📜 Federal Register Scraper: US Rules, Notices & Executive Orders

Overview

Federal Register Scraper turns the US Federal Register (the official daily journal of the federal government) into clean, structured JSON. Search by term, filter by document type (final rules, proposed rules, notices, presidential documents), narrow to a specific agency, and set a publication date window. No API key, no login, no rate-limit dance. Pass "cryptocurrency" and the SEC as an agency slug, and get back every SEC crypto rulemaking as flat records ready for your database, spreadsheet, or RAG pipeline.

Built for regulatory monitoring, compliance teams, legal research, and AI agents that need authoritative federal regulatory text.

Reliability posture: blocked, empty, or failed runs are never charged. You only pay for a document record that was actually delivered.

✅ No login | ✅ No API key | ✅ Pay only for documents delivered | ✅ MCP-ready for AI agents

Features

Full text search across the entire Federal Register. Document type filter for final rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents. Agency slug filter to narrow to any regulator (EPA, SEC, FDA, etc.). Publication date window filter with YYYY-MM-DD inputs. Flat one record per document output with title, abstract, docket IDs, HTML and PDF links.

How it works

The Federal Register runs an open, well-documented API v1 at federalregister.gov. Driving it well requires handling bracketed condition parameters, field selection, cursor pagination, and rate limits. This actor wraps all of that and returns one clean record per document, with the fields that regulatory and policy teams actually need already lifted to the top level.

Every new rule, proposed rule, agency notice, and presidential document published in the Federal Register is available the same day it prints. Set a task with your watchlist of terms and agency slugs, schedule a daily run, and you have a lightweight regulatory monitor that never misses a rulemaking.

🧾 Input configuration

{
  "searchTerm": "cryptocurrency",
  "documentTypes": ["RULE", "PRORULE"],
  "agencySlugs": ["securities-and-exchange-commission"],
  "dateFrom": "2025-01-01",
  "dateTo": "2026-12-31",
  "maxResults": 200
}

📤 Output format

{
  "document_number": "2026-14132",
  "type": "Rule",
  "title": "Enhanced Favorable Treatment for the United Arab Emirates Under the Export Administration Regulations",
  "abstract": "In this final rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to provide enhanced favorable treatment for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Specifically, BIS is removing the UAE from Country Groups D:3 and D:4 and adding the UAE to Country Group A:5. More license exceptions will now be available, including Strategic Trade Authorization (STA) for the UAE Government and approved commercial entities in the UAE.",
  "action": "Final rule.",
  "agencies": ["Commerce Department", "Industry and Security Bureau"],
  "publication_date": "2026-07-14",
  "effective_on": "2026-07-10",
  "docket_ids": ["Docket No. 260710-0168"],
  "citation": "91 FR 43034",
  "president": "Donald Trump",
  "html_url": "https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/14/2026-14132/enhanced-favorable-treatment-for-the-united-arab-emirates-under-the-export-administration",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-07-14/pdf/2026-14132.pdf",
  "scraped_at": "2026-07-15T04:15:03.978Z"
}

Every document record contains these fields:

Field	Description
🆔 document_number	Federal Register document number
🏷️ type	Rule, Proposed Rule, Notice, or Presidential Document
📄 title	Official document title
📝 abstract	Regulatory abstract summarising the action
⚙️ action	Action line (e.g. "Final rule", "Proposed rule")
🏛️ agencies	Array of issuing agency names
📅 publication_date	Publication date in the Federal Register
⏰ effective_on	Effective date if set
🗂️ docket_ids	Array of docket identifiers
🔖 citation	Official FR citation (e.g. "91 FR 12345")
👤 president	Named president for presidential documents
🌐 html_url	Direct link to the official HTML text
📕 pdf_url	Direct link to the govinfo.gov PDF
🕒 scraped_at	ISO timestamp of capture

💼 Common use cases

Compliance monitoring Track new and proposed rules from the agencies that regulate your industry, the day they publish. Trigger a Slack or email alert when a matching rule crosses the register.

Regulatory intelligence Feed a watchlist of terms and agencies into a daily run and never miss a rulemaking. Build an internal dashboard of open comment periods for your policy team.

Legal and policy research Assemble the complete documentary trail on a topic, with links to the official text. Pull a full year of one agency's output for a research memo or brief.

AI and RAG pipelines Ingest authoritative regulatory text and abstracts for grounded question answering. Give a compliance copilot a daily-refreshed corpus of live federal rulemaking.

🚀 Getting started

1. Open the actor and set searchTerm to a topic that matters to you, or leave empty for everything.
2. Pick document types in documentTypes. Use RULE, PRORULE, NOTICE, or PRESDOCU.
3. Add agency slugs in agencySlugs to narrow to specific regulators (e.g. environmental-protection-agency).
4. Optionally set a dateFrom and dateTo window in YYYY-MM-DD format.
5. Click Start and download the dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel, or pull it via API or MCP.

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. The Federal Register API is fully open, and the actor handles all pagination, retries, and rate limiting for you.

How current is the data? Real time. New documents appear as soon as they are published, every business day.

Can I monitor a specific regulator? Yes. Set agencySlugs (with or without a searchTerm), save the config as a task, and schedule a daily or weekly run.

What document types are covered? Final rules, proposed rules, notices, and presidential documents (executive orders, proclamations, memoranda).

Can I use it inside an AI agent? Yes. It is exposed as an MCP tool. See below.

Use in Claude, ChatGPT & any MCP agent

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

Or call it programmatically with the Apify client:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

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

const run = await client.actor('themineworks/federal-register-scraper').call({
  searchTerm: 'cryptocurrency',
  documentTypes: ['RULE', 'PRORULE'],
  agencySlugs: ['securities-and-exchange-commission'],
  maxResults: 200,
});

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

🛠️ Complete your government data pipeline

Pair Federal Register Scraper with related themineworks actors for a full GovTech workflow:

• USAspending Federal Awards Scraper: pull every US federal contract, grant, and loan by keyword, agency, or recipient.
• CourtListener Federal Court Scraper: pull federal court opinions and dockets alongside the underlying rules.
• NIH RePORTER Grant Scraper: pull federal biomedical grant funding data.

Typical flow: federal-register captures the rulemaking, usaspending shows who is receiving federal dollars under those rules, and courtlistener surfaces the litigation that follows.

Questions or need a custom field set? Reach out through the Apify profile.