Federal Register Documents Scraper by Birds Nest Data

Export Federal Register rules, proposed rules, notices and comment deadlines as JSON or CSV. Filter by agency and date. Uses the public Federal Register API, no key needed.

Unofficial tool. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Office of the Federal Register or the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Data provided as-is from https://www.federalregister.gov.

What it does

Pulls documents published in the daily Federal Register (final rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents) and returns one clean, flat row per document. Built for compliance analysts tracking new rules, journalists and policy researchers watching agencies, and government-contracting teams watching comment deadlines.

What you get

Field	Type	Example
document_number	string	2026-21432
title	string	Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
type	string	Presidential Document
abstract	string or null	summary text (emails and phone numbers removed)
publication_date	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	2026-10-19
effective_on	date or null	2026-11-18
comments_close_on	date or null	2026-11-20
agencies	array of strings	["Executive Office of the President"]
docket_ids	array of strings	["NRC-2023-0212"]
regulation_id_numbers	array of strings	["3245-AH12"]
cfr_references	array of strings	["10 CFR 170"]
citation	string or null	91 FR 66281
html_url	URL	link to the document on federalregister.gov
pdf_url	URL	link to the PDF on govinfo.gov
source	string	Federal Register API (federalregister.gov)

Use cases

• Track new final rules and proposed rules from the agencies you follow, every day.
• List open comment periods and their closing dates for regulatory and public-affairs teams.
• Feed Federal Register notices into a spreadsheet, Slack alert or newsletter through the Apify API.
• Build a dataset of past rules by agency and date range for policy research.

How to use

1. Set inputs (keyword, comments-closing window, document type, agency from the dropdown; start date, end date and any other agency's slug are under Advanced), or leave the defaults to get the 50 newest documents.
2. Click Run.
3. Export the dataset as JSON, CSV or Excel, or read it through the Apify API.

Input example

{
  "searchTerm": "",
  "documentType": "ALL",
  "agency": "ALL",
  "maxResults": 50
}

Comments closing soon: set Comments closing within (days) to N to get only documents whose public comment period closes between today and today + N days (U.S. Eastern calendar date). Leave it empty to turn the filter off. Example, proposed rules from any agency with comments closing in the next 30 days:

{
  "commentsClosingWithinDays": 30,
  "documentType": "PRORULE",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Output example

Two records from real runs on 2026-10-17 (PT): the first from the default input, the second from {"documentType": "PRORULE"}.

[
 {
  "document_number": "C1-2026-12067",
  "title": "Fee Schedules; Fee Recovery for Fiscal Year 2026",
  "type": "Rule",
  "abstract": null,
  "publication_date": "2026-10-19",
  "effective_on": null,
  "comments_close_on": null,
  "agencies": ["Nuclear Regulatory Commission"],
  "docket_ids": ["NRC-2023-0212"],
  "regulation_id_numbers": [],
  "cfr_references": ["10 CFR 15", "10 CFR 170", "10 CFR 171"],
  "citation": "91 FR 65941",
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/19/C1-2026-12067/fee-schedules-fee-recovery-for-fiscal-year-2026",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-10-19/pdf/C1-2026-12067.pdf",
  "source": "Federal Register API (federalregister.gov)"
 },
 {
  "document_number": "2026-21154",
  "title": "Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) in Underground Mines",
  "type": "Proposed Rule",
  "abstract": "In response to a public request, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is reopening the rulemaking record and is scheduling a virtual public hearing on the Agency's proposed rule published on July 1, 2025, titled, \"Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) in Underground Mines.\"",
  "publication_date": "2026-10-16",
  "effective_on": null,
  "comments_close_on": "2026-12-08",
  "agencies": [
   "Labor Department",
   "Mine Safety and Health Administration"
  ],
  "docket_ids": [
   "Docket No. MSHA-2025-0089"
  ],
  "regulation_id_numbers": [
   "1219-AC17"
  ],
  "cfr_references": [
   "30 CFR 57",
   "30 CFR 75"
  ],
  "citation": "91 FR 65697",
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/16/2026-21154/powered-air-purifying-respirators-paprs-in-underground-mines",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-10-16/pdf/2026-21154.pdf",
  "source": "Federal Register API (federalregister.gov)"
 }
]

Pricing (pay-per-event)

• Result: $2.00 per 1,000 results ($0.002 for each document saved to the dataset).
• No start fee. Empty runs save nothing and are not charged for results.
• Estimate: the default run (50 documents) costs about $0.10 in result fees.

Limits

• Sends at most about 1 request per second to the source and uses no proxies. If the source refuses access (HTTP 403), the run stops with a clear message; it never changes its identity or retries from other IPs.
• Up to 10,000 documents per run.
• The comments-closing filter is applied by the Federal Register API and re-checked on every row before it is saved; only rows with a comments_close_on date inside the window are returned (and charged).
• FederalRegister.gov states it is not the official legal edition of the Federal Register. For legal research, verify results against the official legal edition on govinfo.gov (the PDF linked in pdf_url).
• The Federal Register publishes each business day; documents can appear a few days before their publication date (public inspection).

Data source & legality note

This actor reads public data from the Federal Register (https://www.federalregister.gov) via its public API. It does not log in, bypass access controls, or collect personal data; person/contact fields are dropped at parse time. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Office of the Federal Register (National Archives and Records Administration) or the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Output is provided as-is, without warranty; it may be incomplete or delayed, so verify against the Federal Register before relying on it. Not legal, medical, or safety advice. You are responsible for how you use the output and for complying with applicable laws and the source's terms.

Support

birds.nest.apify@gmail.com, or open an issue in the Issues tab.