by likely business impact." — the agent calls this Actor, gets normalized document records back, and works with them directly.

You can also call it from code via the Apify API:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/bikram07~federal-register-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keywords": "PFAS", "agencies": ["environmental-protection-agency"], "publishedSince": "30d"}'

Limitations — what it does NOT do

• It returns document metadata (title, abstract, agencies, dates, citation, links) — not the full rule text. Use htmlUrl / pdfUrl to read the complete document.
• The abstract field is truncated to 500 characters; the full abstract and body are at htmlUrl.
• It covers the published Federal Register only. It does not pull public comments or dockets from Regulations.gov, the Unified Agenda, OIRA/OMB review status, or the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR/eCFR).
• It is US federal regulatory data only — no state registers and no other countries.
• Coverage and freshness match the official Federal Register API: documents appear the day they are published (business days, typically by morning ET). It is not real-time intraday.
• It does not send email or Slack itself — wire an Apify integration to your run for delivery.

FAQ

Is this a subscription? No. There is no monthly subscription and no seat license. It is pay-per-event: you are charged $1 per 1,000 document records the Actor writes to your dataset, and nothing when a run returns nothing. You can run it once or schedule it daily — you pay only for the documents you actually receive.

How does the pricing work, and can I get a refund? You are charged $0.001 per document record at the moment it is pushed to the dataset — so a 250-document run costs $0.25. Documents that aren't written (an empty run, or duplicates skipped in alert mode) cost $0. Because you only pay for records you receive, there is normally nothing to refund; for any billing issue, Apify's billing support and the Apify refund policy apply.

Does it use official APIs? Yes. All data comes from the official US Federal Register API at https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/articles.json, operated by the Office of the Federal Register / U.S. Government Publishing Office. No scraping, no third-party mirrors, no API key required. The Actor handles request formatting, pagination, retries, and field normalization for you.

How do I find the agency slug for the agency I want to monitor? Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies and find your agency. The slug is the URL segment — for example, the EPA's page is at /agencies/environmental-protection-agency, so the slug is environmental-protection-agency. Common examples: securities-and-exchange-commission, federal-trade-commission, food-and-drug-administration, consumer-financial-protection-bureau, federal-communications-commission, department-of-labor.

What's the difference between a Rule and a Proposed Rule? A Rule (Final Rule) is a binding regulation that has been finalized and takes legal effect on its effectiveDate. A Proposed Rule (NPRM — Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) is an agency's public draft, open for comment (typically 30–60 days) before it's finalized. For compliance, track both: proposed rules give advance warning, final rules are what you must comply with.

Am I charged for documents in alert mode that I've already seen? No. In alert mode, documents whose numbers appear in the seen-history are skipped before being written to the dataset — they are never charged.

Can I monitor multiple agencies at once? Yes — list multiple agency slugs in the agencies array in a single run. For completely independent alert histories per agency, create one Schedule (or Task) per agency. Each filter combination gets its own seen-history, so alerts never bleed into each other.

Related searches this Actor answers

Federal Register API · US regulatory monitoring · NPRM tracker · federal agency rule alert · compliance monitoring tool · EPA rule tracker · FTC regulatory feed · FDA notice monitor · federal rulemaking alert · regulatory intelligence API · GovInfo / Federal Register data feed

---

Built on the official Federal Register API (U.S. Government Publishing Office). This Actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Government or the Federal Register. Federal Register content is in the public domain.