📜 Federal Register Rules Scraper — Every proposed and final federal rule — agency, RIN, docket, public-comment data

Scrape the U.S. Federal Register — every proposed rule, final rule, notice, and presidential document published by federal agencies. Get the document title, agency, type (proposed/final), publication date, effective date, RIN (Regulation Identifier Number), docket ID, citation, public-comment period, and full-text body.

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

Why This Actor Beats Bloomberg Government, Politico Pro, RegInfo direct

• Bloomberg Government is $10K+/year: Bloomberg Government and Politico Pro are the GovAffairs standards — and they're priced for K-Street budgets. We read FederalRegister.gov directly at $0.03 per document.
• RIN + docket join: Every proposed/final rule pair shares a RIN — we expose the join key so you can track a rule from proposal through finalization through court challenge.
• Comment period and counts: When a rule is open for comment, we surface the comment period dates, comment deadline, and (where available) total comment count.
• Effective date tracking: Filter to rules with imminent effective dates — what regulations take effect in the next 30 days?

Feature	This Actor 📜	Bloomberg Government	Politico Pro	RegInfo 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:

• Document number, FR citation (volume + page)
• Title, abstract, full-text body
• Agency name, parent department, agency code
• Document type — proposed rule, final rule, notice, presidential document
• Publication date, effective date, comment period start/end
• RIN (Regulation Identifier Number) and prior RIN history
• Docket ID (regulations.gov reference)
• CFR references — title, part, section affected
• Topics / tags (USC titles, subject matter)
• Significant rule flag (EO 12866 economically significant)

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

• Government affairs / lobbyists — Monitor proposed rules in your client's regulatory domain the day they post.
• Compliance officers — Build rule-watching alerts for CFR sections your firm is subject to.
• Trade associations — Coordinate member comments on proposed rules within the public-comment window.
• Investors — Track regulatory risk to portfolio companies — rules affecting pharma pricing, FinTech licensing, etc.
• Law firms — Build a regulatory-tracking practice on top of structured Federal Register data.
• Academic researchers — Empirical regulation datasets for studying agency rulemaking cycles.
• Journalists — Beat-feed of new rules from your agency of interest.

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/federal-register-rules-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~federal-register-rules-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: Federal Register document at $0.03 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
USAspending federal awards & contracts	usaspending-federal-awards-scraper
FTC enforcement actions	ftc-enforcement-actions-scraper
CFPB consumer complaints	cfpb-consumer-complaints-scraper
EPA ECHO enforcement and compliance	epa-echo-enforcement-scraper
LDA lobbying disclosure — federal lobbying filings	lda-lobbying-disclosure-scraper
FEC independent expenditures and Super PAC spending	fec-independent-expenditures-scraper

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

FAQ

Q: Is the Federal Register public?

A: Yes. The Federal Register is the official daily publication of the U.S. government, published since 1936.

Q: How fresh is the data?

A: Published business days at 8:45 AM ET. Our actor reads on demand — schedule daily for full coverage.

Q: Can I filter by agency?

A: Yes — pass agency or agency_code to scope to EPA, FDA, SEC, CFPB, or any agency.

Q: What's a RIN?

A: Regulation Identifier Number — a unique code that links every stage of a rulemaking (advance notice, proposed, final, withdrawn). The cross-stage join key.

Q: Are comments parseable?

A: Comments live on regulations.gov, not Federal Register. This actor surfaces the docket ID and comment deadline; the comments themselves are a separate scraping target.

Q: What's historical depth?

A: FederalRegister.gov goes back to 1994 reliably. Earlier years are scanned PDFs without full structure.

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.