Federal Register Scraper — Rules, Notices & Regulations

Extract documents from the US Federal Register — the official journal of the US federal government — by keyword, agency, document type, or date range. No API key required. Powered by the official, keyless Federal Register public API.

What You Can Do

• Search the full text of Federal Register documents by keyword or phrase
• Filter by agency (EPA, FDA, DOT, OSHA, and 400+ more)
• Filter by document type: Final Rules, Proposed Rules, Notices, Presidential Documents
• Filter by publication date range
• Retrieve thousands of documents per run (up to 10,000)
• Export to JSON, CSV, or Excel for compliance monitoring, legal research, and regulatory intelligence

Why Federal Register Data?

The Federal Register publishes over 80,000 documents per year. Every federal agency rulemaking, public notice, executive order, and regulatory proposal must be published here before it takes effect. This makes it the most authoritative source for:

• Compliance teams tracking rule changes that affect their industry
• Legal and policy researchers monitoring regulatory activity
• Lobbyists and advocacy groups watching proposed rules during the comment period
• Journalists covering federal policy
• Data scientists building regulatory datasets for NLP and ML pipelines
• Government contractors staying ahead of procurement-related notices

The official Federal Register website offers search but no bulk export. This actor bridges that gap.

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
query	String	—	Keyword or phrase to search
agencies	Array	[]	Agency slugs, e.g. ["epa", "fda", "dot"]
types	Array	[]	Document types: RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, PRESDOCU
dateFrom	String	—	Start date YYYY-MM-DD
dateTo	String	—	End date YYYY-MM-DD
maxResults	Integer	200	Max documents to return (1–10,000)
mode	String	search	search or agencyDocs

Mode: search

Searches the Federal Register by keyword. You can combine this with agency, type, and date filters.

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Mode: agencyDocs

Returns all recent documents from one or more agencies, without a keyword filter. Useful for monitoring everything an agency publishes.

{
  "mode": "agencyDocs",
  "agencies": ["epa"],
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Combining Filters

All filters stack. You can combine keyword search with agency, type, and date filters:

{
  "query": "clean air",
  "agencies": ["epa"],
  "types": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2024-12-31",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Output Fields

Each document record contains:

Field	Type	Description
documentNumber	String	Official FR document number, e.g. 2024-12345
title	String	Full document title
type	String	RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, or PRESDOCU
abstract	String	Brief summary of the document
agencies	String	Comma-separated list of issuing agencies
publicationDate	String	Publication date YYYY-MM-DD
effectiveDate	String	Effective date YYYY-MM-DD (if applicable)
htmlUrl	String	Full document URL on federalregister.gov
pdfUrl	String	Direct PDF download URL
citation	String	Official citation, e.g. 89 FR 12345

Sample Output

{
  "documentNumber": "2024-28147",
  "title": "Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework for Federal Agencies",
  "type": "NOTICE",
  "abstract": "This notice announces the availability of an updated risk management framework for artificial intelligence systems used in federal decision-making processes.",
  "agencies": "Office of Science and Technology Policy",
  "publicationDate": "2024-11-15",
  "effectiveDate": "",
  "htmlUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/11/15/2024-28147/artificial-intelligence-risk-management-framework",
  "pdfUrl": "https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2024-11-15/pdf/2024-28147.pdf",
  "citation": "89 FR 90512"
}

How It Works

This actor calls the official Federal Register API at https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json. This is a completely public, keyless API — no authentication, no rate limits for reasonable usage. The API is maintained by the US Government Publishing Office (GPO) and is designed for programmatic access.

The actor paginates through results (up to 1,000 documents per page) until it hits your maxResults limit or exhausts all matching documents. For large queries like "regulation" or agency-wide pulls, this can return thousands of documents in a single run.

