Federal Register Scraper - Rules & Comment Tracker

Never miss a comment deadline. Track proposed and final federal rules by agency or topic, on a schedule.

What it does

This Federal Register scraper pulls structured rulemaking data straight from the official Federal Register API (federalregister.gov) - no API key required. Search or filter final rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents by keyword, agency, document type, and publication date range, then export clean CSV or JSON.

Where most tools stop at a one-time bulk dump, this actor is built for recurring regulatory change monitoring. It captures every rule's comment close date alongside its effective date, so you can run it on a schedule and get a live view of proposed rules whose comment windows are still open - by agency, by topic, or by search term. Use it as a Federal Register monitor, a proposed rules tracker, or a comment deadline tracker for compliance and government-affairs workflows.

Who it's for

• Regulatory affairs & compliance teams monitoring rules that affect their industry
• Government affairs & policy researchers tracking agency rulemaking activity
• Lobbyists & public-affairs firms watching comment windows to file responses on time
• Legal & in-house counsel building regulatory change logs and docket trails
• Analysts & data teams who need Federal Register data as clean CSV/JSON for dashboards

What you get / Output

Each record maps directly to the Federal Register document. Fields returned:

Field	Description
title	Document title
documentType	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, or Presidential Document
action	Short summary of the regulatory action
abstract	Document abstract / summary
agencies	Issuing agency or agencies
publicationDate	Date published in the Federal Register
effectiveDate	Date the rule takes effect
commentsCloseDate	Deadline to submit public comments
documentNumber	Unique Federal Register document number
citation	Federal Register citation
docketIds	Associated docket ID(s)
regulationIdNumbers	Regulation Identifier Number(s) (RIN)
topics	Subject/topic tags
significant	Whether the document is flagged significant
htmlUrl	Link to the full document on federalregister.gov
pdfUrl	Link to the official PDF

Input / How to query

Filter down to exactly the regulations you care about:

• Search term - keyword or phrase to match across documents
• Document type - rule (final), proposed rule, notice, or presidential document
• Agency - limit results to one or more issuing agencies (e.g. EPA, SEC, FDA)
• Publication date range - start and end dates to scope the pull
• Monitor mode - watch for new rules and notices by agency or topic, ideal for scheduled runs

Combine filters freely - for example, proposed rules from the EPA published in the last 30 days, or every significant final rule mentioning a specific term.

Example use cases

• Watch your industry: monitor new proposed rules from the agencies that regulate you (e.g. SEC for finance, FDA for medical, EPA for environmental) and get them as a daily feed.
• Never miss a comment window: pull all open proposed rules with a future commentsCloseDate so your team knows exactly which comment periods are still available to respond to.
• Build a regulatory change log: export final vs. proposed rules with RIN, docket IDs, and citations into a compliance tracker or data warehouse.
• Agency activity reports: summarize every document a single agency published in a quarter for a policy or client briefing.
• Effective-date planning: track upcoming effectiveDate values on final rules so operations teams can prepare ahead of enforcement.

Recurring use / scheduling

This actor is designed to run on a schedule. In Apify, open the actor, set your filters (agency, topic term, and/or document type), and add a Schedule - for example daily or hourly.

• Keep the same input to re-check the same slice of the Federal Register each run.
• Use the documentNumber field as a stable unique key to dedupe across runs, so downstream automations only alert on genuinely new documents.
• Pair a scheduled run with Apify integrations (webhooks, email, Slack, Zapier, Make) to turn new proposed rules or approaching comment deadlines into alerts for your team.

FAQ

How do I monitor new federal regulations for my industry?

Set a search term and/or the agencies that regulate your industry, choose your document types (proposed rule, rule, notice), and schedule the actor to run daily. Each run returns the latest matching documents, which you can pipe to email, Slack, or a spreadsheet.

How can I track proposed rules and comment deadlines by agency?

Filter by agency and document type "proposed rule," then use the commentsCloseDate field on each record to see which comment windows are open and when they close. Scheduling the run keeps that list current.

Is there an API to get Federal Register data without a key?

Yes. This actor uses the official Federal Register API (federalregister.gov), which is public and requires no API key or authentication. You just configure the actor's filters and run it.

How do I export Federal Register rules to CSV or JSON?

Every run writes results to an Apify dataset, which you can download or export as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or pull via the Apify API for your own pipeline.

How do I get alerts when a new proposed rule affects my company?

Schedule the actor with filters that match your company's exposure (agency, topic term, document type), dedupe on documentNumber, and connect an Apify webhook or integration so new matches trigger an alert.

Can I use this instead of Regulations.gov to track rules and comment deadlines?

For the rulemaking documents themselves - final rules, proposed rules, notices, and their comment deadlines - the Federal Register is the authoritative source this actor reads from, and it returns docket IDs and RINs so you can cross-reference elsewhere. Note: this actor returns rule/notice documents and their commentsCloseDate, not the full text of individual public comments.

How do I track final vs proposed rules from the EPA, SEC, or FDA?

Set the agency filter to the agency you care about and run two views (or filter downstream) on the documentType field to separate final "Rule" records from "Proposed Rule" records.

How can I automate regulatory compliance monitoring daily?

Save your filters, add a daily schedule, dedupe on documentNumber, and route new records to your team via webhook or integration - a hands-off daily regulatory change monitoring pipeline.

Data source & notes

• Source: Official U.S. Federal Register API at federalregister.gov.
• Access: Public, free, and keyless - Federal Register data is U.S. government public record.
• Coverage: Final rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents indexed by the Federal Register.
• Limitations: Fields reflect what the Federal Register publishes for each document; values such as commentsCloseDate, effectiveDate, docketIds, and regulationIdNumbers are only present when the source document includes them. This actor returns rule/notice documents and their metadata, not the body text of individual public comments.