USAspending Scraper — Federal Contract Awards & Recipients

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Quick answer: The USAspending Federal Awards Scraper searches USAspending.gov's public Award Search API and exports federal contract awards — recipient, amount, agency and dates, plus a ready-made USAspending.gov profile link — into JSON, CSV or Excel, filtered by keyword, recipient, agency, award type and date range. The API is keyless but unforgiving: it needs a precise POST body with a non-empty, enum-validated award_type_codes list or the whole request 422s, and it ships no total-count field, so paging has to stop on hasNext == false rather than an assumed page count. We build that request correctly and treat zero matches as a clean success, not a failed run. Pricing is pay-per-result — $3.05 per 1 000 awards, no subscription, no card required to try it.

🎯 What this scrapes

USAspending.gov publishes every federal contract award, but its Award Search API expects a precise POST body — a non-empty, enum-validated award_type_codes list is mandatory or the whole request 422s, paging has no total-count field so you must stop on hasNext == false, and a narrow filter combination legitimately returns zero rows rather than an error. This Actor builds that request correctly, pages until the API says there is nothing left, and flattens each award — recipient, amount, agency, dates — into one billable row with a ready-made USAspending.gov profile link.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🧵 Pagination done right — we page on USAspending's page/limit cursor and stop exactly on hasNext == false, never on an assumed page count.
• 🛡️ A bad award type code never reaches the API — validated against the live-confirmed enum before your run is charged a cent.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 429 / 5xx, honouring Retry-After — up to 5 attempts per page.
• 🧱 Zero matches is a clean success, not a failure — a narrow filter combination finishes SUCCEEDED with a status message, never a false FAILED run.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, stable award IDs, ready-made USAspending.gov profile links.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for results that hit your dataset.

💡 Use cases

• Govcon lead generation — find which contractors are winning awards from a target agency.
• Competitive intelligence — track a competitor's federal contract wins by recipient name.
• Market sizing — pull the biggest awards in a date window and agency to size a federal market.
• Journalism and watchdog research — follow the money on a keyword or agency across a time period.

⚙️ 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
keywords	array	no	'—'	Free-text keyword search — matches award, recipient, or agency text.
recipientSearchText	array	no	'—'	Match awards by recipient (company) name, e.g. Lockheed.
awardingAgencyName	string	no	'—'	Top-tier awarding agency name, e.g. Department of Defense.
awardTypeCodes	array	no	['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']	Award type codes to include. Defaults to the four prime-contract types (A, B, C,…
timePeriodStart	string	no	'2024-01-01'	Start of the award action date window, as YYYY-MM-DD. The API's documented floor is…
timePeriodEnd	string	no	'2024-12-31'	End of the award action date window, as YYYY-MM-DD. Must be on or after the start date.
sortField	string	no	'Award Amount'	Field the API sorts results by.
sortOrder	string	no	'desc'	Sort direction.
maxResults	integer	no	100	Stop once this many award rows have been emitted. Each row is one billed result event.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{'useApifyProxy': False}	USAspending.gov is a public keyless API and does not need a proxy. Leave this off unless your account requires egress…

Example input

{
  "recipientSearchText": [
    "Lockheed"
  ],
  "awardTypeCodes": [
    "A",
    "B",
    "C",
    "D"
  ],
  "timePeriodStart": "2024-01-01",
  "timePeriodEnd": "2024-12-31",
  "maxResults": 5,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
award_id	string	Award ID, e.g. N0001917C0001.
generated_internal_id	string	Stable internal award identifier used for cross-referencing and building the profile URL.
recipient_name	string	Recipient (company or entity) name.
award_amount	number	Award amount in USD.
awarding_agency	string	Top-tier awarding agency, e.g. Department of Defense.
awarding_sub_agency	string	Awarding sub-agency, e.g. Department of the Navy.
funding_agency	string	Top-tier funding agency.
award_type	string	Contract award type, e.g. DEFINITIVE CONTRACT.
start_date	string	Award period of performance start date.
end_date	string	Award period of performance end date.
description	string	Free-text award description. Often null.
agency_slug	string	Agency slug used to build the USAspending.gov profile URL.
usaspending_url	string	Public USAspending.gov award profile page.

Example output

{
  "award_id": "N0001917C0001",
  "generated_internal_id": "CONT_AWD_N0001917C0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-",
  "recipient_name": "LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION",
  "award_amount": 35135514910.2,
  "awarding_agency": "Department of Defense",
  "awarding_sub_agency": "Department of the Navy",
  "funding_agency": "Department of Defense",
  "award_type": "DEFINITIVE CONTRACT",
  "start_date": "2017-11-17",
  "end_date": "2031-03-31",
  "description": "LRIP LOT 12 ADVANCE ACQUISITION CONTRACT",
  "agency_slug": "department-of-defense",
  "usaspending_url": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_N0001917C0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-"
}

💰 Pricing

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

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.05	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.003	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $3.05. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Prime-award level only in v1 — no sub-award (subcontractor) drill-down.
• No recipient or agency profile enrichment — fields come from the award search response itself.
• Deep pagination beyond 10,000 results requires a cursor-based approach USAspending documents separately; this Actor caps maxResults at 10,000.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. USAspending.gov's Award Search API is public and keyless — no auth, no account required.

Why must I set award type codes?

The API rejects a request with an empty or missing award_type_codes filter. The Actor defaults to the four prime-contract types (A, B, C, D) so a first run always works, and validates any code you add against the API's live enum before charging you.

What happens if my filters match nothing?

The run finishes successfully with zero rows and a status message describing what was searched — a narrow filter combination legitimately returning no awards is not an error.

How far back does the data go?

USAspending.gov's documented floor is 2007-10-01. Earlier start dates are accepted but return no data before that floor.

💬 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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