Grants.gov Scraper

Get real US federal grant opportunity data from Grants.gov with no login: full funding amounts, eligibility, agency contact, attachments, and a real per-revision change log showing exactly what changed on a listing - no other Grants.gov Actor surfaces that.

Here is one real row:

{
  "opportunity_id": "361754",
  "opportunity_number": "PA-FPH-27-001",
  "title": "Title X Family Planning Services Grants",
  "status": "posted",
  "agency_name": "Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health",
  "top_agency_name": "Department of Health and Human Services",
  "posted_date": "04/03/2026",
  "response_deadline": "01/11/2027",
  "estimated_total_funding": 257000000,
  "award_ceiling": 22000000,
  "award_floor": 200000,
  "number_of_awards": 90,
  "eligible_applicant_types": [{ "code": "12", "description": "Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education" }],
  "assistance_listings": [{ "number": "93.217", "program_title": "Family Planning Services" }],
  "revision_count": 1,
  "last_revision_changed_fields": ["responseDate", "archiveDate", "applicantEligibilityDesc"],
  "url": "https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/361754",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-15T00:00:00.000Z"
}

What it does

Reads Grants.gov's own public API directly and normalizes it into clean, flat rows.

• Search filters the live opportunity board by keyword, agency, funding category, funding instrument, eligibility, status (forecasted/posted/closed/archived), and posted-date range.
• Lookup fetches specific opportunities by their public opportunity number (e.g. PA-FPH-27-001).
• Monitor returns opportunities posted since a given date - built to run on a schedule and catch new opportunities as they're published.

Every row can include full funding amounts (estimated total, award ceiling/floor, award count), eligibility text and applicant-type codes, agency contact info, attachment metadata, and - uniquely

• exactly which fields changed in the opportunity's most recent revision. Missing source values are returned as null, never invented.

Why this scraper

• A real per-revision change log, not just a bare listing. Grants.gov's own API tracks exactly which fields changed each time an opportunity is revised (a due-date push, an eligibility rewrite, a funding-amount update) - this Actor surfaces that directly. No other Grants.gov Actor on Apify does.
• Full depth by default, not an expensive add-on. The strongest existing competitor charges $8/1,000 results and requires an extra includeDetails toggle to get funding amounts, eligibility, and contact info at all - here it's the same request, same price tier.
• Real filters that actually filter. Every filter this Actor exposes was checked directly against live results (not assumed from Grants.gov's own docs) - including catching that Grants.gov's own postedFrom/postedTo search parameters are silently ignored server-side, so this Actor applies that filter itself instead of shipping a broken one.
• No API key, no login, no browser. Reads Grants.gov's own public JSON API directly.

How it compares

Checked directly against the real Grants.gov Actors on Apify (their own declared input/output, not a guess):

Capability	This actor	Strongest competitor (full-depth)	Bulk-extract competitor (metadata-only)
Funding amounts, eligibility, contact by default	yes	only with an extra paid toggle	no
Real per-revision change log (what changed, not just that something did)	yes	no	no
Attachment metadata (NOFO documents)	yes	yes	no
A working posted-date filter	yes	claimed, not verified to work	n/a
Monitor mode (new opportunities on a schedule)	yes	no	no
Price per 1,000 full-depth results	priced below the full-depth competitor	from $8.00	n/a (metadata only)

Use cases

• Grant-seeking for universities and nonprofits. Track new funding opportunities by category, agency, or eligibility as soon as they post.
• Grant-writing consultancies. Build a filtered, always-current feed for clients in a specific field (health, education, research, rural development).
• Compliance and deadline tracking. The real per-revision change log catches a due-date push or an eligibility rewrite on an opportunity you're already tracking.
• Federal funding market research. Analyze award ceilings, funding instruments, and agency spending patterns across a whole funding category.

