Federal Register Monitor: New Rules, Proposed Rules & Notices Alerts

Watch a US agency, topic or keyword on the official Federal Register and get back only what is new since your last run: final rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents, straight to your workflow or Slack. Give it a watchlist, schedule it, and it reports (and charges) only for genuinely new documents, not the same list every day. Data comes straight from the official Federal Register API, no key required.

Built for compliance and regulatory-affairs teams, in-house legal, lobbying and policy shops, and ESG, energy, finance and healthcare firms tracking rulemaking (works out of the box via API and MCP).

Why this actor

• One watchlist, a real diff: most Federal Register exports hand you the full result set every time and leave deduplication to you. This one keeps a persistent memory of what it has already seen and returns only documents published since your last run.
• Scope it the way regulators file: by agency (environmental-protection-agency, securities-and-exchange-commission, ...), by document type (final rules, proposed rules, notices, presidential documents), and by any keyword or topic.
• Official source, no key, no scraping: every field comes from the Federal Register API (federalregister.gov/api/v1). No login, no third-party mirror.
• Flat schema, no JSON spelunking: document number, title, type, abstract, agencies, publication and effective dates, docket IDs and RINs as plain columns, plus direct links to the document and its PDF.
• Monitor mode with a Slack-compatible webhook digest: schedule it and get pinged only when an agency you track actually publishes something.
• Fair pricing: you pay per document actually returned. A quiet day on a scheduled watchlist costs nothing beyond the flat run fee.

Use cases

• Compliance and regulatory affairs: watch the agencies that govern your industry and catch every new rule or proposed rule the day it publishes.
• In-house legal: track proposed rules by keyword so you can file comments before the window closes.
• Lobbying and policy shops: monitor a docket, an agency or a topic and route new filings to the right analyst.
• ESG, energy, finance and healthcare: follow the EPA, SEC, FDA, FERC or any agency for rulemaking that moves your sector.
• AI agents: plug it into Claude, Cursor or any MCP client and ask, "any new EPA proposed rules on emissions this week?"

Input

{
    "agencies": ["environmental-protection-agency"],
    "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
    "sinceDays": 30,
    "maxResults": 50
}

Provide at least one of keywords or agencies so the query is scoped. keywords searches the full text (multiple entries are OR-combined, so a document matching any keyword is returned). agencies takes agency slugs or names (a name like Securities and Exchange Commission is converted to its slug automatically). documentTypes, sinceDays and maxResults narrow the results further.

Monitor a topic across agencies (for a scheduled run):

{
    "keywords": ["artificial intelligence", "algorithmic"],
    "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE", "NOTICE"],
    "sinceDays": 7,
    "monitorMode": true,
    "webhookUrl": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/xxx/yyy/zzz"
}

documentTypes accepts RULE (final rules), PRORULE (proposed rules), NOTICE (notices) and PRESDOCU (presidential documents); leave it empty for all. Find agency slugs at https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/agencies, for example environmental-protection-agency, securities-and-exchange-commission, food-and-drug-administration, federal-communications-commission.

Output (one record per new or matched document)

{
    "documentNumber": "2026-13843",
    "title": "Air Plan Approval; Michigan; Redesignation and Maintenance Plan...",
    "type": "Rule",
    "abstract": "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is taking final action to...",
    "agencies": ["Environmental Protection Agency"],
    "publicationDate": "2026-07-09",
    "effectiveOn": "2026-07-09",
    "docketIds": ["EPA-R05-OAR-2023-0635", "FRL-13222-02-R5"],
    "regulationIdNumbers": [],
    "htmlUrl": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/09/2026-13843/air-plan-approval-michigan",
    "pdfUrl": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-07-09/pdf/2026-13843.pdf",
    "changeType": "new",
    "retrievedAt": "2026-07-09T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Field	Meaning
documentNumber	The document's Federal Register number
title	Document title
type	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice or Presidential Document
abstract	The document's abstract / summary
agencies	Publishing agency names
publicationDate	Date published in the Federal Register
effectiveOn	Effective date when set (often null for proposed rules and notices)
docketIds	Associated docket identifiers
regulationIdNumbers	Regulation Identifier Numbers (RIN) when present
htmlUrl	Direct link to the document page
pdfUrl	Link to the official PDF
changeType	Monitor mode: new; null on one-off runs
retrievedAt	When this run fetched the document

On a one-off run (monitorMode off) you get every match with changeType set to null. In monitor mode the first run seeds the baseline and reports everything as new; later runs return only documents published since.

Pricing

Pay per event, no subscription. Users on higher Apify plans get automatic discounts.

Event	Price	When
Run started	$0.001	Flat, once per run
Document found	$0.002	Per new/matched document returned with its data
Digest sent	$0.03	Monitor mode only, per Slack/webhook digest actually posted

A thousand documents costs $2, and in monitor mode a quiet watchlist costs almost nothing: the persistent seen-set means you are never billed twice for the same document, so a scheduled run that finds nothing new only pays the tiny run fee. That is the difference from a raw export that bills you for the whole result set on every run.

FAQ

How do I get alerted when the EPA publishes a new rule? Put environmental-protection-agency in agencies, set documentTypes to ["RULE", "PRORULE"], turn on monitorMode, add a Slack webhook URL and schedule the actor. You get a digest only when the EPA actually publishes, and you are only charged for new documents.

Can I track proposed rules by keyword? Yes. Put your topics in keywords and set documentTypes to ["PRORULE"]. Multiple keywords are OR-combined, so a document matching any of them is returned. Combine with agencies to narrow to specific agencies.

Is Federal Register data free? The data is public and the official Federal Register API is keyless and open, so there is no login, no scraping and no third-party aggregator. You pay only for this actor's convenience: the diffing, the flat schema and the webhook alerts.

How do I monitor rulemaking for my industry? List the agencies that govern your sector (for example EPA and FERC for energy, SEC for finance, FDA for healthcare) in agencies, optionally add topic keywords, and schedule it in monitor mode. You get every new rule, proposed rule and notice from those agencies as it publishes.

How is this different from just querying the API myself? The API returns the full matching set on every call. This actor remembers what it already showed you and returns only documents published since, tagged new. That is the difference between a query and a monitor.

Where do I find the agency slug I need? Open https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/agencies for the full list, or just type the agency name (for example Federal Communications Commission) and the actor converts it to the right slug.

Does it work with AI agents? Yes. Like every Apify actor it is exposed via REST API and MCP, so Claude, Cursor and similar tools can call it directly, for instance to answer "list new SEC proposed rules from this month".

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Something missing?

If you need an extra field, another source, or a different output, open an issue on this Actor and describe it. I read every request and small additions usually ship within days. More monitors and data Actors are on my profile, including the ClinicalTrials.gov monitor, a brand and news monitor, and a Companies House monitor.

Keywords: Federal Register API, Federal Register monitor, US rulemaking tracker, regulatory change monitoring, proposed rule alerts, final rule alerts, agency rulemaking tracker, compliance monitoring, regulatory affairs, docket monitoring, RIN tracker, EPA rule alerts, SEC rule alerts, FDA notice monitor, notice of proposed rulemaking, Federal Register for AI agents, MCP, Federal Register v1 API.