Federal Register API: Rules, Proposed Rules & Notices Monitor

Search and monitor the US Federal Register for final rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents, for compliance teams, regulatory-affairs staff, lobbyists and AI agents. It costs $0.002 per document, so 500 documents cost $1.

Search and monitor the US Federal Register: final rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents, filtered by keyword, agency, publication date, docket, CFR title or significance. Every row includes the comment deadline, effective date, docket IDs, RINs, CFR references and direct HTML, PDF and raw-text links. Uses the Federal Register's official keyless API.

Built and maintained by Lathewright. Lathewright is operated by AI systems under human ownership. A person reviews and approves everything we publish, send and sell. $0.002 per document.

What you can do with it

• Regulatory alerts: run daily with dateFrom = yesterday and a keyword list ("artificial intelligence", PFAS, "crypto asset") to get only new rules and proposed rules.
• Comment-deadline tracking: every proposed rule carries commentsCloseOn, so an agent can build a calendar of open comment periods for your industry.
• Agency watch: filter by agency slug (securities-and-exchange-commission, environmental-protection-agency, food-and-drug-administration) and type.
• Docket and CFR research: pull every document in a docket (EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072) or affecting a CFR title (21 for FDA, 40 for EPA, 47 for FCC).
• Public inspection: optionally include documents that are on public inspection today and publish in the next issue.

Example tasks

Paste any of these into the Input tab, or send the same JSON through the API. Prices are the per-result prices listed under Pricing.

1. Rules and proposed rules about artificial intelligence

{
  "query": "\"artificial intelligence\"",
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "maxResults": 25
}

What comes back: One row per document with publicationDate, type, title, agencies, commentsCloseOn, effectiveOn, significant and htmlUrl. Up to 25 rows, at most $0.05.

2. EPA proposed rules on PFAS since September

{
  "agencies": ["environmental-protection-agency"],
  "documentTypes": ["PRORULE"],
  "query": "PFAS",
  "dateFrom": "2026-09-01",
  "maxResults": 25
}

What comes back: Proposed rules with comment deadlines, docket IDs and pdfUrl links.

3. Significant FCC-related documents under CFR Title 47

{
  "cfrTitle": 47,
  "significantOnly": true,
  "dateFrom": "2026-10-01"
}

What comes back: Documents flagged significant that cite Title 47 of the CFR.

Input

Field	Type	Notes
query	string	Full-text term; quotes force an exact phrase
documentTypes	array	RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, PRESDOCU (empty = all)
agencies	array	Agency slugs from federalregister.gov URLs
dateFrom, dateTo	YYYY-MM-DD	Publication date window (default: last 30 days)
significantOnly	boolean	Only EO 12866 significant documents
docketId	string	One docket
cfrTitle	integer	CFR title 1 to 50
includePublicInspection	boolean	Add today's public-inspection matches
maxResults	integer	Cap on documents (each is one event)

At least one of query, agencies, docketId or cfrTitle is required.

{
  "query": "\"artificial intelligence\"",
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "dateFrom": "2026-07-01",
  "maxResults": 100
}

Output

{
  "documentNumber": "2026-20890",
  "title": "Project-Level Predecisional Administrative Review Process",
  "type": "Rule",
  "action": "Final rule.",
  "abstract": "The U.S. Department of Agriculture is issuing a final rule amending...",
  "agencies": ["Agriculture Department", "Forest Service"],
  "agencySlugs": ["agriculture-department", "forest-service"],
  "publicationDate": "2026-10-13",
  "effectiveOn": "2026-11-12",
  "commentsCloseOn": null,
  "significant": false,
  "docketIds": [],
  "regulationIdNumbers": ["0596-AD51"],
  "cfrReferences": [{ "title": 36, "part": 218 }],
  "citation": "91 FR 48120",
  "htmlUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/10/13/2026-20890/project-level-predecisional-administrative-review-process",
  "pdfUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-10-13/pdf/2026-20890.pdf",
  "rawTextUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/text/2026/10/13/2026-20890.txt",
  "stage": "published"
}

Pricing

Event	Price
Document found (document)	$0.002

Plus Apify's start fee ($0.00005 per run). No proxies, no hidden usage. 100 documents = $0.20. Set a maximum cost per run and the Actor stops cleanly at the limit.

How to use it

• Console: fill in the form and press Start; export JSON/CSV/Excel.
• API: POST https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/lathewright~federal-register-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<token>
• n8n / Make / Zapier: Apify node → this Actor → schedule daily → route new rows to Slack, email or a sheet.

Use from an AI agent (MCP)

Add this Actor as a tool in Claude, Cursor, VS Code or any MCP client with https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=lathewright/federal-register-monitor. The Actor description is the tool description, and the input fields above are the tool parameters. Example prompts: "Which proposed rules mentioning PFAS have comment periods closing in the next 30 days?", "List all FCC final rules published this month".

Data source and fair use

Data comes from the official Federal Register API (federalregister.gov/api/v1), which needs no API key. The Actor sends at most three requests per second with a descriptive User-Agent. Federal Register content is US government work in the public domain. No personal data is collected.

FAQ

Can I get the full text? Each row links to rawTextUrl (plain text) and htmlUrl. Pair with a content crawler Actor to pull the body.

What is the difference between effectiveOn and commentsCloseOn? Final rules carry an effective date; proposed rules carry a comment deadline. Either can be null.

Why does the same document appear twice when public inspection is on? A document can be on public inspection and published on the same day. Deduplicate on documentNumber.