Grants.gov Opportunity Search: Federal Grants API

Search open and upcoming US federal grants on Grants.gov with the official API. Filter by keyword, agency, eligible applicant type (small businesses, nonprofits, universities, tribes, local governments), funding category or Assistance Listing (ALN/CFDA). For each opportunity you get the deadline, award floor and ceiling, total program funding, expected number of awards, eligibility, cost sharing, a plain-text description and the Grants.gov link.

Built for grant writers and consultants, nonprofits, universities and research offices, startups chasing non-dilutive funding (SBIR/STTR, DOE, NSF, NIH), and AI agents that need to answer "which federal grants can we apply for this month?"

What can it do?

• Keyword search across all federal agencies. "artificial intelligence", "rural broadband" or "opioid" searches titles and descriptions, the same as the Grants.gov site.
• Eligibility filters that make sense. Use codes or labels: ["Small businesses"], ["23"] or ["Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3)"] (a label prefix works).
• Department-level agency filter. "HHS", "DOE" or "USDA" automatically includes every sub-agency (NIH, CDC, NIFA and so on). Grants.gov's own API returns nothing for these codes.
• Deadline and size filters. closingWithinDays: 30 returns calls due in the next month. minAwardCeiling: 500000 returns only big awards. postedWithinDays: 1 gives a daily new-grants alert.
• Forecasts as well as open calls. Forecasted opportunities include the fiscal year and the estimated post, deadline and award dates when the agency publishes them.
• Exact lookups. Pass opportunityNumbers such as "DE-FOA-0003631" to refresh specific calls.
• No duplicates. An opportunity matched by several keywords is returned, and charged, once.
• Misses are free. Searches with no matches come back as a free no_results or not_found row that says why.

What data does it return?

Field	Example
type, query, status, rank	opportunity, artificial intelligence, found, 1
opportunityNumber, opportunityId, title	DE-FOA-0003631, 364135, Unlocking New Levels of Output and Capacity... SBIR/STTR
agencyCode, agencyName, topAgencyCode	DOE-ARPAE, Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy, DOE
opportunityStatus, docType	posted, synopsis
postedDate, closeDate, daysUntilClose, archiveDate	2026-10-21, 2026-11-20, 18, 2027-05-20
awardFloor, awardCeiling, estimatedTotalFunding, expectedAwards	323090, 4630944, 45000000, 12
eligibleApplicants, eligibilityText, costSharingRequired	["Small businesses"], ..., false
fundingInstruments, fundingCategories, assistanceListings	["Cooperative Agreement","Grant"], ["Science and Technology and other Research and Development"], [{"number":"81.135","title":"Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy"}]
fiscalYear, estimatedPostDate, estimatedCloseDate, estimatedAwardDate (forecasts)	2027, 2026-07-01, 2026-09-29, 2027-07-01
descriptionText, additionalInfoUrl, grantsGovUrl, lastUpdated	..., https://exchange.energy.gov/, https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/364135, 2026-10-21

No personal data: agency contact names, emails and phone numbers are left out.

Statuses:

• Charged: found.
• Free: no_results, not_found, invalid_input, service_unavailable and skipped_charge_limit.

How much does it cost?

You pay per opportunity returned:

Plan	Per 1,000 opportunities
Free	$1.20
Bronze	$1.20
Silver	$1.00
Gold	$0.90

A daily alert that finds 20 new grants costs about $0.024. Searches with no matches are free. There is also a tiny Apify start fee of $0.00005 per run.

