NSF Award Data by Company — US Research Funding Recipients 🔬

foXLabs research-funding series: NIH grants · Clinical trial sponsors · Research organizations (ROR) · US nonprofits · US federal contracts

🎉 See which companies and institutions win NSF money — award title, amount, dates, principal investigator and the awardee's phone number — straight from the NSF Award Search API, no key and no login. Built for research-sales teams, grant analysts, and anyone mapping who funds US science.

🔍 What is this Actor — and when should you use it?

The National Science Foundation publishes every award it makes. This Actor searches that record by awardee organization and returns one clean row per award: what was funded, for how much, over which period, who the principal investigator was, and where the organization sits.

Unusually for an open award source, NSF also publishes the awardee's phone number — measured at 98% fill on the default run — so these rows carry a direct contact route, not just a name.

Use it when you need: every NSF award a company or university holds; a list of organizations funded in your field; the PI behind a grant; or an outreach list of research-active organizations with phone numbers.

Use something else when: you want biomedical funding — NIH is a separate agency with its own record, covered by NIH Grant Data. For federal contracts rather than research grants, use US Federal Contract Awards.

🤖 Use with AI agents

Already on the Apify MCP server? Ask for this Actor by name: foxlabs/nsf-awards-company-data.

Your agent can pay for its own runs. This Actor is pay-per-event with agentic payments, so an agent can discover it, run it and settle the bill over x402 (USDC on Base) or Skyfire — no Apify account or API token of its own. Billing is the same either way: per delivered award row.

Otherwise paste this into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP-enabled assistant:

Run the Apify actor foxlabs/nsf-awards-company-data with
{"queries":["Georgia Tech Research Corporation"],"maxResultsPerQuery":25}
and list the awards with amounts and principal investigators.

📋 Overview

Source	NSF Award Search API (National Science Foundation)
Coverage	NSF awards to companies, universities and research institutions
Auth needed	None. No API key, no login, no proxy required
Row	One NSF award
Measured run	51 rows in 4.2 s for 3 organizations (2026-09-20, build 0.1.10)
Pricing	$0.003 per delivered row — $3 per 1,000

✨ Features

• 🏢 Organization-first search — type the awardee name, get their awards
• ☎️ Phone number on 98% of rows — the only direct contact detail NSF exposes
• 👤 Principal investigator named on the award
• 💵 Obligated amount and estimated total per award
• 📅 Award date and full period of performance
• 🟢 Active flag — tells you whether the award is still running
• ⚡ Key-free and fast — 51 rows in about 4 seconds, no proxy

🎬 Quick Start

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/foxlabs~nsf-awards-company-data/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries":["Intel Corporation","SRI International"],"maxResultsPerQuery":25}'

🚀 Getting Started (3 steps)

1. Name the organizations. Put awardee names into queries. The default run searches Intel Corporation, Georgia Tech Research Corporation and SRI International.
2. Set the depth. maxResultsPerQuery caps how many awards come back per organization (default 25).
3. Run it. Rows arrive in the dataset; export to CSV/JSON/Excel or read them over the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
queries	array	["Intel Corporation","Georgia Tech Research Corporation","SRI International"]	Awardee organization names
maxResultsPerQuery	integer	25	Cap on awards returned per organization
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Parallel requests against NSF
requestDelayMs	integer	0	Optional pause between requests
includeRaw	boolean	false	Attach the untouched NSF record to each row
proxyConfiguration	object	proxy off	NSF answers direct requests; enable only if you need it

Example — one university's full award list:

{ "queries": ["Georgia Tech Research Corporation"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 100 }

Example — several companies at once:

{ "queries": ["Intel Corporation", "SRI International", "Raytheon"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 50 }

📤 Output

One row per award. Fill rates below are from the measured run (51 rows, 3 organizations, 2026-09-20):

Field	Type	Fill	Description
companyName	string	100%	Awardee organization
awardId	string	100%	NSF award id
awardTitle	string	100%	Title of the funded project
amount	number	100%	Funds obligated
estimatedTotal	number	100%	NSF's estimated total for the award
currency	string	100%	Always USD
awardedOn	string	100%	Award date (ISO)
startDate / endDate	string	100%	Period of performance
isActive	boolean	100%	Whether NSF still lists the award as active
address / state	string	100%	Awardee location as NSF publishes it
phone	string	98%	Awardee phone number — NSF's only direct contact field
principalInvestigator	string	98%	PI on the award
awardType	string	98%	NSF award instrument
counterparty	string	98%	NSF directorate/division funding the award
cfdaNumber	string	98%	CFDA program number
city	string	98%	Awardee city
countryName	string	100%	Awardee country
sourceUrl	string	100%	Official NSF award page
source / query / scrapedAt	string	100%	Provenance fields

Every column above is populated on real rows — columns NSF does not publish (recipient id, award status, industry code, free-text description) were removed rather than shipped permanently empty.