Agency Slugs

Agency slugs are lowercase, hyphenated identifiers used by the Federal Register API. Examples:

Agency	Slug
Environmental Protection Agency	epa
Food and Drug Administration	food-and-drug-administration
Department of Transportation	transportation-department
Occupational Safety and Health Administration	occupational-safety-and-health-administration
Securities and Exchange Commission	securities-and-exchange-commission
Federal Communications Commission	federal-communications-commission
Federal Trade Commission	federal-trade-commission
Department of Homeland Security	homeland-security-department
Treasury Department	treasury-department
Department of Justice	justice-department

You can find any agency's slug by searching the Federal Register website and checking the URL parameter. The API accepts partial slug matching.

Document Types

Type Code	Description
RULE	Final Rules — legally binding regulations
PRORULE	Proposed Rules — open for public comment
NOTICE	Notices — announcements, meetings, grant awards
PRESDOCU	Presidential Documents — executive orders, proclamations

Use Cases

Compliance Monitoring

Track all final rules published by the EPA or OSHA in the last 90 days:

{
  "agencies": ["epa", "occupational-safety-and-health-administration"],
  "types": ["RULE"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-10-01",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Proposed Rule Comment Tracking

Find all proposed rules with an open comment period in your industry:

{
  "query": "financial services",
  "types": ["PRORULE"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "maxResults": 200
}

AI and Tech Policy Research

Monitor all AI-related regulatory activity across the federal government:

{
  "query": "artificial intelligence",
  "maxResults": 1000
}

Agency Activity Audit

Get a complete picture of what the SEC published this year:

{
  "mode": "agencyDocs",
  "agencies": ["securities-and-exchange-commission"],
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "maxResults": 2000
}

Legal Citation Research

Search by a specific regulatory topic and export citations for legal briefs:

{
  "query": "clean water act effluent limitations",
  "agencies": ["epa"],
  "types": ["RULE"],
  "maxResults": 100
}

Performance and Limits

• No API key required — the Federal Register API is completely public
• No login required — no account, no OAuth, no credentials
• Per-page limit: 1,000 results per API call
• Max results: 10,000 per actor run
• Speed: Typically 1,000–5,000 documents per minute
• Memory: 512 MB (sufficient for any query size)
• Datacenter proxy used by default (the Federal Register API is not blocked)

The Federal Register API returns total_pages in each response, so the actor knows exactly how many pages to fetch. Pagination is automatic — you only need to set maxResults.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this actor require an API key?

No. The Federal Register API (federalregister.gov/api/v1) is a completely free, public government API with no authentication required. You can verify this yourself by visiting https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json?conditions[term]=test&per_page=5 in your browser.

How recent is the data?

Documents are typically available within 24 hours of publication. The Federal Register publishes on business days, and the API reflects the same-day publication.

Can I get the full text of documents?

The API returns the abstract and a URL to the full HTML document. You can use the htmlUrl field to access the complete document. For bulk full-text extraction, combine this actor with a web scraper pointed at those URLs.

How do I find the right agency slug?

Visit https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/agencies.json for a complete list of all agencies and their slugs. You can also search for an agency on federalregister.gov and check the URL — the slug appears after /agencies/.

What is the difference between RULE and PRORULE?

A RULE (Final Rule) is a legally binding regulation that has completed the rulemaking process. A PRORULE (Proposed Rule / NPRM) is a draft regulation open for public comment — it is not yet binding.

Can I filter by multiple agencies and types at once?

Yes. All filters stack. You can pass multiple agency slugs and multiple document types in the same run. The API treats multiple values of the same filter as OR (any match), while different filter types are AND (all must match).

How many results can I get per run?

Up to 10,000. The Federal Register API can return up to 1,000 results per page, and the actor will paginate automatically. For unrestricted keyword searches like "regulation", there may be hundreds of thousands of matching documents — use maxResults to cap the output.

Is this legal to scrape?

Yes. All Federal Register content is in the public domain (US government works are not subject to copyright). The API is provided specifically for programmatic access and is documented at https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/api/v1.

Data Source

All data is sourced from the official US Federal Register API:

• Base URL: https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/
• Documentation: https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/api/v1
• Publisher: US Government Publishing Office (GPO)
• Coverage: All Federal Register documents since 1994 (full-text since 2000)

The Federal Register has been published every federal business day since 1936. The API covers documents from 1994 onward, with full-text search available for documents from 2000 onward.