Government Contract Watch Scraper

Government Contract Watch Scraper

Track open government contract opportunities from SAM.gov, CanadaBuys and UK Contracts Finder in one feed, with their closing dates and their bid documents. Every notice comes as a flat row with the buyer, the deadline, the notice type, the description and direct links to the RFP, SOW and addenda where the portal publishes them. No API key, no login. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Opportunities are scattered across three national portals, each with its own search, its own export limits and its own idea of what "open" means. This Actor queries all three from one search term, drops the notices whose deadline has already passed, and returns what is left in a single schema. It can also remember what it has already given you, so a daily schedule returns only what is new or has been amended.

Who uses it	What they watch it for
Real estate and facilities teams	Government space, lease and fit-up solicitations before the deadline
Bid managers	New opportunities in their category across the US, Canada and the UK
Sales teams	A qualified pipeline of public-sector work with contacts attached
Market researchers	Which agencies are buying what, and on what timeline

What it does

• 🔍 One search across three portals: SAM.gov for US federal opportunities, CanadaBuys for Canadian tenders, UK Contracts Finder for British notices.
• 📎 Bid documents: turn on Include bid documents and each notice comes back with its attachment list: filename, file type, size and a direct download link. A live US Army office-space solicitation in Nashville returns fourteen of them, including the RLP, the sample lease and the design criteria.
• ⏰ Deadlines you can trust: every source keeps notices flagged open whose deadline has already passed. In a measured run, nine rows out of twenty-one. With Open opportunities only on, those are dropped.
• 🔔 New or changed only: the Actor remembers every notice it has delivered and, on the next run, returns only what is new or has been amended since. Schedule it daily and you are billed for the new work, not for the same list again.
• 🎯 NAICS filter: narrow the US results to one code. 531190 is Lessors of Other Real Estate Property.
• 📊 One schema for three countries: source, country, title, buyer, closing date, notice type, solicitation number, description, attachments, and the notice URL.

What you can do with it

🏢 Watch for government space requirements.

Search office lease, filter to NAICS 531190, and schedule it daily. You get GSA and agency solicitations for space, with the response deadline, the place of performance down to the ZIP code, and the lease exhibits attached.

📌 Never miss an amendment.

The watch keys on the notice's last-modified date, so an amended solicitation comes back as new rather than staying hidden behind the version you already saw.

📥 Feed a bid library.

Every attachment row carries a direct link, so the documents can be pulled straight into your own storage.

🌍 Compare across borders.

The same keyword runs against all three portals in one call, so a category can be sized across the US, Canada and the UK without three integrations.

Sources

Source	What it returns	Bid documents
SAM.gov	Open US federal opportunities: presolicitations, solicitations, combined synopses and sources sought, with response deadline, place of performance and NAICS	Yes, the full attachment list
CanadaBuys	Every open Canadian tender from the official open-data extract, with closing date, contracting entity, contact email and UNSPSC codes	Yes, where the notice hosts them. Around four in ten do
UK Contracts Finder	British notices from the OCDS feed, with value, CPV code, buyer and tender period	Sometimes. The feed carries documents on roughly one notice in twelve
USAspending (opt-in)	US federal contracts that were already awarded. Market intelligence, not opportunities	No
USITC HTS (opt-in)	Tariff schedule lines. Trade reference data, not tenders	No
CBP CROSS (opt-in)	Customs rulings. Trade reference data, not tenders	No

Configure the run

The Input tab lists every parameter. maxItems is the total for the run, shared evenly across the sources you select. Earlier builds applied it per source, so five sources at 200 could quietly bill 1,000 rows.

Office space opportunities with their documents:

{
 "query": "office lease",
 "sources": ["samgov", "canadabuys", "contractsfinder"],
 "maxItems": 60,
 "openOnly": true,
 "includeAttachments": true
}

A daily watch that only returns what is new:

{
 "query": "office lease",
 "sources": ["samgov", "canadabuys"],
 "maxItems": 100,
 "openOnly": true,
 "includeAttachments": true,
 "onlyNewOrChanged": true,
 "watchKey": "office-space"
}

US federal real estate only, by NAICS:

{
 "query": "",
 "sources": ["samgov"],
 "naicsCode": "531190",
 "maxItems": 100,
 "openOnly": true,
 "includeAttachments": true
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.021 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$2.10
1,000 results	$21.00
10,000 results	$210.00

With New or changed only on, a scheduled run bills for the handful of new notices rather than for the whole list each time.

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Government Contract Watch Scraper.
3. Set your search term and sources, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/us-gov-contract-watch-scraper"

Troubleshooting

A source returned fewer rows than my share of maxItems.

That source ran out of matches. UK Contracts Finder is the usual one: its feed has no server-side keyword search, so the Actor scans the most recent notices and filters locally within a time budget. A rare keyword will find fewer.

Why is my watch returning nothing?

That is the watch working. It returns only notices it has not delivered before under that watch name. Change the watch name, or turn the mode off, to get the full list again.

Two schedules are hiding each other's results.

Give them different watch names. Watches with the same name share one memory of what has been delivered.

Why do some notices have no attachments?

Not every notice publishes its documents on the portal. Many Canadian ones point bidders at MERX or Ariba instead, and those rows carry an externalNoticeUrl you can follow.

The run takes longer with bid documents on.

SAM.gov needs one extra request per notice for its attachment list and one for the full description, so a large pull with documents on is slower than one without.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Do I need an API key?	No. All three portals are read through public endpoints with no registration.
Are these open opportunities or past awards?	Open opportunities, by default. USAspending is available as an opt-in source and returns contracts that were already awarded.
Does it return the closing date?	Yes, on every source, with the time zone where the portal publishes one.
Can I download the bid documents?	The Actor returns direct links with filename, type and size. Fetching the files themselves is up to you.
How does the watch decide something changed?	It keys on the notice id plus its last-modified or amendment date, so an amended notice comes back as new.
Can I filter by location?	US results carry the place of performance with city, state and ZIP, Canadian ones carry the regions of delivery, and you can filter the exported dataset on those. The NAICS filter narrows the US source directly.
What export formats are supported?	CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Is this legal?	All three portals publish this information for public use. This Actor accesses only publicly available data.

Related actors

• CanadaBuys Federal Tenders Scraper for the Canadian source on its own, with the full notice record.
• SAM.gov Contract Opportunities Scraper for US federal opportunities on their own.

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the US General Services Administration, Public Services and Procurement Canada, or the UK Cabinet Office. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL.