USAspending Federal Awards Scraper — Contracts, Grants, Loans & More

Search every US federal award — contracts, IDVs, grants, direct payments, loans and other assistance — straight from USAspending.gov, the US government's official spending database, and get clean structured JSON back. Filter by keyword, awarding agency, recipient, NAICS code, place of performance, dollar amount and date. Ideal for government-contracting intelligence, competitor and market research, grant discovery, and B2G lead generation. You only pay for awards actually delivered.

Keywords: USAspending API, federal contracts scraper, government contracts data, federal grants scraper, SAM.gov alternative, GovCon intelligence, federal spending data, B2G leads, NAICS contract search, government award data.

---

Why this actor

USAspending.gov holds the complete public record of how the US federal government spends money — trillions of dollars across millions of awards. The data is open, but the official API is awkward to drive: it is a POST-only search with required award-type codes, different valid fields for contracts versus assistance awards, cursor-style pagination, and raw column names that do not map cleanly to a database row.

This actor wraps all of that into a simple, structured scraper:

• Every award type in one place — contracts, IDVs, grants, direct payments, loans, other assistance — selected with a single dropdown.
• Powerful filters — keyword, awarding agency, recipient name, NAICS code, place-of-performance state, minimum/maximum dollar amount, and a date window.
• Clean, normalized output — one tidy record per award, with the recipient, agency, amount as a real number, dates, type, NAICS/PSC, description and a direct link to the award page on USAspending.gov.
• Deep pagination — pull anywhere from a handful of awards to thousands, sorted largest-first.
• Fully open, no API key — this targets USAspending's official public API. No key, no login, no anti-bot fight.

It is a clean, low-maintenance alternative to manually exporting from USAspending or wrestling with SAM.gov for award-level intelligence.

---

What you can build with it

• GovCon competitive intelligence — see exactly which contracts your competitors win, from which agencies, for how much, and when they expire (re-compete timing).
• B2G lead generation — find agencies and prime contractors actively spending in your NAICS or category, then target them.
• Grant discovery — surface federal grants by agency, recipient type and keyword for nonprofits, universities and research teams.
• Market sizing & research — quantify total federal spend in a category, geography or time window.
• Supply-chain & risk analysis — map which recipients depend on which agencies and programs.
• Recurring monitoring — schedule a daily or weekly run on a saved filter and capture new awards as they post.

---

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
keywords	string[]	["cybersecurity"]	Free-text search across descriptions, recipients and IDs. Empty = all.
awardType	enum	contracts	contracts, idvs, grants, direct_payments, loans, other_assistance.
agencies	string[]	—	Top-tier awarding agency names (e.g. Department of Defense).
recipientSearch	string	—	Recipient name contains this text (e.g. Lockheed).
naicsCodes	string[]	—	NAICS industry codes (contracts/IDVs only).
placeOfPerformanceState	string	—	Two-letter US state code (e.g. CA).
minAmount / maxAmount	integer	—	Award amount bounds in USD.
dateFrom / dateTo	string	last 365 days	Action-date window YYYY-MM-DD (search supports back to 2007-10-01).
maxResults	integer	100	Max awards to return, largest first.

Example input

{
  "keywords": ["artificial intelligence"],
  "awardType": "contracts",
  "agencies": ["Department of Defense"],
  "minAmount": 1000000,
  "dateFrom": "2024-10-01",
  "dateTo": "2025-09-30",
  "maxResults": 200
}

---

Output

Each award is one dataset record:

{
  "award_id": "FA862118F6251",
  "recipient_name": "LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION",
  "recipient_id": "abc123-C",
  "awarding_agency": "Department of Defense",
  "awarding_sub_agency": "Department of the Air Force",
  "award_amount": 625405469.07,
  "award_type": "DELIVERY ORDER",
  "award_category": "contracts",
  "naics": { "code": "336413", "description": "OTHER AIRCRAFT PARTS AND AUXILIARY EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURING" },
  "psc": { "code": "1680", "description": "..." },
  "start_date": "2018-02-08",
  "end_date": "2027-01-31",
  "place_of_performance_state": "TX",
  "description": "AFSOC ACTS AWARD OF CONTRACT FOR CLS, ENGINEERING, INSTRUCTION",
  "award_url": "https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_FA862118F6251_9700_FA862115D6276_9700",
  "scraped_at": "2026-06-10T15:00:00.000Z"
}

naics and psc are present for contracts and IDVs; assistance awards use award_type (e.g. BLOCK GRANT (A)). A final {"_type": "summary"} record reports how many awards were returned.

---

Pricing

Your first 25 awards are free — every Apify account, no card, no trial clock. After that it is a flat $0.003 per award delivered.

• First 25 awards free per account (lifetime), then $0.003/award
• Zero charge on empty runs — filters that match nothing cost you nothing
• No monthly minimum, no rental
• A run pulling 1,000 awards costs $3.00

You pay for awards in your dataset, not for time on the platform.

---

FAQ

Do I need an API key? No. USAspending.gov's API is fully open. Nothing to sign up for.

How far back does the data go? The award search covers action dates back to 2007-10-01. For older data, USAspending offers bulk downloads.

Is this the same data as SAM.gov? USAspending is the authoritative record of awarded federal spending (where the money went). SAM.gov focuses on active solicitations and entity registration. For award-level intelligence — who won what, for how much — USAspending is the right source, and this actor makes it queryable.

Can I monitor new awards automatically? Yes — save your filter as a task and schedule it. Each run returns the latest matching awards.

What award types are covered? Contracts, IDVs, grants, direct payments, loans, and other assistance — every category USAspending tracks.