USAspending — US Federal Contracts & Grants Scraper

Search every US federal award — contracts, IDVs, grants, direct payments, other financial assistance and loans — straight from the official USAspending.gov awards API, and get flat JSON rows you can drop into a CRM, a spreadsheet or a model.

No API key, no login, no proxy: this Actor uses the US government's public open-data API (api.usaspending.gov), so the data is authoritative and there is nothing to violate. Awards data covers recipients (companies, universities, state agencies), not individuals.

What you can do with it

• Federal-contractor lead lists — every company that won work from a given agency, with UEI, address and NAICS/PSC codes.
• Competitor tracking — pull one recipient's full award history by name keyword and watch amounts, agencies and end dates (recompete timing).
• Grant prospecting — filter to grants and cooperative agreements by CFDA/Assistance Listing program and state.
• Market sizing — how much a given agency obligated on solar, cyber, AI or any keyword over any window since 2007.
• Recompete alerts — sort by end date and find contracts about to expire in your NAICS.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
awardCategories	array	["contracts"]	contracts, idvs, grants, direct_payments, other_financial_assistance, loans. Pick several — each is fetched separately and merged.
startDate / endDate	string	last 365 days	YYYY-MM-DD, filters on award action date. Nothing exists before 2007-10-01; earlier dates are clamped.
keywords	array	–	Free text over description, recipient and agency. Multiple keywords are ORed.
agencies	array	–	Exact top-tier agency names, e.g. Department of Energy. Abbreviations like DOE match nothing.
placeOfPerformanceStates	array	–	Two-letter USPS codes for where the work happens (CA, TX).
recipientStates	array	–	Two-letter USPS codes for the recipient's own address.
minAwardAmount / maxAwardAmount	integer	–	Obligated amount bounds in USD.
sortBy	string	awardAmount	awardAmount, lastModifiedDate, startDate, recipientName.
order	string	desc	desc or asc.
maxResults	integer	100	Total across all selected categories.
maxPagesPerCategory	integer	50	Depth cap, 100 awards per page.

All filters are ANDed. Awards filtered out are never pushed and never charged.

Output

One flat row per award:

Field	Example
awardId	89243425FEE000489
awardUrl	https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_89243425FEE000489_8900_…
awardCategory / awardType	contracts / BPA CALL
recipientName, recipientUei, recipientId	ENERGY TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE LLC, WDTLX4NKRKC8
recipientAddress, recipientCity, recipientState, recipientCountry	920 NW BOND ST STE 204, BEND, OR, UNITED STATES
awardingAgency, awardingSubAgency, fundingAgency, fundingSubAgency	Department of Energy
description	SCIENTIFIC, ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT (SETS) FOR DOE EERE'S SOLAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE…
awardAmount, totalOutlays	7909335.88, 7909335.88
loanValue, subsidyCost	loans only — face value and subsidy cost
startDate, endDate, baseObligationDate, lastModifiedDate	2025-04-30, 2026-04-30
placeOfPerformanceCity/State/Zip/Country	GOLDEN, CO, 80401, USA
naicsCode, naicsDescription, pscCode, pscDescription	562910, REMEDIATION SERVICES, R425, SUPPORT- PROFESSIONAL: ENGINEERING/TECHNICAL
cfdaNumbers, cfdaProgramTitles	grants/loans — e.g. ["93.778"], ["GRANTS TO STATES FOR MEDICAID"]
disasterEmergencyFundCodes	["Q"]

Sample row

{
  "awardId": "89243425FEE000489",
  "awardUrl": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_89243425FEE000489_8900_89243423AEE000008_8900",
  "awardCategory": "contracts",
  "awardType": "BPA CALL",
  "recipientName": "ENERGY TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCE LLC",
  "recipientUei": "WDTLX4NKRKC8",
  "recipientCity": "BEND",
  "recipientState": "OR",
  "awardingAgency": "Department of Energy",
  "awardingSubAgency": "Department of Energy",
  "description": "SCIENTIFIC, ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SUPPORT (SETS) FOR DOE EERE'S SOLAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES OFFICE (SETO)",
  "awardAmount": 7909335.88,
  "totalOutlays": 7909335.88,
  "startDate": "2025-04-30",
  "endDate": "2026-04-30",
  "placeOfPerformanceCity": "GOLDEN",
  "placeOfPerformanceState": "CO",
  "naicsCode": "562910",
  "pscCode": "R425",
  "disasterEmergencyFundCodes": ["Q"]
}

Pricing

Pay per result: $0.004 per award, no Actor-start fee. You only pay for awards actually written to the dataset.

FAQ

Why can't I mix contracts and grants in one search on USAspending's own site? You can here. The underlying API rejects a request whose award_type_codes span two groups (must only contain types from one group), so this Actor runs one query per category you select and merges the results into a single dataset, deduplicated by the award's stable internal id.

Why did my search return zero awards? The filters are ANDed. A keyword plus a state plus a minimum amount over a short window is often genuinely empty — drop one filter first. The other common cause is an agency name that isn't the exact top-tier spelling (Department of Energy, not DOE).

How far back does the data go? 2007-10-01. The API refuses earlier start dates, so this Actor clamps them instead of failing.

Are loan amounts in awardAmount? No. Loans report loanValue (face value) and subsidyCost instead of an obligated amount — that is how the API models them, and both fields are passed through unchanged.

Why does startDate on a row show a date decades before my search window? startDate/endDate filter on the award's action date (when it was last modified), not on startDate's own value. A long-running contract (e.g. a national-lab management contract) can have a 1978 period-of-performance start and still match a 2025-2026 filter window because it was modified this year — lastModifiedDate is what actually falls inside your range. Sort by lastModifiedDate instead of startDate if you want the most recently active awards first.

Is this the same as SAM.gov? No. SAM.gov lists pre-award opportunities you can bid on; USAspending lists awards already made. This Actor covers awards — who won, how much, which agency, and when the work ends.

Does it need a proxy? No. Plain HTTPS to a public government API, so runs are fast and cheap.

How does this compare to other USAspending scrapers? Checked the real pricingInfos and depth of the top competitors on Apify Store (2026-09-10). Pricing is bimodal: the two highest-traction players — parseforge (25 users, the most of any competitor) at $0.012/result + $0.16 start, and benthepythondev (17 users, 292 runs/30d, the most active) at $0.005/result + start — are both pricier than our $0.004/result with no start fee. Two lower-traction entrants (copious_atoll, 10 users; themineworks, 3 users) charge $0.001/result, cheaper than us on price alone — but themineworks' own listing advertises "18 Fields"; this Actor returns 37 typed fields across 6 award categories (contracts, IDVs, grants, direct payments, other financial assistance, loans), each category with its own correct field mapping (loans carry loanValue/subsidyCost, not awardAmount) rather than one generic shape stretched across every award kind.

Source code: https://github.com/Fetchsmith/fetchsmith/tree/main/actors/us-federal-awards-scraper