Congress.gov Bill Tracker

Scrapes U.S. Congress bill data from the official Congress.gov API. Returns bill details, sponsor and cosponsor records with party and state breakdown, committee assignments, policy subject tags, and latest legislative actions across all bill types and congresses.

Runs against the real Congress.gov API — no HTML scraping, no proxies, no guesswork about when the site layout changes.

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Congress.gov Bill Tracker Features

• Extracts 20+ fields per bill — title, congress number, bill type, introduced date, sponsor info, action history, and more
• Full cosponsor graph — every cosponsor with name, party, state, and date. Formatted as readable strings so you don't have to reassemble them
• Policy subjects — legislative subject tags from the Library of Congress subject system, useful for classification and filtering
• Committee assignments — which committees each bill was referred to
• Incremental mode — filter by updatedSince date to pull only bills updated since your last run
• Bill type filters — target House bills, Senate bills, joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, or simple resolutions independently
• Congress number filters — pull a specific session or let it run across all historical congresses
• Direct text link — URL to the HTML version of the bill text on congress.gov
• API-based — uses the official Congress.gov JSON API (5,000 req/hr with a free key)

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Who Uses Congress.gov Data?

• Lobbying shops — track bills in specific policy areas, monitor sponsor/cosponsor movement, flag bills that reach committee
• Policy research teams — build structured datasets of legislative activity for analysis
• ESG and compliance analysts — monitor proposed regulations by subject area and sponsor party
• Journalists and data reporters — follow a bill from introduction to floor vote in structured JSON
• Political analytics startups — feed historical and current bill data into models tracking legislative productivity

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How It Works

1. Configure your run — set the congress number (e.g., 119), bill type filter, and maxItems. Add your free Congress.gov API key if you have one.
2. The scraper pages through the bill listing — pulls bills in batches of 250, sorted by most-recently-updated.
3. For each bill, it fetches the detail record — sponsor info, cosponsor count, committee references, text version links.
4. Optionally fetches cosponsors and policy subjects — one extra API call each. Enabled by default, disable them if you need speed over depth.
5. Returns structured JSON — one record per bill, matching the output schema below.

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Congress.gov Bill Tracker Input

{
  "congress": 119,
  "billType": "hr",
  "maxItems": 100,
  "fetchCosponsors": true,
  "fetchSubjects": true,
  "updatedSince": "2025-01-01"
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
apiKey	String	—	Your free API key from api.congress.gov/sign-up/. Without one, the DEMO_KEY is used (30 req/hr — testing only).
congress	Integer	119	Congress number to fetch bills from (119 = current, 118 = previous). Leave empty for all congresses.
billType	String	All types	Bill type: hr, s, hjres, sjres, hconres, sconres, hres, sres.
updatedSince	String	—	ISO date (YYYY-MM-DD). Fetch only bills updated after this date. Enables incremental runs.
fetchCosponsors	Boolean	true	Fetch full cosponsor list for each bill. One extra API call per bill.
fetchSubjects	Boolean	true	Fetch policy subject tags for each bill. One extra API call per bill.
maxItems	Integer	10	Maximum number of bills to return.

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Congress.gov Bill Tracker Output Fields

{
  "congress": 119,
  "billType": "HR",
  "billNumber": "1",
  "billId": "119-hr-1",
  "title": "Lower Energy Costs Act",
  "introducedDate": "2025-01-03",
  "originChamber": "House",
  "policyArea": "Energy",
  "sponsorBioguide": "S001176",
  "sponsorName": "Rep. Scalise, Steve [R-LA-1]",
  "sponsorParty": "R",
  "sponsorState": "LA",
  "cosponsorCount": 12,
  "cosponsors": [
    "Rep. McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (R-WA, 2025-01-10)",
    "Rep. Westerman, Bruce (R-AR, 2025-01-10)"
  ],
  "committees": ["Energy and Commerce Committee"],
  "subjects": ["Energy policy", "Oil and gas", "Climate change"],
  "latestActionDate": "2025-03-30",
  "latestActionText": "Passed/agreed to in House.",
  "amendmentCount": 37,
  "relatedBillCount": 44,
  "textUrl": "https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr1/BILLS-119hr1eh.htm",
  "legislationUrl": "https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1",
  "apiUrl": "https://api.congress.gov/v3/bill/119/hr/1?format=json",
  "updateDate": "2025-04-01T14:22:00Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
congress	Integer	Congress number (e.g., 119 for 119th Congress, 2025-2027)
billType	String	Bill type code: HR, S, HJRES, SJRES, HCONRES, SCONRES, HRES, SRES
billNumber	String	Bill number within the congress
billId	String	Unique identifier (congress-type-number, e.g., 119-hr-1)
title	String	Official full title of the bill
introducedDate	String	Date the bill was introduced (YYYY-MM-DD)
originChamber	String	Chamber of origin: House or Senate
policyArea	String	Primary policy area classification
sponsorBioguide	String	Bioguide ID of the primary sponsor
sponsorName	String	Full name of the primary sponsor
sponsorParty	String	Party of the primary sponsor (R, D, I)
sponsorState	String	State code of the primary sponsor
cosponsorCount	Integer	Total number of cosponsors
cosponsors	Array	Cosponsors formatted as "Name (Party-State, date)" strings
committees	Array	Committee names the bill was referred to
subjects	Array	Legislative subject tags
latestActionDate	String	Date of the most recent congressional action
latestActionText	String	Description of the most recent action
amendmentCount	Integer	Number of amendments filed
relatedBillCount	Integer	Number of related bills
textUrl	String	URL to the latest HTML version of the bill text
legislationUrl	String	URL to the bill's congress.gov page
apiUrl	String	Congress.gov API URL for the bill detail
updateDate	String	When the bill record was last updated

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🔍 FAQ

How do I scrape Congress.gov bill data?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker handles everything — configure the congress number and bill type filters, then run it. Structured JSON with full bill details, sponsors, cosponsors, and policy subjects comes out the other end.

Do I need an API key for Congress.gov?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker uses a DEMO_KEY by default, limited to 30 requests per hour. That's enough for testing with small maxItems values. For any real workload, get a free key from api.congress.gov/sign-up/ — production keys allow 5,000 req/hr.

How much does it cost to run?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker charges $0.10 per run plus $0.001 per bill scraped. A run of 1,000 bills costs around $1.10. Each bill with cosponsors and subjects enabled requires 3-4 API calls total.

Can I filter by congress number or bill type?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker supports both. Set congress: 119 for the current session, or leave it empty to pull across all historical congresses. Set billType: "hr" for House bills, "s" for Senate bills, or leave empty for all types.

Does it support incremental scraping?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker has an updatedSince field for exactly this. Set it to yesterday's date and run it on a schedule — you get only bills that changed since your last pull. Keeps a database current without re-pulling 12,000 bills every time.

Does it need proxies?

Congress.gov Bill Tracker uses the official Congress.gov API. No proxies needed. Government API, reasonable rate limits, public data.

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Need More Features?

Need vote roll call data, full bill text extraction, or a different data source? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use Congress.gov Bill Tracker?

• Official API — pulls from Congress.gov's own JSON API, not scraped HTML that breaks when they change a CSS class
• Cosponsor graph included — party and state breakdown per cosponsor, formatted and ready to use. The existing bill trackers on the store don't have this, which is why they have three users between them
• Incremental-ready — updatedSince filter makes scheduled runs practical without re-fetching thousands of bills each time