Federal Register Scraper: Rules, Notices and Comment Deadlines

This Federal Register scraper turns the daily journal of the US government into a clean table. It reads final rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents such as executive orders, and gives you one row per document with the agency, the dates that matter, the legal references and a link to the full text.

The row is built for people who act on regulation, not only read it. You see whether the comment period is still open and how many days are left, when a rule takes effect and in how many days, the Code of Federal Regulations parts it changes, the docket numbers, the regulation identifier, the topics and how many times people opened the page. Documents that are filed but not yet published are available too, so you see tomorrow's rules today.

Compliance teams, lobbyists, lawyers, policy analysts, trade associations, journalists and investors use it to watch an agency, a topic or a whole industry.

What can you do with this Federal Register scraper?

• Find every proposed rule that is open for public comment, with the days left
• Watch one agency, such as the EPA, the SEC or the FDA, day by day
• Follow a topic in the full text, for example tariffs, artificial intelligence or lead pipes
• List executive orders, proclamations and memoranda with the signing date
• See which rules take effect in the next 30 days
• Get only significant rules, the ones with a large effect on the economy
• Look up all documents that touch one part of the Code of Federal Regulations
• Read the documents that are on public inspection and will be published in the next days
• Count how many documents each agency published in a period
• Add the full text of each document for search or language models
• Export to CSV or Excel, or send new documents to Slack and your own tools

What data can you extract from the Federal Register?

Mode	One row is	Highlights
Published documents	One document	Document number, title, type (rule, proposed rule, notice, presidential document), subtype, action, abstract, publication date, agencies and their parents, significant flag, comment deadline, comment period status, days left to comment, effective date, days to effective, comment link, regulations.gov link, docket numbers, regulation identifier numbers, Code of Federal Regulations references and titles, topics, citation, page range and length, page views, signing date, executive order number, president, correction links, links to HTML, PDF, text and XML, optional full text
Public inspection	One document filed but not yet published	Expected publication date, days until publication, filing time, special filing flag, agency, subject, pages, page views, editorial note, links
Agencies	One agency	Name, short name, parent and child agencies, description, website, and in a period: documents, final rules, proposed rules, notices, presidential documents and significant documents

How to scrape the Federal Register

1. Choose Published documents, Public inspection or Agencies.
2. Type search terms, agency names, or both. Short names such as EPA work.
3. Pick the document types and the dates.
4. Turn on Only documents open for public comment if you want deadlines.
5. Set Max Items and click Start.
6. Export the dataset as CSV, Excel or from the Apify console.

Input example

{
  "mode": "documents",
  "searchTerms": ["artificial intelligence"],
  "documentTypes": ["PRORULE", "NOTICE"],
  "commentsOpenOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Output example

{
  "documentNumber": "2026-20474",
  "title": "Investment Adviser Performance-Based Compensation Modernization",
  "documentType": "Proposed Rule",
  "primaryAgency": "Securities and Exchange Commission",
  "publicationDate": "2026-10-06",
  "commentsCloseOn": "2026-12-07",
  "commentPeriodStatus": "Open",
  "daysUntilCommentsClose": 58,
  "cfrReferences": ["17 CFR Part 239", "17 CFR Part 249", "17 CFR Part 274", "17 CFR Part 275"],
  "docketIds": ["Release Nos. 33-11443", "34-106533", "IA-7022", "IC-36350", "File No. S7-2026-28"],
  "pageViews": 435,
  "citation": "91 FR 63676"
}

Agencies output example

{
  "agency": "Commerce Department",
  "slug": "commerce-department",
  "documentsInWindow": 769,
  "finalRulesInWindow": 75,
  "noticesInWindow": 676,
  "significantDocumentsInWindow": 2
}

How much does it cost to scrape the Federal Register?

You pay per result: $27 per 1,000 rows plus a tiny start fee. The free plan returns up to 10 rows per run. Agency counts are one row per agency, so a full table of 400 agencies costs about ten dollars.

Tips for better results

• Searching a term looks at the full text of the document, so a short, specific phrase gives cleaner results than a single common word.
• Dates are publication dates. Comment deadlines can be months later, so use Comments close from and Comments close until to plan your work.
• A proposed rule has no effective date, so that field stays empty. Final rules show it.
• The significant flag only exists for rules and proposed rules and is empty for notices.
• A very large request is cut into date windows by the Actor, so you can pull years of documents in one run.
• For a daily watch, schedule the Actor every morning with the last day as the date range, and send the rows to a spreadsheet or a chat.
• Turn on the full text only when you need it. It makes each row bigger and the run slower.
• Public inspection documents are drafts that are published within days. Their final text can change slightly.

Who uses Federal Register data?

• Compliance and legal teams track rules that change their duties.
• Government affairs and lobbyists find open comment periods for clients.
• Trade groups and consultants watch an industry across agencies.
• Investors and analysts read significant rules before they move a sector.
• Journalists and researchers follow executive orders and agency activity.

Automate and connect

Schedule the Actor every day and send new documents to Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make or n8n, or trigger a webhook when a run ends.

FAQ

Do I need an account or a login? No. The Actor works without any login.

How far back does the data go? Back to 1994. Use the publication dates to choose the period.

What do the document types mean? Rule is a final rule, Proposed Rule is a draft open for comment, Notice covers meetings, permits and agency announcements, and Presidential Document covers executive orders, proclamations and memoranda.

Can I get documents of one agency only? Yes. Type the agency name, its short name or its slug in the agencies field.

What is a docket and why are there several? A docket groups all the papers of one rulemaking. Agencies often cite more than one number, for example a release number and a file number. All of them are listed, and docket numbers that follow the regulations.gov pattern come with a link.

Is the text legal advice? No. The Federal Register is the official record, but you should check the linked document and ask a lawyer before you act on it.

Legal note

This Actor collects information that is publicly visible on the website. Check the source site's terms and your local rules before using the data.

Support

Missing a field or found a bug? Open an issue from the Actor page.