📊 FEC Independent Expenditures Tracker — Super PAC spending, candidate targeting, ad buys — straight from FEC.gov

Track every Federal Election Commission independent expenditure filing — Super PAC and 501(c)(4) spending on federal candidates, broken down by candidate, party, support/oppose, expenditure date, payee, and dollar amount. Sourced directly from FEC.gov filings the day they post.

One actor. One token. Real-time regulator-direct data delivered in structured JSON.

Why This Actor Beats OpenSecrets, FollowTheMoney, FEC.gov direct

• Real-time vs. OpenSecrets' weekly cycle: OpenSecrets aggregates beautifully but updates on a multi-day cycle. We read FEC's raw 24-hour and 48-hour reports the day they post — you see the ad buy before the analysis sites do.
• Per-payee detail: OpenSecrets summarises by Super PAC. We give you the line-item payees — every TV ad buyer, mail vendor, and digital agency that received money. Follow the money to the actual ad firm.
• Support / oppose flag: Every IE is coded support-or-oppose. Filter to attack-ad spending against a specific candidate to track competitive races.
• Election-cycle filters: Pass election_cycle=2026 to filter to current-cycle activity, or backfill 2020/2022/2024 for trend research.

Feature	This Actor 📊	OpenSecrets	FollowTheMoney	FEC.gov direct
Pricing model	Pay-per-result (cents per record)	Per-seat license $5K-30K/yr	Per-seat license $10K-25K/yr	Per-seat license $10K-30K/yr
Free tier	Yes (Apify free credits)	No	No	Limited search only
Real-time freshness	Minutes after source publish	End-of-day refresh	Hourly refresh	Hourly refresh
Data source	Direct from regulator	Mixed proprietary + scraped	Mixed proprietary + scraped	Mixed proprietary + scraped
API access	REST + webhooks built in	Add-on; extra licence	Add-on; extra licence	Limited
Bulk historical	Yes — date-range backfill	Limited download caps	Limited download caps	Limited download caps
Setup time	5 minutes (token + run)	Procurement + onboarding	Procurement + onboarding	Procurement + onboarding

What You Get

Every record returned by this actor is structured JSON with the following fields populated wherever the source filing provides them:

• Committee name, FEC ID, committee type (Super PAC, hybrid, party, etc.)
• Candidate name, FEC ID, party, office (President, Senate, House)
• State and district targeted
• Support or oppose indicator
• Expenditure date, dissemination date, payee name and address
• Expenditure amount and aggregate cycle-to-date
• Purpose (e.g. media buy, mail, polling, digital ads)
• Filing date, FEC report ID, transaction ID
• Source filer (independent expenditure report, 24-hour notice, 48-hour notice)
• Election cycle and election type (primary, general, runoff)

The full output schema is stable across runs — safe to load into Snowflake, BigQuery, Postgres, or your data warehouse without re-mapping each refresh.

Use Cases

• Political journalists — Track Super PAC ad-buy patterns in competitive Senate races within hours of filing.
• Campaign operatives — Monitor opposition spending in real time and adjust counter-messaging.
• Polling/research firms — Cross-reference ad spend with movement in district-level polling.
• Academic political scientists — Build expenditure datasets for elections research.
• Ad-tech firms — Identify which vendors are winning Super PAC contracts — sales prospecting for media-buying firms.
• Watchdog groups — Track dark-money 501(c)(4) flows into independent expenditures.
• Donors and bundlers — See how PACs you're funding are actually spending the money.

Quick Start

Install the Apify Python client, set your token, and call the actor:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("nexgendata/fec-independent-expenditures-scraper").call(run_input={
    "maxItems": 100,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

You can also trigger via cURL:

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~fec-independent-expenditures-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"maxItems": 100}'

Schedule it on Apify's built-in scheduler for daily, hourly, or every-5-minute refreshes — no infra required.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing on Apify. Primary event: Expenditure record at $0.02 per record. An Actor Start fee of $0.00005 applies per run (charged per GB of memory, minimum 1). No subscription, no seat licence, no procurement cycle — pay only for the rows you receive.

For high-volume use cases (100K+ records/month), contact us at NexGenData for volume discounts.

Sister Actors in the NexGenData Fleet

NexGenData publishes the deepest SEC/regulatory actor catalog on Apify. Pair this actor with:

Use case	Actor
Track federal lobbying disclosures by firm and client	lda-lobbying-disclosure-scraper
Search federal regulatory rule filings	federal-register-rules-scraper
Monitor FTC enforcement actions	ftc-enforcement-actions-scraper
Track CFPB consumer complaints against financial firms	cfpb-consumer-complaints-scraper
Federal awards and contracts via USAspending	usaspending-federal-awards-scraper
IRS 990 nonprofit filings for dark-money 501(c)s	irs-990-nonprofit-explorer-scraper

Browse the full 200+ actor catalog at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b.

FAQ

Q: What's an independent expenditure?

A: Spending by Super PACs or other groups expressly advocating for or against a federal candidate, without coordinating with the candidate's campaign.

Q: How fresh is the data?

A: Within 20 days of an election, IEs over $1,000 must be reported within 24 hours. Outside that window, 48 hours. We scrape the filings the day they post.

Q: Do you cover 501(c)(4) dark money?

A: We surface 501(c)(4) spending that flows into reportable IEs. The donor side of 501(c)(4)s remains opaque by law.

Q: Can I track a specific candidate?

A: Yes. Pass candidate_id (FEC ID) or candidate_name to filter.

Q: What's historical coverage?

A: FEC IE filings go back to the 1990s. Modern Super PAC-era data (post-Citizens United, 2010+) is most complete.

Q: Is this legal?

A: Yes. FEC filings are public records under federal campaign-finance law.

About NexGenData

NexGenData publishes 200+ buyer-intent Apify actors covering SEC filings, federal regulatory data (EPA, FTC, CFPB, FEC, IRS 990, FAA), private-market intelligence (Form D, IPO, 13F, 13D/G), stock screeners across 30+ exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, LSE, TSX, ASX, HKEX, KOSPI, SGX, B3, BSE), B2B lead generation, and competitive intelligence. All actors are pay-per-result with no seat licences and no minimum commitments.

Browse the full catalog and start a free run at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b.

Built by independent regulatory-data engineers. Reach out via the Apify message form for custom data integrations.