Federal Register scraper - rules, notices and proposed rules

Returns: one row per Federal Register document (rule, proposed rule, notice, presidential document): number, title, type, agencies, publication and effective dates, abstract, HTML/PDF links, docket IDs, CFR references, citation and page range. Input: { "search_term": "workforce", "agencies": ["labor-department"], "document_types": ["RULE", "PRORULE"], "publication_date_from": "2026-06-01", "max_records": 100 } — all optional; empty {} returns the last 7 days. Price: $5.00 per 1,000 rows ($0.005 per document row) plus $0.10 per run. Pay per event; no subscription.

One row per Federal Register document from the Office of the Federal Register's public documents API (https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json). Filter by search term, agency, document type (rule, proposed rule, notice, presidential document) and publication date; get document number, title, type, agencies, publication and effective dates, abstract, HTML/PDF links, docket ids, CFR references and page range — normalised, one flat row per document, ready for CSV or JSON.

The default input (notices + rules, last 7 days, 200 rows) succeeds within 5 minutes and returns rows — Apify auto-tests it daily.

Data source and status

Publisher	Office of the Federal Register (National Archives) and the U.S. Government Publishing Office
API	https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json — public, no key (documentation: https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/documentation/api/v1)
What this Actor reads	Plain GET requests with fields[], conditions[term], conditions[agencies][], conditions[type][], conditions[publication_date][gte/lte], per_page=100, order=newest; it follows the API's own next_page_url cursor, at most one request per second
Refresh cadence	The Federal Register is published every federal business day (documents appear on the API at 8:45 a.m. ET on the publication date; public-inspection documents the day before). The Actor reads live on every run; fetched_at on each row is the fetch time
Copyright	Works of the United States Government are not subject to copyright in the U.S. (17 U.S.C. §105). The data are public; please cite the Federal Register as the source
Known caveats	One query pages through at most 5,000 documents (50 pages × 100) — narrow the date range for more; effective_date, comments_close_on, docket_ids, cfr_references and abstract are empty when the document has none (notices usually have no effective date or CFR reference); significant is null for most documents; an unknown agency slug makes the API answer HTTP 400 and the run fails with that message

Honesty note: the rows are the API's own fields renamed and flattened — nothing is inferred, summarised or classified by this Actor, and a run stops with an error rather than guess when the API's shape changes.

Identification: the requests carry a product-token User-Agent and the operator's contact address in the standard From: header (RFC 9110 §10.1.2).

Input

Field	Type	Meaning
search_term	string	Optional full-text term (conditions[term], phrases in double quotes)
agencies	array of slugs	Optional, e.g. labor-department, employment-and-training-administration; any listed agency matches. Full list: https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/agencies
document_types	array	Optional: RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, PRESDOCU. Empty = all
publication_date_from / publication_date_to	YYYY-MM-DD	Optional, inclusive. Both empty = the last 7 days
max_records	integer	Default 200, at most 5,000
request_interval_ms	integer	Default 1000 (floor 250)
contact_email	string	Sent in the From: header

Example — Department of Labor rules and proposed rules mentioning workforce since June 2026:

{ "search_term": "workforce", "agencies": ["labor-department"], "document_types": ["RULE", "PRORULE"], "publication_date_from": "2026-06-01", "max_records": 100 }

Output (dataset row)

document_number, title, type (Rule / Proposed Rule / Notice / Presidential Document), subtype, action, agencies (names), agency_slugs, publication_date, effective_date, comments_close_on, signing_date, abstract, html_url, pdf_url, json_url, public_inspection_pdf_url, docket_ids, regulation_id_numbers, cfr_references ("20 CFR 680" strings), citation (e.g. 91 FR 56776), volume, page_start, page_end, page_length, significant, topics, fetched_at, source.

A run summary (filters, the API's own match count, pages, requests, whether the paging cap or the pay-per-event budget stopped the run) is stored as RUN_SUMMARY in the run's key-value store.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price
run-start — once per run	$0.10
record — per row written	$0.005

The default 7-day pull (≤ 200 rows) costs at most $1.10; 1,000 documents cost $5.10. Rows stop when your run's maximum charge is reached; the run summary says so.

Operator

Steelyard Ventures LLC (RetrainMap) — info@steelyardclinical.com. Not affiliated with the Office of the Federal Register or GPO. The Actor writes only to its own dataset and key-value store; it stores no credentials and sends nothing else.