A real row from the default run:

{
  "companyName": "Intel Corporation",
  "awardId": "7469025",
  "awardTitle": "FACULTY RESEARCH PARTICIPATION",
  "amount": 6960,
  "currency": "USD",
  "awardedOn": "2004-04-13",
  "startDate": "1974-01-01",
  "endDate": "1974-11-01",
  "state": "CA",
  "isActive": false
}

💼 Use cases

• Research-sales outreach — build a call list of research-active organizations, phone number included
• Grant landscape — see which organizations NSF funds in a field, and at what scale
• Competitor and partner mapping — profile a university's or company's federal research income
• PI targeting — reach the named principal investigator on relevant awards
• Funding trend analysis — group awards by year, directorate or program to see where NSF money moves

🔗 Integration

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('foxlabs/nsf-awards-company-data').call({
  queries: ['Intel Corporation'], maxResultsPerQuery: 25,
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient
client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("foxlabs/nsf-awards-company-data").call(
    run_input={"queries": ["Intel Corporation"], "maxResultsPerQuery": 25}
)
items = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

No-code: Make, n8n and Zapier reach this Actor through the Apify app — schedule it and push new awards into a CRM or a sheet.

📊 Pricing

Pay-per-event: award-record — $0.003 per delivered row ($3 per 1,000). Compute and traffic are included; you pay for rows, not run time. Rows without an award id are not charged.

View current pricing.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an NSF API key? No. NSF's award search is public and this Actor needs no key, login or proxy.

Does it cover NIH or other agencies? No — NSF only. NIH has its own record; use NIH Grant Data.

Is the phone number really there? Yes. NSF publishes the awardee's phone on the award record; it came back on 98% of rows in the measured run. It is the organization's listed number, not a personal line.

Why do some rows have no city or PI? NSF's older award records are thinner than recent ones. The 98% figures above reflect exactly that.

How far back does it go? As far as NSF's own record — the measured run returned awards starting in 1974.

Can I search by award id instead of organization? queries are organization names. For a known award, open its sourceUrl directly.

🐛 Troubleshooting

An organization returns nothing. NSF matches the awardee's registered name. Try the formal form (Georgia Tech Research Corporation rather than Georgia Tech).

Fewer rows than expected. maxResultsPerQuery caps per organization, not per run — raise it, or split organizations across runs.

Amounts look small. amount is the funds obligated on that award record; a large program is usually split across many awards. estimatedTotal carries NSF's own total estimate.

⚠️ Trademark

The National Science Foundation is a US federal agency. This Actor is an independent tool, is not affiliated with or endorsed by NSF or the US Government, and reads only publicly published award records.

⚖️ Is it legal to scrape this data?

NSF award records are published by a federal agency so the public can see how research money is spent. The rows this Actor returns describe organizations and funded projects — business and institutional information. The phone number is the organization's published contact number, not personal data. You remain responsible for how you use the output, including any outreach rules that apply to you.

🤝 Support & contact

Questions, a field you need, or a bug: info@foxlabs.com.tr — or open an issue on the Actor's Apify page.

Changelog

0.1.10

• Fixed award dates. NSF ships dates as US MM/DD/YYYY; they were parsed as dd/mm/yyyy, which swapped day and month and produced impossible values such as 2004-13-04. Measured before: 39 of 51 rows invalid. Now 0.
• Added phone. NSF publishes the awardee's phone number and it was not being carried through. Measured fill: 98%.
• Removed permanently-empty columns (companyId, status, industryCode, description) — NSF does not publish them, so they no longer ship as null.

0.1

• NSF award search by awardee organization, one row per award.
• Pay-per-event billing on delivered rows (award-record).