Federal Register API — US Rules, Proposed Rules, and Notices

Daily US Federal Register: agency rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents, plus structured metadata (agency, CFR references, dockets, public comment deadlines). Built for policy analysts, compliance teams, and AI agents that need grounded US regulatory evidence.

Free trial

A free Apify account gives you about 5 USD of monthly credits, enough to pull a full week of Federal Register activity before paying.

Use cases

1. Regulatory change watch — daily cron pulling all Rule and Proposed Rule documents published by epa-narrative-se (EPA), filtered to last 24 h, then emailed to the compliance team.
2. Comment-period tracker — fetch documents with is_open_for_comment=true and export (document_number, days_until_comment_close) for a Slack reminder pipeline.
3. CFR research audit — given a CFR part (e.g. 40 CFR 60), return all documents with cfr_references_count > 0 touching that citation.

Input

{
  "publication_date_from": "2026-09-25",
  "publication_date_to": "2026-09-30",
  "agency_slug": "executive-office-of-the-president",
  "max_results": 10
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
publication_date_from	string	2026-09-25	Earliest publication_date (YYYY-MM-DD).
publication_date_to	string	2026-09-30	Latest publication_date.
agency_slug	string	""	Agency slug (e.g. epa-narrative-se). Empty = all.
document_type	string	""	RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, PRESDOCU.
presidential_only	boolean	false	Restrict to presidential documents.
max_results	integer	20	Cap on returned documents.

Output (real run)

[
  {
    "document_number": "2026-20093",
    "title": "Gold Star Mother's and Family's Day, 2026",
    "type": "Presidential Document",
    "is_rule": false,
    "is_presidential": true,
    "abstract": null,
    "publication_date": "2026-09-30",
    "effective_date": null,
    "comment_close_date": null,
    "is_open_for_comment": false,
    "days_until_comment_close": null,
    "docket_id": null,
    "agency_names": ["Executive Office of the President"],
    "agency_slugs": ["executive-office-of-the-president"],
    "agencies_count": 1,
    "first_agency": "Executive Office of the President",
    "first_agency_slug": "executive-office-of-the-president",
    "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/30/2026-20093/gold-star-mothers-and-familys-day-2026",
    "pdf_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/30/2026-20093/pdf",
    "page_count": 2,
    "page_views": 0
  },
  {
    "document_number": "2026-20089",
    "title": "Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Determination for the Whitebark Pine",
    "type": "Rule",
    "is_rule": true,
    "is_presidential": false,
    "abstract": "We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, determine endangered status for the whitebark pine.",
    "publication_date": "2026-09-30",
    "effective_date": "2026-10-30",
    "comment_close_date": null,
    "is_open_for_comment": false,
    "docket_id": "FWS-R6-ES-21-0014",
    "agency_names": ["Fish and Wildlife Service"],
    "agency_slugs": ["fish-and-wildlife-service"],
    "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/30/2026-20089",
    "pdf_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/30/2026-20089/pdf",
    "page_count": 28,
    "significant": true
  }
]

Field	Type	Description
document_number	string	Federal Register document number.
title	string	Document title.
type	string	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, Presidential Document.
is_rule / is_presidential	boolean	Type flags.
abstract	string	First paragraph summary (or null).
publication_date	string	Published date.
effective_date	string	Effective date (or null).
comment_close_date	string	Public comment deadline (or null).
is_open_for_comment	boolean	True when comment window is open.
days_until_comment_close	integer	Days until close (or null).
docket_id	string	Agency docket number.
agency_names / agency_slugs	array	Originating agency names and URL slugs.
html_url / pdf_url	string	Canonical HTML and PDF URLs.
page_count	integer	Approximate PDF page count.
significant	boolean	True when flagged "significant" by OMB.

Pricing (pay-per-event)

• No subscription. Free monthly credits apply first.
• 1 result = $0.001 USD (about $1 per 1 000 results).
• Charged per item returned in the dataset; failed runs are not charged.

Source, licence, limits

• Source: Federal Register API at https://www.federalregister.gov/.
• Licence: US Government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. § 105).
• Update frequency: Federal Register is published every weekday; this Actor reflects the upstream API at the moment of the run.
• Limits: each request returns up to 1 000 documents per page; we paginate up to max_results. There is no documented rate limit, but we use exponential backoff to be polite.

FAQ

What's a "slug"? The agency slug is the URL-safe identifier (e.g. fish-and-wildlife-service) used by federalregister.gov. Pass it in agency_slug.

Why is the abstract missing for some documents? Notices and presidential documents often have no separate abstract; the title is the summary.

How do I filter to presidential documents only? Set presidential_only=true (or document_type=PRESDOCU).

How accurate is is_open_for_comment? It mirrors the upstream flag at fetch time. Federal Register occasionally adjusts comment windows post-publication.

Why are cfr_references sometimes empty? Notices without regulatory impact do not reference the Code of Federal Regulations — those records will have cfr_references_count = 0.

Can I get the JSON? The full original record is on raw_url. This Actor flattens and denormalises the most useful fields for downstream pipelines.

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Changelog

• 2026-10-12 — SEO metadata (seoTitle, seoDescription); README rewritten with real output sample, FAQ, cross-links.
• 2026-10-07 — Pricing switched to Apify pay-per-event ($0.001 per dataset item).
• 2026-09-30 — Initial public release on the Apify Store.