E-Rate Form 470 Scraper: School & Library Bids

This Actor collects new E-Rate FCC Form 470 bid notices, the forms US schools, libraries and consortia post when they want quotes for internet access, Wi-Fi, cabling, network equipment or managed broadband. Each notice is one clean record per application with the applicant, state, funding year, service requests, capacity ranges, the allowable contract date and links to the form PDF and RFP documents. It reads the public USAC open-data API politely, needs no login, strips personal contact details and charges $0.005 per notice.

By Civitab, independent public-data tools. Apify Store ID: civitab/e-rate-form-470.

What you get

Every Form 470 is a public request for bids: under E-Rate rules the applicant must wait at least 28 days after posting before signing a contract, so a fresh Form 470 is a live sales lead for internet providers, network integrators, Wi-Fi and cabling contractors and E-Rate consultants. USAC publishes the forms as one row per service request; this Actor groups those rows into one item per application and gives you:

• applicant organisation, type (school district, school, library, library system, consortium), city, state, ZIP and Billed Entity Number
• funding year, status, form version (original or amended), certified, last-modified and allowable contract dates
• every service request: category, service type, function, quantity, unit, minimum and maximum capacity, manufacturer
• Category 1 and Category 2 narratives, state or local procurement rules, installment options
• links to the certified Form 470 PDF and every uploaded RFP document
• the E-Rate consulting firm on the form (firm name and registration number only)

Personal data is removed. Contact person, technical contact and authorized person fields, the applicant e-mail, phone and street address are never requested from the API. E-mail addresses and phone numbers inside free text are replaced with [removed]; open the form PDF for the official contact route.

Input example

Open Category 2 (Wi-Fi, switches, cabling) forms from Colorado and Texas posted in the last 14 days:

{
  "daysBack": 14,
  "states": ["CO", "TX"],
  "serviceCategories": ["Category 2"],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Output example

One real item from a live run on 22 Oct 2026 (long texts shortened):

{
  "applicationNumber": "270001016",
  "formNickname": "CONVERSE CO  2.470.27.C2",
  "fundingYear": 2027,
  "status": "Certified",
  "formVersion": "Original",
  "applicantType": "School District",
  "billedEntityNumber": "142528",
  "billedEntityName": "CONVERSE CO SCHOOL DISTRICT 2",
  "billedEntityFccRegistrationNumber": "0012049268",
  "city": "GLENROCK",
  "state": "WY",
  "zip": "82637",
  "websiteUrl": null,
  "numberOfEligibleEntities": 4,
  "consultingFirms": [
    {
      "name": "BTU Consultants",
      "registrationNumber": "16049611"
    }
  ],
  "certifiedDate": "2026-10-21T20:20:36",
  "lastModifiedDate": "2026-10-21T20:20:36",
  "allowableContractDate": "2026-11-18T00:00:00",
  "rfpUploadDate": "2026-10-21T20:10:38",
  "hasRfp": true,
  "rfpDocumentUrls": [
    "https://publicdata.usac.org/EPC/Prd/Form470/270001016/142528/22575398-Converse2%20FY27%20MIBS%20RFP.xlsx"
  ],
  "formPdfUrl": "https://publicdata.usac.org/EPC/Prd/Form470/270001016/142528/22791742-USAC_FCC_FORM_470_APPLICATION_270001016_CERTIFIED.pdf",
  "category1Description": null,
  "category2Description": "Please see attached  Converse2 FY27 MIBS RFP  for details and specifications",
  "installmentType": null,
  "installmentMinYears": null,
  "installmentMaxYears": null,
  "hasStateOrLocalRestrictions": true,
  "stateOrLocalRestrictions": "Responses must be received via email only to  [removed] . Responses must include detailed pricing and descriptions. SPAM and/or robotic responses will not be...",
  "statewideState": null,
  "allPublicSchoolDistricts": false,
  "allNonPublicSchools": false,
  "allLibraries": false,
  "serviceCategories": [
    "Category 2"
  ],
  "serviceTypes": [
    "Managed Internal Broadband Services"
  ],
  "serviceRequestCount": 1,
  "serviceRequests": [
    {
      "serviceRequestId": "1",
      "serviceCategory": "Category 2",
      "serviceType": "Managed Internal Broadband Services",
      "function": "Existing Equipment",
      "otherFunction": null,
      "entities": 4,
      "quantity": null,
      "unit": null,
      "minimumCapacity": null,
      "maximumCapacity": null,
      "installationInitial": false,
      "maintenanceTechnicalSupport": null,
      "manufacturer": null,
      "otherManufacturer": null,
      "hasRfpAttachment": true
    }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://opendata.usac.org/d/jt8s-3q52",
  "source": "Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), E-Rate FCC Form 470 Tool Data, dataset jt8s-3q52; modified: contact fields removed, normalized",
  "attribution": "Universal Service Administrative Company",
  "license": "Public Domain",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-10-23T03:12:09Z"
}

