📋 Federal Register Rules Scraper — Regulatory Compliance Tracker

Pull every final rule, proposed rule, notice, and presidential document — direct from the official Federal Register API. No paywall, no API key, every weekday's publication.

The Federal Register is the official daily journal of the US government — every legally-binding rule, every proposed rule open for comment, every executive order, every regulatory notice. ~10K documents publish each year across 300+ agencies. This Actor wraps federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json and ships clean rows for regulatory-affairs teams, government contractors, legal compliance, lobbyists, and GovTech sales.

What you get (per document)

• document_number — the unique FR ID
• title, type (Rule / Proposed Rule / Notice / Presidential Document), subtype
• abstract — the agency's summary
• action — e.g. "Final regulations" / "Notice of proposed rulemaking"
• publication_date, effective_on, comments_close_on, dates_text
• agencies[] — every issuing agency with id, name, raw_name, slug, parent_id
• agency_slugs[], agency_names[] — flat lists for easy filtering
• topics[] — agency-tagged subject keywords
• cfr_references[] — [{title, part, chapter}] arrays of affected CFR
• regulation_id_numbers[] — RIN (e.g. "1545-BR17")
• docket_ids[] — agency docket IDs (e.g. "TD 10024", "EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072")
• executive_order_number — for EO-tied documents
• start_page, end_page, page_views
• significant — Significant Rule flag (per E.O. 12866)
• html_url, pdf_url, raw_text_url, body_html_url, public_inspection_pdf_url
• regulations_dot_gov_info — rule-comment-portal cross-reference

Six high-leverage use cases

1. Compliance: SEC rule alerts — agencies: ["securities-and-exchange-commission"], documentTypes: ["RULE","PRORULE"]. Every SEC rule the day it publishes, with dockets + comment-close dates.
2. GovTech sales: every new rule = sales opportunity — pipe Final Rules tagged with topics like "data security" / "privacy" / "cybersecurity" into your CRM as opportunity records.
3. Lobbying ROI — match regulation_id_numbers against your tracked LDA filings. Did your client's lobbying actually shape the final rule?
4. Legal practice intake — set cfrTitle: 17 (SEC) and watch for new actions affecting securities-law practice.
5. Government-contractor monitoring — agencies: ["defense-acquisition-regulations-system"] for DFARS/FAR changes.
6. Open public-comment dashboard — aggregate all PRORULE with comments_close_on in the next 14 days for your subject-matter experts.

JSON quick start

{
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2025-01-15",
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "agencies": ["securities-and-exchange-commission"],
  "maxDocuments": 50
}

POST to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~federal-register-rules-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN.

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/federal-register-rules-scraper").call(
    run_input={
        "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
        "dateTo": "2025-01-15",
        "documentTypes": ["RULE"],
        "cfrTitle": 17,
        "maxDocuments": 25,
    }
)
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["publication_date"], item["type"], "—", item["title"][:80])

cURL one-liner

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~federal-register-rules-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"dateFrom":"2025-01-01","dateTo":"2025-01-15","documentTypes":["RULE"],"maxDocuments":25}'

Pipe the output anywhere

• Zapier — daily watcher → new SEC final rules → Slack
• Make.com — Apify trigger → Notion regulatory database
• n8n — Apify run → CRM enrichment → opportunity creation
• DBT / Snowflake / BigQuery — daily ingest into your regulatory data lake

Pricing — pay only for what you get

Event	Cost
Actor start	$0.00005 (one-time per run, scaled by GB-RAM)
Each document	$0.08

A typical one-month pull (~800 documents) is ~$64. The full year of Final Rules + Proposed Rules + Significant Notices (~6,000 docs) is ~$480. Compare to Bloomberg Government ($10K+/yr), Westlaw Regulatory ($15K+/yr), or RegHub ($24K+/yr).

Cost calculator: documents × $0.08 + $0.00005 × memoryGB. No subscription, no minimum.

FAQ

Q. How fresh is the data? A. The Federal Register publishes daily on weekdays. Documents appear in the API the morning of publication.

Q. Can I get the full document text? A. Yes — every record carries raw_text_url, body_html_url, pdf_url, and public_inspection_pdf_url. Follow those links for the full Federal Register notice text. Our Actor returns metadata + abstract + agency-supplied dates, not the full body (keeps response sizes reasonable).

Q. What's the difference between effective_on and dates_text? A. effective_on is parsed when the agency uses a clean ISO date; dates_text is the agency's free-text "DATES" section which often includes multiple effective dates for different parts of a rule.

Q. How do I know which CFR title 17 etc. corresponds to? A. Common: 17 = SEC, 21 = FDA, 26 = IRS, 40 = EPA, 42 = HHS, 47 = FCC, 49 = DOT, 31 = OFAC.

Q. Is the data free / public? A. Yes — federalregister.gov is a public-domain government source. We charge for the engineered pipeline.

Related actors from the same author

• CourtListener Federal Docket Scraper — federal court dockets, $0.008/docket. Companion legal/regulatory dataset.
• FTC Enforcement Actions Scraper — FTC cases & proceedings, $0.10/case. Companion compliance dataset.
• LDA Lobbying Disclosure Scraper — lobbying filings, $0.10/filing. Pair with rule-tracking for lobbying-ROI analysis.

Try the full nexgendata fleet

Browse 170+ scrapers — SEC EDGAR, government contracts, ATS jobs, FEC, court records, real estate, MCP servers and more. Get $5 free Apify credit when you sign up via that link.

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Built and maintained by the nexgendata team. Bug reports & feature requests welcome via Apify Console messaging.