Federal Register Scraper — Rules, Notices & Proposed Rules

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🎯 What this scrapes

Every US federal rule, proposed rule and notice lands in the Federal Register first, which makes it the earliest public signal that a regulation affecting your industry is moving. The official API paginates in a way that stops at 2,000 records per query and buries the agency names in a nested block. This Actor pages it properly, flattens agencies into one readable column, and hands you a dated regulatory feed you can filter in a spreadsheet.

🔥 What we handle for you

pages the API properly and stops cleanly at its 2,000-record ceiling flattens the nested agency block into a readable column plus a lead-agency field retries transient 429/5xx responses instead of failing the whole run

💡 Use cases

• Monitor proposed rules touching your industry before the comment window closes.
• Build a regulatory-change feed for a compliance or legal team.
• Track one agency's output over a quarter for a policy report.
• Assemble a dated evidence trail of rulemaking on a single topic.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Fill in the input form — most fields have sensible defaults.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
searchTerm	string	no	'emissions'	Full-text search across the document. Leave empty to take everything in the date range.
documentTypes	array	no	[]	Restrict to these types: RULE, PRORULE (proposed rule), NOTICE,…
publishedFrom	string	no	'2026-01-01'	Only documents published on or after this date, as YYYY-MM-DD. Leave empty for no floor.
maxResults	integer	no	100	Stop after this many documents. Each document is one billed result row.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': False}	The Federal Register API is public and does not need a proxy. Leave this off unless your account requires egress…

Example input

{
  "searchTerm": "emissions",
  "publishedFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "maxResults": 3,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
document_number	string	Federal Register document number.
title	string	Document title.
type	string	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice or Presidential Document.
abstract	string	Official abstract, when present.
publication_date	string	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD).
agencies	array	Issuing agency names.
lead_agency	string	First listed agency — the usual owner.
html_url	string	Document page on federalregister.gov.
pdf_url	string	Official PDF URL.

Example output

{}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.20	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.002	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $2.20. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Returns document metadata and links, not the full rule text or the public comments.
• A single query cannot exceed 2,000 documents — that is an API limit, not an Actor one.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. The Federal Register API is public and keyless, so a run needs no credentials from you.

How far back can I search?

The API covers 1994 onward. Set Published from to any date in that range.

Why cap at 2,000?

The API stops paging past 2,000 records for a single query. The Actor stops cleanly there and says so in the log rather than looping — narrow the term or the date range to go deeper.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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