Federal Register Scraper: Rules & Notices, 14 Fields

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💰 From $0.60 / 1,000 results.

Track the daily journal of the US government as structured JSON. Search rules, proposed rules, notices and presidential documents in one Actor and get 14 fields per document: document number, type, title, abstract, action, issuing agencies, publication date, effective date, docket IDs, Federal Register citation, president, HTML and PDF links, and a capture timestamp.

Pure HTTP against the official Federal Register API v1. No API key, no login, no browser, newest first, up to 10,000 documents per run.

Why use this Federal Register scraper

• All four document types from one input. documentTypes accepts RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE and PRESDOCU, so a compliance watch and an executive-order watch are the same Actor with a different array.
• Agency filtering by slug. agencySlugs narrows to specific agencies, and multiple slugs combine into one query.
• Abstract and action on every row. abstract and action are what make a Federal Register entry readable without opening the PDF, and both come through parsed.
• Both document links. Every row carries html_url and pdf_url, so a downstream RAG pipeline can fetch full text without a second lookup.
• Ordered newest first. A small maxResults gives you the most recent activity rather than an arbitrary window.

Watch new rules on a policy topic

{
  "searchTerm": "artificial intelligence",
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "maxResults": 100
}

Final rules plus proposed rules is the standard shape for a regulatory-change watch. Save it as a Task and schedule it daily.

Monitor one agency's entire output

{
  "agencySlugs": ["environmental-protection-agency"],
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE", "NOTICE"],
  "dateFrom": "2026-01-01",
  "maxResults": 500
}

Agency slugs are the hyphenated names used in Federal Register URLs. Multiple slugs in the array are ORed together.

Collect executive orders and presidential documents

{
  "documentTypes": ["PRESDOCU"],
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-20",
  "maxResults": 300
}

Presidential documents populate the president field alongside the standard citation and links.

Build a dated compliance corpus for RAG

{
  "searchTerm": "data privacy",
  "dateFrom": "2024-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-01-01",
  "maxResults": 2000
}

abstract, action, agencies[] and pdf_url on every row is enough to chunk and embed without a second pass over the source.

What data does the Federal Register scraper return

{
  "document_number": "2026-01234",
  "type": "Rule",
  "title": "Safeguards for Automated Decision Systems",
  "abstract": "This final rule establishes requirements for covered entities that deploy automated decision systems...",
  "action": "Final rule.",
  "agencies": ["Federal Trade Commission"],
  "publication_date": "2026-02-14",
  "effective_on": "2026-05-15",
  "docket_ids": ["FTC-2025-0042"],
  "citation": "91 FR 12345",
  "president": null,
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/02/14/2026-01234/...",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-14/pdf/2026-01234.pdf",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-01T09:00:00.000Z"
}

Field	Description
document_number	Federal Register document identifier
type	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice or Presidential Document
title, abstract, action	What the document is and what it does
agencies[]	Every issuing agency, flattened to names
publication_date, effective_on	Published and effective dates
docket_ids[]	Associated rulemaking dockets
citation	Federal Register volume and page citation
president	Populated for presidential documents
html_url, pdf_url	Direct links to both renderings
scraped_at	Capture timestamp

Fields the Federal Register does not publish for a given document (an effective date on a notice, a president on a rule) come back empty rather than guessed.

How the scraper works without an API key

The Federal Register API v1 is fully open. This Actor requests a fixed field list, which keeps responses small and the schema stable, 100 documents per page, ordered newest first, and follows next_page_url until your maxResults is reached. No key, no cookies, no browser.

What can you build with Federal Register data

Regulatory change monitoring. A daily watch on rules and proposed rules matching your policy terms, with effective dates attached.

Comment-deadline tracking. Proposed rules with their docket IDs, so you can join to regulations.gov comment periods.

Government-affairs briefings. One agency's full output over a quarter, ready to summarise.

Compliance RAG. A dated corpus with abstracts and PDF links for retrieval over the actual regulatory text.

How much does it cost to scrape the Federal Register

Pay per document delivered: $0.0035 on the Apify Free plan, $0.0025 on Gold and above. A search that matches nothing is never charged.

How do I use Federal Register data in Claude or ChatGPT

https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=themineworks/federal-register-scraper

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('themineworks/federal-register-scraper').call({
  searchTerm: 'artificial intelligence',
  documentTypes: ['RULE', 'PRORULE'],
  maxResults: 50,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

Federal Register scraper FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The Federal Register API v1 is open to anyone.

What are the document type codes? RULE for final rules, PRORULE for proposed rules, NOTICE for notices and PRESDOCU for presidential documents including executive orders.

Where do I find agency slugs? They are the hyphenated agency names in federalregister.gov URLs, for example environmental-protection-agency.

How current is it? Same day. The Federal Register publishes each business morning and the API reflects it immediately.

Can I get the full document text? The Actor returns the abstract plus both html_url and pdf_url; fetch either link for the complete text.

Complete your government data pipeline

• FDA Recalls Scraper, the enforcement actions that follow the rules.
• Company KYB Resolver, resolve the entities named in a docket to LEI and SEC CIK.

Found a bug or want a field added? Open an issue on the Actor's Apify Console page.

Related guides

• Federal Register API: How to Track US Rules, Proposed Rules, and Executive Orders
• Monitor Federal Regulations: A Compliance Watch with the Federal Register API

Last verified: 2026-08