Federal Register Search

Search the official US Federal Register and export clean, spreadsheet-ready rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents with agencies, publication dates, abstracts, and source links. No API key or browser automation is required. Set max_items before each run to keep output and cost predictable.

What data can I extract?

• Official Federal Register API data
• Rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents
• 52 flat columns: agencies, citation and page range, CFR parts, RIN, docket IDs, effective and comment-close dates, regulations.gov comment links and counts, presidential order numbers, and full-text URLs
• Automatic pagination with a hard result ceiling

Every result is written to the default dataset and can be downloaded as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML.

Input example

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "type": [
    "RULE",
    "PRORULE"
  ],
  "order": "newest",
  "max_items": 10
}

The default input is deliberately bounded and produces a small, useful Store test. max_items is a hard output ceiling.

Output example

{
  "document_number": "2026-17163",
  "title": "Request for Comment on the Listing of Compute Derivatives Contracts",
  "type": "Proposed Rule",
  "agencies": "Commodity Futures Trading Commission",
  "agency_count": 1,
  "publication_date": "2026-08-21",
  "abstract": "The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (\"CFTC\" or \"Commission\") is seeking public responses to this Request for Comment to better inform its understanding and oversight of derivatives markets in compute.",
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/21/2026-17163/request-for-comment-on-the-listing-of-compute-derivatives-contracts",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-08-21/pdf/2026-17163.pdf",
  "citation": "91 FR 54259",
  "volume": 91,
  "start_page": 54259,
  "end_page": 54264,
  "page_length": 6,
  "subtype": null,
  "action": "Request for comment.",
  "toc_subject": null,
  "excerpt": "below, this request for comment addresses an emerging class of derivatives contracts that reference the price of access to computing power (“compute”), 4 which is the processing power primarily used by the large language models (“LLMs”) at the center of the artificial intelligence (“AI”) economy. AI anchors a large and growing share of the U.S. economy and public equity markets and, accordingly, compute has become a multi-hundred-billion-dollar enterprise 5 and is a scarce, capital-intensive commodity. 4 This request for comment",
  "significant": null,
  "topics": null,
  "topic_count": 0,
  "dates": "Comments must be received on or before October 20, 2026.",
  "effective_on": null,
  "comments_close_on": "2026-10-20",
  "signing_date": null,
  "cfr_references": "17 CFR 1, 17 CFR 38",
  "cfr_reference_count": 2,
  "docket_ids": null,
  "regulation_id_numbers": "3038-AF77",
  "rin_priority_category": null,
  "unified_agenda_url": null,
  "comment_url": "http://www.regulations.gov/commenton/CFTC-2026-1850-0001",
  "regulations_gov_docket_id": "CFTC-2026-1850",
  "regulations_gov_document_id": "CFTC-2026-1850-0001",
  "regulations_gov_comments_count": 10,
  "regulations_gov_comments_url": "https://www.regulations.gov/docketBrowser?rpp=50&so=DESC&sb=postedDate&po=0&dct=PS&D=CFTC-2026-1850",
  "president": "Donald Trump",
  "presidential_document_number": null,
  "executive_order_number": null,
  "proclamation_number": null,
  "disposition_notes": null,
  "correction_of_document_number": null,
  "correction_document_numbers": null,
  "correction_count": 0,
  "page_views_count": 932,
  "image_count": 0,
  "image_urls": null,
  "public_inspection_pdf_url": "https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-17163.pdf?1787229923",
  "body_html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/html/2026/08/21/2026-17163.html",
  "full_text_xml_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/xml/2026/08/21/2026-17163.xml",
  "raw_text_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/text/2026/08/21/2026-17163.txt",
  "mods_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/metadata/granule/FR-2026-08-21/2026-17163/mods.xml"
}

One real record from the default input. Nullable fields remain explicit when the upstream source does not supply a value - a notice carries no effective date, a rule carries no proclamation number.

Common use cases

• Regulatory monitoring and compliance alerts
• Policy and government-affairs research
• Tracking agency action by topic
• Building rulemaking datasets

Use with AI agents and MCP

Apify's MCP server can discover and call this Actor from an AI workflow. Example intent:

Find the 10 newest Federal Register rules and proposed rules about artificial intelligence.

Use the JSON from Input example as the tool arguments. The strict input schema rejects unsupported parameters, and the documented dataset schema tells the agent how to interpret each returned field.

Pricing and cost control

Output is billed per result at $0.0025 per result (about $2.50 per 1,000 results), plus a $0.0002 Actor-start charge billed once per gigabyte of memory at run start. Use max_items to cap both output volume and charges. The price shown on the Apify Store listing is authoritative.

max_items limits both output volume and result-based charges. Start with 10 records, inspect them, and then scale deliberately.

Reliability

The Actor validates input, bounds pagination, retries transient upstream failures, writes structured records, and fails explicitly when the source cannot produce usable output. A production default-input canary is monitored by the fleet.

Limitations and responsible use

• The abstract is the official summary; full document text is linked, not inlined.
• Free-text matching is supplied by the source API, not semantic search.
• Source records may omit an abstract or PDF URL.
• Very deep result sets remain subject to upstream API limits.

Use the data lawfully, respect source terms, and independently validate records before making consequential decisions.

FAQ

Does it need my own API key?\n\nNo, the default workflow does not require a customer-supplied API key.

Can I export the results?

Yes. Download the default dataset as JSON, CSV, Excel, or XML, or retrieve it through the Apify API.

How do I control cost?

Set max_items to the most records you want returned. Begin with the bounded default input.

Can an AI agent call it?

Yes. The Actor has strict input and semantic output schemas and can be called through Apify's MCP tooling.

What happens when a source field is missing?

The relevant field is returned as null or an empty normalized value rather than being merged into another field.