UKRI Project Status Change Watch

Status transitions on UKRI research projects — active, closed and back again.

Source

UKRI Gateway to Research GtR-2 REST API (public, logged-out)

• https://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/projects

Public, logged-out only — no API key, login, cookie or CAPTCHA.

Why this Actor reads a different API from the rest of the UKRI family

The other UKRI watches read the search API, which carries the date sort they need. It returns status: null on 339 of 339 live records — measured 2026-07-27. A status watch built on it would compare nothing to nothing and report a clean zero forever, which from the outside is indistinguishable from a quiet regulator.

The Project Status facet on that same API advertises Closed 146,235 / Active 28,155. The index holds the field; the record does not. Facet counts are advertisements, not evidence.

GtR-2 does carry status — 85 Closed / 15 Active in a 100-record sample. It has no date sort, which a status watch does not need: it fetches the projects you name and diffs them.

You name the projects — this Actor does not sweep the corpus

project_references is required, capped at 200, and one lookup is issued per project you name. That count is visible to you before you run. Without a list there is nothing to watch, so the run fails loudly rather than reporting a healthy-looking nothing.

A reference that returns no exact match is reported as NOT FOUND, never silently dropped — a typo must not read as a quiet source.

Parameters proven under the filter-proof law, control-vs-test, 2026-07-27:

parameter	result
q=<grant reference>	REAL — totalSize 174,404 → 1
ref=<grant reference>	IGNORED — HTTP 200, totalSize unchanged at 174,404
page size 5	rejected, HTTP 400; 25 is the documented floor

ref is exactly the parameter you would reach for first, and it does nothing. q is a SEARCH rather than a lookup, so this Actor keeps only the project whose reference matches exactly.

One delta type per Actor

This Actor watches project-status and nothing else. A project's FIRST sighting is absorbed into the baseline silently — selling you your own seed run as a status change would be dishonest.

Unit nouns (Pay-Per-Event)

• apify-actor-start — reserved platform event, charged per GB of run memory. This Actor is pinned to 1024 MB, so it is one event per run.
• source-check — once per run after the source enumeration terminates, seed runs and evidenced-zero runs included. Not charged when the source refused the read.
• ukri-project-delta — the value event, charged per status change emitted. Billed deltas are capped at 500 per run; any overflow is reported as a withholding and is not charged.

Pricing

Event	FREE	BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD+
Actor Start (apify-actor-start)	$0.02	$0.02	$0.02	$0.02
Source check (source-check)	$0.10	$0.09	$0.08	$0.067
UKRI Project Delta (ukri-project-delta)	$0.20	$0.18	$0.16	$0.134

Prices are the filed pay-per-event amounts per plan tier (PLATINUM/DIAMOND match GOLD). Blocked and refused runs do not intentionally charge value events.

Run it WEEKLY, not daily

Schedule this Actor once a week. A project moving from Active to Closed is not an hour-sensitive event, and Gateway to Research is republished in bursts rather than continuously — its own index reported a last refresh of 14 Apr 2026 when measured on 2026-07-27, 104 days later. A daily schedule pays seven source-check events a week to see the same thing. Override it if you have a reason.

Honest limits

Status is the publisher's own field and this Actor reports it verbatim; a project whose status is null is surfaced as such, not watched, because a null cannot produce a delta. Gateway to Research publishes awarded projects, not funding opportunities. Absence is never read as a withdrawal. Public logged-out data only. Not investment, legal or research-funding advice.