FEC Campaign Finance Scraper

Extract campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) API. Search candidates, individual donations, PAC contributions, disbursements, and committee details. Filter by candidate name, state, political party, election year, and office type. Returns structured political contributions data ready for analysis, journalism, or compliance research.

Disclaimer: This actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

What campaign finance data can you extract?

This campaign finance scraper wraps the free FEC API to extract four types of political finance data:

• Candidates — Search and retrieve candidate profiles with fundraising totals, party affiliation, office sought, election years, and financial summaries
• Contributions (Schedule A) — Individual donations to campaigns and PACs including donor name, amount, date, employer, occupation, and recipient committee
• Disbursements (Schedule B) — Campaign spending records showing where political money goes: vendors, amounts, purposes, and payment dates
• Committees — PAC and committee details including type, designation, filing frequency, treasurer, and connected organizations

How to search FEC campaign finance data

By candidate name: Enter a name like "Biden" or "Trump" in the search query to find matching candidates and their fundraising data.

By state: Use a two-letter state code (CA, TX, NY) to filter candidates, donors, or committees by state.

By party: Filter by political party code — DEM for Democrat, REP for Republican, LIB for Libertarian, GRE for Green.

By election year: Set the election cycle (2024, 2022, 2020) to scope results to a specific campaign season.

By office: Filter candidates running for president, senate, or house seats.

By ID: Use FEC candidate IDs (e.g., P80001571) or committee IDs (e.g., C00703975) for precise lookups with detailed financial totals.

Output example

Each result varies by mode. Here is a candidate search result:

{
    "type": "candidate",
    "candidate_id": "P80001571",
    "name": "BIDEN, JOSEPH R JR",
    "party": "DEM",
    "office": "P",
    "state": "DE",
    "election_years": [2020, 2024],
    "incumbent_challenge": "I",
    "candidate_status": "C"
}

How much does it cost to scrape FEC data?

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing. You pay per result returned.

• $0.00005 per actor start (Apify default)
• Per-result charge based on the number of records extracted
• No proxy costs — FEC is a free government API, no proxy needed

A typical candidate search returns 10-100 results at minimal cost. Contribution searches can return thousands of donation records for deeper analysis.

Tip: Use the maxResults parameter to control costs. Start with 100 and increase as needed. Get a free API key at https://api.data.gov/signup/ to avoid DEMO_KEY rate limits.

Who uses FEC campaign finance data?

• Journalists and newsrooms — investigate political donations, track dark money, follow the money in elections
• Political researchers — analyze donation patterns, party fundraising trends, and campaign spending
• Compliance teams — monitor political contribution limits and disclosure requirements
• Nonprofit watchdogs — track PAC spending and corporate political contributions
• Data scientists — build models on political donation data, predict election outcomes from fundraising
• Campaign strategists — benchmark fundraising performance against competitors
• Civic tech developers — build transparency tools and voter information platforms

Tips for best results

• Use DEMO_KEY for testing, but get a free key at https://api.data.gov/signup/ for production use (higher rate limits).
• Start with candidates mode to find candidate IDs, then use those IDs to fetch specific contributions or disbursements.
• Filter by election year to reduce noise — FEC data spans decades of elections.
• Use committee mode to research PACs and Super PACs by name or ID.
• Combine filters — search for Republican senate candidates in Texas for 2024 by setting party=REP, office=senate, state=TX, electionYear=2024.

FEC API rate limits

With DEMO_KEY: 40 requests per hour. With a free registered key: 1,000 requests per hour. This actor includes automatic rate limiting (0.5s between requests) and retry with exponential backoff for rate limit responses.

Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
mode	string	Data type: candidates, contributions, disbursements, or committees
searchQuery	string	Name search for candidates, donors, recipients, or committees
state	string	Two-letter US state code (CA, TX, NY)
party	string	Party code: DEM, REP, LIB, GRE
electionYear	integer	Election cycle year (2024, 2022, etc.)
office	string	Office: president, senate, or house
candidateId	string	FEC candidate ID for specific lookups
committeeId	string	FEC committee ID for specific lookups
maxResults	integer	Maximum results to return (1-5000, default 100)
apiKey	string	FEC API key (DEMO_KEY works for testing)

Integrations

Export your data as JSON, CSV, or Excel. Schedule runs to monitor new campaign filings automatically. Use webhooks to trigger downstream workflows when new donation data is detected.

This actor works as an MCP server — AI agents can discover and use it to access FEC campaign finance data programmatically.