Fields

Field	Type	Meaning
applicationNumber	string	Form 470 application number
billedEntityName, applicantType, city, state, zip	string	Applicant organisation and location
fundingYear	integer	E-Rate funding year (2027 = July 2027 to June 2028)
status, formVersion	string	Certified or Canceled; Original or Current (amended)
certifiedDate, lastModifiedDate, allowableContractDate	string	USAC timestamps (no time zone)
serviceCategories, serviceTypes	array	Distinct categories and service types on the form
serviceRequests	array	One object per service request (type, function, quantity, capacity, manufacturer)
hasRfp, rfpDocumentUrls, formPdfUrl	boolean, array, string	RFP flag and document links
category1Description, category2Description, stateOrLocalRestrictions	string	Narratives, personal details removed
consultingFirms	array	Firm name and registration number
source, attribution, license, sourceUrl, scrapedAt	string	Provenance on every item

The full typed list is in the dataset schema (Output tab).

Pricing (pay per event)

• $0.005 per notice (one Form 470 application with all its service requests), so $5 per 1,000.
• $0.02 new-match alert, charged at most once per run, only when Only new is on and the run found at least one new or amended notice.
• The default run (last 7 days, 50 notices) costs about $0.25. A daily all-states monitor finds about 30 to 40 forms a day in October, so roughly $0.17 to $0.22 a day including the alert.
• Set Max cost per run in Console; the Actor stops cleanly when it is reached and you are only charged for items saved to your dataset.

Schedule and alerts

Turn on Only new or amended notices, pick your states and categories, and schedule the Actor daily in Console. Each run returns only forms you have not received yet (an amended form counts as new), and the ALERT record in the key-value store says how many were found. Connect the run to e-mail, Slack or a webhook with Apify integrations. AI agents can call it through the Apify MCP server as civitab/e-rate-form-470.

Input reference

Input	Default	Notes
daysBack	7	Forms certified or modified in the last N days; 0 = no date limit
modifiedSince	empty	Exact start date; overrides daysBack
fundingYears	all	e.g. ["2027"]
states	all	2-letter codes
applicantTypes	all	School District, School, Library, Library System, Consortium
serviceCategories	both	Category 1 or Category 2
keywords	none	Any word in nickname, narratives, service types, functions, manufacturers
statuses	Certified	Add Canceled to see cancelled forms
onlyWithRfp	false	Only forms with an RFP
maxItems	50	One notice per application
onlyNew	false	Monitor mode with cross-run memory per filter set
requestDelaySecs	1	1 to 10 seconds between API requests

Source and license (robots.txt / terms checked 22 Oct 2026)

• Source: USAC Open Data portal, dataset "E-Rate FCC Form 470 Tool Data" (ID jt8s-3q52), read through its public SODA JSON API. No login, no API key, no account.
• License: the dataset page lists the license as Public Domain, with attribution to the Universal Service Administrative Company. Every item carries that attribution and a note that it was modified (contact fields removed, normalized).
• robots.txt of the portal sets Crawl-delay: 1 and disallows only the browse, login and OData paths; the JSON resource API this Actor uses is not disallowed. The Actor waits at least 1 second between requests and fetches 1,000 rows per request.
• Terms: the portal footer links the platform vendor's terms of service, which returned "page not found" on 22 Oct 2026, and USAC's own terms-of-use address also returned "not found"; no terms forbidding automated access to the public API were found. USAC's privacy policy is published on its site.
• Not affiliated with or endorsed by USAC or the FCC.

FAQ and disclaimer

Is this every Form 470? It covers everything USAC publishes in the open dataset, which is updated as forms are certified. Very recent forms can appear with a short delay.

Why are contact e-mails missing? We do not output personal data. Use the form PDF or RFP documents linked in each item.

What is the allowable contract date? The earliest day the applicant may sign a contract. Bid deadlines are set by each applicant and are often earlier; check the RFP.

Data is provided as published by USAC, without warranty; always confirm details in the official form before bidding.

Reliability and test results (22 Oct 2026)

• Default input (last 7 days, 50 notices): 50 notices in 4 s, 1 request, 100% success.
• Last 30 days, no cap: 1,008 notices from 7,406 rows in 11 s, 8 of 8 requests successful (100%).
• Monitor test under simulated pay per event: run 1 saved 18 Texas notices and charged 18 notices plus 1 alert ($0.11); run 2 found 0 new notices and charged nothing.
• 50 offline tests (parsing, grouping across pages, privacy stripping, filters, retries, charging, monitor memory).