Input example

{
  "keywords": ["artificial intelligence", "cybersecurity"],
  "statuses": ["posted", "forecasted"],
  "eligibilities": ["Small businesses"],
  "closingWithinDays": 60,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Daily alert for one department, filters only:

{"agencies": ["DOE"], "postedWithinDays": 1, "sortBy": "newest"}

Output example

{"type": "opportunity", "query": "artificial intelligence", "status": "found", "rank": 3,
 "opportunityNumber": "DE-FOA-0003631", "title": "Unlocking New Levels of Output and Capacity for Key Subsurface Resources SBIR/STTR (UNLOCK SBIR/STTR)",
 "agencyCode": "DOE-ARPAE", "topAgencyCode": "DOE", "opportunityStatus": "posted", "postedDate": "2026-10-21", "closeDate": "2026-11-20", "daysUntilClose": 18,
 "awardFloor": 323090, "awardCeiling": 4630944, "estimatedTotalFunding": 45000000, "expectedAwards": 12, "costSharingRequired": false,
 "fundingInstruments": ["Cooperative Agreement", "Grant"], "eligibleApplicants": ["Small businesses"],
 "assistanceListings": [{"number": "81.135", "title": "Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy"}],
 "additionalInfoUrl": "https://exchange.energy.gov/", "grantsGovUrl": "https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/364135"}

A search with no matches:

{"type": "status", "query": "NOPE-123", "status": "not_found", "error": "Opportunity number \"NOPE-123\" not found with statuses posted/forecasted. Try fewer filters, add \"closed\" or \"archived\" to statuses, or a broader keyword. Not charged."}

Use cases

• Grant prospecting: a weekly list of open calls that match your mission, eligibility and minimum award size.
• New-grant alerts: schedule postedWithinDays: 1 and send new rows to Google Sheets, Slack or email through Make, Zapier or n8n.
• Deadline calendar: closingWithinDays: 30 with sortBy: "closingSoonest" for a submission pipeline.
• Non-dilutive funding for startups: filter on ["Small businesses"] plus a technology keyword.
• Research offices and consultants: monitor NIH, NSF, DOE or USDA calls across many keywords in one run.
• Market and policy research: track how much funding agencies put into a topic over time (add closed and archived).

Use with AI agents (MCP, ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, n8n)

AI agents can run this Actor through the Apify MCP server:

{"mcpServers":{"apify":{"url":"https://mcp.apify.com?tools=swillz/grants-gov-opportunity-search"}}}

Or run it locally with npx -y @apify/actors-mcp-server --tools swillz/grants-gov-opportunity-search and APIFY_TOKEN set.

Example prompts:

• "Find open federal grants for small businesses about artificial intelligence that close in the next 60 days."
• "Which NIH funding opportunities were posted this week?"
• "List DOE grants with an award ceiling over $1 million and summarize the eligibility."

Minimal input: {"keywords": ["climate resilience"], "maxResults": 20}. To cap the cost, pass maxTotalChargeUsd. Searches left unrun come back as free skipped_charge_limit rows.

Integrations and API

Run it from the Apify API, the clients, Make, Zapier or n8n. Schedule it daily or weekly with postedWithinDays to get only new calls. The OUTPUT record holds a run summary (byStatus, perSearch, zeroResultsReason, nextSteps).

FAQ

Where does the data come from? The public Grants.gov API (api.grants.gov, Search2 and fetchOpportunity), which is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services for all federal grant-making agencies. No login or API key is needed.

Is the data live? Yes. Every run queries Grants.gov directly, so new and updated calls show up as soon as Grants.gov publishes them. Always confirm deadlines on the official page before you apply.

Why is awardCeiling empty for some calls? Many agencies (NSF and NIH, for example) don't publish a ceiling in Grants.gov and put the budget in the full announcement instead. Follow additionalInfoUrl.

Why is closeDate empty? Forecasts and rolling or continuous calls have no fixed deadline. Check closeDateNote and estimatedCloseDate.

Does it include SAM.gov contracts? No. It covers grants and cooperative agreements listed on Grants.gov. For awards already made, use Federal Contracts & Grants by Company.

Related tools

More tools from the same developer, built to work together:

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Popular workflows

• Grant pipeline: search open calls with this Actor, see who won similar awards before with Federal Contracts & Grants by Company, and track deadlines in a sheet with Google Sheets Import & Export.
• Partner research: find open programs with this Actor, check partner organisations with LEI Lookup (GLEIF) and Sanctions Screener, and add contacts with Company Website Enrichment.

Source code: https://github.com/williamjin02/apify-actors/tree/main/actors/grants-gov-opportunity-search