Quickstart

Search by keyword:

{ "mode": "search", "keyword": "rural broadband" }

Search by agency and funding category:

{ "mode": "search", "agencies": ["HHS-OPHS"], "fundingCategories": ["HL"] }

Look up specific opportunities:

{ "mode": "lookup", "opportunityNumbers": ["PA-FPH-27-001"] }

Monitor new postings in a category, run daily:

{ "mode": "monitor", "postedSince": "1 day", "fundingCategories": ["ED"] }

Input reference

Field	Applies to	Description
maxItems	all	Ceiling on rows written.
mode	all	search, lookup, or monitor.
keyword	search, monitor	Full-text search across titles and descriptions.
agencies	search, monitor	Exact Grants.gov agency codes (e.g. HHS-OPHS).
fundingCategories / fundingInstruments / eligibilities	search, monitor	Category/instrument/applicant-type codes.
oppStatuses	search, monitor	forecasted, posted, closed, archived. Defaults to forecasted+posted.
postedFrom / postedTo	search	ISO dates; applied on our side (see FAQ).
fetchDetails	search, monitor	Adds funding/eligibility/contact/change-log fields. Default on.
opportunityNumbers	lookup	Public opportunity numbers to fetch directly.
postedSince	monitor	ISO date or relative window ("3 days").

Output reference (selected)

Field	Description
opportunity_id / opportunity_number / title / url	Identity.
status / category / agency_name / top_agency_name	Classification.
posted_date / response_deadline / deadline_is_estimated / archive_date	Key dates. deadline_is_estimated is true on forecasted opportunities, whose deadline isn't confirmed yet.
estimated_total_funding / award_ceiling / award_floor / number_of_awards	Funding.
eligibility_description / eligible_applicant_types	Who can apply.
funding_instruments / funding_categories / assistance_listings	Classification codes, each with its own real description.
contact_name / contact_email / contact_phone	Agency contact.
attachments	Real NOFO/announcement document metadata.
revision_count / last_revision_changed_fields	How many revisions, and exactly what changed most recently.
change_type	"new" in monitor mode.
query / error	Set on an unresolved lookup number.
scraped_at	ISO 8601 collection timestamp.

Run via API and CLI

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/USERNAME~grants-gov-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"mode":"search","keyword":"rural broadband"}'

$apify call USERNAME/grants-gov-scraper --input '{"mode":"lookup","opportunityNumbers":["PA-FPH-27-001"]}'

Fetch results

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?token=<TOKEN>&clean=true&format=json"
curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/<DATASET_ID>/items?token=<TOKEN>&clean=true&format=csv"

Billing and limits

• Pay per result. Billed per row written, whether from search, lookup, or monitor.
• No charge on failure. A run that produces zero rows fails with a message and is not billed.
• An unresolved lookup number still writes one error: "not found" row and is billed as a base row.
• Free Apify plans run the built-in 10-row sample only.

FAQ and troubleshooting

Do I need an API key? No. Grants.gov's own public API is read directly, with no key and no login.

Why did postedFrom/postedTo not narrow my results the way I expected? Confirmed live: Grants.gov's own search API accepts these parameters but does not actually apply them server-side (identical result counts with or without them, in every format tried). This Actor filters on the real posted_date itself instead, so the field works correctly here even though the underlying API silently ignores it.

Why does an agency code like "HHS" not match anything? Grants.gov's own agency codes are sub-agency-specific (e.g. HHS-OPHS, not the parent HHS alone). Copy the exact code from a real opportunity's own agency_code field, or run a broad search first to find it.

Does monitor mode catch opportunities that were modified, not just newly posted? It catches new postings reliably (Grants.gov's own board sorts by posting date, which this Actor walks). Confirmed live there is no working modified-date sort to walk from for older opportunities that were recently revised - but every row (in any mode) still carries last_revision_changed_fields for the opportunities it does return, so a tracked opportunity's own latest revision is never hidden from you.

Why is response_deadline sometimes marked deadline_is_estimated: true? That row is a forecasted opportunity - Grants.gov's own heads-up that funding is expected, before it's formally posted. Its deadline (and its funding amounts and eligibility) are Grants.gov's own real estimates, not yet confirmed. Once the real solicitation posts, look it up again for the confirmed figures.

What do the funding instrument/category/eligibility codes mean? Grants.gov's own API returns a real human-readable description alongside every code - this Actor passes that straight through rather than re-mapping it against a separate table that could drift out of sync.

How current is the data? Read live from Grants.gov on every run. It is not cached.

Is this an official Grants.gov tool? No. Independent, not affiliated with Grants.gov or the US government. It reads only publicly available data.

Local development

bun install
bun test                       # offline: normalization, input parsing (real fixtures)
bun run src/main.ts             # reads storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json